As the world grapples with containing the spread and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must also act to address the origins of zoonotic diseases, including the illegal, unregulated and underregulated trade and consumption of wildlife that may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic and is widely considered to be the cause of HIV, Ebola, […]
Out of necessity, local school systems worldwide have reacted quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic by transitioning education for young people to a virtual setting. A screen with a grid of faces is replacing classrooms, exacerbating inequalities in attendance and engagement in math and science for students in minority-predominant and low-income communities. While countries like China, […]
SURGICAL DISCRETION As an M.D., I’d like to applaud Claudia Wallis’s review of the ISCHEMIA and CABANA trials of treatments for particular heart conditions in “The Case for Less Heart Surgery” [The Science of Health]. As she says, those trials conclude that stenting or bypass surgery for stable coronary artery disease—in which coronary arteries are […]
One morning a few weeks ago I was chatting with my friend Horacio, a mathematician in the New York City area. He told me he’d lost his sense of smell for a couple of weeks in April. He was cooking for Passover and couldn’t even smell the gefilte fish. He didn’t think much of it […]
1970 Gene Switches “How are genes controlled? All cells must be able to turn their genes on and off. For example, a bacterial cell may need different enzymes in order to digest a new food offered by a new environment. As a simple virus goes through its life cycle, its genes function sequentially, directing a […]
A first-of-its-kind study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows that modern building codes are averting $1 billion a year in structural damage in California and Florida, the nation’s most disaster-prone states, according to preliminary findings. The study could be groundbreaking in the agency’s effort to convince states and localities to adopt up-to-date building codes […]
The items below are highlights from the newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign-up here. On 6/10/20, The New York Times published a “coronavirus vaccine tracker,” by Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer. With prose and graphics, it describes the status of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates currently being […]
COVID-19 is cutting a jarring and unequal path across the U.S. The disease is disproportionately killing people of color, particularly Black Americans, who have been dying at more than twice the rate of white people. In some places—Washington, D.C., Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri—the death rate is four to six times higher among Black people. […]
Amidst protests and conversations on racism following several instances of police violence, scientific institutions are reevaluating their approach to dealing with anti-Black racism—extant, historical or symbolic. For example, on Wednesday, June 10, a large segment of the scientific community (and the staffs of prominent journals) participated in a strike, where the goal was to reflect […]
EPA published a proposal in the Federal Register yesterday that critics described as an assault on minority communities coping with the public health legacy of structural racism. The agency’s plan would mandate changes to the way future rules under the Clean Air Act would weigh the costs and benefits of climate and air pollution regulations. It’s the […]