Untreated fevers during pregnancy can cause more harm than taking acetaminophen will

Participants in a new study were more likely to cheat when delegating to AI—especially if they could encourage machines to break rules without explicitly asking for it

Artificial tissues that mimic the placenta, endometrium, ovary and vagina could point to treatments for common conditions such as preeclampsia and endometriosis

Hurricane Humberto and a system that may become Tropical Storm Imelda in the coming days are swirling quite close to each other in the western Atlantic Ocean

Scientists electrically culled invasive fish in a 20-year battle—but the fish fought back with rapid evolution

Many asteroids are related, but their family trees can be hard to trace

A museum exhibit in Australia lets visitors hear music generated by brain cells derived from the blood of a dead composer.

Nearly 100 years ago dozens of ships were abandoned in a shallow bay in the Potomac River. Today plants and animals are thriving on the skeletons of these vessels

An analysis of Taylor Swift’s interviews suggests her speech pattern has changed over her career

Carla Brodley, founding executive director of the Center for Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University, explains how to make computer science education more accessible to everyone

Brain imaging is illuminating the patterns linked to productive, positive dialogue , and those insights could help people connect with others

Cells in cow udders could act as a site for human flu and bird flu viruses to swap genes and generate dangerous novel strains

The infection rate of one type of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales bacteria has risen by more than 460 percent in recent years. Scientists say people receiving treatment in hospitals are at highest risk

Up to 98 percent of the energy of an earthquake goes into flash heating rocks, not shaking the ground, new research shows. The finding could help yield better earthquake forecasts

Mary Roach unpacks the millennia-long effort to replace failing body parts—and the reasons that modern medicine still struggles to match the original designs.

By understanding warning signs and talking to your child, parents can help reduce the risk of teen suicide

Lunar minerals can rust when bombarded with high-energy oxygen particles, experiments show

Tragic RSV vaccine trials in the 1960s set the field back for decades. Here’s how scientists finally made breakthroughs in RSV immunization

American Indian and Alaska Native infants experience the highest rates of RSV-related hospitalization in the U.S., but a breakthrough immunization is helping to close the gap

Abigail Echo-Hawk, a preeminent Native American public health expert, discusses RSV, “data genocide” and positive change driven by Indigenous storytelling

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continues to affect infants and older and immunocompromised people around the world. These graphics reveal where the burden lies and what the effects of immunizations are

The year 2023 marked the debut of groundbreaking innovations to prevent severe RSV infections in infants. Now protected babies are way less likely to develop severe infections or to end up in the ICU

RSV is the leading cause of infant hospitalizations in the U.S. But that could soon change as research advances lead to new preventive drugs for everyone

The journey toward an RSV vaccine for children has been wrought with tragedy and setbacks. But six decades after scientists embarked on that path, they are nearing the finish line

Hot, small and old—exoplanet TOI-561 b is just about the worst place to look for alien air. Scientists using JWST found it there anyway

The common pain reliever is safe when used as directed, research shows. But scientists remain puzzled by one aspect: how it reduces pain and fever

To celebrate Scientific American ’s 180th anniversary, we invited readers to place our magazine covers in the wild. See our staff’s favorite submissions

The San Francisco Bay Area was rattled early this morning by a magnitude 4.3 earthquake along the Hayward fault line

Seemingly contradictory materials are trapped together in two glittering diamonds from South Africa, shedding light on how diamonds form

How a space rock vanished from Africa and showed up for sale across an ocean

A revamped CDC advisory committee faces vaccine debates, studies reveal brain changes in athletes, and climate change drives deadly heat waves across Europe.

Winners of the annual Ig Nobel awards include the science of tipsy bats and the physics of cacio e pepe

Annotating the margins of books is an important part of deep reading and has a long legacy of merit in both science and literature

It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

Gauging the mass of a black hole is tricky, but astronomers have devised multiple methods to measure the heft of these galactic gluttons

Linguist Adam Aleksic explains how viral slang and algorithm-driven speech aren’t destroying language––they’re accelerating its natural evolution.

A powerful magnitude 7.8 aftershock off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that arose from July’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake is raising concerns about possible tsunami impacts, although risk appears to be waning

A large language model called Delphi-2M analyzes a person’s medical records and lifestyle to provide risk estimates for more than 1,000 diseases

New research shows that wherever human populations mix, their languages blend as well

These dogs can extend words to new objects based on function the way children do in early language learning

Three vaccines were on the agenda for this week’s meeting of ACIP, the CDC’s key advisory panel on immunization: the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine and COVID vaccines

These hobbyists use GPS coordinates to hunt for secret prizes around the world

The first peer-reviewed study of the DeepSeek AI model shows how a Chinese start-up firm made the market-shaking LLM for $300,000

With federal vaccine guidance under fire, states are forging their own immunization paths

Wild chimps ingest the equivalent of multiple alcoholic beverages a day

Former CDC chief Susan Monarez testified that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., had demanded she rubber-stamp recommendations from his remade vaccine panel

A newly discovered dinosaur species has been identified from a fossil unearthed in Mongolia that represents the most complete pachycephalosaur specimen yet found