Surprising Science

Scientists continue to document the “marriage advantage”: the fact that married people, on average, appear to be healthier and live longer than unmarried people.

Scientists say they may have found a new way to measure obesity that has nothing to do with how much you weigh. The new measurement is called the Body Adiposity Index, or BAI.

Brazilians are among the world’s biggest fans of Twitter. Now they are using it to outwit police over a drink-driving campaign known as Operation Lei Seca, or “dry law”.

David Kirkpatrick talks to Jack Dorsey about his taxicab inspiration, his ejection as Twitter’s C.E.O., and his ambition to make Square the payment network of the future.

Ever wish you had your own personal makeup artist? That dream could soon be a reality with a computer that scans your face and suggests the perfect personalized makeup combination.

Why are new drugs always tested on laboratory mice, anyway? And when a drug does successfully cure a poor mouse, how does it find its way to human drug stores?

Apple didn’t invent the tablet computer, but it didn’t invent the MP3 player or the cell phone either, says Shane Richmond. Now Apple markets its iPad 2 as a post-PC device.

The Cancer Genome Atlas project, already several years underway, is transforming the way scientists think about and treat cancer.  

Only 2% of the 3 billion DNA base pairs in the human genome actually code for proteins, but the rest of our non-coding genes are proving vital to understanding a host of diseases like autism and schizophrenia.

A volunteer effort to map all the food stores in Brooklyn, N.Y., is an example of two rising trends: citizen mapping and increasing scrutiny of urban Americans’ access to healthy food.

A new printing technology is in development that promises to pack between 10 and 30 percent more energy into batteries for electric vehicles helping them to compete with conventional cars.

The world’s leading particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, has yet to find any evidence of certain particles that physicists depend on to explain our subatomic world.

Italian inventor Andrea Rossi claims to have developed commercial-ready cold fusion technology that can produce large amounts of energy from dirt-cheap nickel and hydrogen.

Enzymes like Telomerase and Resveratrol, though not the Fountain of Youth unto themselves, offer tantalizing clues to how we may soon unravel the aging process.

Technology will make collaboration your next competitive advantage, says Technology Review. But what are the tools that truly help you be more collaborative and productive?

Struggling to solve a creative problem? Pretend you’re doing it for someone else. We’re more capable of mental novelty when thinking on behalf of strangers than for ourselves.

Darwin himself struggled to explain the evolution of so intricate an organ as the human eye. But scientists have discovered a worm’s eye that may make the job easier.

Comparative cognition expert Laurie Santos’ research with capuchin monkeys shows that we both fall prey to the same irrational economic tendencies.

A new ‘dementia map’ of the UK suggests six out of ten cases go undiagnosed, leaving families without the support they badly need.

Scientists can’t definitively say why some cells become cancerous, but an even bigger mystery is why some cancer cells spontaneously regress and even disappear on their own.

Ever since Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution, scientists have wondered whether the process still applies to humans. At some point, did we stop evolving?

“I don’t own a computer, have no idea how to work one,” Woody Allen told an interviewer recently. Author Jim Hold asks if those of us with computers are really better off?

Abraham Verghese, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, offers surprising reasons for why C.T. scans should not replace the ritual of doctors examining patients’ bodies.

Context, oblique cultural allusions, metaphors and so on are par for the course in human-to-human conversation, but entirely beyond machines, says a Turing Test participant.

When the brain juggles two—or more—languages, there are positive consequences for the brain, says Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto.

Simple marketing strategies can be very effective at getting kids to eat healthier lunches, like putting fruit in an attractive bowl and replacing carrots with ‘x-ray vision carrots’.

The idea of a coming Singularity refers to a point in time of radical exponential progress, beyond which our minds can’t imagine—the technological counterpart to an event horizon in a black hole.

Putting on a bright face at work could leave you feeling miserable. Workers who fake a smile to keep their customers and colleagues happy could be making themselves depressed.

The notion that science and religion are at war is one of the great dogmas of the present age. However, the views of many scientists turn out to be less rigidly doctrinaire than suspected.

When combat veterans tell their battle tales, the stories often are laced with themes of heroism, sacrifice and loyalty. But guilt also takes a heavy mental toll.