Stories by Carin Leong

Why are bears both adorable and deadly? Scientific American investigates why these apex predators are “friend-shaped”

Vaccine misinformation on social media, smartphone addiction in teens, and more are discussed in this week’s news roundup.

A noninvasive test for genetic material could predict embryo quality in IVF.

When symptoms start, COVID tests may say you’re not infected when you really are.

Nell Greenfieldboyce discusses her new book Transient and Strange, the intimacy of the essays and the science that inspired them.

In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she? A 2023 editor's pick. 

The stories we tell about orcas might say more about us than about them

Residents of a mining town waits for economic recovery while physicists under their feet wait for answers from the universe.

Fewer kids got their routine childhood vaccines since before the pandemic. Are lack of access and a loss of trust in science to blame?

More than half of our diet consists of foods that have been industrially processed in some way, and they may be harmful to our health

The popular decongestant phenylephrine is not effective, an FDA panel found. Here’s what to use instead.

An astronomy festival in Italy opted to make all of its events and workshops multisensory. The organizers wanted to see whether sound, touch and smell can, like sight, transmit the wonders of the cosmos.

A blind astronomer “sonified” the universe’s most explosive events: gamma-ray bursts. By listening to, rather than looking at, the data, she made a critical discovery and changed the field of astronomy.

Space is famously silent, but astronomers and musicians are increasingly turning astronomical data into sound as a way to make discoveries and inspire people who are blind or visually impaired.

Consumers can now get easy tests for Alzheimer’s. But these tests may not really help patients that much—yet.

Four decades into his activism, Robert Bullard looks back on his legacy and the work ahead.

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses her involvement in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the inspiration behind her poem, which will travel onboard the spacecraft.

The bite of the lone star tick makes people allergic to a sugar found in mammalian products, and many doctors don’t know about it.

Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall.

Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb.

Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress

ChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they?

The James Webb Space Telescope is giving us our first glimpse of stars in the early universe.

In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she?