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The huge disaster in Japan has ruined parts of the nation's electrical system, notably the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors that remain shut down. As a result, the country's utilities can't generate enough power to meet demand, so they are using rolling blackouts to give some power to everyone for some portion of each day.

By Jon Herskovitz [More]

Some extinct animals have anatomical oddities that seem destined to be confined to the marginalia of history. Questionable characters, such as the single-fingered dinosaur and the flightless, club-winged bird , ultimately died off despite--if not because of--their idiosyncratic adaptations. [More]

A genetic archaeologist of sorts, Cary Fowler works to save the wild species threatened by crop domestication. Fowler is the executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an organization that seeks to preserve the genetic diversity of plants in seed banks.

On December 1, 1969, Jersey Central Power & Light initiated fission in the fuel rods of the nation's first boiling-water nuclear reactor--one of 31 ultimately built in the U.S. The first "turnkey" plant, Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey was sold for less than $100 million in 1964--a price well below what it would ultimately cost to build the reactor. The point was to prove that a nuclear power facility could be built as cheaply as a coal-fired power plant, and the key to that was a smaller safety system

APRIL 1961 Tiling [More]

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. Penguin Press, 2011 [More]

It’s been more than a decade since the human genome was published.

By Chaiwat Subprasom MAE SAI, Thailand, March 25 (Reuters) - At least 74 people were killed in a strong earthquake that struck Myanmar, state media said on Friday, while a series of aftershocks have caused panic but only limited damage in Thailand and Laos.

They missed the heavy metal explosion of the 1980s, but this all-girl robotics team from Bronx High School of Science take their name from 80s rockers Iron Maiden. They show off their mechanical talents at a robotics competition in New York

By Yoko Kubota TOKYO, March 25 (Reuters) - Injuries to workers battling to bring Japan's earthquake-damaged nuclear plant under control will set back efforts to stabilise it, officials said, as fear of radiation from the complex spread both at home and abroad. Engineers are trying to regain control of the six-reactor nuclear power station in Fukushima, 240 km (150 miles) north of the capital, two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami battered the plant and devastated northeastern Japan, leaving about 27,400 people dead or missing. Explosions in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station last week made this the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl and raised fears of a catastrophic meltdown

John Milnor, an American mathematician best known for the discovery of exotic hyperspheres, was awarded the 2011 Abel Prize , the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced March 23. [More]

Dear Scientific American Reader: Scientific American is conducting a survey about the future of cities, the results of which will be published in the magazine along with a series of articles on urban life in the 21st century. The survey will poll elected officials, academics, policymakers, and opinion leaders, including Scientific American readers, about ways to improve cities and their livability.

Pervasive, elusive and tough, cancer has proved to be a formidable foe against generations of bright and well-funded researchers. [More]

Some 15,500 years ago early nomadic North Americans had already set up camp near Buttermilk Creek in central Texas's hill country, where they left behind impressive array of stone tools and artifacts. [More]