Scientific American May 2020 A new device could ultimately increase the number of usable livers for transplants and could perhaps preserve other types of organs More than 1,000 people in the U.S. died while waiting for a liver transplant in 2018, partly because standard preservation methods can keep a donor liver alive outside the body […]
In trying to make sense of this rapidly changing COVID-19 world, I reflected on the recent passing of one of the great physicists of our time, my former Princeton colleague and Nobel laureate, the late Phil Anderson. Anderson made seminal contributions to our understanding of fundamental interactions that make up matter, but to many scientists […]
On January 10, when Chinese researchers published the genome of a mysterious, fast-spreading, virus, it confirmed Dan Barouch’s greatest worry. The genome was similar to that of the coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet it also had striking differences. “I realized immediately that no one would be immune to it,” says Barouch, director of […]
Mount Vesuvius and the surrounding region, photographed from the International Space Station, January 30, 2017. Credit: Earth Observatory, NASA Here are a few brief reports about science and technology from around the planet, including one about what the eruption of Mount Vesuvius might have done to one ill-fated resident of Herculaneum. Rights & Permissions ABOUT […]
We know how the COVID-19 pandemic began: Bats near Wuhan, China, hold a mix of coronavirus strains, and sometime last fall one of the strains, opportunistic enough to cross species lines, left its host or hosts and ended up in a person. Then it was on the loose. What no one knows yet is how […]
The menagerie of immune cells and proteins that defend the human body have received mounting scrutiny in struggles to ward off COVID-19. A lot of the debate has centered around whether, after recovery, a person carrying antibodies can safely return to the workplace. But attention has also turned to runaway immune reactions provoked by the […]
After his roughest days in a New York City emergency room, physician Matthew Bai feels his whole body relax when he sees his wife and 17-month-old daughter. “My light at the end of the tunnel is going home to family,” Bai says. When Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital started to overflow with COVID-19 patients in late […]
With medical supplies in high demand, federal authorities say health workers can wear surgical masks for protection while treating COVID-19 patients—but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said lower-grade surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” to N95 masks unless workers are performing an […]
Summer arrived early for parts of the Southwest last weekend, as a heat wave sizzled across Southern California and into neighboring states. Temperatures in downtown Los Angeles climbed into the 90s. And Phoenix broke 102 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, a record for daily heat on April 26. Both cities made the decision to open up […]
COVID-19 has rendered conventional passports pointless for the foreseeable future. But many countries are exploring the idea of a new type of “immunity passport” to permit people with antibodies against the COVID-19 virus to escape lockdowns. The alluring premise is that these individuals are immune and thus could be permitted to work and travel, a […]