Nearly a Year into the Pandemic, Nursing Home Deaths Decline
Pandemic conditions are improving in nursing homes across the country. A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, released last week, found that deaths among nursing home residents had begun to drop...
View ArticleAs Peru Battles Covid-19, Tuberculosis Finds New Footing
The United Nations aims to end the epidemic of tuberculosis by 2030, but Covid-related disruptions to TB treatments may push that goal out of reach — and end up propagating the most deadly strains that...
View ArticleA Shift in Nursing Home Residents to Younger Psychiatric Patients
As older residents die from Covid-19 and more families choose to keep elderly relatives at home, some nursing homes are accepting more younger patients, including some with drug addictions and mental...
View ArticleIn India’s Bohra Community, a Battle Over Genital Mutilation
A lawsuit in India weighs women’s religious right to practice female circumcision in a Muslim minority group against those who condemn the tradition as genital mutilation. But according to hundreds of...
View ArticleRoad Salt Is Imperiling Aquatic Ecosystems. It Doesn’t Have To.
The rock salt that keeps wintry roads safe also racks up high hidden costs to freshwater ecosystems — and could spell disaster, according to a 2017 study. In a lakeside region in upstate New York,...
View ArticleBook Review: The Elusive Dream of Self-Driving Cars
In “Driven,” Alex Davies chronicles the early days of autonomous vehicle technology and its evolution into a billion-dollar race to put them on the road. Though the technology has long been promised to...
View ArticleAs Vaccine Campaign Expands, A Racial Gap Persists
As of Friday morning, more than 64 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. But amid the expanding vaccination campaign, some scholars and analysts...
View ArticleThe Egg Industry Grapples With a Grim Practice: Chick Culling
The U.S. egg industry is investing in sophisticated technologies that may one day be used to eradicate culling of male chicks, a practice both cruel and wasteful. But cull-free eggs are already...
View ArticleIn Colorado, the Looming Liability of Oil and Gas Cleanup
Nearly 60,000 defunct oil or gas wells in Colorado need to be plugged — costing an estimated $8 billion, according to a new report. If not properly treated, the wells may leak toxins into groundwater...
View ArticleLab Leak: A Scientific Debate Mired in Politics — and Unresolved
Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 — which is still unknown — could help stop future pandemics. But some scientists say that the possibility of a lab leak never got a fair hearing. Instead, those...
View ArticleThe Troubling Rhetoric of Space Exploration
Terms such as “conquest,” “frontier,” and “Manifest Destiny” are often invoked to justify missions into the cosmos. Space is one of few places humans have gone that thus far remains peaceful. Why,...
View ArticleBats, Panthers, and the Utterly Plausible Lab-Leak Hypothesis
Large swaths of the biomedical community have rejected out of hand the idea that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, could have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. But a zoo analogy helps...
View ArticleBook Review: Who Does Bears Ears National Monument Belong To?
In “The Bears Ears,” David Roberts teases out the nuanced and often counterintuitive web of science, history, archaeology, industry, and spirituality that makes the fight over Bears Ears National...
View ArticleCoronavirus Growing More Transmissible — But Not Less Dangerous
A recent Nature paper offers new evidence that a fast-spreading variant of SARS-CoV-2, called B117, may be more virulent than older variants. “Our analysis suggests that B117 is not only more...
View ArticleSTDs are Rising Among Teens. Can Video Games Help?
Recent studies suggest that virtual sexual health education — particularly computer-based video games — could be at least as effective as traditional methods at promoting practices like condom use and...
View ArticleFor New York’s First Offshore Windfarm, an Unexpected Hurdle
Wainscott, a hamlet in the wealthy New York enclave of the Hamptons, is the unlikely setting for a rancorous battle over what would be the state’s first offshore wind farm. The turbines themselves...
View ArticleIn a Pipe Repair Worker’s Death, Questions of Safety Still Swirl
A lawsuit arising from the death of a 22-year-old worker who was helping to install an underground pipe repair known as cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP, was settled for $3 million. But questions remain...
View ArticleFrom the Pandemic, a Roadmap for Lowering the Costs of Medicine
Rushed by the urgency to deploy new Covid-19 treatments, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cut some of its usual red tape, adopting a more innovative, nimbler regulatory posture. Could an extension...
View ArticleBook Review: An Open-Eyed History of Wildlife Conservation
In “Beloved Beasts,” journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the evolution of conservation, arguing that the past is a key repository of lessons hard learned through trial and error that is too often...
View ArticleAs Eligibility Widens, Concerns Over Vaccine Hesitancy Linger
Despite lingering fears about vaccine hesitancy, surveys continue to suggest that large — and growing — portions of the U.S. population are willing to get a shot against Covid-19. Already, more than 70...
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