The damage that air pollution can do is wide-ranging and well-known: The chemicals produced by human activities can trap heat in the atmosphere, change the chemistry of the oceans and harm human health in myriad ways. Now, a new study suggests that air pollution might also make flowers less attractive to pollinating insects. Compounds called…
A Drive to Cincinnati The response was immediate. This was unlikely to be a reaction to the P.P.I., her friend wrote. A nutritional deficiency was certainly possible. But the friend would be worried about a tumor too. When was her brother planning to go home? If he was going to stay in Chicago, one of…
The chief executives of three major pharmaceutical companies are set to appear in front of the Senate health committee on Thursday to defend how much they charge for drugs in the United States, drawing them further into a confrontation with lawmakers and the Biden administration over the cost of some of the most widely used…
The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the last five years, and the average duration is almost twice the 15-day threshold that the United Nations has said may constitute torture, according to a new analysis of federal records by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit group…
Like many captive elephants, Nidia suffered from chronic foot problems. Fissures had formed in the 55-year-old Asian elephant’s foot pads, and her toenails had cracked and become ingrown. Painful abscesses lingered for months. Nidia had lost her appetite and she was losing weight. Dr. Quetzalli Hernández, the veterinarian in charge of Nidia’s care at a…
If you’ve presented the same arm for every dose of a particular vaccine, you may want to reconsider. Alternating arms may produce a more powerful immune response, a new study suggests. The researchers studied responses to the first two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Those who alternated arms showed a small increase in immunity over those…
Seizures of psychedelic mushrooms across the nation by law enforcement officials have increased significantly in recent years as attitudes regarding their use have grown more permissive, according to a government-funded study released Tuesday. Researchers found that law enforcement officials confiscated 844 kilos of mushrooms containing psilocybin in 2022, an increase of 273 percent from 2017….
A patient checks into the hospital for a routine procedure to treat an enlarged prostate. And, unexpectedly, a test done in the hospital — perhaps a blood test or an X-ray or an examination of the urethra and the bladder — finds a cancer. Apparently, something like that happened to King Charles III. When the…
The new studies on sleep involved federal data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the American Time Use Survey between 2013 and 2019. Researchers used those time-stamped surveys from about 190,000 from Black people and about 1,846,000 white people who had been called at random by phone and asked about, among other topics,…
Sometimes a pine cone is just a pine cone. But on a January day, the rough edges of the cone — and the lone feather sticking out of it — meant something different to Rachel Oppenheimer, 25, a counselor at the Chesapeake Mental Health Collaborative in Towson, Md. “Growing up, I had some challenges,” Ms….
