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Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread

Globe-trotting humans were the culprits  Credit: Martin Krzywinski Advertisement The world struggled to understand how COVID-19 spread during the pandemic’s first four months, but genetic sequences of the coronavirus reported by laboratories tell the real story—when the virus arrived in each place and where it came from. The sequences, which advance from left to right […]

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Experts Doubt the Sun Is Actually Burning Coal

Originally published in August 1863 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “If the sun were composed of coal, it would last at the present rate only 5,000 years. The sun, in all probability, is not a burning, but an incandescent, body. Its light is rather that of a glowing molten metal than that of a burning furnace. […]

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Nurses Are Playing a Crucial Role in this Pandemic—as Always

The World Health Organization declared 2020 to be the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife” in celebration of the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). Across the globe many organizations, professional associations, health care systems and other entities were poised to affirm this theme and celebrate the many roles and contributions of nurses in advancing […]

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Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread

Globe-trotting humans were the culprits  Credit: Martin Krzywinski Advertisement The world struggled to understand how COVID-19 spread during the pandemic’s first four months, but genetic sequences of the coronavirus reported by laboratories tell the real story—when the virus arrived in each place and where it came from. The sequences, which advance from left to right […]

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The Morally Complex Mix of Euthanasia and Organ Donation

The first time Fred Gillis noticed something was wrong he was on the ice, holding his hockey stick but somehow unable to shoot the puck. Was middle age catching up with him, or was it something more serious? Over the following months Gillis’s arms continued to weaken. Soon it took two hands to brush his […]

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Giant Volcano Rewrites the Story of Seafloor Formation  

Big, dark ocean waves were rolling our research ship from side to side. The Falkor is 83 meters long and weighs more than 2,000 metric tons, but a storm from Siberia that had just missed us was still churning the seas. Sitting in the science lab on the main deck, I was trying to keep […]