The egg drop challenge is an annual rite of passage for many students learning about physics: Swaddle an egg in cotton balls and masking tape or other materials, and then drop it off the roof of your school. Anyone who has participated in this exercise knows how difficult it is to engineer a structure that will save the egg from …
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These Beautiful Birds Form Something Like Lasting Friendships
True friends, most people would agree, are there for each other. Sometimes that means offering emotional support. Sometimes it means helping each other move. And if you’re a superb starling — a flamboyant, chattering songbird native to the African savanna — it means stuffing bugs down the throats of your friends’ offspring, secure in the expectation that they’ll eventually do …
Read More »Trump Has Called for More Babies but Dismissed Fertility Experts
Every year, tens of thousands of young women opt to freeze their eggs, an expensive and sometimes painful procedure. As more Americans postpone childbearing, the numbers are growing. But there are many unknowns: What is the optimal donor age for freezing? What are the success rates? And critically: How long do frozen eggs last? The answers to those questions may …
Read More »Genetic Study Retraces Covid’s Origins in Bats
In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals …
Read More »N.I.H. Bans New Funding From U.S. Scientists to Partners Abroad
The National Institutes of Health will no longer allow American scientists to direct its funding to research partners overseas, casting doubt on the future of studies on subjects including malaria and childhood cancer. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the N.I.H., announced the policy on Thursday, the same day Dr. Matthew J. Memoli, the principal deputy director, blasted these …
Read More »Trump Budget Cuts Funding for Chronic Disease Prevention
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, has said that tackling a chronic disease “epidemic” would be a cornerstone of his Make America Healthy Again agenda, often invoking alarming statistics as an urgent reason for reforming public health in this country. On Friday, President Trump released a proposed budget that called for cutting the funding of the Centers for …
Read More »RFK Jr. Orders Search for New Measles Treatments Instead of Urging Vaccination
With the United States facing its largest single measles outbreak in 25 years, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will direct federal health agencies to explore potential new treatments for the disease, including vitamins, according to an H.H.S. spokesman. The decision is the latest in a series of actions by the nation’s top health official that experts …
Read More »Volcanic Eruption in Deep Ocean Ridge Is Witnessed by Scientists for First Time
Andrew Wozniak, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Delaware, struggled to process what his eyes were taking in. Dr. Wozniak was parked on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean beneath nearly 1.6 miles of water in Alvin, a research submersible. As far as he could see lay a mostly barren expanse of jet-black rock. Just a day before, at …
Read More »Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him Hundreds of Times
The video is just under two and a half minutes long. A slim man with close-cropped hair walks into a room, pulls a long black mamba — whose venom can kill within an hour — from a crate and allows it to bite his left arm. Immediately after, he lets a taipan from Papua New Guinea bite his right arm. …
Read More »Upheaval in Washington Hinders Campaign Against Bird Flu
The campaign to curb bird flu on the nation’s farms has been slowed by the chaotic transition to a new administration that is determined to cut costs, reduce the federal work force and limit communications, according to interviews with more than a dozen scientists and federal officials. On poultry farms, more than 168 million birds have been killed in an …
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