Scientific American
Motivation complex: What explains that extra burst of energy as we near completing a goal or task?
Whatever it is you’re striving to achieve, science shows you’re likely to push harder the closer you feel to the ...
How COVID-19 works to destroy our sense of smell
[A]nosmia [loss of sense of smell] seen with COVID-19 is present in 30–98 percent of infected people seen in hospitals, ...
Viewpoint: We still don’t know how deadly COVID-19 is—and why it doesn’t really matter
We’ve learned an incredible amount about the novel coronavirus these last few months… But we’re still struggling to answer what ...
Ignorance is bliss? Why people prefer to remain unaware of potentially unpleasant but useful information
A study of more than 2,000 people in Germany and Spain by Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for ...
Infographic: Deadly opioid overdoses are way more common than we think
Researchers looked at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on about 630,000 people who died of drug ...
Viewpoint: Genetics research was supposed to change human health. Is it time to reconsider investments in the field?
Since its birth 30 years ago, proponents of the Human Genome Project have promised that genetics research would yield untold ...
The problem with winter: Indoor heating creates an easy pathway for coronavirus to spread
It is obvious that in winter, indoor heating causes a difference between indoor and outdoor temperature. But what we are ...
Explaining near-death experiences and why they aren’t always ‘blissful’
Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are triggered during singular life-threatening episodes when the body is injured by blunt trauma, a heart ...
How the stigma surrounding addiction keeps people from seeking treatment
Stigma is a problem with health conditions ranging from cancer and HIV to many mental illnesses. Some gains have been ...
We need a quick, cheap test for coronavirus antibodies. It also needs to be accurate
An inexpensive coronavirus test that millions of Americans could use at a pharmacy, in a workplace or even at home ...
Zapping the brain with electrical pulses allows blind patients to ‘see’ letters
Scientists sent patterns of electricity coursing across people’s brains, coaxing their brains to see letters that weren’t there. The experiment ...
Does smoking pot lower your IQ? New study challenges current thinking
As access to marijuana increases—and while acceptance of the drug grows and perception of its harmfulness diminishes—it is important to ...
Dinosaur DNA discovered?
The tiny fossil is unassuming, as dinosaur remains go. ... But it may contain something never before seen from the ...
Infographic: Widespread use of coronavirus antibody tests will still leave many questions
Dozens of antibody tests for the novel coronavirus have become available in recent weeks. And early results from studies of ...
Menopause might be a tipping point for Alzheimer’s for millions of women
Estrogen is the master regulator of metabolism in the youthful female brain, orchestrating everything from glucose transport and uptake to ...
Is climate change dampening our ability to fight the coronavirus and other diseases?
Scientists have long known that the rise in average global temperatures is expanding the geographical presence of vector-borne diseases such ...
‘Cartoonishly oversimplistic’: Researchers rethinking amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimer’s
[Experts are] divided about whether treating amyloid buildup—long thought to be the best target for an Alzheimer's therapy—is still a ...
Do our genes affect vulnerability to the coronavirus?
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic several months ago, scientists have been puzzling over the different ways the disease ...
Coronavirus vaccine in months, instead of years? Genetic engineering could make it possible
On January 10, when Chinese researchers published the genome of a mysterious, fast-spreading, virus, it confirmed Dan Barouch’s greatest worry ...
Speeding up coronavirus vaccine development by intentionally infecting the healthy? Volunteers are lining up
Momentum is building to speed the development of coronavirus vaccines by intentionally infecting healthy, young volunteers with the virus. A ...
Alzheimer’s research is at a dead end. Here are 5 unexplored treatment routes
It is time to go back to basics. I have been a scientist involved in Alzheimer's research for three decades, ...
Searching for genetic fountain of youth? Study suggests we’ll never find a ‘longevity gene’
What do naked mole rats, elephants, bats and whales have in common? They are all exceptionally long-lived mammals, and recent ...
Specialized ‘event’ cells help your brain keep all your memories organized, study suggests
Our recollection of events is usually not like a replay of digital video from a security camera—a passive observation that ...
Microbiome could be key to better blood sugar control
Researchers from the Weizmann Institute in Israel analyzed the gut microbiome of 800 people. They also hooked these folks up ...
‘Like trying to hit a moving target’: Why it’s so difficult to attack cancer with targeted gene therapies
We are, it seems, still a long way off from a cure, in any ordinary sense of the term. Yet ...
Coronavirus pill? Oral antiviral medication shows promise, slated for human tests
An oral medicine was able to hinder the coronavirus behind COVID-19 as it attempted to replicate itself in human lung ...
‘Next time we might not be so lucky’: The coronavirus shows why we need to learn more about viral threats
Living through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all now seeing the consequences of a failure to plan ahead when an ...
