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Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel for oil consuming nations

Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk, posted on January 25th, 2012. I’m Steve Mirsky

Time and again humans have domesticated wild animals, producing tame individuals with softer appearances and more docile temperaments, such as dogs and guinea pigs. But a new study suggests that one of our primate cousins--the African ape known as the bonobo --did something similar without human involvement.

President Obama mentioned climate change almost in passing during last night's State of the Union address, noting: "The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change." [More]

What is time? It begins, it ends, it s real, it s an illusion. It s the ultimate paradox.

On January 23 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that law enforcement authorities do not generally have a right to affix a GPS tracking device to a suspect's car without first obtaining a valid warrant.

Obama delivering his 2012 State of the Union address In his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama spent less time than in years past discussing his ambitions to reform science education. He referred to his administration’s offer to let states opt out of No Child Left Behind (” … grant schools flexibility to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test …”)

I knew it was going to be a wonderful night when I magically found street parking on Central Park West directly across from the American Museum of Natural History. Camera in hand I entered the planetarium where I enjoyed a presentation of vintage films and movies depicting space travel and life on other planets. I was soon flying towards the dark side of the moon and out into the Milky Way during a 3D presentation of the planets that was out of this world.

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By Jo Marchant of Nature magazine Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. [More]

Pilot Whale wearing sound-recording tag. Credit: Daniel Ottmann; photo was taken taken as part of research conducted under permit 14241 issued by the U.S

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neuromuscular disease that affects about 130,000 people worldwide a year. The vast majority of patients are isolated cases with no known family history of the disease.

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The number of U.S. undergraduate degrees being awarded in most STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) has risen steadily in recent years{link to G Sci page}

When Mexican tetra fish moved into dark caves long ago, they evolved to deal with the dark by becoming albino…and going blind. And new research shows that the changes various cavefish populations went through occurred repeatedly--a massive, textbook example of convergent evolution. The study is in the journal BioMed Central Evolutionary Biology