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There are two opposite paths to achievement in science. The first is straightforward: Identify a problem and set about solving it. The second is rather unscientific-sounding and perhaps more faith-based: [...]

As an incubator of life, Earth has a lot going for it, something we often fail to appreciate fully from within its nurturing bounds. Merely sending probes and rovers to [...]

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android . ''Time,'' when we give it any thought, tends to strike us [...]

After reaching historic lows more than a decade ago, rates are on the rise again. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest data on cases [...]

How might we leverage knowing that a particular neurological feature makes someone more vulnerable to autism or Alzheimer's or more likely to achieve academically? In March, neuroscientists and psychiatrists from [...]

The pandemic is not the only reason. Last June, researchers from Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine documented six unusual cases in the journal Movement Disorders. The subjects [...]

New research proves a virus -- one that almost all of us have -- ''causes'' multiple sclerosis. Denis Burkitt, an Irish surgeon, traveled to Africa during World War II as [...]

There's virtually no aspect of our lives that the pandemic hasn't changed. We're just starting to understand some of the data on public health. At some point, hopefully soon, infections [...]

The women who arrived at Rosalind Cartwright's sleep laboratory in Chicago in 1978, carrying toothbrushes and pajamas, were in pain. Rosalind Cartwright b. 1922 She wanted to understand the dreams [...]

A new class of flu vaccines could eventually save millions of lives -- and perhaps stop the next pandemic -- if scientists can overcome the remaining obstacles. On Nov. 19, [...]

The agency has taken a controversial stand on vaping as a way to quit tobacco. This is what the research shows. When they first appeared in the United States in [...]

A recent warning about the pain reliever acetaminophen is a reminder that health risks in pregnancy remain maddeningly, dangerously understudied. If you have spent the pandemic calculating the potential costs [...]

How could that change our understanding about, for starters, chronic disease, aging and obesity? It's simple, we are often told: All you have to do to maintain a healthy weight [...]

Both can pose distinct dangers to our mental and physical health. How many close friends and relatives do you have with whom you feel at ease and can discuss private [...]

This might turn out to be a crucial window to try to prevent Alzheimer's and other chronic diseases that often accompany older age. During menopause, which marks the end of [...]

It points the way to some possible means of fighting it. Childhood obesity has increased significantly in the United States during the past four decades. In 1980, about 5 percent [...]

The rise of teledentistry and other alternatives have the potential to fix some of the disparities in care. There are early indications that the pandemic is taking a serious, and [...]

The past year has changed alcohol use patterns, especially among women. The impacts probably won't be fully known for years. Even before the pandemic began, some Americans were drinking significantly [...]

The advice from research on coffee, and nutrition more generally, always seems to be changing. Processing vast amounts of data could help us pin it down. Should you drink coffee? [...]

New research suggests that stimulating neurons in the brain can address psychological issues with surprising speed and precision. The brain is an electrical organ. Everything that goes on in there [...]

Even before we entered this darkest of winters, when Covid-19 is relentlessly causing more and more sickness and death -- not to mention additional stress, isolation and economic pain -- [...]

At this point, we have all the scientific information we need in order to prevent the surgings of the coronavirus: Avoid gathering indoors with people from outside your household, keep [...]

The failure to control the coronavirus pandemic has in many ways been a failure of real-time health data. Worldwide, clinical testing has not identified enough cases, or returned results fast [...]

In the United States, the standard approach to distributing a routine vaccine is based on the assumption that there will be plenty of doses available. Ideally, everyone will then follow [...]

American Dynasty, a commercial trawler, departed Seattle one day in May to fish for hake off the Washington coast. Before leaving, its 122 crew members were screened for the coronavirus [...]

Last month, several college conferences, the Big Ten and the Pac 12 among them, postponed their sports seasons, including football, citing the risks posed to athletes by the coronavirus. A [...]

Accuracy is everything, typically, when we take a diagnostic test -- an incorrect result can lead to anguish and erroneous, if not harmful, treatment. Currently the most reliable way to [...]

Is it possible to reopen school buildings in the fall in a way that keeps kids, educators, staff and their families and communities safe from Covid-19? Is it possible not [...]

The last class Joel Sanders taught in person at the Yale School of Architecture, on Feb. 17, took place in the modern wing of the Yale University Art Gallery, a [...]

Finding a way to prevent or treat Covid-19 has become the overwhelming focus in medical-research facilities around the world. Keeping track of their work and progress is all but impossible, [...]

As scientists race to understand the coronavirus, the process of designing experiments, collecting data and submitting studies to journals for expert review is being compressed drastically. What typically takes many [...]

As states and cities across the country have closed schools, businesses and public spaces and as governors have ordered residents to stay home as much as possible, millions of Americans [...]

As public health officials struggle to contain the spread of the coronavirus, determining whether a person has a fever is now a high-stakes matter, and using temperature guns to screen [...]

Hearing loss has long been considered a normal, and thus acceptable, part of aging. It is common: Estimates suggest that it affects two out of three adults age 70 and [...]

Roughly a third of all adults in the United States have high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. It's a condition that can be largely [...]

The first iPhone was introduced in 2007; just over a decade later, in 2018, a Pew survey found that 95 percent of teenagers had access to a smartphone, and 45 [...]

We humans spend a third of our lives asleep, oblivious to our surroundings and temporarily paralyzed. It's a vulnerability that would seem to diminish our odds of survival, so evolutionarily [...]

In the United States and other Western countries, diet and nutrition researchers face an urgent imperative: Figure out how to solve the crisis of obesity. About 40 percent of the [...]

Men have a far greater appetite for sex and are more attracted to pornography than women are. This is the timeworn stereotype that science has long reinforced. Alfred Kinsey, America's [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDOn opening night in the W.N.B.A., three hours and 25 minutes until the Atlanta Dream's home tipoff against the Dallas Wings, Brennan Galloway, who runs game operations, was standing [...]

Humans, once in constant motion as hunters and gatherers, are moving less than ever. At first, this trend seemed like progress: Transferring our heavy and dangerous work to animals, then [...]

The Food and Drug Administration almost never tests products itself. But in May, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a randomized trial, conducted by F.D.A. [...]

In 1994, the National Football League formed a Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury to study an alarming trend: Players were retiring early because of what seemed to be concussion-related [...]

Humans have been drinking fermented concoctions since the beginning of recorded time. But despite that long relationship with alcohol, we still don't know what exactly the molecule does to our [...]

A modern building of cedar, stone, steel and glass, set in a wooded sanctuary, houses the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. On a wet morning in August, I [...]

1 Kilauea Volcano, HAWAII Kilauea is one of six active volcanoes in Hawaii. This spring and summer, it erupted, and ribbons of molten orange lava flowed down to the sea, [...]