Tag Archives: Research

Kelly Brunt wasn’t the only federal employee to be laid off this month while traveling for work. But she was almost certainly the only one whose work trip was in Antarctica. Dr. Brunt was a program director at the National Science Foundation, the $9 billion agency that supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine. As part of …

The Trump administration stormed into office, loudly firing workers and closing diversity programs. But behind the scenes, it has also brought biomedical research to the brink of crisis by holding up much of the $47 billion the United States spends on the field every year. The world’s leading medical labs can be found in the United States, and they rely …

The Trump administration has blocked key parts of the federal government’s apparatus for funding biomedical research, effectively halting progress on much of the country’s future work on illnesses like cancer and addiction despite a federal judge’s order to release grant money. The blockage, outlined in internal government memos, stems from an order forbidding health officials from giving public notice of …

A federal judge on Friday agreed to extend an order blocking the National Institutes of Health from reducing grant funding to institutions conducting medical and scientific research until she could come to a more lasting decision. Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts had temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s cuts from taking effect earlier …

The banks of the Thames River have hosted human settlements for thousands of years, from Neolithic huts to the soaring skyscrapers of London. Evidence of bygone civilizations has been steadily deposited on the river’s muddy bottom for modern archaeologists to mine. Now, researchers in London have dated dozens of bones dredged from the river, creating a comprehensive database that has …

The elusive oarfish, a creature nicknamed the “doomsday fish” because of its place in folklore as a precursor to disaster, was captured on video this month after it was seen in shallow water in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast. A group of people who were visiting the area spotted the fish swimming near a beach on Feb. 9. …

Anyone who has sat through a third-grade science class knows there are three primary states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Microsoft now says it has created a new state of matter in its quest to make a powerful machine, called a quantum computer, that could accelerate the development of everything from batteries to medicines to artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, …

The Covid-19 vaccines were powerfully protective, preventing millions of deaths. But in a small number of people, the shots may have led to a constellation of side effects that includes fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, tinnitus and dizziness, together referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome,” according to a small new study. Some people with this syndrome appear to show distinct biological …

The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick — the influenza viruses that send us to bed and the smallpox viruses that may send us to the grave. But healthy people are rife with viruses that don’t make us ill. Scientists estimate that tens of trillions of viruses live inside of us, though they’ve identified just …

The Trump administration on Tuesday cut more than 10 percent of the work force at the National Science Foundation, an independent agency that supports cutting-edge scientific research, adding to the widespread purge of federal workers with probationary status that began last week. Michael England, a spokesman for the foundation, said in a statement that the agency fired 168 probationary employees, …