Tag Archives: Research

Asanda Zondi received a startling phone call last Thursday, with orders to make her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection. The trial was shutting down, a nurse told her. The device, a silicone ring inserted into her …

Hospital and emergency room patients diagnosed with cannabis use disorder — defined as an inability to stop using cannabis even when the drug is causing harm — died at almost three times the rate of individuals without the disorder over the next five years, according to a study published on Thursday, the largest on the subject. Patients with cannabis use …

A colleague approached Ernesto Di Maio, a materials scientist in Naples, Italy, and an expert in plastic foams, with a blunt suggestion: “You should do something cooler.” The colleague had a project in mind, Dr. Di Maio recalled. He wanted a perfectly boiled egg. The task was harder than it might seem, as many home cooks know. The yolk and …

With serpentine necks, flippers and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, plesiosaurs have captured imaginations since paleontologists uncovered the first specimen more than two centuries ago. Their skeletal anatomy is well documented, but their external appearance has largely remained a mystery. Now researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of plesiosaur soft tissue, offering a more complete look at what …

It’s taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth’s first fowl. It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai, presented a puzzle: What …

In 1786, a British judge named William Jones noticed striking similarities between certain words in languages, such as Sanskrit and Latin, whose speakers were separated by thousands of miles. The languages must have “sprung from some common source,” he wrote. Later generations of linguists determined that Sanskrit and Latin belong to a huge family of so-called Indo-European languages. So do …

Every July, at the opening ceremony of the San Fermín festival signaling the imminent start of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, more than 5,000 people cram into the city’s central plaza. The crowd starts the morning dressed in white. By noon, much of their clothing has been dyed pink by the free-flowing sangria. Participants in the event …

The idea was so tantalizing. Drugs in the GLP-1 class, which includes Wegovy and Ozempic, have proved miraculous in treating weight loss and other diseases. And some researchers hoped that the drugs could also help with some of the most difficult diseases to treat — those of the brain, like Parkinson’s. But now, at least for Parkinson’s, that hope seems …

Two canyons near the south pole of the moon rival the Grand Canyon, both in depth and length. Unlike the sinuous chasm in Arizona, the two lunar canyons, known as Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck, are straight, as if the crust of the moon had been cut by a knife. And unlike the Grand Canyon, carved over millions years by …

After more than three decades of planning and a $250 million investment, Lykos Therapeutics’ application for the first psychedelic drug to reach federal regulators was expected to be a shoo-in. Lykos, the corporate arm of a nonprofit dedicated to winning mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that its groundbreaking treatment for post-traumatic …