While many people have managed to stockpile food, medicine and cleaning supplies in the face of the pandemic, we as physicians have found that too few are prepared for COVID-19 in one key way: what to do if you need to make medical decisions for a critically ill loved one. High-risk patients who survive intensive, […]
Jill Horowitz stood outside the Quaker Ridge Shopping Center in New Rochelle, N.Y.—an early COVID-19 hotspot—in March, stopping shoppers as they walked into the grocery store. She handed them blue pamphlets soliciting volunteers for a Rockefeller University antibody research study. “I would say, ‘Would you like to help us find a cure?’” says Horowitz, executive […]
Somewhere between Hawaii and the Philippines near the small island of Guam, far below the surface of the water, sits the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the ocean. What’s down there? How deep is the Mariana Trench? The Trench sits like a crescent-shaped dent in the floor of the Pacific Ocean, extending over 1500 […]
Originally published in January 1967 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “Petroleum products are being used in an ingenious effort to upgrade submarginal land. In Libya the Esso Research and Engineering Company undertook in 1961 to stabilize 125 acres of shifting sand dunes by spraying them with a low-grade oil. Such dunes usually cannot support even vegetation […]
I am an astrophysicist. I read the memories of the universe, encoded in photons—tiny bits of light that have traveled to Earth over vast distances of space and time. Those photons carry, within their electromagnetic oscillations, a record of their voyages and what transpired in the past, from hours ago to billions of years ago, […]
Recovery is a complicated fitness area to navigate. It means different things to different athletes, and each one has their favorite recovery ritual. The problem gets compounded when you introduce something as complex as compression. It can be applied statically or intermittently, and it varies from gentle pressure to very intense medical support. There are […]
I’m assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier. And here’s a short piece from the May 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches From The Frontiers Of Science, Technology And Medicine. The article is titled Quick Hits, and it’s a rundown of some non-coronavirus stories from around the globe. From Chile: Baffled […]
The European Union unveiled a €750 billion ($825 billion) recovery package for the coronavirus pandemic yesterday that includes plans to address another global crisis: climate change. Notable is that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen views the proposal as a vehicle to steer the continent toward carbon neutrality by 2050. That’s a critical deadline […]
Chickens are by far the most numerous birds on the planet, with a population of around 23 billion. But new research suggests that another species was once a strong contender to become the world’s favorite poultry: ancient bird remains in China have turned out to be not from the first domesticated chickens, as researchers long […]
The coronavirus pandemic has provided the world with a quick study in the intricacies of immunology. “Herd immunity” and “serological tests” have become household terms. Front and center among these concepts are antibodies. These immune proteins typically emerge during the second or third week after an infection, glomming onto invaders and preventing them from sneaking […]