February 13, 2025: We're covering the causes of mass extinctions, how RFK, Jr., could influence health care and the "slow flower" movement. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | Dahlias bloom at the Maine Flower Collective, a group of local growers. Jesse Burke | | | • New "slow flower" farms are growing beautiful blooms—without the health-harming chemicals used by overseas operations that dominate the U.S. flower market. | 18 min read | | | • Scientists have reported a new strain of bird flu in Nevada dairy cattle. And viral spread in pet cats has fueled worries over increased risk of exposure to humans. | 3 min read | | | • From Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s views on vaccines to Medicaid, here are some ways his confirmation as head of the Department of Health and Human Services could have sweeping effects on health care. | 5 min read | | | • Trump has ordered the EPA to decide by next week whether the agency could abandon its authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. | 5 min read | | | Mass Extinction Commonalities | Extensive volcanic eruptions that spewed lava "over periods of thousands or even millions of years" are now thought to be the primary cause of Earth's five biggest mass extinction events, although the details are still under debate, writes Scientific American editor Clara Moskowitz. | | | Rick Simonson; David Bond/University of Hull (scientific reviewer) | | | How it works: The interactive graphic above illustrates several possible causes of the five major extinction events as well as which ones are thought to share the same causes. For instance, global warming is a strongly established cause of the Ordovician-Silurian, the Permian-Triassic and the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinctions. Some listed causes didn't directly kill organisms. Instead they likely triggered widespread deadly conditions that contributed to mass extinction events.
Why this matters: Many scientists think that a sixth mass extinction event is under way, caused by human activity. "We need to learn lessons from these events and use them to try to understand our potential impending diversity crisis," says mass extinction specialist David Bond, of the University of Hull in England.
| | | • Men, like women, experience hormonal changes that may prepare them for parenthood, writes James K. Rilling, a professor of psychology at Emory University. In his recent book Father Nature: The Science of Paternal Potential, Rilling details these findings. "Men's potential for caregiving is an ancient capacity that has evolved by natural selection. We clearly can do this. We just need to tap into it," Rilling writes. | 5 min read | | | Today is World Radio Day, a celebration of the communications technology which is enjoyed and crucial in many operations and regions worldwide. This 2009 Scientific American piece, by Ed Regis, asserts that a radio, technically the nanotube radio, was one of the "first truly functional nanoscale devices." You can listen here to one of the early successes, in 2007, of physicist Alex Zettl's carbon nanotube radio, as it receives, converts and then transmits the song "Layla," co-written by Eric Clapton. You also might enjoy this Ramones tribute to "rock and roll radio," as well as this 2006 podcast episode. Following the episode's Totally Bogus quiz questions, around timestamp 10:42, former Scientific American editor Steve Mirsky interviews his father about a household radio in the late 1920s. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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