Wildfire Smoke from Canada Blankets the U.S. Midwest in Haze of Bad Air Quality Winds from the northwest are blowing cool, dry air—but also wildfire smoke—into the U.S. Midwest from Canada By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson Smoke from wildfires in Canada is drifting across the U.S. Midwest, leading to hazy skies and air…
The Retreat of Napoleon’s Army from Russia in 1812 by Ary Scheffer IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo When Napoleon’s half-million-strong army retreated from Russia in 1812, around half the men were wiped out by disease, starvation and the extreme cold. Now, state-of-the-art DNA analysis has revealed which pathogens contributed to the catastrophe. In the…
Probiotics aren’t universally gut-friendly, a study in mice suggests. At least one type of usually beneficial gut bacteria may invite an unwanted guest. A single dose of Lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria, a popular probiotic component found naturally in milk and yogurt, can make it easier for Clostridioides difficile to take hold in the guts of mice…
U.S. Science and Scientific American Have Weathered Attacks Before and Won Federal officials seized 3,000 copies of Scientific American in 1950 in a “red scare” era of attacks on science. The move backfired and offers lessons for today By Dan Vergano Albert Einstein and other scientists, including Hans Bethe standing behind him, in 1946. Smith…
Certain AI training techniques may encourage models to be untruthful Cravetiger/Getty Images Common methods used to train artificial intelligence models seem to increase their tendency to give misleading answers, according to researchers who are aiming to produce “the first systematic analysis of machine bullshit”. It is widely known that large language models (LLMs) have a…
These star-shredding black holes sit within dusty galaxies that block many telescopes’ views. That’s not an issue for JWST.
If you haven’t accomplished as much this summer as you had hoped to, you can blame forces far beyond your control: a few of these dog days, by one measure, are among the shortest you’ve ever lived through. For most of humanity’s history, we have measured time by the sun as it rises and sets—essentially,…
The New Scientist Book Club has just read Adam Roberts’s Lake of Darkness Lawrie photography After watching historical figures travel through time in Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, the New Scientist Book Club headed in the other direction for our latest read, to the far future and some hard science fiction with Adam Roberts’s…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Today we’re going to talk about an AI chatbot that appears to believe it might, just maybe, have achieved consciousness. When Pew Research Center surveyed Americans on artificial intelligence in 2024, more than a quarter of respondents said they interacted with AI “almost constantly” or…
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin at the agency’s headquarters Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images The Trump administration is attempting to end the US government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by arguing they do not pose a danger to people. This is part of a strategy to roll back restrictions on power plants and vehicles, which the administration…
