How COVID Changed the World

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February 15, 2022

Public Health How COVID Changed the World Lessons from two years of emergency science, upheaval and loss

Sociology How a Virus Exposed the Myth of Rugged Individualism Humans evolved to be interdependent, not self-sufficient By Robin G. Nelson

Climate Change Lichens Could Need More than a Million Years to Adapt to Climate Change The composite organisms, formed from the symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, are crucial members of myriad ecosystems By Jack Tamisiea

Medicine These Eye Drops Could Replace Your Reading Glasses Solutions to age-related vision problems now come in a bottle. How well do they work? By Charles Schmidt

Public Health Introducing 21 Ways COVID Changed the World The pandemic didn't bring us together, but it did show us what we need to change the most By Jen Schwartz

Vaccines Tracking Outbreaks Through Sewers, and Kids' Vaccines on Hold Again | COVID Quickly, Episode 24 Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American's senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. By Tanya Lewis,Josh Fischman,Jeffery DelViscio | 06:03

Climate Change Western 'Megadrought' Is the Worst in 1,200 Years An exceptionally dry year in 2021 pushed the 22-year-long drought to the top of the record books By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Genetics First Gene Therapy for Tay-Sachs Disease Successfully Given to Two Children About 1 in 300 people in the general population carry the Tay-Sachs disease gene By Miguel Sena-Esteves,The Conversation US

Artificial Intelligence Humans Find AI-Generated Faces More Trustworthy Than the Real Thing Viewers struggle to distinguish images of sophisticated machine-generated faces from actual humans By Emily Willingham

Defense Russia-Ukraine Conflict Prompted U.S. to Develop Autonomous Drone Swarms, 1,000-Mile Cannon The U.S. military has new technology on the drawing board in response to warfare trends previously demonstrated in the region By Jason Sherman

Public Health Guinea Worm Disease Nears Eradication Just 14 cases of the scourge that once infected millions of the world's poorest people were reported last year. But infections in animals complicates efforts to stamp it out By Freda Kreier,Nature magazine

Physiology How Olympic Figure Skaters Break Records with Physics An exercise scientist explains the biomechanics behind jumps such as the quadruple Axel, and what the body's limits are By Tanya Lewis

Psychology The Personality Trait 'Intolerance of Uncertainty' Causes Anguish during COVID High levels of it have put people at risk of emotional problems  By Francine Russo

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 326, Issue 3

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FROM THE ARCHIVE How COVID Changed Science What is unprecedented is not just the speed and focus with which the community responded to the pandemic but also the singular willingness of scientists all over the world to share new ideas and data immediately and transparently By William A. Haseltine | May 2021

QUOTE OF THE DAY "We assembled this collection of stories to reflect on how COVID has already changed our world, as well as how our world has been resistant to change--even when a virus disrupts everything, even when it shows us what we need to change the most." Jen Schwartz, senior editor of features at Scientific American

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