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Key concepts Electricity [More]

Time-shared access to supercomputers or computing clusters cloistered in laboratory data rooms and university basements has helped scientists for decades with problems requiring massive amounts of number-crunching muscle. This is now changing as scientists come to rely on software and storage delivered via the Web, aka "cloud computing," as a resource for organizing and analyzing research data. Biotech and physical sciences are two fields in particular that are gravitating skyward, at least piecemeal

The idea of cloud computing is to make all the information and services run in data centers around the world available via the Web. The reality of this is daunting.

A robot must protect its own existence. [More]

In their August 28th, 1869 issue, Scientific American listed some techniques to aid in restoring breath to “persons apparently dead from drowning.” The methods were given by Professor Benjamin Howard and were sanctioned by the Metropolitan Board of Health of the city of New York. [More]

Could plastic bottles and metal food can liners be contributing to the American asthma epidemic? A study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting this past weekend suggests so, finding that pregnant women exposed to bisphenol A ( BPA )--a chemical building block of plastics from polycarbonate to polyester--gave birth to children with a higher risk of respiratory problems

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine Memories fade, events get conflated, names get attached to the wrong faces, or, in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, signals in safe environments can mistakenly evoke emotions that rightly belong to a battlefield tragedy. [More]

By Christopher Le Coq BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union should halt the rapid extinction of plant and animal species by 2020 because it will cost less than trying to repair the damage once it is done, Europe's environment chief said on Tuesday. [More]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Workers at Japan's crippled nuclear plant began putting up equipment on Tuesday to allow the start of repairs to its cooling systems, key to bringing reactors under control after they were badly damaged in the March 11 quake and tsunami. Soldiers moved to within 10 km (6 miles) of the Fukushima complex to search for those still missing following the disaster, the first time the military is conducting searches in this area since the plant began leaking radiation after the disaster hit. [More]

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Quickening climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland's ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by 2100, an international report showed on Tuesday. [More]

Dieters take note: thinking in detail about eating can reduce actual food consumption, according to a study in the December 10, 2010, issue of Science .

Editor-in-Chief Mariette DiChristina and her daughters show us how to make Oobleck, a substance that's not quite liquid and not quite solid. For more fun activities to do with your kids visit scientificamerican.com/BringScienceHome.

Through the month of May, Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Mariette DiChristina presents Bring Science Home - a series of fun science activities parents and kids ages 6-12 can do together using household items.

In the past year floods have submerged cities as far apart as Nashville, Tenn., and Nowshera, Pakistan.

Key concepts Gravity [More]