December 15, 2025 1 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Getting a COVID Vaccine while Pregnant Slashes Risk of Premature Birth, Major New Study Finds Pregnant people who receive a COVID vaccine are 60 percent less likely to experience severe disease and around 30 percent less likely to give birth prematurely, according to new…
Green hydrogen has many possible uses Bernat Armangue/Associated Press/Alamy Hydrogen, the most abundant element, gives off energy when combined with oxygen, and the only by-product is water. That is why politicians have touted it as the Swiss Army Knife of climate change, able to power a huge array of vehicles and industrial processes that currently…
A puzzling ultraviolet light seen across the Milky Way could come from the destruction of nuggets of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up around a quarter of the matter and energy in the universe. The light could originate with a type of dark matter called axion quark nuggets, researchers suggest in a paper…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup. First up, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported last Monday that 2025 is shaping up to be the second-hottest year on record, with data suggesting it will tie with 2023 for…
Christopher Chiu conducted the first human challenge trial for covid-19 in 2021 Thomas Angus/Imperial College London At first glance, you would think it was a modest hotel. There are en-suite bedrooms, a socialising area with table tennis and pool tables and even on-call staff. Despite appearances though, this unassuming glass-fronted building on the outskirts of…
’Tis the season for conifers—whether they are being decorated for a little Christmas cheer or merely serving as a vibrant, verdant contrast to their denuded deciduous peers. What you might not appreciate is that conifers, which grow and thrive all year alongside other evergreens, have played some surprising roles in U.S. history. Take the eastern…
Feeling alienated in others’ company can happen to anyone at any time franckreporter/Getty Images As we enter the holiday season, one Dear David reader is dreading loneliness this Christmas. It isn’t that she lacks friends or family, she says, but that she sometimes finds the enforced jollity of work parties and family gatherings to be…
December 14, 2025 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Trump Officials Keep Comparing the U.S.’s Vaccine Schedule to Denmark’s. They’re Missing the Point The U.S.’s and Denmark’s health systems are starkly different, so it makes sense that their vaccination schedules would differ, too By Tanya Lewis edited by Claire Cameron & Clara Moskowitz…
Shutterstock/Andrei Kuzmik Rooms available: minimum two-week stay, en-suite. Free pool. Meals, Wi-Fi and infectious virus included. Call now! Would you answer an ad like that? What about one offering the promise of violent diarrhoea? How many stars worth of service would tempt you to add a sexually transmitted infection to your stay? Perhaps a nice…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup. First up: vaccines. On Thursday and Friday of last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met to review and vote on recommendations for official…
