Lyme Vaccines Show New Promise, and Face Old Challenges
Demand for a Lyme vaccine should be greater than ever before. When LYMErix first hit the market in 1998, the number of reported cases was about 17,000. By 2017, that number had climbed to roughly...
View ArticleThe Persistent Myth of Persistence Hunting
Did our stone-age ancestors chase down antelope across the hot, dry savanna, armed with nothing but maybe some blunt sticks or rocks, for hours on end, never letting the animals rest until they...
View ArticleThe Many Threats to Our Coastlines: Five Questions for Gilbert M. Gaul
In "The Geography of Risk," journalist Gilbert M. Gaul argues that decades of reckless development and faulty planning, along with the effects of climate change and the specter of more severe storms in...
View ArticleAnother Week, Another Nutrition Axiom Upended: Is Eating Meat Unhealthy?
Nutrition experts have warned that eating red meat can be bad for your health. Then a multi-part meta-analysis, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, concluded that red meat may...
View ArticleEnvisioning and Designing the Floating Future
The Float Lab is a prototype of what may come: floating structures built to withstand the challenges of rising tides. Its creators believe such structures could help make marine ecosystems healthier...
View ArticleHospital Closures in Rural U.S. Reach a Crisis Point
In the past decade, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed, and more than 20 percent, or 430 hospitals across 43 states, are now near collapse. This is despite the fact that rural hospitals are not...
View ArticleCanada Opens the Door to Public Scrutiny of Clinical Drug Trials
Canada's health department is making clinical study reports submitted by companies seeking approval for new drugs and treatments publicly available through an online portal. The reports play an...
View ArticleExoplanets, Life, and the Danger of a Single Study
It is perfectly legitimate to ask those at the highest level of their profession to give their view on their own work, even if that view is speculative and at odds with what their rivals and colleagues...
View ArticleCalifornia’s Plan to Buy Carbon Offsets in the Amazon Raises Ethical Concerns
Some indigenous peoples, policymakers, environmentalists, and researchers view California's new carbon offset program as a novel way to financially support those struggling against the odds to protect...
View ArticleThe Nobel Prize: What Is it Good For?
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences minted nine new science Nobel Laureates this week. But in the 118 years that such prizes have been awarded, only 20 out of more than 600 have gone to women. The...
View ArticleDeath Valley’s Park Service Wants Them Gone. But Are Wild Donkeys Really the...
Wild burros have long flourished in Death Valley National Park, and officials are now seeking to remove them because of their destructive impact on scarce water and vegetation resources. But new...
View ArticleDespite Progress Towards Gender Parity, Women Rarely Win Science Nobels
The rarity of female Nobel laureates raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s...
View ArticleA Mobile Health Clinic Is Bringing Contraception to the Rio Grande Valley
A new medical school is working to bring a range of contraceptive methods to the underserved Rio Grande Valley. Women have indicated they want better access, but some argue that such outreach efforts...
View ArticleConcussion Research Has a Troubling Patriarchy Problem
Experts estimate that millions of women and people of marginalized genders have suffered from intimate partner violence and untreated concussions. The fact that concussions are viewed primarily as...
View ArticleDeep Time, and the Precarious Future of Humanity
Time is key to understanding the risk of human extinction. For manmade threats like A.I., biotech, or nuclear war, existential calamity can strike in a blink. But for natural existential threats, like...
View ArticleTo Tackle Drug Use, Researchers and People With Addiction Alike Turn to...
Today, online forum threads about drug use aren’t just of interest to the site’s users. As the opioid epidemic worsens, claiming about 130 lives a day in 2018 in the United States alone, a cadre of...
View ArticleAmid Private Dinners and False Advertising, Facebook Comes Under Fire
On Monday, Politico reported that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting private, off-the-record dinners with prominent, and in some cases controversial, conservatives. The story...
View ArticleThe Problem With Labeling Gut Troubles ‘Dysbiosis’
As the concept of microbial balance has reached the public — in part through direct-to-consumer testing kits — it has contributed to an untold number of people attempting to give themselves fecal...
View ArticleDeath Valley’s Park Service Wants Them Gone. But Are Wild Donkeys Really the...
Wild burros have long flourished in Death Valley National Park, and officials are now seeking to remove them because of their destructive impact on scarce water and vegetation resources. But new...
View ArticleDespite Progress Towards Gender Parity, Women Rarely Win Science Nobels
The rarity of female Nobel laureates raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s...
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