Science & Environment

Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who for nearly half a century represented women whose health had been irreparably and often catastrophically harmed by poorly tested drugs and medical devices, died on April 9 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96. Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleeger announced the death, which was not widely reported. Ms. Shainwald was 48 years old and …

The Trump administration has scrapped more than $800 million worth of research into the health of L.G.B.T.Q. people, abandoning studies of cancers and viruses that tend to affect members of sexual minority groups and setting back efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times. In keeping with …

The Trump administration has systematically stripped funding from research into the health of L.G.B.T.Q. people. Benjamin Mueller, a reporter covering health and medicine for The New York Times, describes how hundreds of such projects were abruptly halted, stranding participants in experiments, and leading to lawsuits that argue that the administration had not offered a legal justification for the cuts. Source …

For people on the West Coast, atmospheric rivers, a weather phenomenon that can bring heavy rain or snow from San Diego to Vancouver, are as common a feature of winter as Nor’easters are in Boston. Like those East Coast storms, “atmospheric river” can feel like a buzzword — more attention grabbing than just “heavy rain,” even if that is how …

When Don Pike takes his daily walk, he laces up his brown hiking boots, grabs his walking stick and bucket hat and heads outside. Ten feet later, he carefully slips past barbed wire and enters the Tonto National Forest. Unlike other parts of the Tonto, where the ground between native plants and trees is covered with dry grasses, the earth …

Getty Images A black mamba is arguably the world’s deadliest snake The blood of a US man who deliberately injected himself with snake venom for nearly two decades has led to an “unparalleled” antivenom, say scientists. Antibodies found in Tim Friede’s blood have been shown to protect against fatal doses from a wide range of species in animal tests. Current …

Spend enough time in San Francisco, peering into the cyberpunk future, and you may find that weird things start seeming normal. Fleets of self-driving cars? Yawn. A start-up trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth? Sure, why not. Summoning a godlike artificial intelligence that could wipe out humanity? Ho-hum. You may even find yourself, as I did on Wednesday night, standing …

You might be able to explain your “insights into oral chemesthetic perception” to a group of chemistry professors – but can you dance it? Dr. Sulo Roukka from the University of Helsinki can and he’s won a prize to prove it. The Dance your PhD competition was founded in 2008 aims to make complex research engaging through movement and art. …

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would disperse scientists from its independent research office to other divisions where they among other things will be tasked with approving the use of new chemicals. Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the changes to the E.P.A. in a video, saying the agency was “shifting its scientific expertise” to focus on issues he …

Elon Musk and SpaceX are big winners in Donald J. Trump’s 2026 spending plan. President Trump is delivering on Mr. Musk’s wish list at both NASA and the Pentagon to reorient federal spending on space in a way likely to drive billions of dollars in new business to Mr. Musk’s space technology company, if Congress signs off on the budget …