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You don't need an advanced degree in physics or biology to participate in scientific research, just a curiosity about the world around you and an interest in observing, measuring and reporting what you hear and see. The Internet makes it easy these days to take part as an amateur in sophisticated science projects around the world, and now Scientific American is making it even easier for you to find the right one through our new Citizen Science initiative

From DNA matching to tracking technology, this report reveals how science aided in bringing down the master terrorist [More]

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER--When NASA scrubbed the shuttle Endeavour 's final launch here on Friday, engineers said there was a best-case and a worst-case scenario. Well, guess what: it was the worst case. The trouble began when an electric heater for the hydraulics system failed to turn on

Selling a home is easier now than in the darkest days of 2009, but not much. “For Sale” signs still litter yards across the country, fading in the sun

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor accident has focused new attention on how much ionizing radiation people are exposed to from different sources (see list below). By far the largest source is medical imaging technology (see " Graphic Science: Exposed " in the May 2011 issue). Americans, on average, are exposed to 3.1 millisieverts of radiation a year from natural background factors such as radon gas from the Earth and cosmic rays from the universe

MAY 10 What does your brain do when you memorize something?

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Box jellyfish have it over the rest of the jellyfish world--they have true eyes, featuring corneas, lenses and retinas. They have a more sophisticated nervous system too

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER--The shuttle Endeavour suffered a minor but potentially troublesome electrical failure that delayed its launch from Friday to Monday at the earliest. Technicians won't know for sure until they drain the external fuel tank and get access to the errant unit, a process that will take 24 hours

Chinese skylines are defined by construction cranes and the din of jackhammers. China produces 50 percent of the world's cement [ pdf ]--the next largest producer, India is responsible for just 6 percent--to build seemingly endless tracts of high rises, railroads, parking lots, highways, airports and shopping malls.

Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS) , the cloud computing arm of online marketplace Amazon.com, on Friday explained what happened during last week's service outage, which disrupted many of its customers' Web sites. AWS, formed by Amazon in 2006 to capitalize on the cloud computing hype, ran into problems on April 21 with a network configuration change that took several days to fix, slowing or disabling access to sites run by location-based social network Foursquare , fellow cloud service provider Engine Yard , social news outlet Reddit and several others.

A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology shows the linkage between the illegal production of coca and the continuing destruction of Colombia's rainforest. New plots of coca between 2002 and 2007 accounted for the direct destruction of 890 square kilometers of rainforest. That's roughly 6 percent of total rainforest lost in that period, which totaled to 14,000 square kilometers, or an area slightly larger than Jamaica.

I recently visited Tucson, Arizona and was happy to see a fair amount of people riding bicycles rather than driving through the city’s downtown area. There are wide bike lanes and plenty of racks for parking, and even a monthly street fair where bikers can pick up new and used parts or equipment. All this plus a mostly sunny forecast made Tucson seem like an ideal biking locale, until a friend who lives in the area pointed to the numerous needles and burrs sticking out of his bike tires.

If we cannot find aliens in the stars, we might create alien intelligences on Earth

By Suzanne Cosgrove [More]