If your name gets picked for jury duty, it’s because a computer used a random number generator to select it. The same goes for tax audits or when you opt for a quick pick lottery ticket. But how can you trust that the draw was truly fair? A new cheat-proof protocol for generating random numbers…
Planned NIH Cuts Threaten Americans’ Health, Senators Charge in Tense Hearing Senators grilled NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya the day after more than 300 NIH staff members sent him a fiery letter protesting the cancellation of thousands of research projects By Max Kozlov & Nature magazine U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jayanta (Jay) Bhattacharya…
Minions are characters in films produced by Universal Pictures Cinematic/Alamy Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against AI image generator Midjourney alleging mass copyright infringement that enables users to create images that “blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters”. The action could be a major turning point in the legal battles over…
A plastic structure separates white noise into pitches, like a rainbow splits light into colors, offering a novel way to manipulate sound.
New Map Shows How Gun Deaths of Children Have Increased in States with Loose Firearm Laws Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in the U.S.—and states with loose gun control laws bear the heaviest burden, a new study found By Allison Parshall edited by Dean Visser Gun violence has been the…
A tadpole, stained with immunofluorescence to visualise its internal anatomy, that had a brain-tracking device implanted in it as an embryo Hao Sheng et al. 2025, Jia Liu Lab/Harvard SEAS How does our brain, which is capable of generating complex thoughts, actions and even self-reflection, grow out of essentially nothing? An experiment in tadpoles, in…
After my son was born in December, new parent questions consumed my thoughts. Is he sleeping enough? Is he screaming because he’s hungry or his diaper is dirty? And is poop normally that color? Now that I’ve somewhat mastered those questions, and he’s sleeping through the night, I’m still up obsessing over a new issue:…
How RFK, Jr.’s Dismissal of CDC Immunization Committee Panelists Will Affect America’s Vaccine Access U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., abruptly removes all 17 sitting members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). An epidemiologist explains how this will affect people’s health and vaccine access By Lauren J….
Deserts like Death Valley could be a surprising source of drinking water Mimi Ditchie Photography/Getty Images A small panel managed to extract a glassful of clean water from the bone-dry air of Death Valley in California, which suggests that the device could provide the vital resource to arid regions. The atmosphere over extremely dry land…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. In the animal kingdom lifespans can stretch from mere hours to entire centuries, but that’s just the start. Some creatures deteriorate so slowly that we’ve never actually caught them dying of old age. Others don’t seem to age at all. And some can apparently reset…
