The U.S. Government Is Starving Its Own Scientists of Knowledge
The USDA’s National Agricultural Library has canceled subscriptions to about one-fifth of its original journals, leaving many federal scientists and academics without a way to access the full range of...
View ArticleBook Review: The Mystery of Alzheimer’s Disease in Rural Colombia
Jennie Erin Smith’s “Valley of Forgetting” explores the genetic roots of early-onset dementia plaguing a mountain region of Colombia, which led to the discovery of the E280A mutation — a near-guarantee...
View ArticleUncovering the Exposome: An Emerging Field Casts a Wide Net
Exposome researchers say the work could be as consequential for human health as the effort to catalogue the human genome, or even more so, if it can realize its promise. Some experts, though, caution...
View ArticleThe EPA Wants to Roll Back Emissions Controls on Power Plants
Days after NOAA released figures showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 in recorded history, the EPA moved to roll back emission standards for power plants. “The EPA is trying to get out of...
View ArticleVia the False Claim Act, NIH Puts Universities on Edge
For weeks, a major research university quietly froze some, perhaps all, of its incoming NIH funding. The details — reported here for the first time — show how universities are struggling to adapt to...
View ArticleWhat if MAGA Has a Point About Science?
Distrust of science among the political right has been growing for at least two decades, setting the stage for the Trump administration’s actions to slash university research funding. Cosmologist Paul...
View ArticleBook Review: The Trouble With Depending on Experts
Using the pandemic response as Exhibit A, two recent critiques — “The Weaponization of Expertise” and “An Abundance of Caution” — offer illuminating assessments of the role of scientific expertise in...
View ArticleThe Challenges of Tackling Too Much Screen Time
Evidence suggests that excessively using smartphones and social media may harm youth. Now, RFK Jr. and some states want to institute blanket bans against cellphones in schools. But some studies suggest...
View ArticleCounting the Potential Casualties of the One Big Beautiful Bill
Eric Roberts, one of the authors of a new analysis assessing the impact of the pending One Big Beautiful Bill Act on public health, says the bill’s provisions for public health insurance — Medicaid,...
View ArticleThe U.S. Government Is Starving Its Own Scientists of Knowledge
The USDA’s National Agricultural Library has canceled subscriptions to about one-fifth of its original journals, leaving many federal scientists and academics without a way to access the full range of...
View ArticleA Possible Connection Between Mental Illness and Diet
A limited, though growing, body of scientific evidence suggests the ketogenic diet could be effective for treating schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. The approach may also reduce the often...
View ArticleThe U.S. Government Is Starving Its Own Scientists of Knowledge
The USDA’s National Agricultural Library has canceled subscriptions to about one-fifth of its original journals, leaving many federal scientists and academics without a way to access the full range of...
View ArticleShifting Forces: The Evolving Debate Around Dark Energy
This year, scientists found evidence that dark energy — a mysterious but key force in understanding the universe — might not behave as initially expected. The discovery could pave the way for new...
View ArticleData, Death, and Delay — America’s Maternal Health Crisis
Each state has a maternal mortality review committee that reviews data on pregnancy-related deaths and makes recommendations on how to reduce them. Recent lapses in the work of committees in Idaho,...
View ArticleBook Review: An Impassioned Ode to the Riverine World
In “Is a River Alive?”, the British nature writer Robert Macfarlane explores that question and its moral, legal, and environmental implications. “How we answer this strange, confronting question...
View ArticleThe Impact of NIH Cuts Ripples Beyond U.S. Borders
Cuts to science funding in the U.S. have devastated American institutions, but they also affect a raft of international collaborations and scientists based at institutions abroad. Meanwhile, European...
View ArticleIn California, Colleges Pay a Steep Price for Faulty AI Detectors
Turnitin, which sells a popular plagiarism detector, released tool to identify AI-generated writing just six months after ChatGPT’s debut. California colleges have now spent millions to catch...
View ArticleThe Gates Foundation’s Global Reach Expands, to Mixed Reviews
The U.S. has backed away from global health funding, leaving a vacuum of an estimated $10 billion or more. That makes the Gates Foundation — formerly known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,...
View ArticleThe Many Perils of the ‘Pivot Penalty’
A recent study found that scientists who pivoted to new research areas incurred a penalty in terms of their research’s measured impact. Columnist C. Brandon Ogbunu considers the finding, as disruption...
View ArticleWildfires Are Challenging Air Quality Monitoring Infrastructure
The U.S. has one of the world’s most advanced systems to monitor air pollutants, but the system is built with industrial emissions in mind and lacks consistent regional coverage. Now, with wildfires...
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