In a Rush to Supply PPE, U.S. Importers Were Scammed for Millions
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in the international trade system, and some experts say this type of fraud will continue even as the pandemic subsides. A group of American business owners have...
View ArticleHow Ukraine’s Environmentalists Are Helping the War Effort
Amid Ukraine’s whole-of-society wartime reorganization, environmentalists are using their resources to support people and nature in crisis by monitoring air quality, tracking environmental war crimes,...
View ArticleWhy Won’t Academia Let Go of ‘Publish or Perish’?
“Publish or perish” has become a mantra in academia — a not-so-subtle warning of the profession’s brutal expectations for scholarly output. Although many researchers acknowledge that this cutthroat...
View ArticleBook Review: The Unleashing of Tyrannosaurus Rex
David K. Randall’s “The Monster’s Bones” is a fresh and engrossing account of the exploits of early dinosaur fossil hunters and how their remarkable discoveries — notably the first bones of...
View ArticlePuerto Rico’s Coastal Gentrification Displaces People, Wildlife
Tourism-driven development along Puerto Rico’s rural coastlines is displacing local communities and damaging biodiverse wetlands and mangroves. These natural areas are already under stress from climate...
View ArticleFor Students Struggling With Mental Health, Schools Try Time Off
A new Illinois law grants K-12 public school students five excused absences per school year for mental health reasons, an example of growing acknowledgment from lawmakers that emotional and physical...
View ArticleHow the Yurok Tribe Is Bringing Back the California Condor
In the 1980s, the total condor population dwindled to fewer than 30 individuals. Biologists concluded the species’ only chance of survival lay in capturing every living condor in order to breed the...
View ArticleWe Must End Attacks on Hospitals in Conflict Zones
Despite international law, health facilities are now frequent military targets in the Ukraine and beyond. Even in conflict-free countries, the Covid-19 pandemic has elicited an unprecedented assault on...
View ArticleBook Excerpt: A Summer Camp for Sleep Experiments
In an unusual long-term sleep study in the 1970s and ’80s, adolescent campers were plugged into bedside consoles during frequent “nap tests” to monitor brainwaves, eye movements, and chin-muscle...
View ArticleAmid the Turmoil of Covid, Biosafety Legislation Gets Political
The pandemic has brought unprecedented public attention to the safety practices of laboratories that work with dangerous pathogens. Until recently, the conversation about lab security was largely...
View ArticleIn Permafrost Thaw, Scientists Seek to Understand Radon Risk
An estimated 3.3 million people live on permafrost that will have completely melted away by 2050. Not all of these areas are prone to radon, but parts of Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia could be...
View ArticleEp. 62: Restoring Landscapes and Livelihoods in Western Bosnia
This month: Twenty-six years after the end of the Bosnian War, farmers in Livno are once again making cheese the traditional way, grazing herds of sheep on the wide-open plains. The animals’ return is...
View ArticleDavos Was a Case Study in How Not to Talk About Climate Change
Fawning media coverage of corporate climate pledges and clean technology investments elides a fundamental truth of the climate crisis: Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions will require steep...
View ArticleInterview: James Poskett on Reframing the History of Science
In “Horizons,” a historian of science casts a wider lens on the last five centuries of scientific achievement, highlighting the crucial contributions of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and African...
View ArticleWhat Can Menstrual Blood Reveal about Health and Disease?
Researchers routinely examine saliva, skin, teeth, and even feces for clues about health and disease. The conventional view suggests menstrual blood is merely a waste product. However, some scientists...
View ArticleHow Abortion Rules Impact Prenatal Genetic Screening
Only 10 states with gestational limits on abortion have exemptions for conditions lethal before or at birth. None allow exemptions for serious but nonlethal conditions. But this leaves people who can’t...
View ArticleIn Agriculture, a Perennial Problem with Grains
Some researchers think that replacing annual grains with Kernza could counter intensive agriculture. Whether Kernza’s potential can be realized on a meaningful scale hinges on one measure of...
View ArticleIn Bioethics, Ignoring Racism Is Itself a Kind of Racism
GUEST ESSAY | Given the abundant evidence of racism’s health impacts, one would expect bioethicists, of all people, to grapple with the problem in a substantive way. But close scrutiny of the...
View ArticleBook Review: The Limits of Drug-Based Psychiatry
“The Mind and the Moon,” by journalist Daniel Bergner, is both a moving account of his brother’s long struggle with bipolar disorder and a deeply reported critique of the disease model of mental...
View ArticleWhat Ethnographers Have Learned from People Who Use Drugs
Ethnographers often credit the contributions of people who use drugs in shaping safe use practices. By talking with and observing people, these researchers provide a fine-grained view of the forces...
View Article