News

When the Washington State Department of Health said this week that the recent heat wave in the Northwest had killed 117 people, many people missed an important word in the announcement. Preliminary. The death tallies being released by state and county officials are early estimates based on records that the officials acknowledge typically undercount heat-related […]

It has lasted longer than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. It’s dropped water levels perilously low at two of the nation’s largest reservoirs, forced ranchers to sell off herds and helped propel scorching wildfires. And worst of all, the drought blanketing the western United States is not going away. A group of experts featuring […]

In the spring of 2020, as COVID was ravaging communities across the globe, word spread to the village of Culden, Peru, that the virus that causes COVID originated in bats. Mistakenly believing that the animals spread the virus to humans, inhabitants of the village burned a nearby colony of mouse-eared bats, intent on extermination. During […]

A California power plant likely will shut down for the first time ever because of low water during a prolonged drought, squeezing the state’s very tight electricity supplies, state officials said yesterday. The Edward Hyatt power plant, an underground facility next to Oroville Dam in Butte County, is expected to close in August or September, […]

From political manipulation of COVID-19 research to censorship of weather forecasters who tried to contradict President Trump’s false claims about Hurricane Dorian, the Trump years were punctuated by jaw-dropping episodes of scientific misconduct. But those are just the cases that couldn’t be covered up. There were countless more that were never made public. That’s why […]

Calling all doctors, local politicians, clergy, social media influencers, and others with clout in your communities: Please become public advocates for vaccines. Right now. Calling all local journalists, too: Please amplify your neighbors’ advocacy, and add some of your own. This is a time when you should transcend the norms of your craft. You cannot […]

A little before sunrise on July 4, A.D. 1054, imperial astronomers of the Song Dynasty in China spotted an unknown star lighting up the eastern sky. “It’s as bright as Venus, with pointed rays in all four directions and a reddish-white color,” they wrote in notes delivered to the emperor. The glow, which remained visible […]

Most people in the poorest countries will need to wait another two years before they are vaccinated against COVID-19, researchers have told Nature. Around 11 billion doses are needed to fully vaccinate 70% of the world’s population against COVID-19. As of 4 July, 3.2 billion doses had been administered. At the current vaccination rate, this will […]

1971 Virus Control “To date the only clinically practical way to control virus diseases is to administer a vaccine that stimulates the body to form antibodies against that virus. Another possibility is to rely on what is apparently the cell’s own first line of defense: interferon. Our group at the Merck Institute concentrated on the […]

In late May, a Dutch court brought new hope to addressing climate change by ruling that Royal Dutch Shell must cut carbon emissions from both its operations and the oil and gas products the company sells. Never before has a fossil fuel company been ordered to reduce its heat-trapping emissions to address climate change. From […]