Scientific American Online

By Janelle Weaver

Published animal trials overestimate by about 30 percent the likelihood that a treatment works because negative results often go unpublished, a study suggests.

This is a surprisingly strong bias, says the study's lead author, Malcolm Macleod, a neurologist at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, UK. [More]

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By Amy Maxmen

Bon appétit! A team of European researchers has decoded the genome of the delectable Périgord black truffle. [More]

Whisking quietly through the night, around buildings, trees and even branches, bats have a keen sense of their surroundings despite darkness. Researchers have known for decades that bats use their sonarlike echolocation to "see" potential obstacles as well as prey. But bats' execution of their airborne acrobatics often got scientists wondering just how they could be so specific--even while moving at high speeds through dense vegetation. [More]

Innocent? Or guilty? As any judge can tell you, it’s not so simple.  What was going in the defendant’s mind is important.  Underlying intent is a pretty big deal when it comes to moral judgment.

Past studies have shown that an area of the brain, the right temporoparietal junction, shows increased activity when people read about another’s intentions or beliefs.

Dear EarthTalk: If the ice caps are melting, what is happening to the salt content of the oceans? And might this contribute to weather patterns or cause other environmental problems? --George Boyer, via e-mail

Killing commuters with bombs has to be one of the most cowardly (and dastardly) forms of terrorism. And that's exactly what happened in Moscow earlier today, as suicide bombers from Chechnya detonated themselves as trains pulled into the Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations . The Russian capital's subway system is one of the busiest in the world, along with Tokyo, New York and London. [More]

SAKAI, Kenya -- No one complained that the rains were late when they watered the parched hills and muddied the roads here in December. Normally, they would have begun weeks earlier.

Villagers were grateful the rain had come at all.

Benhur Lee may have discovered a medical silver bullet that can disable pandemic HIV, exotic Ebola, the common flu and possibly every kind of enveloped virus on the planet. An added bonus is that those viruses likely are unable to develop resistance to the compound. [More]

For earthbound creatures like us, flight just seems so fantastical. How do birds and bats and other flying beasties manage to get off and stay off the ground? Well, having wings obviously helps. And bird bones are hollow and seem delicate, which should help lighten the load. [More]

It’s a cool November day near Bologna, Italy. We are strolling through the woods with truffle hunter Mirko Illice and his little dog, Clinto. Clinto runs back and forth among the oak trees sniffing the ground, pausing, then running again. Suddenly, he stops and begins to dig furiously with both paws. “Ah, he’s found an Italian white truffle,” Mirko explains. “He uses both paws only when he finds one of those.” Mirko gently pulls the excited dog from the spot and pushes through the soil with his fingers. He extracts a yellowish brown lump the size of a golf ball and sniffs it. “ Benissimo , Clinto,” Mirko intones. Though not the finest example of the species, Tuber magnatum --which grows only in northern Italy, Serbia and Croatia--Clinto’s find will fetch a nice price of about $50 at the Saturday market.

Throughout history, truffles have appeared on the menu and in folklore. The Pharaoh Khufu served them at his royal table. Bedouins, Kalahari Bushmen and Australian Aborigines have hunted them for countless generations in deserts. The Romans savored them and thought they were produced by thunder.

Like many people, rats are happy to gorge themselves on tasty, high-fat treats. Bacon, sausage, chocolate and even cheesecake quickly became favorites of laboratory rats that recently were given access to these human indulgences--so much so that the animals came to depend on high quantities to feel good, like drug users who need to up their intake to get high. [More]

Tuna steak. Tuna tartare. Toro , as the Japanese call it, or the fatty underbelly of the bluefin tuna served as sushi --a delicacy that became more common with the advent of cheap refrigeration in the 1960s. These are just some of the ways that humans consume one of the few warm-blooded fish.  

Unfortunately that love for bluefin tuna has led to overfishing , despite the fish's ability to swim as fast as 80 kilometers per hour. The Atlantic population of the giant fish that grows to an average of more than 360 kilograms has fallen by 90 percent. And the estimated global population is less than half what it was in 1970.  

Editor's Note: Scientific American 's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here .    [More]

By Meredith Wadman

One of the better-kept secrets about the massive clinical research hospital at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., has been tucked away for half a century in Wing D of a building that dates to 1953. [More]

NEW YORK CITY--More than 100 countries have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord --the nonbinding agreement to combat climate change hastily agreed to this past December at a summit of world leaders. As signatories, the countries agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. The countries that have signed up to date represent more than 80 percent of the global emissions of such heat-trapping gases. [More]

If you think your morning cup of joe only has 12 ounces (35 centiliters) of water in it, you're sorely mistaken--it has closer to 40 gallons (150 liters). Conservation scientists say it's time consumers become aware of the quantity and source of water that goes into growing, manufacturing and shipping food. [More]

"Smart" phones offer the intelligence of a computer, with the convenience of a phone. "Smart" meters let homeowners choose between using cheap and expensive electricity.

The next frontier: "smart" trash?