I sat at an oral surgeon’s office waiting for my daughter. The scene called to mind an assembly line. Patients went in, one after another, resigned to having their third molars, commonly known as wisdom teeth, taken out. They left with bandages, specially form-fitted with ice packs, wrapped around their heads. Each carried a gift […]
Kit R. Roane Kit R. Roane is a producer at Retro Report. He has worked as a journalist and documentary photographer for more than 20 years, covering local, national and foreign assignments for a variety of publications, including The New York Times and U.S. News & World Report. Kit has reported on events, from the […]
Much activist and political rhetoric, even from United Nations conferences, frames solving climate change as a political challenge—as if all the specific technologies needed to fix the problem were already ready to plug in at reasonable costs, with the challenge simply being to convince every person and every country to “do their part.” We can […]
“You know, the other day we had a bright sunny day as we do today in New York, after many days of gloomy darkness and cold. And I went outside to get some milk. And saw the streets were full of people. And they were all young people who’d somehow gotten the message that this […]
While the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic has been on respiratory problems and securing enough ventilators, doctors on the front lines are grappling with a new medical mystery. In addition to lung damage, many COVID-19 patients are also developing heart problems—and dying of cardiac arrest. As more data comes in from China and Italy, as […]
Originally published in June 1868 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “The use of raw meat in the treatment of debility and consumption [primarily tuberculosis] is in the ascendant in France: but that it may be served in a style the least objectionable to the patient’s delicate sensibilities, it is prepared under the name of musculine tablets, […]
In the weeks to come, we’re about to relearn that old truth: necessity is the mother of invention. Researchers will work around-the-clock because of the world’s need for a cure for COVID-19. But it’s worth keeping a corollary thought in all of our minds: necessity may be the mother of invention, but curiosity and imagination […]
Earlier this year, the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department was arrested and charged with lying to federal law-enforcement officials about secretly working for the Chinese government. While the story of nanotechnology pioneer Charles Lieber is shocking and dramatic, it is indicative of a broader challenge facing America’s leading scientific research institutions. We must secure the […]
An oral medicine was able to hinder the coronavirus behind COVID-19 as it attempted to replicate itself in human lung cells in test tubes, scientists reported Monday. It also hampered closely related coronaviruses from reproducing in mice for several days and improved their lung functions.* The drug, called EIDD-2801, interferes with a key mechanism that […]
In recent weeks, my patients in an urgent care in central Brooklyn came in progressively sicker by the day. They were mostly Black and Brown. Many complained of fever, cough and worsening shortness of breath. I even sent a few of the sickest patients to the ER. COVID-19 had arrived in New York City in […]