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That convenience comes at a cost. Three out of every four children in communities in the Corrientes River basin have blood lead levels higher than those considered excessive under U.S. health guidelines. The lead strips found inside the homes solved a mystery that had long puzzled researchers. Scientists had expected to find that water polluted by oil drilling upriver was responsible for the villagers’ high lead levels. But to their shock, they discovered that children and teens were fashioning homemade fishing sinkers from scrap lead with their teeth....

Putting People into Bins Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind by David Berreby. Little, Brown and Company, 2005 ($26.95) Each of us has experienced a feeling of kinship with someone who shares a love of chocolate, a passion for foreign films, or perhaps an affinity for a person with the same skin color or ethnic identity. We might also feel alienated from someone with the same qualities if he or she belongs to a “group” we do not like....

One “dog year” supposedly equals seven human years. But does one year feel like seven years to a dog? Evidence suggests that distinct species do indeed experience passing time on different scales. A recent study in Animal Behavior reveals that body mass and metabolic rate determine how animals of different species perceive time. Time perception depends on how rapidly an animal’s nervous system processes sensory information. To test this ability, researchers show animals a rapidly flashing light....

Europe’s gravitational-wave hunters are celebrating. On July 1, a satellite will wrap up its mission to test technology for the pioneering quest to measure gravitational ripples in the stillness of space. Over the past year, the craft has performed much better than many had hoped. That success has convinced the European Space Agency (ESA) to give the go-ahead to a full-scale version able to sense cataclysmic events that can’t be felt on Earth....

Abbott is a global healthcare company that creates life-changing products—in diagnostics, medical devices, nutrition and branded generic pharmaceuticals—that help people and their families lead healthier lives. Abbott aims to provide accurate diagnostic tools that enable smarter, faster decisions and transform the way healthcare providers are managing patients. The company’s diagnostic technology spans the world of healthcare operations—with medical diagnostic instruments, tests, automation and informatics solutions for hospitals, reference labs, blood centers, emergency departments, physician offices and clinics....

In the 1960s, Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn and others absorbed the accolades of being the first men in space. Behind the scenes, they were supported by hundreds of unheralded NASA workers, including “human computers” who did the calculations for their orbital trajectories. “Hidden Figures,” a 2016 book by Margot Lee Shetterly and a movie based on the book, celebrates the contributions of some of those workers. Beginning in 1935, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor of NASA, hired hundreds of women as computers....

It must have been quite the scene when the crew of our oh-so-techy new president, Barack Obama, reported for their first day of work at the White House to discover “a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts” as The Washington Post reports today. Among other remnants of the past: The aides, who the Post says are accustomed to working on Apple Macs, instead found themselves using PCs running six-year-old versions of Microsoft software....

In October 2009 a small group of robotic space exploration geeks decided to venture out of our comfort zone and began brainstorming different approaches to flying people into space. We were spurred into action when the Augustine com­mission, a blue-ribbon panel that President Barack Obama set up earlier that year to review the space shuttle and its intended successor, reported that “the U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory....

AT SOME POINT IN THE HISTORY of civilization, shepherding gave way to farming. That created a need for some way of keeping cows and pigs from wandering freely through the meadows. The fence was born. Wooden fences were among the earliest, but they are expensive and time-consuming to build. By 1870 smooth cable was easy to get hold of and came into wide use on ranches. Cattle would rub their back on the wire, and sometimes one would slip through....

Take a good look at the oceans today—there’s a strong chance they won’t look the same in a few decades, scientists say. As water temperatures rise around the world, some marine animals are already migrating to other areas in response. Habitats are shifting and evolving. Some species are disappearing, and others are moving in to take their place. The ecological consequences of all these changes—and how they may alter food webs and habitats and entire communities of organisms—remain to be seen....

The Martian surface may be even less hospitable to life than scientists had thought. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation streaming from the sun “activates” chlorine compounds in the Red Planet’s soil, turning them into potent microbe-killers, a new study suggests. These compounds, known as perchlorates, seem to be widespread in the Martian dirt; several NASA missions have detected them at a variety of locations. Perchlorates have some characteristics that would appear to boost the Red Planet’s habitability....

Comedian Jerry Lewis says he was surprised to reel in $1.2 million more in this year’s annual charity drive than he did in 2007. His annual 21 ½-hour telethon helps fund research and care for people with muscular dystrophy, a group of 40 hereditary diseases that causes a patient’s muscles to progressively weaken. “Each year I tell myself, ‘This has got to be it. There’s no way we can do better....

The dense vegetation of Isla de Mona, an uninhabited speck in the Caribbean, hides car-sized boulders studded with corals. Scientists first reported spotting them in the early 1990s, but the strange rocks slipped back into obscurity before anyone investigated their origin. Now researchers have revisited these behemoths and concluded that massive tsunami waves, launched by an underwater landslide, heaved them from the sea. Many of the boulders are visible from the air, but most are difficult to reach from the ground, says Bruce Jaffe, an oceanographer at the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, Calif....

The names we give our technologies are often … aspirational. Automobiles can move on their own—meaning without horses—but they still can’t steer themselves reliably. Visiting via telepresence is nothing like being there. Smartphones have very low IQs. Augmented reality (AR) has been in this same hopeful category since the term was coined in the early 1990s. It was meant to describe screen-mediated experiences that add information to one’s surroundings rather than replacing those surroundings, as virtual reality does....

Editor’s note (4/2/2017): This week marks the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. entry into the First World War. Scientific American, founded in 1845, spent the war years covering the monumental innovations that changed the course of history, from the first tanks and aerial combat to the first widespread attacks with chemical weapons. To mark the centennial, we are republishing the article below and many others. For full access to our archival coverage of the Great War sign up for an All Access subscription today....

California is parched. Rivers that usually surge now trickle, and once large reservoirs stand as puny pools. Those most critically affected by the state’s four-year drought are the Central Valley’s farmers, whose livelihoods are threatened. Without rain to irrigate croplands, growers repeatedly turn to underground aquifers, but the overpumping has taken a toll, causing water tables to drop dramatically. Fortunately, this winter’s forecast in California calls for plenty of rain, most likely amplified by strong El Niño conditions....

Chewing gum mixed with a particular protein could be a low-cost way to help prevent the spread of the virus behind COVID-19, a recent study suggests. The angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) protein, found on the surface of many human cells, acts as a gateway for the virus to infect them. If delivered to the mouth by chewing gum, however, ACE2 could instead trap the virus by binding to the spike protein it uses to infect cells....

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – This city plans to invest in wind farms, electric cars, bike paths and energy-efficient buildings in an effort to become the world’s first carbon-neutral capital by 2025. The Danish capital, its inhabitants and its businesses will spend as much as $4.7 billion in the next 13 years to reach this goal, city officials explained as they rolled out their climate plan. “Copenhageners’ daily lives will become better in a greener and healthier city,” said Frank Jensen, the city’s mayor....

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech authorities seized 24 white rhino horns and charged 16 suspected members of an international ring smuggling the prized material to Asia, the customs department said on Tuesday.The horns, believed in parts of Asia to heal illnesses including cancer and sold as an aphrodisiac, were worth $5 million, customs and police officials said.Demand has risen especially in Vietnam in the past years, leading to a rise in poaching of rhinos and smuggling of horns from Africa....

The debris and combustion particles resulting from the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, have compromised lung function in surviving rescue workers. Medical researchers are studying members of the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY), who are tested regularly to see how much air they can exhale through a tube. Number of exposed FDNY rescue workers: 11,766 Number who arrived before or during the collapse: 1,660...