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For voters around the world, including the millions of Americans who will cast ballots in the midterms up to and on November 6, an election is democracy in action—an opportunity to make their voices heard, have a say in how their government is run and, if necessary, throw the bums out. It is a thoroughly political exercise, or so it would seem. But to Peter Klimek, who works in the emerging field of electoral forensics, an election is something else as well....

If you have a sweet tooth or find it difficult to keep yourself from overeating sweet foods, here’s something that could be useful. Sweet Defeat is a product that claims to lessen your desire—and therefore your consumption—of sweets. Does it work? I reviewed the science behind this interesting product and also put it to the test—and I have a full report for you. The active ingredient in Sweet Defeat is an herb called gymnema silvestre....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history. Now, it ranks fourth. The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered....

When a human is submerged in water, within seconds the body begins to reflexively adjust. The heart rate slows; blood vessels in the extremities tighten, diverting blood flow to vital organs. And, crucially, the spleen constricts, expelling a precious reserve of oxygenated red blood cells into the bloodstream. All of this extends the time we can go without gasping. Now a new study suggests some seafaring people may have evolved over thousands of years to push the limits of typical dive responses even further....

HUANCAVELICA, Peru – Sonia Salazar’s house, like most in her neighborhood, is built of adobe bricks made from mud that soaked up centuries of emissions from mercury smelters. Now scientists are trying to determine whether those houses – in the shadow of a hill that once held the hemisphere’s largest mercury mine – pose a health hazard to their inhabitants. In the 16th and 17th centuries, mercury furnaces blasted day and night around this town high in the Andes Mountains....

Samuel Gandy became an Alzheimer’s disease researcher in part to help his own family. He watched his mother spiral downward as she lost her memory and then her ability to care for herself. After that, Gandy, now director of the Center for Cognitive Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, thought his research might help prevent a similar fate for himself. Now in his 60s and having watched every single promising drug trial for Alzheimer’s fail, he’s had to give up on that idea, too....

A couple of years ago, a reporter for The New Yorker demonstrated just how fuzzy public understanding is regarding emotional support animals by toting five different fake emotional support animals around New York City (though, mercifully, not all at the same time). On her forays, she claimed to be comforted, in turn, by a fifteen-pound turtle on a leash, a four-and-a-half-foot tall alpaca, a turkey, a pig in a stroller, and a snake (insert your own Snakes on a Plane joke here)....

A violent explosion picked up by a NASA satellite earlier this year is the oldest object ever seen by astronomers, its light having been emitted some 13 billion years ago. At that time the universe was roughly 5 percent of its present age and the big bang was a fairly recent occurrence, having taken place just 600 million years earlier. NASA’s Swift Gamma-Ray Burst spacecraft spotted the flash signaling a massive stellar explosion on April 23....

Editor’s note: This Q&A is a part of a survey conducted by Scientific American of executives at companies engaged in developing and implementing non–fossil fuel energy technologies. What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of nuclear fission? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? Nuclear power generation in the U.S. has been a very reliable and safe form of power generation since the first reactors came online....

Our world is determined by the limits of our five senses. We can’t hear pitches that are too high or low, nor can we see ultraviolet or infrared light—even though these phenomena are not fundamentally different from the sounds and sights that our ears and eyes can detect. But what if it were possible to widen our sensory boundaries beyond the physical limitations of our anatomy? In a study published recently in Nature Communications, scientists used brain implants to teach rats to “see” infrared light, which they usually find invisible....

There’s no balancing this ledger. Insurance companies face greater dangers from climate change, including weather-related catastrophes and court fights, than they do silver linings, according to a report released today by Moody’s Investors Service, the ratings agency. From payouts after a hurricane, flood or other disaster to lawsuits that could wrap them up in costly litigation, insurers and reinsurers are severely exposed to the perils of climate change, Moody’s said. “We felt on balance that it was a net negative impact,” said James Eck, the lead author....

It’s looking less likely that a swarm of comets or an “alien megastructure” can explain a faraway star’s strange dimming. The star (nicknamed “Tabby’s Star,” after its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian) made major headlines last October when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, suggested that it could be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure. A more likely idea — one that’s far less exciting — is that the star is orbited by a swarm of comets....

A federal government shutdown would cut short a key NASA field campaign to monitor Arctic ice. For the past three weeks, NASA researchers and crew have been surveying Arctic land and sea ice using specially equipped aircraft. The work is part of a larger project, “Operation IceBridge,” designed to fill a gap between NASA’s now-defunct ICESat satellite and its replacement, which isn’t scheduled to launch until 2016. But now it appears that stopgap effort would itself grind to a halt if Congress and President Obama cannot agree on a new budget before the measure now funding federal operations expires on April 8....

The Philippines jumped into the wireless age with both feet, like many developing countries, after decades of unreliable or nonexistent landline service. When Typhoon Haiyan pummeled the archipelago late last week, the voice and data services that had served the Filipino people relatively well in recent years were wiped out in many areas. Mobile communications are only now beginning to be restored, most of it set up by incoming aid workers to coordinate agency efforts....

This week, SciAm frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi spends his days in the Yukon on an expedition with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Their goal: to recover intact DNA from mammoths, which once roamed the tundra but went extinct some 11,000 years ago. Slide Show: Mammoth Excavation Photos [Click here to see his blog posts from the Yukon.] Below are excerpts from his posts: DAY 1 June 13, 2008 Today I begin a dig in the Yukon!...

A week into taking up residency on board the International Space Station, Bill Shepherd closed out the first entry in his new (space) ship’s log with a note to those supporting him and his crewmates on the ground. “We have all written some space history,” the Expedition 1 commander wrote. Now, 15 years later, Shepherd’s focus is on the future and how what he helped start might influence what happens next....

In 1970 casino gambling was confined to Nevada; New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York were the only states with lotteries. Today either casinos or lotteries–usually both–are legal in 47 states, as shown on the map. In addition, widespread but illegal gambling thrives on the Internet. Because of its potential for addictive behavior, casino gambling has aroused the interest of health professionals. The activity is pervasive: A 1998 survey found that 29 percent of Americans had taken their chances at a casino in the previous 12 months....

It is widely accepted that when popular figures descend into corruption, they do so a little at a time. Consider the case of Bernie Madoff, the perpetrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history. According to some accounts, his far-reaching fraud began with making up a few figures on some client investment reports. Over time, this seemingly minor peccadillo snowballed into a $65 billion swindle. But is this “slippery slope” view of corruption really accurate?...

Scientists have found more than 150,000 sites in the Arctic where methane is seeping into the atmosphere, according to a report published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Aerial and ground surveys in Alaska and Greenland revealed that many of the methane seeps are located in areas where glaciers are receding or permafrost is thawing as the climate warms, removing ice that has trapped the potent greenhouse gas in the ground....

BOULDER, Colo.—Scientists, governments and environmental groups are focused on what may be the first global detective story about emissions. It’s an effort to determine how many rogue businesses may have violated the Montreal Protocol by selling insulation containing a banned chemical that is 5,000 times more powerful as a global warmer than carbon dioxide. China has mounted an investigation of more than 1,000 companies to see which Chinese firms violated international law by using trichlorofluoromethane—also known as CFC-11—in plastic foam insulation....