Georgia’s New Election System Raises Old Computer Security Concerns
With many states seeking to overhaul their election systems before 2020, Georgia's decision has experts worried that lessons learned over nearly two decades of computerized voting are being woefully...
View ArticleAs Counterfeit Alcohol Proliferates, So Do Potential Health Risks
One of the key aspects of counterfeit alcohol is that producers distill their products cheaply and quickly using dangerous shortcuts, like adding toxic ingredients including methanol, fuel, or...
View ArticleRevealing the Secret Lives of Cells With Advanced Microscopy
How do cells differentiate into brain, organ muscles, or any of the other approximately 200 different human cell types? How do they change as they age? How do these little bags of water and chemicals...
View ArticleThe Trials of Being Autistic at an Autism Research Conference
The experience of being surrounded by thousands of researchers — many of whom had never met anyone like me except as a subject, and some of whom had never met anyone like me at all — is at times...
View ArticleOne Family’s Ordeal With Schizophrenia
In chronicling her family's experience dealing with the harrowing effects of schizophrenia, Marin Sardy, in “The Edge of Every Day,” reveals what it means to love someone who is mentally ill and how...
View ArticleTrump’s ‘Environmental Leadership’ Speech Contradicted By Policy Record
While Trump listed “the very cleanest air and cleanest water,” and protecting public lands as top priorities for his administration, he has spent much of his time in office weakening and dismantling...
View ArticleRevisiting the Role of the Science Journalist
Can the average reader articulate what makes a story published by Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News different from one published by a popular site like Massive Science, which is written by...
View ArticleTicks Carry More Than Just Lyme Disease
Cases of tick-borne disease are on the rise in the U.S., thanks to new, invasive tick species, newly discovered pathogens, and expanded tick habitat ranges. Lyme disease receives the bulk of the...
View ArticleIn Latin America, Using Crowd-Sourced Maps to Improve the Lives of Women
In Latin America, individual volunteers and organizations are charting underserved regions through publicly-available satellite imagery, conducting on-site geological surveys, and raising awareness on...
View ArticleNutrition Science Is Broken. This New Egg Study Shows Why.
When so much of what we are told about diet, health, and weight loss is contradictory, can we believe any of it? Probably not. Nutrition research tends to be unreliable because nearly all of it is...
View ArticleThe Long, Strange Voyage of Ancient Scientific Texts
In "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found,” British historian Violet Moller chronicles the long, strange journey of a small collection of ancient...
View ArticleFifty Years After Apollo Mission, Challenges in Returning to the Moon
On Tuesday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) celebrated the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the 1969 spaceflight mission that first put humans on the Moon. Amid its reminiscing,...
View ArticleCritics of Peer Review Ask How ‘Race Science’ Still Manages to Slip Through
The issue extends beyond South Africa, as both papers were subjected to review by international journals. That the research was published despite appearing to dabble in race science was seen by some as...
View ArticleAre Bioplastics Better for the Environment? It’s Complicated.
The term “bioplastics” refers to both bio-based plastics (plastics made from biological matter) and biodegradable plastics (plastics that can be broken down by microbes, given specific conditions). Not...
View ArticleChasing Opal and Fossils in the Australian Outback
Some of the fossils unearthed at Lightning Ridge represent animal species found nowhere else. They are packed with information from the Cretaceous Period — the tail end of the age of the dinosaurs....
View ArticleA Doctor Shortage Is Looming, and a Clinton-Era Policy Is Partly to Blame
American medicine is already experiencing a devastating crisis within its workforce. In a recent report, 44 percent of American physicians reported feeling burned out, 15 percent reported feeling...
View ArticleDispatches From the World Beneath Our Feet
Humans are innately drawn to and repulsed by underground worlds, British nature writer Robert MacFarlane writes in "Underland," his wide-ranging survey of the world's deep, dark places, from the...
View ArticleEthics Probes Launched at Department of the Interior and EPA
Two new ethics probes were opened this week — one into the policies of the U.S. Department of the Interior regarding public records requests and one into the actions of former EPA air quality chief...
View ArticleArtificial Intelligence Could Improve Health Care for All — Unless it Doesn’t
There is no shortage of optimism about AI in the medical community. But many also caution the hype surrounding AI has yet to be realized in real clinical settings. There are also different visions for...
View ArticleReusing Wastewater for Crops Could Reduce Water Scarcity, If We Can Stomach It.
Recycling wastewater for use in agriculture could cut down on pollution of waterways and slow the rate at which food production depletes freshwater. But beyond practical considerations of risks and...
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