A male doctor sitting down and looking pensive

How Doctors Make End-of-Life Choices

Many people facing the end of their life receive treatments that ultimately have no benefit. A team of researchers set out to find out why.
A series of torn up academic papers against a blue background

Preprints, Science, and the News Cycle

Preprints are academic papers that haven't been peer-reviewed yet. When preprints make news, that's often overlooked.
An illustration of the coronavirus in front of a strand of DNA

Can We Protect Against Coronavirus by Rewriting Our Genomes?

Genome recoding could offer new modes of virus resistance, but the technology raises serious ethical concerns.
A Canada Goose

Has the U.S. Government Abandoned Birds?

Recent changes to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 leave birds vulnerable to industry, experts say.
UK research organisation Mass-Observation conducts a survey at the Nuffield Centre, a Service Club in Soho, to find out the preferred 'pin-up girl' of a number of servicemen, September 1944.

Yes, Mass Observation Still Wants to Know about Your Life

The organization has collected interviews and diaries recording ordinary life in Britain over the course of decades. A pandemic won't stop it now.
Source: . Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC

Plant of the Month: Stanhopea Orchids

How did some orchids transform from rare, all-but-inaccessible flowers into popular houseplants you can purchase at a supermarket?
A large tree with moss-covered roots.

Ten Stories about Trees for Arbor Day

They talk to each other via underground networks, grow shy, migrate across the Earth's surface, and reverse some of the damage caused by climate change.
La Malaria by Auguste Hebert

Cracking the Malaria Mystery—from Marshes to Mosquirix

It took science centuries to understand malaria. Now we’re waiting to see how the 2019 vaccine pilot works.
Photograph showing Waldemar Mordecai Wolffe Haffkine (1860-1930), Bacteriologist with the Government of India, inoculating a community against cholera in Calcutta, March 1894.

Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic

We should learn from, instead of repeating, the racist assignations of the past.
A Waffle House in Augusta, Georgia on March 30, 2020

Waffle Houses Mean Way More Than Waffles in Disasters

The restaurant chain and FEMA work together in calamities like tornadoes and hurricanes, for good reason.