Cari Sietstra first learned about menstrual regulation when they were working on the Myanmar-Thailand border. At the time, abortion was broadly criminalized in both countries. But if a person’s period was late, it was relatively easy to get access to pills that would induce menstruation in just a few days. …
Read More »The Foods the World Will Lose to Climate Change
There’s no denying it: Farming had a rough year. Extreme weather spun up storms and floods, unseasonal freezes and baking heat waves, and prolonged parching droughts. In parts of the world in 2023, tomato plants didn’t flower, the peach crop never came in, and the price of olive oil soared. …
Read More »A Demographic Time Bomb Is About to Hit the Beef Industry
The early 1970s were the real heyday of beef in the US. It was the era of stroganoff, stews, and casseroles, steak lunches and 60-cent hamburgers. It was also the beginning of a long decline for the all-American meat. In 1975, Americans on average ate close to 90 pounds of …
Read More »The Age of Crispr Medicine Is Here
Jimi Olaghere used to end up in the emergency room so often that the hospital reserved a bed for him. Sickle cell disease dominated his life. A genetic defect he was born with meant that instead of having flexible, round red blood cells like most people do, his were sticky …
Read More »You Know It’s a Placebo. So Why Does It Still Work?
You booked this doctor’s appointment weeks in advance. You took off work, endured the trip here, filled out paperwork while a cooking show blared from a TV on the wall, and now you’re finally in the inner sanctum, awkwardly perched on an exam table and staring at a jar of …
Read More »Apple to Halt Sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2
If you wanted to buy your loved ones the latest Apple Watch for the holidays, you should try to do it before December 21. Apple has announced that it will pause sales of its two newest Apple Watch models, the Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2, pending an expected ban …
Read More »The Toxic Truth About Your Christmas Tree
This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Perhaps no single Christmas custom is more ubiquitous than putting up the Christmas tree. It originated in eastern Europe more than 500 years ago, when people decorated evergreen trees with roses or apples as …
Read More »Energy Drinks Are Out of Control
Whenever he visited his local branch of Panera Bread in Fleming Island, Florida, it was Dennis Brown’s habit to order three drinks in a row. On September 28, and again on October 2, and the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th—the day Brown died—his drink of choice was Panera Bread’s Charged …
Read More »The US Supreme Court Will Decide the Fate of Medication Abortion
The US Supreme Court decided Wednesday to hear a case challenging access to abortion pills in the United States, including in states where abortion is legal. This will be the most consequential case for access to reproductive health care since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Following the …
Read More »Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Luca Giomi still remembers the time when, as a young graduate student, he watched two videos of droplets streaming from an inkjet printer. The videos were practically identical—except one wasn’t a video at all. It was a simulation. “I was …
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