Positive thinking may boost the body’s defenses against disease. Increasing activity in a brain region that controls motivation and expectation, specifically the brain’s reward system, is linked with making more antibodies after receiving a vaccine. The finding suggests these boosts were related to the placebo effect, researchers report January 19 in Nature Medicine. “Placebo is…
January 30, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Lost ancient Greek star catalog decoded by particle accelerator Synchrotron radiation has revealed a star map made by the ancient astronomer Hipparchus that was thought to be lost to time By K. R. Callaway edited by Clara Moskowitz X-ray fluorescence imaging is illuminating Hipparchus’…
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer was the Book Club’s January read Dittmeier The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December – Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games – to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot, which won the Arthur C. Clarke prize…
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. When it comes to our cultural understanding of who can be a scientist, the idea that it’s largely a career for men tends to still dominate. This season the podcast Lost Women of Science digs into the life of the American…
Elizabeth Hohmann with Dmitri, one of her prized stool donors Elizabeth Hohmann Faecal transplants are now commonly used to treat recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections, but finding people whose faeces are of sufficient quality to be used in these transplants is a major challenge. “It’s actually quite a frustrating activity because only about 1 per cent…
January 29, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm How long you live may depend much more on your genes than scientists thought A new analysis suggests that genes play a much larger role in human longevity than previously believed. But lifestyle factors still matter By Cody Cottier edited by Tanya Lewis Amr…
We may never know the universal wave function VICTOR de SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images From the vantage point of quantum physics, the universe may in some ways be fundamentally unknowable. In quantum physics, every object, such as an electron, is matched to a mathematical formula called the wave function. The wave function encodes all the…
Pulsating remnants of stars hint at a clump of invisible matter thought to be about 10 million times the sun’s mass.
January 29, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Doctors keep patient alive using ‘artificial lungs’ for two days Novel artificial lungs could help keep people whose lungs no longer function alive long enough to get an organ transplant By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron New lungs (left) that were transplanted…
Spotting cancer tumours in mammograms seems to be easier with AI AMELIE-BENOIST/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty People who are screened for breast cancer by AI-supported radiologists are less likely to develop aggressive cancers before their next screening round than those who are screened by radiologists alone, raising hopes that AI-assisted screening could save lives. “This…
