News

Wedding Rings

For Richer (Not For Poorer): The Inequality Crisis of Marriage


March 15, 2012


Americans are falling out of love with marital bliss. Look at the data. As of 2010, only 51 percent of Americans 18 or older were married, compared with 72 percent in 1960. Exacerbated by a weak job market, the drop … Read more

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica stops printing after more than 200 years


March 14, 2012


The publisher is ditching its weighty tomes to concentrate on an internet version, after recognising that knowledge was changing so quickly that the they were becoming obsolete as soon as they were issued. Its handsomely-presented volumes have been in print … Read more

Ben Gulak on the Uno

Taking the speed bumps


March 12, 2012


The summer before his last year in high school, Ben Gulak went to China with his parents. Growing up in the small city of Milton, Ont., he was shocked by the transportation challenges facing China’s high-density population. The movie An … Read more

Darpa’s Robotic Cheetah Sets Racing Record


March 6, 2012


The Pentagon’s far-out research agency, Darpa, has just released a new video of its Cheetah ‘bot — designed to mimic the rapid movements of cheetahs, the speediest animals in nature — absolutely killing it on a laboratory treadmill. In fact, the ‘bot … Read more

100-Mile Houses Expand the Locavore Movement From Food to Architecture


February 24, 2012


The rise of the locavore movement introduced millions of people to the100-mile diet, which involves eating only food produced within one’s own region. Now, a new focus on sustainable architecture is applying the same concept to homes. The idea of … Read more

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal


February 14, 2012


Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and … Read more

lake

Russian Drill Penetrates 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake


February 6, 2012


After twenty years of drilling, a team of Russian researchers is close to breaching the prehistoric Lake Vostok, which has been trapped deep beneath Antarctica for the last 14 million years. Vostok is the largest in a sub-glacial web of more than … Read more

elephants

A Proposal to Introduce Elephants to Australia: Really?


February 3, 2012


  Why not bring elephants to Australia? That’s the proposal made by biologist David Bowman of the University of Tasmania in a comment published February 2 in Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The pachyderms could help to polish off … Read more

Toronto to get its own symphony at the TSO


February 1, 2012


The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has commissioned composer Tod Machover to write a symphony about Toronto using the ideas and suggestions of the city’s own citizens. No musical expertise is required in the interactive project which will use the internet to … Read more

Cambridge scientist debunks flying myth


January 30, 2012


Aeroplanes can fly because their wings cause the air pressure underneath to be greater than that above, lifting them into the air. But engineers have for years been frustrated by a theory which wrongly explains what causes the change in … Read more