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For a century workers flocked to Dubuque, Iowa, as they raised new generations of laborers, they built houses, shops and streets that eventually covered over the Bee Branch Creek. The water gurgled through underground pipes out of sight and largely out of memory. [More]

Promising treatments for those blinded by an often-hereditary, retina-damaging disease are expanding throughout Europe and making their way across the pond, offering a ray of hope for the hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. left in the dark by retinitis pigmentosa . The disease--which affects about one in 4,000 people in the U.S

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children, and is becoming a big deal in adults as well. ADHD is a pile of related symptoms, most of them dealing with motivation, impulsivity, inattention, and, you know hyperactivity (they call it ADHD for a reason). Right now, we treat ADHD with stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, which in low doses and when they act over a long period of time can increase focus and help people with ADHD function better

It’s December 12 th , which means if you’re 14 to 18 years old, you still have a couple of days left to enter the YouTube SpaceLab competition . [More]

Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk, posted on December 11th, 2011. I’m Steve Mirsky. Rumors are flying about the search for the long-sought Higgs boson at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider

I am here in Durban, South Africa to report on the just finished climate change negotiations. While an agreement was reached, negotiations were in doubt throughout the three final nights.

All science writers, especially those of us who cover particle physics and other fields that purport to reveal ultimate reality, hear from cranks. Pre-email, I got envelopes stuffed with manuscripts, sometimes hundreds of pages long, from people unaffiliated with any research institution known to me.

Groupthink is a phenomenon in which the members of a group override their individuality in favor of unanimity. Scholars have ascribed bad decision making to groupthink, for example, in U.S. policy during the Vietnam War

The Advances section of Scientific American 's December issue helps parents find educational toys for the holidays, pushes cooking into the future, remembers Steve Jobs, takes a look at faster-than-light neutrinos, investigates turtle yawning and more. For those interested in learning more about the developments described in this section, a list of selected further reading follows.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sixteen thousand years ago, woolly mammoths , Beringian lions and short-faced bears roamed a grassy steppe that stretched across North America into Alaska. [More]

DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. [More]

As more and more content goes digital, people expect TV shows and movies to stream to their TVs, computers, tablets and smart phones. We want to pay for our entertainment once and then watch it anywhere, on any device.

Cooking is one big science experiment.

NASA has lost or misplaced more than 500 of the moon rocks its Apollo astronauts collected and brought back to Earth, according to a new agency report.

Paul Farmer: Wikimedia Commons/Billigan PHILADELPHIA Paul Farmer is used to uphill battles. After decades working to fight HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in impoverished areas of Haiti, the seemingly tireless doctor and anthropologist is now struggling to reassemble a health strategy for the country after last year’s earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak .