Laundry-listing facts rarely changes hearts and minds – unless a bot is doing the persuading. Briefly chatting with an AI moved potential voters in three countries toward their less preferred candidate, researchers report December 4 in Nature. That finding held true even in the lead-up to the contentious 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and…
December 4, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Man Dies of Rabies after Receiving Infected Kidney Transplant A man has passed away after he received a kidney transplant from a person who had died with undiagnosed rabies, according to U.S. public health officials By Claire Cameron edited by Megha Satyanarayana Kathleen Reeder…
A machine making semiconductor chips David Talukdar / Alamy The latest commodity coveted by the AI industry is computer memory, and the sector is signing deals directly with manufacturers for billions of dollars worth of chips – the very same chips that consumers use in smartphones, laptops and games consoles. At best, this is driving…
The microbial toxin colibactin has just the right shape to snuggle up to DNA — but its embrace is unfortunately more cancerous than cozy. Colibactin is produced by bacteria in the gut and causes mutations implicated in colon cancer. It bears chemical motifs so good at damaging DNA that scientists call them “warheads.” And now,…
December 4, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm CDC Vaccine Panel in Disarray over Hepatitis B Vote Members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices seemed confused about a proposed recommendation for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine By Lauren J. Young edited by Claire Cameron Robert Malone, a…
AI chatbots may have the power to influence voters’ opinions Enrique Shore / Alamy Does the persuasive power of AI chatbots spell the beginning of the end for democracy? In one of the largest surveys to date exploring how these tools can influence voter attitudes, AI chatbots were more persuasive than traditional political campaign tools…
Let the record show: In 2025, one of paleontology’s oldest debates was settled. A second study in as many months confirms — using an independent and novel analysis — that the the tiny tyrannosaur Nanotyrannus is indeed its own species and not a young T. rex. A mysterious fossil skull of a small, sharp-toothed dinosaur,…
December 4, 2025 1 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm China’s CO2 Emissions Might Have Finally Peaked China has rapidly become the world leader in renewable energy, but continued coal use means it could take longer for its emissions to decline By Andrea Thompson edited by Claire Cameron A coal-fired power plant in China….
The bubonic plague arrived in Europe in the late 1340s CPA Media / Alamy The Black Death, a bubonic plague outbreak that killed up to 60 per cent of the population of medieval Europe, may have been set in motion by volcanic activity around 1345. The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, is spread by fleas feeding…
An erupting volcano may have kicked off a chain of events that led to the swift dance of the Black Plague across Europe in the 14th century, in a pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. New analyses of tree ring data, ice cores and historical accounts suggest that a powerful volcanic eruption somewhere…
