Are chatbots learning? Plus, record-breaking heat waves and pink eye everywhere

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May 12, 2023

Artificial Intelligence How AI Knows Things No One Told It Researchers are still struggling to understand how AI models trained to parrot internet text can perform advanced tasks such as running code, playing games and trying to break up a marriage By George Musser

Climate Change We're About to See a Rare and Record-Setting May Heat Wave A potentially record-setting heat wave is headed for the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, a sign of the shift to hotter—and earlier—summers By Andrea Thompson

Quantum Physics Physicists Create Biggest-Ever Schrödinger's Cat Physicists have put the largest-ever object into a quantum superposition By Lars Fischer,Daisy Yuhas

Pharmaceuticals Birth Control Pill Gets Strong Endorsement for Over-the-Counter Access U.S. Food and Drug advisers show unanimous support to approve the use of the birth control medication Opill without a prescription By Mariana Lenharo,Nature magazine

Sponsor Content Provided by BioHarvest It’s Time to Follow Earth Day with Lab Day Earth Day has made a difference, but Science & Technology must provide the solutions- the world needs "Lab Day" to focus researchers and the younger generation on real actions that will save the Earth.

Culture Will Creationism Continue to Flourish in Brazil? Under former president Jair Bolsonaro, scientific misinformation ran rampant through Brazil; and even with new leadership, it will be difficult to stop By Heslley Machado Silva

Epidemiology What Is Causing So Much Pink Eye? The newest SARS-CoV-2 strain may cause red, watery eyes. But the symptom can have other causes, too By Emily Sohn

Cognition Adversity in Early Childhood Can Impair Brain Development Adverse early childhood experience leaves persisting traces in brain structure, highlighting the importance of preventive measures for healthy brain development By Cordula Hölig,Brigitte Röder,Ramesh Kekunnaya

Genetic Engineering First U.K. Children Are Born Using DNA from Three 'Parents' The U.K.’s fertility regulator reveals that at least one child has been born using mitochondrial replacement therapy, but the procedure’s effectiveness remains to be seen By Ewen Callaway,Nature magazine

Animals Parrot Babies Babble Just Like Us Parrot nestlings spend time stringing together jumbled mixtures of sound—a rehearsal for more adult conversations   By Karen Hopkin | 06:19

Medicine The 'Brain Fog' of Long COVID Is a Serious Medical Issue That Needs More Attention Brain fog is such a nebulous term in long COVID that it delegitimizes efforts to get disability accommodations and medical leave By Emily Mendenhall,Kenton Kaplan

Public Health Astronomy Tool Can Now Detect COVID in Breath Laser-based optical frequency combs, originally developed to time atomic clocks, can also perform fast, noninvasive tests for COVID—and potentially other diseases as well By Starre Vartan

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 328, Issue 5

FROM THE ARCHIVE Spooky Quantum Action Passes Test Recent experiments quash the hope that the unsettling phenomenon of quantum entanglement can be explained away By Ronald Hanson,Krister Shalm | December 2018

WHAT WE'RE READING You Can't Trust What You Read About Nutrition We found a link between cabbage and innie bellybuttons, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. By Christie Aschwanden | FiveThirtyEight | Jan 6, 2016

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