Trump’s Cuts to Global Health Aid Could Prove Deadly
A new report finds that If Congress approves even a modest fraction of President Trump’s proposed budget cuts, the worldwide consequences will be dire: starting next year, almost a million more...
View ArticleAbstracts: Hot Air, Prozac, and Sea Pickles
More than 40 American Airlines flights in Phoenix have been cancelled this week due to record-breaking heat in the city. A new artificial intelligence algorithm can predict the likelihood that a...
View ArticleTeaching Machines to Recognize (and Filter) Humanity’s Dark Side
With billions of social media users posting content all over the world, social media giants, along with video streaming services everywhere, are scrambling to develop and deploy automated content...
View ArticleA Yelp for Psychiatric Facilities
Some advocates and researchers see the online project as filling a range of unmet needs, from empowering the people who submit reviews to potentially helping families of mental health patients inform...
View ArticleAbstracts: Wind Energy, Bright Nights, and More
China and India are set to exceed carbon emission reduction goals outlined in the Paris climate agreement years earlier than anticipated. Researchers at the University of Virginia are leading efforts...
View ArticleIt’s ‘Energy Week’ at the White House, and Environmentalists Are Worried....
Analysts are increasingly finding ways to value the benefits of the natural world and to identify the threats posed by fuel production. Oil and gas rigs on national monuments could lead to habitat...
View ArticleIn the American South, an Inequity of Diseases
Parasitic infections involving tapeworms and other vectors are often associated with the developing world. But in the Southern U.S., climate change and poor infrastructure provide hospitable conditions...
View ArticleWill Trump Give ‘Right to Try’ a Boost?
Advocates of the Right to Try movement say terminally ill patients should have access to certain drugs that haven't yet been approved by the FDA. While they're hopeful the Trump administration's lax...
View ArticleAbstracts: Bees, Ozone, Underwater Forests, and More
A new threat to the ozone layer has been discovered, which could delay its recovery. The brightest light ever produced on Earth — one billion times the brightness of the sun — can apparently change the...
View ArticleEarn a $1.5 Million Prize at ‘Kaggle!’ (American Applicants Only, Please.)
The data scientists and machine learning researchers at Kaggle.com compete to solve problems and earn prize money. But many Kagglers, who hail from 194 different countries, are upset over the...
View ArticlePodcast #16: Health Care in North Korea
Our podcast host David Corcoran discusses Undark’s latest Case Study about medical problems in refugees from North Korea, with writer Sara Talpos. Also: Seth Mnookin on how the media cover health care...
View ArticleWhen Paris’s Streets Were Paved With Filth
The filth of Paris was inescapable. It attached itself to clothes, buildings, the insides of nostrils. Parisians had to walk through inches of thickened blood that slaughterhouses tossed into streets...
View ArticleAbstracts: Inequality, Therapy Pets, and More
When American communities are hit by major natural disasters, inequality appears to increase throughout the country. Therapy animals might be trendy, but are they really helping people's mental health?...
View ArticleGOP Gamble: Avoiding Climate Remedies While Sidestepping the Legal Fallout of...
Trump has already withdrawn the U.S. from participation in the global climate pact reached in Paris in 2015. Now, the administration may be angling to reverse a landmark finding in 2009 by the...
View ArticleNeeded at the G20 Summit: A Global Assault on Drug-Resistant TB
Tuberculosis is already the world’s leading infectious killer, claiming 1.8 million lives a year and accounting for a third of all deaths from antibiotic resistance. If left unaddressed, it will have...
View ArticleIf the Air Got Just a Little Cleaner, Thousands Fewer Would Die
There is still room for improvement when it comes to curtailing air pollution. A new study of millions of people reveals that pollutants at levels below current standards still would cause thousands of...
View ArticleAbstracts: Neanderthals, Natural Gas, and More
Early humans bred with Neanderthals 200,000 years earlier than scientists had thought, according to a recent study. The EPA will not delay the enforcement of methane regulations established under the...
View ArticleTips for Aggrieved Science Writers
The National Association of Science Writers used to have a active grievance committee. Its mission was to intervene with publishers when freelance journalists among its membership were unfairly...
View ArticleTo Save the Planet, Eat More Bugs?
For most of our history, the problem of more mouths to feed was solved simply by hunting more animals, raising more livestock, and farming more land. Today those options are no longer viable —...
View ArticleFive Questions for Nick Bilton
“American Kingpin” tells the story of Ross Ulbricht, the libertarian and self-taught coder who at the ripe age of 26 singlehandedly developed what became the Silk Road, the world’s largest “dark web”...
View Article