Tag Archives: your-feed-science

President Trump’s order that the United States exit the World Health Organization could undo programs meant to ensure the safety, security and study of a deadly virus that once took half a billion lives, experts warn. His retreat, they add, could end decades in which the agency directed the management of smallpox virus remnants in an American-held cache. Health experts …

With TV cameras pointed at her, Felisa Wolfe-Simon began speaking at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2, 2010. “I’ve discovered — I’ve led a team that has discovered — something that I’ve been thinking about for many years,” Dr. Wolfe-Simon said. She was at that time a visiting researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, speaking to a sizable …

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda. But the Academies’ priorities changed abruptly on Jan. 31. Shortly after receiving a “stop …

In some cases, these health problems arose as byproducts of inbreeding. Because breeds are genetically closed populations, a disease-causing mutation that just happens to pop up in one dog can quickly become common in future generations. “Especially if the animal with that mutation is otherwise a prize specimen,” Dr. Serpell said. “Because everyone will want to breed from that individual.” …

Cursing is coursing through society. Words once too blue to publicly utter have become increasingly commonplace. “Language is just part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle,” said Timothy Jay, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Mass. Dr. Jay has spent a career studying the use of profanity, from …

Funds from the world’s richest nation once flowed from the largest global aid agency to an intricate network of small, medium and large organizations that delivered aid: H.I.V. medications for more than 20 million people; nutrition supplements for starving children; support for refugees, orphaned children and women battered by violence. Now, that network is unraveling. The Trump administration froze foreign …

An abandoned gunpowder storage shed pokes out from a small mound of earth in what’s now a nature preserve in Northern Ireland. It is the perfect place for a spider: semi-subterranean, cool and dark. But in 2021, a crew working on a BBC nature program found more than an average arachnid lurking there. They spotted a dead spider with a …

Surgeons in Boston successfully transplanted the kidney of a genetically modified pig into a 66-year-old man with kidney failure last month, Massachusetts General Hospital announced on Friday. It was the fourth pig kidney transplant in the United States, and the first of three that will be done at Mass General as part of a new clinical trial sanctioned by the …

Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird …

The English language is full of wonderful words, from “anemone” and “aurora” to “zenith” and “zodiac.” But these are special occasion words, sprinkled sparingly into writing and conversation. The words in heaviest rotation are short and mundane. And they follow a remarkable statistical rule, which is universal across human languages: The most common word, which in English is “the,” is …