Your Questions about the New COVID Booster Shots, Answered

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September 23, 2022

Vaccines Your Questions about the New COVID Booster Shots, Answered New COVID booster vaccines built for the latest variants are here and should be more effective. But there are still some unknowns By Mariana Lenharo

Space Exploration NASA's Artemis Delays Fuel Controversy over Rocket Design The first test flight of the space agency's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft is plagued by delays decades in the making By Nadia Drake

Sociology A Massive LinkedIn Study Reveals Who Actually Helps You Get That Job Acquaintances, more than close friends, show the strength of "weak ties" when it comes to employment By Viviane Callier

Renewable Energy Why Electric Vehicles Won't Break the Grid Though conservatives have attacked California officials for asking electric vehicle owners to unplug during a heat wave, experts say more electric cars won't topple the power grid By Andres Picon,E&E News

Psychology Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions A specific kind of trauma results when a person's core principles are violated during wartime or a pandemic By Elizabeth Svoboda

Climate Change How California Kept the Lights On during Monster Heat Wave A combination of rapid growth in battery storage and efforts to reduce power demand helped California avoid blackouts during an intense heat wave By Anna Blaustein

Extraterrestrial Life Perseverance Mars Rover Makes 'Fantastic' Find in Search for Past Life NASA's Perseverance rover has collected four rock samples from an ancient river delta where organisms might have thrived By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

Climate Change Vultures Prevent Tens of Millions of Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions Each Year Vultures get a bad reputation for their carrion-scavenging ways, but their dietary habits prevent the release of greenhouse gases By Ian Rose

Astronomy Sparkly Image of Neptune's Rings Comes into View from JWST See a stunning new view of Neptune's rings and oddball moon Triton from the James Webb Space Telescope By Jeanna Bryner

Drug Use A Recent Supreme Court Ruling Will Help People In Pain By ruling in favor of two doctors accused of running pill mills, SCOTUS is clarifying opioid prescription practices By Maia Szalavitz

Quantum Physics Quantum Physics Titans Win Breakthrough Prize This year's Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics honors some of the pioneers of quantum information science By Daniel Garisto

Engineering The First Lady of Engineering: Lost Women of Science Podcast, Season 3, Episode 1 Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. The third season of the Lost Women of Science podcast begins at the start of her story, during her unconventional childhood in the segregated South By Katie Hafner,Carol Sutton Lewis,The Lost Women of Science Initiative

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 327, Issue 4

BRING SCIENCE HOME Making a Sugar Thermometer How can you measure temperature without a thermometer? Find out with this sweet science activity! Credit: George Retseck Bakers (and those who help bakers!) know that at some point in every baking recipe the instructions will tell you to preheat your oven to a certain temperature. But if you've ever tried to bake cookies and they come out flat or take too long, it's possible that your oven is to blame. You might set your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit but how do you know that the inside of your oven actually reaches that temperature? You could use a thermometer—or you could use sugar! Because we know that table sugar (known as sucrose) melts at a very specific temperature, we can test the accuracy of an oven by experimenting to see if sugar melts when the oven is set to the correct melting point. In this activity you will use table sugar to make a homemade oven thermometer and put your oven to the test!

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