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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]

Posted for Jen Christiansen, Art Director, Information Graphics I'm in Pamplona, Spain, sitting at a table strewn with looseleaf paper, scissors and tubes of paste. My table is host to a German, a Swede, two Norwegians and a American

APRIL 1961 Tiling [More]

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

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.

We see it all the time on shows like Bones and CSI. Skeletal remains can yield all sorts of clues--gender, age, past physical traumas

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]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even at its biggest, Arctic sea ice extent this winter was among the smallest ever seen, apparently tying with 2006 for the least amount of ice covering the region around the North Pole, U.S. researchers reported. Sea ice on the Arctic Ocean usually starts growing in September and hits its maximum area in February or March; this year, the maximum appeared to occur on March 7, when ice stretched over 5.65 million square miles (14.64 million square km), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center

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]

VIENNA, March 24 (Reuters) - Japanese scientists have found measurable concentrations of radioactive iodine-131 and caesium-137 in seawater samples taken 30 km (18 miles) from land, the U.N. [More]

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - The closing of aging nuclear reactors is expected to peak in 2020-30, posing a major challenge in terms of safety and the environment, a draft U.N. atomic agency report says

Underlying the wave of unrest across North Africa and the Middle East is the fact that some of the cries for democracy are coming from mouths in need of food. Media outlets around the world were quick to make the link between food and the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, pointing to one specific grain: wheat. Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, with Algeria not far behind.

Dear EarthTalk : Recent news reports have revealed the discovery of previously unknown species inhabiting the deepest parts of our oceans. Is anything being done to protect this habitat before humans have a chance to fish it to death or otherwise destroy it? --Matthew Polk, Gary, Ind.

The sex hormones that bathe a fetus in the womb are some of the earliest and most potent determinates of gender differences in brain structure and social behavior. But other chemicals produced by the human body more subtly tweak the neural pathways underlying these distinctions. Endocannabinoids, natural compounds in the brain that excite the same receptors as marijuana, influence gender-specific behaviors, according to a study published in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.