When it comes to records of human history, don’t overlook Earth’s only uninhabited continent. Researchers recently found soot preserved in Antarctic ice that they’ve linked to fires set in New Zealand by Māori settlers, the islands’ first human inhabitants. Finding evidence of conflagrations thousands of miles away is a dramatic example of early humanity’s environmental […]
During the pandemic, Dr. Collins helped found a project involving partnerships and collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies that enabled numerous trials of antivirals and other treatments for Covid-19 to run simultaneously. Some scientists and public health experts have criticized the federal government’s efforts at studying Covid-19 treatments, saying some that ultimately did not show […]
The first dog in space. The first man and woman. Now Russia has clinched another spaceflight first before the United States: Beating Hollywood to orbit. A Russian actress, Yulia Peresild, a director, Klim Shipenko, and their veteran Russian astronaut guide, Anton Shkaplerov, launched on a Russian rocket toward the International Space Station on Tuesday. Their […]
Did death cheat Stephen Hawking of a Nobel Prize? When the iconic physicist died on March 14, 2018, data was already in hand that could confirm an ominous and far-reaching prediction he had made more than four decades before. Dr. Hawking had posited that black holes, those maws of gravitational doom, could only grow larger, […]
The European Medicines Agency, the European Union’s main drug regulator, said on Monday that a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine could be given to healthy adults at least six months after the second dose. The agency said data showed that antibody levels increased in people age 18 to 55 with normal immune systems […]
“The tiny Maltese,” the American Kennel Club tells us, “has been sitting in the lap of luxury since the Bible was a work in progress.” This is also the opinion of my friend the Maltese owner (the dog is also my friend), who recently invoked the Greeks and the Romans as early admirers of the […]
Every person, every mouse, every dog, has one unmistakable sign of aging: hair loss. But why does that happen? Rui Yi, a professor of pathology at Northwestern University, set out to answer the question. A generally accepted hypothesis about stem cells says they replenish tissues and organs, including hair, but they will eventually be exhausted […]
He’s boldly going where Jeff Bezos has gone before. William Shatner, known best from his years as the U.S.S. Enterprise’s Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” TV and film series, will launch to the edge of space this month aboard New Shepard. That is the tourist rocket built by Blue Origin, the private space […]
The roar of engines has long been part of the soundscape of a city. For a century, for billions of urban people worldwide, getting around has meant boarding a bus powered by diesel or an auto rickshaw that runs on gasoline, or among the affluent, a car. Today, a quiet transformation is underway. Berlin, Bogotá […]
A mustard plant infected with a certain parasite grows strangely, its development warped by tiny invaders. Its leaves take on odd shapes, its stems form a bushy structure called a witches’ broom and it may grow flowers that do not produce seed. Most peculiarly of all, it lives longer than its uninfected brethren, in a […]
