Atlantic
‘High-stakes information battle’ brewing over which coronavirus experts to trust
Determining who is an authoritative figure worth amplifying is more challenging than ever. Curated, personalized feeds enable bespoke realities. Trump ...
Unanswered COVID-19 questions multiply: Why some people get really sick and others not? Does social distancing really matter? Are models right?
In a pandemic characterized by extreme uncertainty, one of the few things experts know for sure is the identity of ...
Are we facing a ‘more transmissible’ coronavirus strain? Not so fast, researchers say
As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory ...
What comic book super heroes and villains tell us about plant and human gene editing – and the coronavirus
Understanding gene editing with comic book figures ...
How America is neglecting its growing elderly autistic population
[E]merging research suggests that autistic adults are at high risk of a broad array of physical and mental health conditions, ...
There are 7 coronaviruses that infect humans. Here’s what makes SARS-CoV-2 so dangerous
SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu. It causes a disease with different symptoms, spreads and kills more readily, and belongs to a completely ...
There are 3 possible endgames for the coronavirus pandemic
Three months ago, no one knew that SARS-CoV-2 existed. Now the virus has spread to almost every country... . It ...
Are we overreacting to the coronavirus? Here’s why we should hope so.
From my perspective, staring down the barrel of a “once-in-a-generation pathogen,” as the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner ...
Breast milk breakthrough on the horizon? Growing mammary cells to create casein and lactose
The inconvenient truth about breastfeeding is that breasts are, invariably, attached to a person. A person who could get too ...
Human hibernation eyed as solution for severe trauma, weight loss and deep-space travel
A small group of scientists is taking human hibernation extremely seriously. They are studying the basic mechanisms with an eye ...
Why are Americans obsessed with unproven CBD supplements?
CBD belongs to a class of chemicals called cannabinoids, dozens of which have been identified in cannabis and hemp plants, ...
Here’s a virus that CRISPR can’t touch—it could help researchers gain better control of the gene-editing tool
Bacteria and phages are likely locked in an arms race. The former evolve new kinds of scissor enzymes, and the ...
Tracing evolution of mammalian hearing: Essential ear bones were once part of the jaw
One hundred and twenty million years ago, when northeastern China was a series of lakes and erupting volcanoes, there lived ...
Chronic pain relief: Why Gabapentin may not be a ‘safe’ alternative to opioids
Gabapentin was supposed to be the answer. Chronic pain afflicts about a fifth of American adults, and for years, doctors thought it ...
Why do women make up two-thirds of Alzheimer’s patients? The answer may be found in menopause
Two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women. Why? It has often been posited that this is because women live longer ...
How a genetically modified morning glory was almost the 2020 Olympics mascot
Sebastian Cocioba, a 29-year-old college dropout and self-styled “plant hacker,” has lived there with his parents for the past decade ...
Keto diet as a cancer treatment? Researchers explore potential to treat diseases, seizures
[S]cientists have known for decades that the keto diet can prevent epileptic seizures even when pharmaceutical treatments have failed. But ...
Could common infections be causing eating disorders?
Infections might, in fact, spark eating disorders in some people. For the study, Lauren Breithaupt, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts ...
Anonymous no more: AncestryDNA test reveals identity of woman’s stem cell donor
In 2017, Holly Becker took an AncestryDNA test, and the results, she would only later learn, exactly matched those of ...
‘Utterly magical’: This ‘two-step dance’ may explain the origins of life
Go back far enough in time, before animals and plants and even bacteria existed, and you’d find that the precursor ...
Can we cure baldness with stem cell-based ‘hair farms’?
The physiology of balding has long vexed even the most entrepreneurial of scientists. Despite a rare confluence of commercial forces ...
10 years ago, the Human Brain Project promised to simulate a human brain. What went wrong?
On July 22, 2009, the neuroscientist Henry Markram walked onstage at the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, England, and told the ...
Can’t lose weight? You may be able to blame this ‘cruel’ metabolic mechanism
In a study of former contestants on a season of the weight-loss reality show The Biggest Loser, scientists found that ...
Acne’s Wonder Drug Is a Mental-Health Puzzle
In 2002, a family filed a lawsuit alleging that an acne drug made their teenage son suicidal. Accutane, a since-discontinued ...
Why is it so difficult to figure out if coffee, wine, eggs and other foods are good for us or not?
Do you know whether eggs are good for you? What about coffee, red wine, or chocolate? Most people probably have ...
Video: Cryogenics could help people ‘cheat death’. But will those bodies ever be thawed?
Until the day he died, in 2011, Robert Ettinger hoped humanity would figure out a way to cheat death. Today, ...
FDA regulatory dilemma: Are fecal transplants drugs, human tissue, or something new?
For the past several years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been trying to figure out how to regulate ...
Are eggs good or bad for you? Why science can’t make up its mind about our favorite foods
Do you know whether eggs are good for you? What about coffee, red wine, or chocolate? Most people probably have ...
