Scientific research, from vaccines to oceanography to space exploration, has flourished in the United States since its Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. However, science is not immune to misinformation, commercial agendas, or conflicting priorities.

The FIFA World Cup is underway, but our attention is on the ball itself. Beneath its bold design is a story of physics, materials science, and engineering. ⚽

Much of what scientists know about the early Solar System comes from meteorites—ancient rocks that travel through space and survive the fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

🏆 American Scientist has won five APEX Awards! We're thrilled to celebrate this recognition and extend our congratulations to the entire American Scientist team and our outstanding authors for bringing home five APEX Awards. Thank you to everyone who made this achievement possible!

Tune in for a live replay of Science by the Slice. In this session, Christina M. Cruz discusses her research on task shifting in child mental health care.

On March 14, 2014, a French news site reported a strange fever in Macenta, a small village in Guinea. The story described a “new disease whose name is unknown” that caused victims to bleed from their orifices, and had already “killed eight people and contaminated several others.”

Acoustics can provide an immense amount of data about ecosystem inhabitants, including what part of the habitat each species uses at different times of day.

One way to open up the AI hood and take a look at their digital engines is to examine and understand the training datasets that fuel them.

There's still time to join us for our live replay of Science by the Slice with Tamlin Pavelsky.

Neutrinos are a type of fundamental particle part of the lepton category of the Standard Model (shown here in cupcake form). Neutrinos have 1/500,000th the mass of an electron and come in three “flavors.” They are extremely abundant, but very little is known about why they’re so tiny!

Hello science lovers! My name is Nik, and I’m one of the interns at SCONC who’ll be covering today’s Science by the Slice talk! Today’s talk will be given by Dr. Kate Scholberg, Arts & Science distinguished Professor of Physics at Duke University, and will be all about neutrinos!

In The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind, Tom Griffiths aims to make his work on understanding the human mind accessible to anyone.

The texture, color, and pattern of bird eggshells may have evolved as protection against harsh environmental conditions.

Join us for a live replay of Science by the Slice now.

Design in all fields requires choices that are fundamentally a question of values, the urban environment itself is a function of a history of selections that express values.

Scientists have found direct biological evidence that pre-Inca cultures used a sophisticated trade network to acquire parrot feathers—coveted symbols of status, power, and cosmology among many ancient trans-Andean groups.

Nuclear fusion is an attractive energy source because it is safer than fission, produces no carbon emissions and minimal radioactive waste, and relies on abundant fuels such as deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen).

A new book explores what earthquakes can tell us about our planet—and possibly others.

A recent book examines Earth science through the lenses of mythology and Indigenous stories.

Most religions have a creation story, but by comparison, the Big Bang theory is a fairly new scientific idea, with evidence of leftover radiation from the Big Bang discovered only in the 1960s.

The FIFA World Cup occurs every four years, and each tournament uses a newly designed football that has unique flight characteristics. Cover image by Ben Kirshner.

We're live on YouTube with a replay of our Science by the Slice talk series. Join us now!

Hello, science enthusiasts! My name is Daniela Danilova and I'm delighted to be with you all once again as one of SCONC's interns for this month's Science By the Slice. We're joined by Véronique Koch, Senior Multimedia Producer at Duke University and 3x Emmy Award–winning science communicator.

"Your voice is not competing with misinformation. It is creating oxygen for the undecided." As a creator, focus your energy on creating the better option, not battling against the worse alternative.

That's it for now! A huge thank you to Véronique Koch for being with us this afternoon and for sharing her scicomm peals. Got more questions about her work? Feel free to reach out at the contact below. Thank you all for tuning into May's STBS coverage. Have a wonderful evening and see you in June!

Fossils of early penguin species reveal the myriad paths these birds took from the sky to the sea, and from temperate New Zealand to the frozen Antarctic.

Medical proof of radioactive health effects on the women who painted these clock and watch dials changed the way that worker safety was enforced and regulated.

Microgrids, which are local energy networks, could power communities when fire risk is high, reducing the need for electricity to pass through long power lines over dry terrain.

The activity level of skeletal muscle modulates a range of genes that produce dramatic molecular changes—and keep us healthy.

Scientists use mathematical descriptions and simulations to make forecasts and provide recommendations to decision makers, but how reliable are these models?

Bone anatomy varies widely, depending on where animals live their lives.

The discovery of thousands of planets orbiting other stars has given us three surprising insights about our Solar System.

A trip through the Solar System would not be complete without visiting these out-of-this-world locales.

Tiny recording backpacks reveal fringe-lipped bats’ surprising hunting style, which minimizes effort while maximizing success.

Collapsed objects weighing millions or billions of times as much as the Sun lie at the heart of nearly all galaxies. New images are finally stripping the mystery from these spheres of warped space.

👩‍🚀 Whether you love astronomy, dark skies, spaceflight, or space history, there’s something for everyone on this list.

Have you heard of a drag crisis? It’s not for reality TV, it’s a real physics term. For the game of football (or soccer, calcio, or futbol), it can cause real problems for goalies. Read more about it in @americanscientist.org new cover feature. Also available on Ebsco/Hoopla via most libraries.

Thanks to @toomanyspectra.bsky.social for this really generous review of THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME in @americanscientist.org! “Throughout all of these topics, she engages the reader on a cerebral yet accessible level” 🙏🏽 amsci.sigmaxi.org/shuttle.php?...

i was thrilled to get to write about THE EDGE OF SPACETIME for @americanscientist.org!

Geological evidence suggests that rivers such as the Red River of the North once flowed south into the Mississippi River, forming a vast continental watershed.

May the Force be with you, always. 🖖 Although they have not yet been found, Earthlike worlds with two suns most likely exist

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a leading cosmologist and a scholar who occupies dual faculty roles in the University of New Hampshire’s physics and women’s and gender studies departments.

Shaking and slowness of movement may be the most obvious symptoms, but they are often not the most debilitating ones.

Call it football, fútbol, calcio, or soccer, there is some striking science behind the Beautiful Game and its sophisticated sphere.

Research impact is no longer measured in prestige publications, but in successfully producing patents, licenses, partnerships, spin-offs, and technology transfer pipelines.

Unless people are mycologists or foragers, or the rare kind of person inclined to slow down and really pay attention, fungi remain invisible. When mushrooms appear, they are often treated as something out of place, such as weird growths or suspicious-looking blobs; things to step around and ignore.

In his quest to “make poetry visible, ” Belgian artist and surrealist René Magritte painted impossible and contradictory scenes that purposely violate the rules of 3D space.

Parkinson’s disease is the fastest-growing neurological condition in the world, currently affecting around 0.1 percent of the population and rising to 3 percent of those over the age of 65.

A recent book explores geology through the lenses of science, history, and culture. Read more of Isabel F. Barton's review of UNDER THE METAL SKY: A Journey through Minerals, Greed, and Wonder:

Trees simultaneously represent refuge, wilderness, commodity, and livelihood. They are at once time-traveling sentinels that function on unimaginable temporal scales as well as organisms that serve as landmarks for navigation of our own lives.