For decades the term “Monday blues” has been shorthand for the collective groan that greets the start of each workweek. It’s also well documented in medical statistics. Mondays come with higher rates of anxiety, stress and even suicide compared with other days. Studies on the phenomenon across entire countries have found a 19 percent increase… Continue reading Your Body Really Does Have a Case of the Mondays
The UK’s New Veterans Strategy Wants to Reshape Veterans’ Roles in Society—Can It Succeed?
We often talk about the importance of “supporting our veterans,” but rarely ask what roles veterans have in modern society. Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, that question remains as salient as ever. The United Kingdom’s new Veterans Strategy (PDF), released last month, attempts to answer it. It goes beyond improving… Continue reading The UK’s New Veterans Strategy Wants to Reshape Veterans’ Roles in Society—Can It Succeed?
The Calvine UFO Sighting
Podcast: Download MYS395: In 1990, two men in Calvine, Scotland took photos of a strange object in the sky that would become the clearest UFO photos ever. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli ask what really happened in Calvine, what happened to the two men, and what was the flying object they photographed? Get all new… Continue reading The Calvine UFO Sighting
Death Rates from Chronic Diseases Dropped in Most Countries
September 15, 2025 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Death Rates from Chronic Diseases Dropped in Most Countries A report finds that death rates from cancer and heart disease have declined since 2010 in roughly 150 countries. Experts explain potential reasons why By Mohana Basu & Nature magazine Chiyoda ward in Tokyo was… Continue reading Death Rates from Chronic Diseases Dropped in Most Countries
David McCullough and the Study of History
One of the greatest weeks of my life was the week David McCullough came to teach a one-credit course at Hillsdale College in 2006. McCullough, the great writer and teacher of history, held forth on the craft of writing, led us in a discussion of a primary source reading from the pen of John Adams,… Continue reading David McCullough and the Study of History
Cryptographers Show That AI Protections Will Always Have Holes
A practical illustration of how to exploit this gap came in a paper posted in October. The researchers had been thinking about ways to sneak a malicious prompt past the filter by hiding the prompt in a puzzle. In theory, if they came up with a puzzle that the large language model could decode but… Continue reading Cryptographers Show That AI Protections Will Always Have Holes
Hate Daylight Saving Time? Our Body Clock Might Prefer Permanent Standard Time
Winding clocks an hour back this fall, when daylight saving time ends for the year across much of the U.S., might do more than just disrupt sleep: evidence suggests such time changes could damage health in the long run. A new study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA indicates… Continue reading Hate Daylight Saving Time? Our Body Clock Might Prefer Permanent Standard Time
CDC Panel to Review Childhood Vaccines: What’s at Stake
Update: After this story was published, an updated draft agenda for the ACIP meeting was posted. According to the schedule, the committee will no longer consider the RSV vaccine, but it will vote on the three other shots described in this story: COVID-19, hepatitis B and MMRV. Next week, the panel of top advisers who… Continue reading CDC Panel to Review Childhood Vaccines: What’s at Stake
The Polyglot Neuroscientist Resolving How the Brain Parses Language
Quanta spoke to Fedorenko about how the language network is like the digestive system, what she knows about how the language decoder works, and whether she really believes that people have LLMs inside their heads. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. What is the language network? There’s a core set of areas… Continue reading The Polyglot Neuroscientist Resolving How the Brain Parses Language
Inside 3 Fusion Reactors That Could Power the Future
Nuclear fusion promises a green and infinitely renewable supply of energy—if we can harness it. Fusion happens all the time inside the sun. But to recreate the process on Earth, we must control incredibly hot, chaotic matter in an exceedingly dense state. Prototypes of several different fusion-reactor designs are being tested around the world. The… Continue reading Inside 3 Fusion Reactors That Could Power the Future