Scientific American Online

Among the more than a quarter of a million published functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies are assays that have purported to locate our mental experiences of religion , love and even the future in the brain. Recently, researchers even investigated the reliability of the scans to find out whether they should hold up in court as evidence of past memories. But increasingly, scientists and onlookers alike have been wondering whether these flashes in the brain have been telling us what we thought they were--or whether the images were little more than biological chaff . [More]

As store-based distribution of genetic health tests remains stalled pending federal review, genetic ancestry tests are also drawing widespread concern from experts. [More]

"When you flash a laser for the first time…it's like you've created something magical." Tom Baer , executive director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center, said this to me recently when I asked him why he's spent the past three decades both studying and developing the technology. [More]

More than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez foundered off the coast of Alaska, puddles of oil can still be found in Prince William Sound. Nearly 25 years after a storage tank ruptured, spilling oil into the mangrove swamps and coral reefs of Bahia Las Minas in Panama , oil slicks can still be found on the water. And more than 40 years after the barge Florida grounded off Cape Cod, dumping fuel oil, the muck beneath the marsh grasses still smells like a gas station. [More]

On August 6, 1960, Hughes Research Laboratories scientist Theodore Maiman published a study in Nature (pdf) describing his experiments with "stimulated optical radiation in ruby." ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) With this research, he took the laser--originally "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"--out of the realm of science fiction and created a tool that would change the world in ways few people could have conceived of at the time. [More]

After more than a century of popular sci-fi fantasies that feature deadly energy weapons, including War of the Worlds , Flash Gordon , Buck Rogers , Star Trek and Star Wars , it looks like the ray gun has finally arrived in the real world. [More]

Even cobras need to defend themselves sometimes. [More]

As hundreds of thousands of gallons of dispersants were dropped into the Gulf of Mexico to control the oil spill , Philip Howard did a little digging. He wanted to figure out what was in the chemicals that were being dumped on the Gulf’s fish, turtles and other marine life.

But he didn’t get very far.

Scientists are on the verge of building an artificial brain! How do I know? Terry Sejnowski of the Salk Institute said so right here on ScientificAmerican.com . He wrote that the goal of reverse-engineering the brain--which the National Academy of Engineering recently posed as one of its "grand challenges"--is "becoming increasingly plausible." Scientists are learning more and more about the brain, and computers are becoming more and more powerful. So naturally computers will soon be able to mimic the brain's workings. So says Sejnowski.

The Health Show http://healthshow.org

Bisphenol A. Also called BPA, it's used to make shatter-proof plastic known as polycarbonate, found in everything from water bottles to medical devices to the lining of food packaging. As much as 2.7 million tons of plastics are manufactured each year with BPA. But it's also an endocrine disruptor posing a threat to fetuses and young children. And it’s been linked to cancer and metabolic disorders leading to obesity.

So how can plastics be properly disposed of to avoid releasing BPA into the environment? Some fungus may help. So say researchers publishing in the journal Biomacromolecules . [Trishul Artham and Mukesh Doble, http://bit.ly/9hEfIw ]

Editor's Note: William Gilly , a professor of cell and developmental biology and marine and organismal biology at Stanford University, is traveling with a group of students on board the Don José in the Sea of Cortez. They will monitor and track Humboldt squid and sperm whales in their watery habitats. This is the group's fifth blog post. [More]

The Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change: A Complete Visual Guide by Juliane L. Frye, Hans-F. Graf, Richard Grotjahn, Marilyn N. Raphael, Clive Saunders and Richard Whitaker. University of California Press, 2010

By Richard Lovett

By 2080, global warming could result in one-fifth of the world's lizard species becoming extinct, a global study has found.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios for curbing carbon dioxide emissions, the analysis by an international team shows that one-fifth of the globe's lizard populations, corresponding to 6 percent of all lizard species, may go extinct by 2050.

"We've committed ourselves to that," says Barry Sinervo, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the study. [More]

Quantum entanglement, a phenomenon by which two or more particles share correlated properties through some instantaneous link, is tricky business. The quantum-mechanical bond entangling two particles is so delicate, it can be broken by any number of outside perturbations. Try entangling three particles , and the system becomes just that much more vulnerable to interference. [More]

By Chris Baltimore and Steve Gorman

HOUSTON/PORT FOURCHON, Louisiana (Reuters) - A small containment dome won't begin trapping oil from BP's leaking oil well until at least next week instead of later on Thursday, a spokesman for BP Plc said, a fresh setback in efforts to contain what could become the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Earth's first life-form, floating in the proverbial froth of the primordial seas that eventually gave rise to trees, bees and humans, is not just a popular Darwinian conceit but also an essential biological premise that many researchers rely on as part of the foundation of their work. [More]

Unlike the traditional power grid, a "smart" grid is designed to accommodate a two-way flow of both electricity and data. This creates great promise, including lower energy prices, increased use of renewable resources and, it is hoped, fewer brownouts and blackouts . But a smart grid also poses several potential security problems--networked meter data, power companies' computers and those of customers could all be vulnerable to tampering. [More]

Space shuttle Atlantis stands at the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, nearly ready to begin its 32nd journey into space. That trip, slated to begin May 14, will also be Atlantis 's final planned mission, as the shuttle program winds down with just two more launches, of sibling orbiters Discovery and Endeavour, booked for later this year . Weather and equipment permitting, Atlantis will lift off for the International Space Station at 2:20 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time. [More]