Scientific American Magazine Vol 323 Issue 2

Scientific American

Volume 323, Issue 2

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Features

Animals Use Social Distancing to Avoid Disease

Animals Use Social Distancing to Avoid Disease

Lobsters, birds and some primates use quarantine to ward off infections

Galileo's Lessons for Living and Working through a Plague

An outbreak in Italy in the 1630s forced him to find new ways of doing his research and connecting with his family

How Climate Change Strategies That Use Biomass Can Be More Realistic

Current plans for drawing down carbon dioxide call for more trees, grasses and crop residues than Earth can spare

How Scientists Solved One of the Greatest Open Questions in Quantum Physics

The story of a macroscopic quantum system and a mathematical odyssey

GDP Is the Wrong Tool for Measuring What Matters

It’s time to replace gross domestic product with real metrics of well-being and sustainability

How Oak Trees Evolved to Rule the Forests of the Northern Hemisphere

Genomes and fossils reveal their remarkable evolutionary history

Humans Evolved to Be Friendly

Cooperation made Homo sapiens the last human species standing

Departments

Advances
In Case You Missed It
Red Stalagmites Reveal Glimpses of the Past
Invisible Qualities such as 'Hardness' Can Pinpoint Objects
Blood Test Allows Safer Turtle Sex Determination
Expanding Paved Areas Has an Outsize Effect on Urban Flooding
Lidar Advances Show Mosquito Rush Hours
Construction Process Builds Brain Circuits
Model Suggests Toxic Transformation on Venus
Pill Takes the Bite Out of Viper Venom
Buried Skeletons Reveal Tsunami Threat in East Africa
Graphic Science
Why Hurricane Names Are Retired
Meter
Gravitational Waves and the Poetry of Blackfoot
The Science of Health
Another Tragic Epidemic: Suicide
Forum
Why Some Male Leaders Won't Follow COVID-19 Safety Protocols
Anti Gravity
Our Temporary Moratorium against Handshakes Should Become Permanent
From the Editor
Quarantine Lessons from Lobsters, Guppies, Finches and Galileo
Letters
Readers Respond to the April 2020 Issue
Reviews
A New View of Sexual Harassment in the Sciences
50, 100 & 150 Years Ago
50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: August 2020
The Science Agenda
Too Many Black Americans Are Dying from COVID-19
Observatory
The False Logic behind Science Denial