Health & Medicine

The microCOVID project was started by a group of friends and housemates who wanted to be more equitable about safety precautions.

Innovation for Good

This Calculator Estimates Your Risk of Getting Covid-19

The online tool draws on recent data to approximate your chances of contracting the virus in different scenarios

Children head back to school in August even as the Covid-19 delta variant makes its rounds. For reasons that aren’t fully understood, kids do not get as sick from Covid-19 as adults do. The role of schools in fostering spread of the virus is also under study.

Covid-19

Why Don't Kids Tend to Get as Sick From Covid-19?

Some children have been hospitalized and some have died, but at a tiny fraction of the adult rate. Scientists are trying to find out why.

Can a machine be taught to understand the plant world?

Innovation for Good

Is This Weed-Spotting, Yield-Predicting Rover the Future of Farming?

The robot, developed by Alphabet Inc.'s X, will make its public debut at the Smithsonian

Firefighters walk towards one of the towers at the World Trade Center before it collapsed on September 11, 2001.

Innovation for Good

9/11 Changed How Doctors Treat PTSD

New research in the 20 years since the September 11th attacks has led to better therapies for those diagnosed with trauma disorders

The researchers retrieved frog foam from the forests of Trinidad and brought it back to their lab after removing the eggs, hatching them and returning the tadpoles to the wild.

Frog Foam May Help Deliver Drugs to Human Skin

A new study suggests the concoction created by mating amphibians may help dispense medicine slowly over time

The Nautilus, a research vessel operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, and the ROV Hercules (in the water) on the hunt for a cancer-busting marine bacteria.

A Marine Bacteria Species Shows Promise for Curing an Aggressive Brain Cancer

A new glioblastoma drug is derived from a microbe found in the ocean at depths of up to 6,500 feet

Rasha Alqahtani, an 18-year-old from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, won a third award in the behavioral and social sciences category of the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair for her prototype of a video game feature to assess anxiety. In addition to her STEM research, Alqahtani is a poet and artist.

Innovation for Good

This Teenager Is Developing a Video Game That Assesses Your Mental Health

Rasha Alqahtani, an 18-year-old from Saudi Arabia, is determined to help her peers learn about their anxiety—in the wildly popular setting of 'Minecraft'

A nurse administers the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Los Angeles, California, in August. More than one million individuals have gotten a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine in the United States.

Covid-19

Six Important Questions About Booster Shots Answered

Experts weigh in who needs the shot first, when it should happen and how it will help

Transplanting a human protein, known for promoting growth, into crops may engender larger, heavier and more bountiful plants.

Innovation for Good

Researchers Transfer a Human Protein Into Plants to Supersize Them

While a promising route to boosting crop yields, experts say more work needs to be done to understand why the tweak works

Individuals wear masks while shopping at a grocery store in Los Angeles. Masks help prevent breakthrough infections.

Covid-19

Six Important Things to Know About Breakthrough Infections

As the Delta variant likely drives more cases of Covid-19 in vaccinated individuals, experts weigh in with helpful information

A man in Seattle wears a mask as wildfire smoke descends on the city in September of 2020.

Covid-19

Four Ways to Protect Yourself From Harmful Air Pollution Caused by Wildfires

Awareness about exposure, high-quality masks and air filters can help protect you from dangerous pollutants in smoke

Were it not for tuberculosis, artist and furniture maker Daniel Mack writes, “It’s unlikely that there would have been an Adirondack chair.”

How the Adirondack Chair Became the Feel-Good Recliner That Cures What Ails You

The furniture piece has gone through countless permutations, but it all started at a time when resting outdoors was thought to be a matter of life or death

Will an American athlete from the Tokyo Games grab gold and become the next to be featured on the cover of Wheaties?

The Tokyo Olympics

How Wheaties Became the 'Breakfast of Champions'

Images of Olympians and other athletes on boxes helped the cereal maintain a competitive edge

Researchers say that wild plants that gave rise to today’s three lineages of cannabis grew in present-day China.

New Study Suggests Cannabis' Wild Ancestors Likely Came from China

The analysis identifies East Asia as a potential source of genetic diversity for the growing market for medical and recreational marijuana

Nine out of 10 malaria victims live in Africa, most of them children under the age of five.

Innovation for Good

West African Scientists Are Leading the Science Behind a Malaria Vaccine

Researchers in Mali have been working for decades on the treatment that's now in the final phase of clinical trials

DARPA's initial, modest goal is to alleviate jet lag.

Innovation for Good

This Implant Could One Day Control Your Sleep and Wake Cycles

The so-called 'living pharmacy' will be able to manufacture pharmaceuticals from inside the body

Many of the tombs in Japan are elaborately decorated. Nearby visitors can buy flowers, buckets. brooms and other gardening tools to tidy up the graves.

'Tree Burials' Are Gaining Popularity in Japan as Gravesite Space Decreases

In some cities, cemetery plots are the most expensive real estate per square foot

In work and in personal life, virtual communication kept us in touch during Covid — but oh, those endless Zoom meets! There’s psychological and sensory science behind why they wear us down, and much promise to be realized once we iron out the wrinkles.

How the Pandemic Has Revealed the Promise and Perils of Life Lived Online

For good and for bad, Covid has propelled us even faster into immersive communication technologies

A Covid-19 restrictions sign hangs outside a supermarket in Austin, Texas. Lauren Ancel Meyers at the University of Texas at Austin has shared her team’s modeling results with city officials who make decisions about Covid-19 measures.

Covid-19

What Data Scientists Learned by Modeling the Spread of Covid-19

Models of the disease have become more complex, but are still only as good as the assumptions at their core and the data that feed them

Minute Molecular, the company developing the device, has high hopes for it as an efficient and accurate means of testing people at schools, workplaces and sports stadiums.

Innovation for Good

This Compact PCR Test for Covid-19 Could Give Accurate Results in 15 Minutes

The speed and ease of the DASH testing platform would be a boon for screening efforts

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