In the early months of the Covid pandemic, when every bit of news seemed bleak, there was one heartwarming narrative that took hold: With humans stuck in their homes, the world was safe again for wild animals, which could now wander freely through cities, parking lots or fields that once might have been crowded with […]
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For Ytasha Womack, the Afrofuture is Now
On Feb. 17, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago unveiled a new sky show called “Niyah and the Multiverse,” a blend of theoretical cosmology, Black culture and imagination. And as with many things Afrofuturistic, Ytasha Womack’s fingerprints are all over it. Ms. Womack, who writes both about the genre and from within it, has curated Afrofuturism […]
Read MoreTeen Pregnancy Linked to Risk of Earlier Death in Adulthood, Study Finds
Teen pregnancy increases the chances that a young woman will drop out of school and struggle with poverty, research has shown. Teenagers are also more likely to develop serious medical complications during pregnancy. Now a large study in Canada reports another disturbing finding: Women who were pregnant as teenagers are more likely to die before […]
Read MoreWith an Orange-Tufted Spiderhunter, Birder Breaks Record for Sightings
On Feb. 9, Peter Kaestner stood in the shadow of majestic Tinuy-an Falls on the Philippine island of Mindanao, on the cusp of a record he’d spent seven decades chasing and worried that he’d arrived too late. For years, nobody alive had seen and identified more bird species than Mr. Kaestner. A retired American diplomat, […]
Read MoreOverdose or Poisoning? A New Debate Over What to Call a Drug Death.
The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose. His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong. On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at […]
Read MoreA.I. Is Learning What It Means to Be Alive
In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert Viault climbed down from a mountain in the Andes, drew blood from his arm and inspected it under a microscope. Dr. Viault’s red blood cells, which ferry oxygen, had surged 42 percent. He had discovered a mysterious power of the human body: When it needs more of these […]
Read MoreGood News and Bad News for Astronomers’ Biggest Dream
The United States should commit $1.6 billion to building an “extremely large telescope” that would vault American astronomy into a new era, according to the National Science Board, which advises the National Science Foundation. In a statement on Feb. 27, the board gave the foundation until May to decide how to choose between two competing […]
Read MoreHow a Sudden Halt to In Vitro Fertilization Shook Alabama Couples
Leelee Ray and her husband, Austin, have been trying to have a baby for six years, through insemination procedures, two egg retrievals, four embryo transfers, an ectopic pregnancy that could have been deadly and eight miscarriages. With four frozen embryos remaining in storage at a fertility clinic, the Rays, who live in Huntsville, Ala., decided […]
Read MoreFDA Urges Recall of Lead-Tainted Cinnamon Brands
The Food and Drug Administration is telling consumers to throw out certain brands of cinnamon that were found to have elevated levels of lead, and it urged companies to recall the products from store shelves. The agency conducted tests across the country after at least 460 children were sickened last year by illnesses linked to […]
Read MoreHe Had 217 Covid Shots Without Side Effects, Study Finds
Two years ago, German doctors stumbled across news reports of a man being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical explanation. Then followed a flurry of speculation about what he had been up to. As it turned out, prosecutors were looking into whether he had been receiving so many extra doses as […]
Read MoreAlabama IVF Protection Bill Will Reopen Clinics but Curb Patient Rights
The Alabama legislature on Wednesday is expected to pass legislation that will make it possible for fertility clinics in the state to reopen without the specter of crippling lawsuits. But the measure, hastily written and expected to pass by a huge bipartisan margin, does not address the legal question that led to clinic closings and […]
Read MorePutin’s Nukes in Space Are Back to Scare Us Again
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was considering what became known as “Star Wars,” a plan to shield America from Soviet missiles by deploying up to thousands of weapons in space. At the same time, as a young science writer, I was reporting on how the rays from a single nuclear detonation in orbit could wipe […]
Read MoreSeeing Stars, Sperm and Millions of Spawn After a Valentine’s Day Rendezvous
On Valentine’s Day, Melissa Torres strung up red tinsel hearts around a shallow pool at her workplace, the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. She and her colleagues were arranging a romantic encounter of sorts, and the stakes were high. The happy couple, a pair of sunflower sea stars, belonged […]
Read MoreOn the Trail of the Denisovans
ORIGINS DNA has shown that the extinct humans thrived around the world, from chilly Siberia to high-altitude Tibet — perhaps even in the Pacific islands. March 2, 2024 Neanderthals may have vanished 40,000 years ago, but they are no strangers to us today. Their stocky skeletons dazzle in museums around the world. Their imagined personas […]
Read MoreWhat to Know About Xolair and Food Allergies
The Food and Drug Administration approved a drug this month that cuts the risk of severe reactions in children and adults exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, tree nuts, milk, dairy and other food allergens — a move that could dramatically improve quality of life for people coping with these risks. The results of the […]
Read MoreDrug Drastically Reduces Children’s Reactions to Traces of Food Allergens
A drug that has been used for decades to treat allergic asthma and hives significantly reduced the risk of life-threatening reactions in children with severe food allergies who were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, cashews, milk and eggs, researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, Xolair, has already been approved by the Food and Drug […]
Read MoreDrug Drastically Reduces Children’s Reactions to Traces of Food Allergens
A drug that has been used for decades to treat allergic asthma and hives significantly reduced the risk of life-threatening reactions in children with severe food allergies who were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, cashews, milk and eggs, researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, Xolair, has already been approved by the Food and Drug […]
Read MoreAs Medicaid Shrinks, Clinics for the Poor Are Trying to Survive
Appointment cancellations and financial distress have become a constant at Bethesda Pediatrics, a nonprofit medical clinic in East Texas that is heavily dependent on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. On a recent Monday, the mother of a toddler who had a primary care appointment broke down in tears after learning the child […]
Read MoreAbortion Laws, Accidents and Lax Rules Now Imperil Fertility Industry
To the fertility patients whose embryos were destroyed at an Alabama clinic, the circumstances must have been shocking. Somehow, a patient in the hospital housing the clinic had wandered into a storage room, pulled the embryos from a tank of liquid nitrogen, and then dropped them on the floor — probably because the tank was […]
Read MoreWhen Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You
For decades, privacy experts have been wary of snooping from space. They feared satellites powerful enough to zoom in on individuals, capturing close-ups that might differentiate adults from children or suited sunbathers from those in a state of nature. Now, quite suddenly, analysts say, a startup is building a new class of satellite whose cameras […]
Read MoreWhat Is a Species, Anyway?
Naturalists have been trying for centuries to catalog all of the species on Earth, and the effort remains one of the great unfinished jobs in science. So far, researchers have named about 2.3 million species, but there are millions — perhaps even billions — left to be discovered. As if this quest isn’t hard enough, […]
Read MoreMore Young People Are on Multiple Psychiatric Drugs, Study Finds
The News Growing numbers of children and adolescents are being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs to take simultaneously, according to a new study in the state of Maryland. The phenomenon is increasing despite warnings that psychotropic drug combinations in young people have not been tested for safety or studied for their impact on the developing brain. […]
Read MoreCooperSurgical’s Botched IVF Liquid Destroyed Embryos, Lawsuits Claim
CooperSurgical, a major medical supply company, is facing a wave of lawsuits from patients who claim that one of its products destroyed embryos created with in vitro fertilization. Fertility clinics across the world used the product, a nutrient-rich liquid that helps fertilized eggs develop into embryos. This week federal regulators made public that the company […]
Read MoreA Columbia Surgeon’s Study Was Pulled. He Kept Publishing Flawed Data.
The stomach cancer study was shot through with suspicious data. Identical constellations of cells were said to depict separate experiments on wholly different biological lineages. Photos of tumor-stricken mice, used to show that a drug reduced cancer growth, had been featured in two previous papers describing other treatments. Problems with the study were severe enough […]
Read MoreCould Your Cat Give You the Plague?
Officials in Deschutes County, Ore., announced last week that a local resident had been diagnosed with the plague — and that the resident had probably been infected by a pet cat. The cat, which was symptomatic, died from the infection, but the human patient is currently recovering, said Emily Horton, a public health program manager […]
Read MoreC.D.C. Considers Ending 5-Day Isolation Period for Covid
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering loosening its recommendations regarding how long people should isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus, another reflection of changing attitudes and norms as the pandemic recedes. Under the proposed guidelines, Americans would no longer be advised to isolate for five days before returning to work or […]
Read MoreWho Kissed First? Archaeology Has an Answer.
This is a love story: During the spring of 2008, long before they produced evidence of humanity’s first recorded kiss, Sophie Lund Rasmussen and Troels Pank Arboll clasped lips in their first good-night snog. They met a week earlier at a pub near the University of Copenhagen, where both were undergraduates. “I had asked my […]
Read MoreChildren Whose Mothers Had Pregnancy Complications May Face Heart Risks
Women who develop high blood pressure or diabetes in the course of pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children who develop conditions that may compromise their own heart health at a young age, scientists reported on Monday. By the time they are 12 years old, these children are more likely to be overweight […]
Read MoreStaggering Rise in Catheter Bills Suggests Medicare Scam
Linda Hennis was checking her Medicare statement in January when she noticed something strange: It said a company she had never heard of had been paid about $12,000 for sending her 2,000 urinary catheters. But she had never needed, or received, any catheters. Ms. Hennis, a retired nurse who lives in a suburb of Chicago, […]
Read MoreFederal Records Show Increasing Use of Solitary Confinement for Immigrants
The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the last five years, and the average duration is almost twice the 15-day threshold that the United Nations has said may constitute torture, according to a new analysis of federal records by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit group […]
Read MoreAlternating Arms for Vaccines May Boost Your Immunity, Study Says
If you’ve presented the same arm for every dose of a particular vaccine, you may want to reconsider. Alternating arms may produce a more powerful immune response, a new study suggests. The researchers studied responses to the first two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Those who alternated arms showed a small increase in immunity over those […]
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