Tag Archives: health

Tolullah Oni has a challenge for you. Next time you’re in a city—especially one you don’t know well—go for a long run, bike ride, or walk. See if you can tell when you enter an affluent neighborhood. You should, she says, be able to guess. “Suddenly it’s a couple of …

Thanks to some genetic tricks, plants can now speak in color. A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside hacked the natural stress response system in Arabidopsis thaliana, a small white-flowered plant from the mustard family that serves as a common model organism in plant biology labs. When …

Clinical depression is considered one of the most treatable mood disorders, but neither the condition nor the drugs used against it are fully understood. First-line SSRI treatments (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) likely free up more of the neurotransmitter serotonin to improve communication between neurons. But the question of how SSRIs …

In mid-September, the New York Times Opinion section ran a piece with a shocking headline. “In Poland, Testing Women for Abortion Drugs Is a Reality. It Could Happen Here,” the paper breathlessly declared. As I read the piece, I felt a shudder of panic go down my spine. For years, …

In the last hard days of World War I, just two weeks before world powers agreed to an armistice, a doctor wrote a letter to a friend. The doctor was stationed at the US Army’s Camp Devens west of Boston, a base packed with 45,000 soldiers preparing to ship out …

Two companies have launched clinical trials to see if they can restore hearing to children with a rare type of genetic deafness. Akouos and Decibel Therapeutics, both based in Boston, are testing experimental therapies in children with severe hearing loss due to variations in a gene called OTOF. A third …

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to call the HPV vaccine a medical miracle. “It’s like the gift that keeps giving,” says Mark Jit, a professor of vaccine epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Not only is it the sole vaccine that can prevent cancer, “we discover …

Even before this week’s deadly hospital blast, Gaza’s health system was already on the brink of collapse. At least 3,700 Palestinians in Gaza have been declared dead since the beginning of the Israeli-Hamas war, and an estimated 12,000 have been injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Gaza’s health system …

A cute little beagle with big smiley eyes … how could you not fall in love with Watson? But the residents of my Parisian building were terrified when they saw him enter. Watson is not like any other dog. He’s trained to detect the tiny insects that have been all …

Chrissy Kinsella was looking for a more personalized approach to her health. “You know, what is good for you as an individual may not necessarily be good for the next person,” she says. So she reached for a subscription to Zoe—a personalized nutrition service cofounded by Tim Spector, a celebrity …