Wendy Science

VACCINATION STRATEGY In “ ” [Science Agenda], the editors suggest that rather than “strong-arm tactics,” we should use a more subtle social strategy of “little nudges” to convince parents to vaccinate their children. But strong-arm tactics are nothing new to public health. How is a law that mandates vaccinations for school-age children, such as the one recently passed in California, any different from, say, fluoridating drinking water? Although forming peer-advocacy groups and promoting provaccine interactions with providers are part of the solution, I do not think these strategies alone are aggressive enough for a time-sensitive and life-threatening public health issue. California's law is a necessary measure to shift the immunization rate above the safety threshold. HANNAH PECKLER DINOSAUR EXTINCTION Stephen Brusatte refers to the extinction of the dinosaurs in “ .” What was so vulnerable in the dinosaurs that ensured their extinction while allowing mammals to survive and thr...

Scientific American's logotype has undergone subtle shifts, large leaps and occasional bouts of nostalgia. The image series below outlines the history of the publication's identity, starting with its debut in August 1845 as weekly devoted primarily to inventions.

Our decisions are constantly shaped by subtle changes in our environment. Even choices that feel deliberate and conscious can be swayed by cues that we may not even notice, such as social norms or the setting of a default option. Behavioral scientists use the phrase “choice architecture” to describe the ways in which the environment influences how we decide. In the past five years several governments have begun to guide people toward making better choices—for themselves and for society—by using behavioral science research. Scientists refer to choice architecture interventions that push people toward a certain outcome as “nudges.” Since 2010, for instance, the U.K.'s Behavioral Insights Team, or “nudge unit,” has dramatically improved on-time tax payments simply by telling people about the large number of citizens who paid their taxes on time. The team has collected an estimated £210 million in revenue. Recently the World Bank issued an extensive report that highlighted similar beh...

When the famed astrophysicist needed to select a college, he turned to the pages of Scientific American for help. Years later, our profile about him turned out to be his favorite. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Healthy ants wanted nothing to do with free-radical-rich foodstuff, but ants exposed to a pathogenic fungus sought the stuff, which upped their odds of survival. Christopher Intagliata reports. By | | We humans . As do our primate cousins. Chimps, for example, . But the habit extends even to invertebrates. Take fruit flies— . Or wood ants, which with anti-fungal, anti-bacterial tree sap. Now researchers in Finland report that ants there that have encountered a pathogenic fungus appear to fight the infection by eating foods high in free radicals. Those are molecules with a talent for causing cell damage, in this case, to the cells of the fungus. That's according to a study in the journal . [Nick Bos et al, ] The researchers collected some 400 wild ants. They exposed some to the fungus, and left the rest alone. Then they offered up a sort of eggy custard—either plain, or laced with free radicals—in the form of hydrogen peroxide. ants didn't want anything to do with the rad...

Neurons involved in Parkinson’s disease are especially susceptible to burnout because of their complex branching By | | Each year doctors diagnose approximately 60,000 Americans with Parkinson’s disease, an incurable neurodegenerative condition for which the number-one risk factor is age. Worldwide an estimated seven to 10 million people currently live with the malady. As U.S. and global populations grow older, it is becoming . So far, researchers know that Parkinson’s involves cell death in a few restricted areas of the brain including the substantia nigra (SNc), one of two big cell clusters in the midbrain that house a large population of dopamine neurons. These cells release dopamine and are involved in a variety of functions including reward processing and voluntary movement. Their death leads to the motor control and balance issues that are core symptoms of the disease. New research shows that these brain cells, most at risk in Parkinson’s disease , require unusually high amo...

Investigators across five continents reported that they were able to replicate only about 40 percent of the results from 100 previously published studies in cognitive and social psychology, in a study described today in the influential journal . The massive collaboration, called the Reproducibility Project: Psychology, could serve as a model for examining reproducibility of research in other fields, and a similar effort to scrutinize studies in cancer biology is already underway. Central to the scientific method, experiments “must be reproducible,” says Gilbert Chin, a senior editor at . “That is, someone other than the original experimenter should be able to obtain the same findings by following the same experimental protocol.” The more readily a study can be replicated, the more trustworthy its results. But “there has been growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired,” says corresponding author Brian Nosek, a psychology professor at the University of Vi...