American Scientist

10. Beautiful Armor

by Andreia Salvador

The rich variety of mollusk shells reflects the diversity of the phylum, which has fascinated humans for millennia.

(November – December 2023)

9. A Picture of Dinosaur Nesting Ecology

by Daniel T. Ksepka

A long-standing mystery in paleontology is why we have discovered thousands of eggs from some types of dinosaurs, such as the duck-billed hadrosaurs, but none at all from other types of dinosaurs, such as the armored stegosaurs. For more than a century, most paleontologists hypothesized that all dinosaurs laid hard-shelled eggs.

(January – February 2023)

8. A Deep Dive into Innovation

by Edward Arnold Wasserman

Because of its striking suitability to specific situations, the butterfly stroke may appear to have been ingeniously and foresightedly designed. More often than not, however, this and many other creative acts actually arose “as if by design.” A deep dive into the history of this innovation provides a firmer grasp on the very nature of behavioral creativity. What emerges is an intricate web of causation involving three main factors: context, consequence, and coincidence.

(January – February 2023)

7. In Models We Trust—But First, Validate

by Daniel Solow

All models are beautiful—even mathematical ones. They provide insights to scientists and to the general public about a vast array of phenomena in the real world, and we have come to rely on them much more than you may realize.

(January – February 2023)

6. Medical Imaging in Increasing Dimensions

by Ge Wang

Combining technologies and moving into virtual space makes seeing into the body more accurate and beneficial.

(September – October 2023)

5. Genomic Predictions in the Big Data Era

by Gustavo de los Campos, Daniel Gianola

In recent years, more than 30 million genomes have been genotyped by companies such as 23andme or MyMedLab. These companies provide customers with ancestry and health-related information, and link genotype data with measurements (called phenotypes) collected from surveys, wearables, and electronic health records. The resulting datasets are routinely used for genomics research. Likewise, several public initiatives have developed large biomedical datasets, such as the UK Biobank and the All of Us program, comprising DNA and extensive phenotypic attributes from hundreds of thousands of participants.

(September – October 2023)

4. The Orbit of the Moon

by José Utreras Contreras

The Moon completes one orbit around the Earth (a sidereal month), in 27.3 days. Because the Earth is also orbiting the Sun, it takes two more days for the Moon to complete its cycle of phases (a synodic month).

(May – June 2023)

3. Bias Optimizers

by Damien Patrick Williams

It has been less than a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT, and mere months since its GPT-4 update and Google’s release of a competing AI chatbot, Bard. The creators of these systems promise they will make our lives easier, removing drudge work such as writing emails, filling out forms, and even writing code. But the bias programmed into these systems threatens to spread more prejudice into the world. AI-facilitated biases can affect who gets hired for what jobs, who gets believed as an expert in their field, and who is more likely to be targeted and prosecuted by police.

(July – August 2023)

2. Is Garlic Mustard an Invader or an Opportunist?

by Michael Anderson

Invasive plants are often assumed to spread by outcompeting native species. In garlic mustard’s case, this hypothesis is certainly plausible. The adult plants are tall, compared to other forest-dwelling herbs, which provides a significant light-gathering advantage in dim understory environments. The rapid growth of adults in their second year of life also seems likely to deplete soil resources such as water and nutrients, lowering their availability to smaller native plants.

(January – February 2023)

1. Time Is an Object

by Sara Walker, Lee Cronin

A timeless universe is hard to imagine, but not because time is a technically complex or philosophically elusive concept. There is a practical reason: The act of imagining timelessness requires time to pass. Even when you try to imagine its absence, you sense it moving as your thoughts shift, your heart pumps blood to your brain, and images, sounds, and smells move around you. The thing that is time never seems to stop.

(September – October 2023)