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Even for the wilderness of human thinking, creative ideas seem to be deliberately designed to defy empirical enquiry. There is something elusive and mystical, perhaps even sacred, about them. So what is a neuroscientist to do if she wants to study inspiration in the lab, under tightly controlled conditions? Clearly, she cannot simply take volunteers, shove them into the nearest brain scanner and tell them: now, please be creative! That’s why most paying members of the Society for Neuroscience find the prospect of studying creativity akin to trying to nail jelly to the wall....

Salmon are so elemental to Indigenous peoples who live along North America’s northwestern coast that for generations several nations have called themselves the “Salmon People.” But when settlers came, their forms of agricultural and urban development devastated the mighty fish. The new inhabitants cut down streamside vegetation that once slowed and absorbed rains, causing floods. They straightened curvy creeks to try to speed floodwater off the land and armored the sides to prevent erosion, but the faster flow gouged the riverbed....

Is your confidence the consistency of Jell-O? Do you feel like a dandelion in a sea of orchids? Do you walk through the world with an existential trombone accompaniment of wah-wah-wahhhhhhh? The good news: you are not alone. Insecurity is universal. We all doubt ourselves from time to time (or even all the time). We can all relate to feeling as insecure as a newly-launched cryptocurrency. Insecurity even causes a unique form of amnesia: when we’re stuck in the throes of insecurity, it’s hard to remember ever feeling confident....

The biggest news in physics in quite awhile—the discovery of gravitational waves rippling through spacetime—has scientists overjoyed around the world. Researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced on Thursday that they had detected waves created when two black holes smashed into each other some 1.3 billion light-years away. The finding is the first direct confirmation of gravitational waves as well as the strongest evidence to date that black holes exist....

Late last week, a Russian news outlet reported that scientists at Antarctica’s Lake Vostok, buried under miles of ice, said they had found bacteria that appeared to be new to science. Now, the head of that lab has said the signature is actually just contamination, leading outside researchers to say that the Russian team rushed too quickly to announce the possibility of new bacterial life. Russian news media reported last week that the team had found DNA from a microbe that did not appear in databases and is only 86 percent similar to others on Earth — considered a reliable threshold of new life....

Every now and then things go “bump!” in the cosmic night, releasing torrents of energy that astronomers can’t easily explain. Not that they mind: most times an energetic riddle flares up in their view of the sky, major epoch-setting discoveries are sure to follow. This was the pattern for pulsars—rapidly spinning city-size stellar remnants that steadily chirp in radio. It was also the pattern for gamma-ray bursts—extreme explosions at the outskirts of the observable universe thought to be caused by stellar mergers and collapsing massive stars....

A U.S. fertility clinic has announced that within six months it will begin offering couples the option to have tailor-made babies, selecting not only their offspring’s gender but also cosmetic traits such as hair and eye color. The Fertility Institutes, an organization which has offices in New York City, Los Angeles and Mexico, says it can provide this service using a procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, according to the New York Daily News....

Immigrants coming to the New World from Europe had to run a gauntlet of tests at Ellis Island, the main federal immigration station in the U.S. from 1892 to 1954. In charge of the tests were the officers and men of the U.S. Public Health Service. If incoming ships showed no sign of endemic disease, they were allowed to land. Medical tests for individuals began as soon as they hefted their luggage up the stairs to the registry room: those who arrived huffing and puffing were pulled aside for further health checks....

We often ask humanity to reflect on nature’s benefits and on what we can do to promote environmental sustainability. These are noble asks in light of our climate emergency, but reflection is not enough. We need action on multiple fronts. Urban settings, far from being ecological wastelands, are rife with biological activity. Cities have been described as essential to climate change solutions, but they can also raise the kinds of ecologists that will bring us into a more inclusive biological future....

An ancient lake whose shores vacillated between lush forests and dry savannahs shows how the changing climate may have shaped humanity’s dawn in eastern Africa, according to new research. Scientists studying organic remains dating back 2 million years in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania tracked how plant life adapted to the regional climate as it shifted from regular monsoons to scorching dry spells. The researchers published their findings last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

You probably think of computers when you hear the words “climate model.” But some intrepid media staffers at Columbia University had a different vision: Convince climate scientists there to model for a 2014 calendar. Surprisingly, 13 researchers decided to bare it all—well, their inspirations, if not their bodies—for the project. And, yes, Columbia calls it a “pinup” calendar. On each page one of the researchers, dressed in high fashion, appears superimposed on an exotic landscape relevant to his or her work....

As any diplomat will attest, nuances in language can dramatically affect the success of communication. But because the idiom of human cells was assumed to be much more literal than that of whole people, a recent discovery surprised even the scientists who made it. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) identified a human protein that takes two distinct shapes depending on a subtle difference in its gene that should not make any difference at all....

Many of the etchings by artist M. C. Escher appeal because they depict scenes that defy logic. His famous “Waterfall” shows a waterwheel powered by a cascade pouring down from a brick flume. Water turns the wheel and is redirected uphill back to the mouth of the flume, where it can once again pour over the wheel in an endless cycle. The drawing shows us an impossible situation that violates nearly every law of physics....

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that he will retain the Bush administration’s controversial rule on polar bear protections, rejecting special authority given to him by Congress and the pleas of Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists and scientists to overturn the regulation. While keeping the rule – which limits use of the Endangered Species Act to curb emissions of greenhouse gases – Salazar held open the possibility of adding habitat protections for the polar bear later....

One day in 1991, neurologist Warren Strittmatter asked his boss to look at some bewildering data. Strittmatter was studying amyloid-β, the main component of the molecular clumps found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. He was hunting for amyloid-binding proteins in the fluid that buffers the brain and spinal cord, and had fished out one called apolipoprotein E (ApoE), which had no obvious connection with the disease. Strittmatter’s boss, geneticist Allen Roses of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, immediately realized that his colleague had stumbled across something exciting....

Every month, Scientific American—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Key information from this month’s issue: SCIENCE AND CONGRESS • Science Priorities for 2011 The study of disease and other scientific research boosts economic growth, creates jobs and saves taxpayers’ money....

ANN ARBOR, MICH.—Driving is a crazy idea. Every day in the U.S., millions of people get behind the wheel of a car, truck or bus and attempt to navigate the two-ton machines at speeds often exceeding 110 kilometers an hour, hoping they will avoid each other as well as stationary objects. Every year more than 10 million of them fall short of this goal, resulting in accidents that claim tens of thousands of lives (pdf), according to the U....

After an eight-year struggle, embattled Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki has finally received some validation. His 600-page proof of the abc conjecture, one of the biggest open problems in number theory, has been accepted for publication. Acceptance of the work in Publications of the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS)—a journal of which Mochizuki is chief editor, published by the institute where he works at Kyoto University—is the latest development in a long and acrimonious controversy over the mathematicians’ proof....

Scientists have found that the adult human brain can create new cells, opening the door to new therapies to possibly halt and even reverse paralysis and damage from degenerative nerve disease. It was long believed that once the brain stopped developing, so did its ability to produce new neurons. But scientists began debating the matter in the early 1960s when claims of fresh neurons in an adult brain surfaced. Since then, evidence for so-called neurogenesis has snowballed, culminating in the 1998 discovery that cells were replicating in the horseshoe-shaped hippocampus region of the cerebrum of five cancer patients....

A patient on the operating table starts bleeding profusely. Medical staff use sponge after sponge to soak up the blood, unsure of exactly how much has been lost. Should the attending physician order a transfusion? The patient may still have enough red blood cells for the rest of the surgery, but a lab test to confirm the count can take 15 to 45 minutes. Confronted with this scenario many physicians opt for a transfusion—to the tune of 1....