The Smartest Way to Use Rapid At-Home COVID Tests

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October 12, 2021

Health Care The Smartest Way to Use Rapid At-Home COVID Tests The self-administered tests are sold over the counter, holding out the promise of safer gatherings. But interpreting results requires savvy By Tara Santora

Anthropology Mammoths Roamed when Humans Started Using Tobacco at Least 12,300 Years Ago A dig in the Nevada desert finds telltale seeds at the site of a late Paleolithic hearth By Rachel Nuwer

Astronomy 'Auroral' Exoplanets Could Help Boost Searches for Alien Life Four candidate worlds found via flashes of radio emission may be the first of many revealed by a new planet-hunting technique By Nola Taylor Tillman

Quantum Physics AI Designs Quantum Physics Experiments beyond What Any Human Has Conceived Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physics By Anil Ananthaswamy

Pollution Landmark Ozone Treaty Could Prevent More Than 400 Million Cases of Cancer The Montreal Protocol has helped heal the ozone layer that blocks harmful ultraviolet rays By John Fialka,E&E News

Conservation Channeling Thoreau: 24 Hours on Pea Island A young writer camps out on a tiny bit of land at the western end of the Long Island Sound By Jordan Salama

Policy The NFL's Racist 'Race Norming' Is an Afterlife of Slavery A statistical manipulation that underpaid Black players in concussion settlements exemplifies American football's immersion in the legacy of slavery By Tracie Canada,Chelsey R. Carter

Particle Physics New Universal Force Tested by Blasting Neutrons through Crystal A recent experiment has placed the best-yet limits on the strength of a long-sought fifth fundamental force By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Pharmaceuticals How Antiviral Pill Molnupiravir Shot Ahead in the COVID Drug Hunt The Merck pill, which could become the first oral antiviral COVID treatment, forces the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to mutate itself to death By Cassandra Willyard,Nature magazine

Climate Change Beyond the Winners, Nobel Prize for Climate Science Is a Victory for Many Research in the field is more collaborative than the Nobel awards can acknowledge By Gavin Schmidt

Fossil Fuels More Countries Join Global Pledge to Cut Methane Emissions Dozens of nations, representing 30 percent of the world's emissions, have indicated support ahead of crucial climate talks By Sara Schonhardt,E&E News

Policy Scientists: When Talking to the Public, Please Speak Plainly Jargon is appropriate when you're speaking with colleagues, but it's a turnoff for the rest of us By Naomi Oreskes

Animals Save the Right Whales by Cutting through the Wrong Noise New noise-cutting tech could pinpoint North Atlantic right whales and other species By Sam Jones

Medicine A Strategy for Rescheduling Psilocybin There are three legal pathways to deregulating the drug under the Controlled Substances Act By Mason Marks

FROM THE STORE How to Do Anything Better When we think about the things we do every day—driving, working, parenting—we realize that even with tasks we are generally good at, there is always room for improvement. As always, science is on the case. This eBook contains a collection of columns written by health and psychology journalist Sunny Sea Gold, whose work has also appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine and Parents. These selections, published by Scientific American between 2009 – 2017, offer practical tips for acing life from nailing that job interview to giving the perfect gift.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Slovakia Offers a Lesson in How Rapid Testing Can Fight COVID One of the country's top epidemiologists explains how population-wide use of rapid antigen tests—in combination with other measures—helped get its outbreak under control By Tanya Lewis | April 2021

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