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On Faith and Futility: A Pediatric Oncologist Meditates on the Death of a Child

My patients are children, and my patients often die. As a pediatric neuro-oncologist, my practice frequently brings me to the beds of dying children and the funerals and memorial services that follow. I have the privilege of supporting families from diagnoses to cure or demise. Early in my career, I was required to come to […]

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Apollo 13 at 50 Years: Looking Back at the Mission’s Lost Lunar Science

Had everything gone to plan, NASA’s third mission to land astronauts on the moon would have deployed a pallet of science instruments and brought back samples from humanity’s first visit to the lunar uplands. Instead, 50 years ago this month, Apollo 13 “had a problem.” An oxygen tank that had been unknowingly damaged before it […]

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The True Costs of the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has swept the world in a global pandemic of extraordinary proportions. The debate about its eventual health costs continues to rage, but one Centers for Disease Control estimate suggested anywhere between 200,000 and 1.7 million deaths could be expected in the United States alone, depending on the eventual fatality rate, and not adjusting for […]

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Paranoid Gossip about Polio Vaccine

Originally published in June 1954 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “After several weeks of confusion about the safety of the new poliomyelitis vaccine, mass tests got underway last month. Walter Winchell had told his radio audience that the vaccine ‘may be a killer’ because one batch had been found with live virus. The National Foundation for […]

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“Event” Cells in the Brain Help Organize Memory into Meaningful Segments

Our recollection of events is usually not like a replay of digital video from a security camera—a passive observation that faithfully reconstructs the spatial and sensory details of everything that happened. More often memory segments what we experience into a string of discrete, connected events. For instance, you might remember that you went for a […]