About a month ago, Judith Hansen popped awake in the predawn hours, thinking about her father’s brain. Her father, Morrie Markoff, was an unusual man. At 110, he was thought to be the oldest in the United States. His brain was unusual, too, even after he recovered from a stroke at 99. Although he left…
It takes a lot of energy to grow a baby — just ask anyone who has been pregnant. But scientists are only now discovering just how much. In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, Australian researchers estimated that a human pregnancy demands almost 50,000 dietary calories over the course of nine months….
In the month since federal authorities announced an outbreak of bird flu on dairy farms, they have repeatedly reassured the public that the spate of infections does not impact the nation’s food or milk supply, and poses little risk to the public. Yet the outbreak among cows may be more serious than originally believed. In…
When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, nearly everything about the novel coronavirus was an open question: How was it spreading so quickly? How sick would it make people? Would a single bout buy you protection from future cases? In the four years since, scientists have unraveled some of…
Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death. Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry…
A lengthy report by the Department of Justice on President Biden’s handling of classified documents contained some astonishing assessments of his well-being and mental health. Mr. Biden, 81, was an “elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” who “did not remember when he was vice president,” the special counsel Robert K. Hur said….
In an unmarked laboratory stationed between the campuses of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a splinter group of scientists is hunting for the next billion-dollar drug. The group, bankrolled with $500 million from some of the wealthiest families in American business, has created a stir in the world of academia by dangling seven-figure…
Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded. The recommendations are contained in a 250-page scientific review provided to Matthew Zorn, a Texas lawyer who sued…
