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Cheating: it’s the ultimate relationship violation and a notorious relationship killer. A favorite gossiping pastime, the phenomenon is frequently discussed but difficult to study. The goal is to avoid getting caught, so why confess infidelity in the name of science? But scientists can offer us new insight on a topic often shrouded in stigma and mystery. As researchers have recently demonstrated, cheating is rarely a simple affair. There are many reasons why people cheat, and the patterns are more complex than common stereotypes suggest....

I’m a compulsive journal-scribbler. This habit, which goes back to my teens, has proved useful to my career. All my articles and books start as journal entries. But my motivation is not merely professional. If I don’t record my thoughts, I won’t remember them, and they won’t matter. So I fear. This feeling has grown as I’ve aged. Compounding my concern is the possibility—no, probability—that one day humanity and all its residues will vanish....

1970 A Lunar “Tablespoonful” “In the broad, flat lunar maria, or ‘seas’ (such as Mare Tranquillitatis, the site of the Apollo 11 manned landing), the depths of craters that have reached bedrock indicate a regolith thickness of from five to 10 meters. Thus the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., did not come within several meters of solid rock at Tranquillity Base, and the geology picks they had brought along for the purpose of chipping specimens off outcrops were superfluous....

In a famous scene from the classic movie Pretty Woman, wealthy businessman Edward Lewis gives Vivian Ward, a Hollywood hooker, a stunning ruby and diamond necklace worth $250,000 to wear out for the evening. At the sight of the necklace, Vivian’s eyes widen and a broad smile lights up her face. Even though it is clear the necklace is only out on loan, Vivian cannot contain her thrill and excitement. Edward, by contrast, displays only the slightest smirk of satisfaction in Vivian’s delight with the jewels....

The effect of volcanic eruptions on climate has been one of the more hotly contested topics in the global warming debate. Seized upon briefly by climate skeptics as an alternative to human-caused warming, eruptions are now understood by mainstream science to result most often in net cooling for a period of up to several years. Few researchers, however, have considered that an inverse relationship might also exist – that over time, climate might have an effect on the planet’s igneous activity....

BETTER PLAN Radiation monitors at U.S. ports are insufficient for preventing terrorists from amassing highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. We maintain that the country should therefore enhance protective actions, some now under way. Chief among them: Identify and round up nuclear smugglers. Secure known sources of poorly guarded HEU and ship it back to its country of origin for elimination. Blend down excess Russian stocks of HEU into low-enriched uranium....

After 12 months of such a brutal biological warfare, more than 390,000 Brazilians have perished; the number of fatalities climbed to more than 4,000 fatalities a day in early April, and the number of new cases per day edged above 100,000, filling hospitals to capacity with tens of thousands of terminally ill patients who occupy all available ICU beds in a country that has one of the largest national public health systems in the world and more hospitals than the U....

First, there was the pitching and rolling in an old Jeep for eight hours. Next came the river crossing in a slender canoe. When Nathalie Strub Wourgaft finally reached her destination, a clinic in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she was exhausted. But the real work, she discovered, had just begun. It was July 2010 and the clinic was soon to launch trials of a treatment for sleeping sickness, a deadly tropical disease....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. With more than 18 months of the pandemic in the rearview mirror, researchers have been steadily gathering new and important insights into the effects of COVID-19 on the body and brain. These findings are raising concerns about the long-term impacts that the coronavirus might have on biological processes such as aging. As a cognitive neuroscientist, my past research has focused on understanding how normal brain changes related to aging affect people’s ability to think and move – particularly in middle age and beyond....

Most scientists dismiss the vast majority of ghost sightings as hoaxes. But researchers in Canada, England and elsewhere are exploring what happens in the brain to create the illusion that something is “haunted.” So far, they have found evidence that some apparitions may be brain benders caused by spiking EMFs (electromagnetic fields), and possibly even extremely low-–frequency sound waves (known as infrasound) so subtle that the ear does not register them as noise....

Slowly, the chemical industry is going green. Many companies are starting to emphasize reducing or eliminating hazardous substances to save money, reduce inefficiencies and promote their brands to consumers who favor eco-friendly products. “Industry really sees the value of ‘green chemistry,’” said Julie Haack, assistant head of the University of Oregon’s chemistry department. “If you want to recruit the best chemists, wouldn’t it make sense to promote the opportunity to work in an environment where they can align their interest in the environment with their passion, which is chemistry?...

As COVID-19 continues to take the world by storm, and vaccine developers race toward safe and effective candidates to stem the tide of the pandemic, health officials and policy makers are grappling with a significant philosophical and ethical challenge: how to best allocate limited vaccines doses to the world’s population. This challenge presents a range of questions: Which countries should get a vaccine first? To what degree should helping essential workers, the poor, minorities and the young (or old) affect vaccine distribution between countries?...

Scientific American presents Nutrition Diva by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. A lot of people are concerned that fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be because the soil has become depleted of minerals. (For more on this, see my article Are Fruits and Vegetables Getting Less Nutritious?) Whether or not this is something we really need to worry about, mineral water sounds as it if might be a good idea—sort of like a vitamin supplement that you can drink....

The SR-71 Blackbird flew faster than any other production plane ever. Its successor, the SR-72, will go twice as fast. That’s the big, jaw-dropping takeaway from Aviation Week’s exclusive look at Lockheed Martin’s work on the next-generation aircraft. A demonstrator version of the SR-72 could be ready as early as 2018. Lockheed told Aviation Week that the goal is for the new aircraft to be seriously hypersonic, blazing across the sky at around Mach 6....

Certain areas near the moon’s poles linger perpetually in shadow, never receiving direct sunlight. Recent studies suggest these so-called permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) contain rich ice reservoirs that could reveal details about the early solar system; they could also help future visitors make fuel and other resources. But these areas are hard to photograph from satellites orbiting the moon and thus are a challenge to study. The few photons PSRs do reflect are often overwhelmed by staticlike camera noise and quantum effects....

Halfway between Scotland and Bermuda, a wild expanse of ocean draws millions of seabirds from vast distances every year. A new study published in Conservation Letters uses decades of tracking data to document that at least five million migratory birds, representing about two dozen species from both hemispheres, rely on a North Atlantic hotspot of almost 600,000 square kilometers for food. Ecologists have long suspected that the North Atlantic served as a critical foraging zone for migrating seabird species, but they lacked data on birds’ travel patterns to justify protecting these international waters....

We tend to regard pain as an unfortunate by-product of physical harm. Sensations of crushing, burning and piercing are the language of alert, used by our bodies to communicate tissue damage, whether imminent or real. But what about the pain we inflict on ourselves? What about the moment of anguish when we tear at our hair or thrust our fists into the wall? New research suggests that we seek out physical pain to provide an emotional catharsis for feelings of guilt or shame....

Shrews might seem rather unassuming. Smaller than mice, they can go largely unnoticed—scurrying through the grasslands of Britain, northern Europe and many parts of the U.S. in search of insects or dodging the hovering threat of owls and eagles. Yet new research reveals these little molelike mammals are biological marvels when it comes to enduring the hardships of winter. A new study published Monday in Current Biology reports the skulls of Sorex araneus, the most common shrew species, shrink by up to 20 percent as the cold season approaches....

Like self-replicating machines, robot movies are taking over Hollywood. Yet Ex Machina, which opened last Friday in New York and Los Angeles, is so smart and stylish that it stands out among the swarm. In the film, a 26-year-old coder named Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), who works for the online search giant Blue Book, wins a chance to spend a week with the company founder, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) at his compound in Alaska....

In early November 2000 the Big Island of Hawaii experienced its largest earthquake in more than a decade. Some 2,000 cubic kilometers of the southern slope of Kilauea volcano lurched toward the ocean, releasing the energy of a magnitude 5.7 shock. Part of that motion took place under an area where thousands of people stop every day to catch a glimpse of one of the islands most spectacular lava flows. Yet when the earthquake struck, no one noticed–not even seismologists....