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By Manuel Jimenez SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) - A strengthening Hurricane Irene churned on a northwest track toward the Southeast United States on Tuesday, threatening the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas with battering winds and rain and dangerous surf. [More]

A note from the Editor in Chief: Scientific American is celebrating its 166th year. [More]

A note from the Editor in Chief: Scientific American is celebrating its 166th year. Given its history as the longest continuously published magazine in the U.S., it's probably no surprise that it has touched the lives and career paths of many readers--including the scientists who write articles for us and whose work we cover. So, as often happens, when I met Peter Norvig, director of research for Google, while we were serving as judges for the Google Science Fair , we got to chatting about Scientific American

In Part 1 of this interview series, MailChimp ’s CEO Ben Chestnut discussed how going freemium led to creating a fund for integrators , resulting in creative new developments with their product.

To the list of cocaine’s many dangers, health officials have added at least one more: purpura, a rash caused by internal bleeding from small blood vessels. Two recent papers in major medical journals have documented cases of cocaine users showing up in emergency rooms with patches of blackened, dying skin on the ears, face, trunk or extremities. The condition causes scarring and sometimes requires reconstructive surgery.

Why can't anyone tame the social stream and just give us the good stuff? Illustration by Debaser Every minute of every day , the more than a half-billion members of Facebook collectively create almost 1 million photos, wall posts, status updates, and other bits of ephemera. The firehose at Twitter looks tame by comparison--the network sees more than 125,000 tweets a minute, only half of them about (or from) randy congressmen.

For years scientists have urged national leaders to tackle climate change, based on the

From Nature magazine The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is perilously overbudget and under threat of cancellation, but Naturehas learned that it may be offered a financial lifeline. The flagship observatory is currently funded entirely through NASA's science division; now NASA is requesting that more than US$1 billion in extra costs be shared 50:50 with the rest of the agency. The request reflects administrator Charles Bolden's view, expressed earlier this month, that the telescope is a priority not only for the science programme, but for the entire agency.

The future looks warmer for many major cities, that's clear--but perhaps you missed the part where it's also forecast to look wetter. Scientific measurements show that the quantity of rainfall that fell on the Northern Hemisphere intensified in the second half of the 20th century. At least some of that increase can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, according to a recent study .

Atmospheric researchers tend to agree that tropical cyclones of unusual ferocity are coming this century, but the strange fact is that there is no consensus to date on the five-point scale used to classify the power of these anticipated storms. In what may sound like a page from the script of the rock-band spoof Spinal Tap with its reference to a beyond-loud electric guitar amplifier volume 11, there is actually talk of adding a sixth level to the current Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, on which category 5 intensity means sustained winds higher than 155 miles per hour (250 kilometers per hour) for at least one minute, with no speed cap

Marriage can have its ups and downs.

It sounds too good to be true: you can go solar without paying a cent.

Top 10 Overall Performances [More]

They say there's no place like home. Well, we may get to test the idea. Because astronomers have located a world that could be a bit like Earth some 36 light-years away.

U.S. and Chinese officials heading up a series of joint advanced coal projects Friday signed an intellectual property agreement meant to ease the sharing of innovative technology while protecting patents and licensing agreements. Companies collaborating on research and development projects tied to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), a program started in 2009, can enter into regular commercial contracts.