This hurricane season's sixth storm, known as Tropical Storm Fay, may prove the first to hit Florida. And it will likely reach hurricane strength before striking the Florida Keys. Presently churnin
...As a professor, a software developer and an author I've spent a career in software security. I decided to conduct an experiment to see how vulnerable people's accounts are to mining the Web for inf
...Arsenic, a deadly poison, kills by blocking the ability of cells to produce and consume energy. Yet, some red and green slime mats in briny hot springs in Mono Lake, Calif., use the potent compound
...Czech police nab a man suspected of raping 12-year-old girls after offering them car rides via an Internet Web site. In Ohio, a 400-pound man, likewise, uses a Web site to impersonate a 15-year-old
...Scientific American's Larry Greenemeier talks about your privacy and the threats to it. See our privacy package online at SciAm.com, as well as the September special single-topic issue of Scientifi
...In their rush to avoid a repeat of the controversy that plagued the 2000 presidential election, and to meet the requirements of Congress's hastily mandated 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), states
...In the early days of the Internet, optimists projected that it would usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Maybe this will happen yet, but currently the net is proving to be a powe
...He has a name, but most people just know him as “the Star Wars Kid.” In fact, he is known around the world by tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, his notoriety is for one of the most embarra
...Privacy is a public Rorschach test: say the word aloud, and you can start any number of passionate discussions. One person worries about governmental abuse of power; another blushes about his drug
...A cold wind is blowing across the landscape of privacy. The twin imperatives of technological advancement and counterterrorism have led to dramatic and possibly irreversible changes in what people
...FINALIST YEAR: 1981 [More]
Once upon a time an ethicist had a brilliant idea for a prison. Today we all live in it.
Starting in 1785, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham spent decades (and much of his own fortune) advocating f
...PALO ALTO, CALIF.--It was perhaps the most highly touted press conference of the week, but it didn't reveal much in the way of evidence: Three bigfoot enthusiasts announced today that a series of g
...It's an Olympics year, which means that Lee Sweeney's phone is ringing off the hook. Athletes call him three or four times a day asking for help, offering him money. They're persistent, practically
...I just got off the phone with Erik Vance, a freelancer covering the bigfoot press conference in Palo Alto, California, for us. We'll be posting his story as soon as we can this afternoon, but here
...All good cryptid stories come to an end and so it goes with the chupacabra video. Although it is difficult to make a definitive identification from the tape, biologist Scott Henke of Texas A&M Univ
...Yesterday, North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su was stripped of silver and bronze medals after he tested positive for propranolol. The drug is prescribed for a variety of conditions, from high blood pr
...Here's a scenario that might be going through the minds of NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff and his two fellow Russian crew members on the International Space Station (ISS). [More]
The amount of solar photovoltaics harnessing electricity from sunshine in the U.S. will more than double by 2013, thanks to plans to build 800 megawatts (MW) worth in California. The two vast solar
...The National Archives' recent decision to open more than 35,000 official personnel files of men and women who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)--the U.S.'s intelligence agency during
...The latest film in the Star Wars saga is now at multiplexes nationwide, taking moviegoers back to that far, far away galaxy for a fresh dose of epic space battles between cloned soldiers and roboti
...Scientists have developed a two-pronged protein that grabs immune system cells with one arm and introduces them to cancer cells it has snagged with the other. The result: eradicated tumors--at cert
...You probably think you're doing everything you can to stay healthy: you get lots of sleep, exercise regularly and try to avoid fried foods. But you may be forgetting one important thing. Relax! Str
...More bad news for the world's oceans: Dead zones--areas of bottom waters too oxygen depleted to support most ocean life--are spreading, dotting nearly the entire east and south coasts of the U.S. a
...[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Laundry detergents and air fresheners have long promised to keep your house and clothes smelling sunshine fresh and rain shower clean. But wh
...Defining the Line “The Doping Dilemma,” by Michael Shermer, suggests that the possible penalties of using artificial enhancements in sports should be made greater than the possible rewards. But it
...Reconstructing the Very First CellUnlike modern cells, with their mitochondria, pores, nuclei and such, the very first cell, which emerged some 3.5 billion years ago, was simple. It probably consis
...The world’s major auto companies have yet to bring an electric vehicle (EV) to market and keep it there for long. Some drivers, however, taunted by stratospheric gasoline prices, have taken matters
...Many researchers were none too happy when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted in 2006 to cast Pluto out from among the planets, demoting it along with similar bodies in the solar syste
...A press conference in Palo Alto, Calif. tomorrow is planned to showcase yesterday's bold claim that the remains of a Sasquatch, or bigfoot, have been found in northern Georgia. Matthew Whitton, a p
...The annual Defcon computer security conference might be relabeled as the Woodstock of corporate paranoia. [More]
Concrete and steel are the materials of choice when building buildings and vehicles that will protect soldiers from enemy fire. But a group of Norwegian researchers are testing another option: ligh
...Sandy Allen--the world's tallest woman, according to Guinness World Records--died on Wednesday (August 13) in the Indiana nursing home where she lived, the Associated Press reports. Allen was 53 ye
...I am a New Age skeptic. I used to be a New Age cynic, so this change shows how far I have come in opening my mind to things I do not understand. I no longer dismiss channeling and crystals and acup
...No matter how many times researchers try, there's just no getting around the weirdness of quantum mechanics. [More]
Here’s a story that’s leaving a pretty big footprint on the Web: Two people claim to have bagged bigfoot in northern Georgia (the U.S. state, not the at-war Central Asian country).
The pair that cla
...Traveling all the way from its point of origin in Puerto Rico, the chupacabra (literally "goat sucker") has now popped up in the Texas town of Cuero. Or it allegedly has. Even better, sheriff's dep
...It's fourth and goal and the home team's football quarterback can't get through to his coach on the sideline; the cast of a Broadway musical goes silent mid-show; a television news crew has to scra
...Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2007 issue of Scientific American.
August 14, 2003, was a typical warm day in the Midwest. But shortly after 2:00 P.M. several power li
...It seems the pilot of a Titan Tornado (their site was down as of late this afternoon) ultralight aircraft--a single-seat, homebuilt hot-rod capable of hitting 90 mph--had some trouble on Tuesday mo
...On August 14, 2003, shortly after 2 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, a high-voltage power line in northern Ohio brushed against some overgrown trees and shut down--a fault, as it's known in the power in
...Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world's energy woes. But the process of making the various components requires fossil fuels, both for power and for the components themselves,
...This Friday, Buzz Aldrin will be landing on the moon again--this time in the 3-D, computer-generated film, Fly Me to the Moon. In the kiddie flick, Aldrin voices a digital version of himself during
...Courtney Humphries talks about her new book, Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan...And the World. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned in thi
...[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Since so many species in a food web are interconnected, the demise of a one can mean extinction for several others that depend on it for food.
...