Sometimes Mindlessness Is Better Than Mindfulness

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September 03, 2021

Psychology Sometimes Mindlessness Is Better Than Mindfulness In some situations, don’t pay so much attention By Alexander P. Burgoyne,David Z. Hambrick

Sociology The Pandemic Caused a Baby Bust, Not a Boom Birth rates in many high-income countries declined in the months following the first wave, possibly because of economic uncertainty By Tanya Lewis

Public Health U.S. Forces Are Leaving a Toxic Environmental Legacy in Afghanistan Legal and practical obstacles make it difficult to clean the burn pits and health-damaging chemicals that remain at military bases By Kelsey D. Atherton

Medicine Rogue Antibodies Involved In Nearly One Fifth of COVID Deaths Self-targeting antibodies attack part of the immune system that plays a key role in fighting infection By Diana Kwon,Nature magazine

Climate Change How Hurricane Ida Got So Big So Fast An eddy in the Gulf of Mexico and some heavy vapor played key roles By Robin Lloyd

Ethics Afghanistan's Terrified Scientists Fear Persecution Reprisals may come for their field of study, their ethnicity or involvement in international collaborations By Smriti Mallapaty,Nature magazine

Space Exploration China Wants to Build a Mega Spaceship That's Nearly a Mile Long A proposal plans to study how to build a giant spacecraft By Edd Gent,LiveScience

Animals Why Tiny Tardigrades Walk like Insects 500,000 Times Their Size Animals this small and squishy usually don’t have legs By Mindy Weisberger,LiveScience

Public Health COVID, Quickly, Episode 13: Vaccine Approval, Breakthrough Infections, Boosters Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. By Josh Fischman,Tanya Lewis,Jeffery DelViscio | 06:26

Behavior Drug Overdose Deaths in 2020 Were Horrifying We need radical change in order to address the crisis By Nora D. Volkow

Agriculture In-Hive Sensors Could Help Ailing Bee Colonies The technology could help beekeepers reduce short-term losses, but it doesn’t address long-term problems facing honeybees By Allison LaSorda

Particle Physics Hidden Particle Interactions Exposed by Peeling Layers of Graphene Ions flowing through atom-thin stacks of carbon confirm classic theories but also yield new surprises By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 30, Issue 4s

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BRING SCIENCE HOME Popsicle Stick Trusses: What Shape Is Strongest? What makes a structure superstrong? Would you believe it can come down to simple shapes? Learn how with this fun engineering activity!  Credit: George Retseck Have you ever driven across a bridge or seen a building that is under construction and noticed the large metal support girders? What about wooden beams in a house that is under construction? Did you notice how sometimes the supports form different geometric shapes such as triangles or squares? In this project you will be a structural engineer and make your own "support" shapes out of popsicle sticks. What shape do you think will be the strongest?

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