2017-06-06 所属栏目:科学美国人

Caviar is one of the world's priciest foods: it can cost thousands of dollars a pound. And caviar from the beluga sturgeon is the most exclusive of all. But even experts have a ha

2017-06-05 所属栏目:科学美国人

“I wish to tell the United States, France believes in you. The world believes in you.”

New French President Emmanual Macron, speaking in English, June 1st, after Ameri

2017-06-05 所属栏目:科学美国人

When California was strangled by drought, the city of Los Angeles was offering homeowners cash to replace their lawns with landscaping that was less thirsty. Because water just eva

2017-06-01 所属栏目:科学美国人

“Einstein wrote, ‘Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life.’”

Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prev

2017-05-27 所属栏目:科学美国人

Fitness bands like the Apple Watch and the Fitbit aim to track your vitals, like heart rate. But early models weren't all that accurate. "We thought of them a little bit like rand

2017-05-25 所属栏目:科学美国人

There's a stretch of highway in Pennsylvania, along U.S. 422. "And like every probably 20 feet you see a big pothole or cracking at the joint. Like everywhere. It was so bad." Yag

2017-05-22 所属栏目:科学美国人

We humans enjoy coffee and tea, to give our brains a caffeine boost. And bees sometimes sip nectar that naturally contains caffeine, which seems to enhance their memory. Now a stud

2017-05-22 所属栏目:科学美国人

Other rocky planets in our solar system show a common feature: within giant craters caused by impacts there’s evidence of volcanic activity. Which made scientists wonder&mdas

2017-05-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, that’s a philosophical pickle. But if you want to know why chickens don’t get cross at people—why they’re content

2017-05-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

Charles Darwin is, most famously, the author of The Origin of Species. But the last book he ever wrote gets far less attention today. It's called The Formation of Vegetable Mould

2017-05-15 所属栏目:科学美国人

Aside from all the satellites, and the space station orbiting the Earth, there's a lot of trash circling the planet, too. Twenty-one thousand baseball-sized chunks of debris, acco

2017-05-12 所属栏目:科学美国人

You can thank your parents for your DNA. Because humans share genes through sexual reproduction, passing DNA from parent to child. It's known as the 'vertical transfer' of DNA.

2017-05-11 所属栏目:科学美国人

May 18th is the 37th anniversary of the massive explosion of Mount Saint Helens. But within days of the volcano erupting, the local ecosystem started to bounce back. Thanks to some

2017-05-10 所属栏目:科学美国人

“Noise can prevent an animal from hearing other important sounds.”

Rachel Buxton, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University. Buxton and colleagues wanted t

2017-05-08 所属栏目:科学美国人

You may have noticed your summertime electricity bills, when you're cranking the A–C, are more pricey than your wintertime payments. That's because air-conditioning is an e

2017-05-04 所属栏目:科学美国人

The ingredient that makes hot chilies hot is called capsaicin—and it can set your mouth on fire. But the spicy compound has a soothing effect too: in your gut, it kicks off a

2017-05-03 所属栏目:科学美国人

“So here’s the first of the alewives, all silvery, they’re all about the same size, you can’t tell the boys from the girls. These will be the first.”

2017-05-02 所属栏目:科学美国人

Fossilized skulls and skeletons found in European caves gave us our first glimpse of our ancient cousins, the Neandertals. And a finger bone, found in a Siberian cave, first indica

2017-05-02 所属栏目:科学美国人

Just like humans, fruit flies have to eat a balanced diet.

"They need sugar to survive, they need amino acids to make eggs, to have stem cells proliferate. They need salt, they n

2017-04-27 所属栏目:科学美国人

Want to make a dog? Well, wolves evolved into dogs at least once. But it turns out you can also make what’s basically a dog by starting with wild foxes. Select the ones that

2017-04-26 所属栏目:科学美国人

“And tomorrow I’ll be marching, because don’t you think Millie would agree with the March for Science.”

Lisa Klein, from the materials science and engineer

2017-04-24 所属栏目:科学美国人

If your friends are happy—turns out you're more likely to be happy too. If your friends are overweight, that too ups the odds you'll pack on pounds. Those effects have been

2017-04-21 所属栏目:科学美国人

“We’re hearing a lot of the arguments against action on reducing CO2 being based on, ‘well CO2 was higher in the past, so we don’t have to worry about it.&r

2017-04-20 所属栏目:科学美国人

In recent years researchers have learned that trauma can be inherited—passed down due to changes in DNA, what’s known as epigenetics. But researchers recently uncovered

2017-04-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

The tropics are well known for their biodiversity. But another hotspot? Mountains. Like the Hengduan Mountains, in south-central China. "It'll look very much like this kind of fam