scientificamerican.com

On June 20, visiting the U.S., I watched intense rains flood Westmoreland County, in western Pennsylvania, on the morning TV news, wondering if I could fly out of Washington, D.C., as planes soon would be grounded because of the weather system in the East. I saw cars washed away, and damaged bui…

If so, then you may be a card-carrying moral grandstander. Of course it's wonderful to have a social cause that you believe in genuinely, and which you want to share with the world to make it a better place. But moral grandstanding comes from a different place.

First defined and delineat…

Rachel Carson, speaking to the class of 1962 at Scripps College, said, “Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shinin…

Researchers who focus on positive emotions have amassed evidence suggesting that we are more likely to find more meaning in our lives on days when we experience positive emotions. In contrast, researchers taking a meaning-making perspective tend to focus on meaning in the context of adjustment t…

The Trump administration's recent decision to push for a complete invalidation of the Affordable Care Act, and the Medicaid expansions that accompany it, has implications for more than simply the provision of healthcare in this country. It will also impact economic opportunity. Understanding the…

Cats are notorious for their indifference to humans: Almost any owner will testify to how readily these animals ignore us when we call them. But according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports, domestic cats do recognize their own names—even if they walk away when they hear them.

The ongoing measles outbreaks across the United States and Europe prove definitively that our personal choices affect everybody around us. Although you have a right to your own body, your choice to willfully be sick ends where another’s right to be healthy begins. For that reason, people who “op…

At a meeting to coordinate climate action, the nations thwarted recognition of a recent report expressing the urgency of reducing emissions

KATOWICE, Poland—The United States worked with Russia and Saudi Arabia on Saturday night to sideline climate science in U.N. negotiations, angering …

The spacecraft’s final observations are turning up a wealth of bizarre, unexpected phenomena.

But what they seem to have found was far more material than they had expected, coming from far more exotic compounds. The instrument spotted not just hydrogen and helium but also carbon monoxide…