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A More Scientific Obesity Test Says: It's Even Worse Than You Think
Obesity is a major public health threat, yet doctors assess it using a 200-year-old comparison of weight and height called the Body Mass Index, or BMI. In April, researchers Nirav Shah and Eric...
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The Algorithm That Finds Connections Scientists Never See
Here’s a thought experiment for you: If someone told you you had to drink just one kind of alcoholic beverage for the rest of your life, and you wanted that life to be long and healthy, what would you...
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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Autopsies
3 The Catholic Church ordered an autopsy on conjoined infant twins Joana and Melchiora Ballestero in Hispaniola in 1533 [pdf] to determine if they shared a soul. There were two distinct hearts, and...
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Getting Personal: How I Became Bait for Bloodsucking Leeches
For most zoologists, fieldwork involves lying low and watching quietly as animals wander by. That is not Mark Siddall’s approach. Instead, he rolls up his pant legs, wades into murky waters, and calmly...
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Vital Signs: A Storm Inside
The mother’s gaze was as piercing as a hawk’s. “My daughter has never been like this,” she told me evenly. “This is not her.” I glanced at the nurse’s ER triage note: “Rita Suarez, 26-year-old,...
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Impatient Futurist: House Calls for the 21st Century: Carrying a Doctor in...
I don’t know why people complain about going to the doctor for checkups. I’d go every week if I could. It’s not just for the sociability of exchanging interesting new microbes in the waiting room, or...
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The Gray Tsunami
On a bright February morning under a blank desert sky, three experts in world population get into a van in Tempe, Arizona, and drive back to the future. From the campus of Arizona State University on...
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Spy on the Inside: What's Cooking Inside Homeland Security's Pathogen Lab?
Fernando Torres-Vélez waits for samples in the darkness by a helicopter landing pad on Plum Island. Situated 1.5 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, the island’s 840 acres of wildlife surround a...
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Controlling Brains With a Flick of a Light Switch
Stopped at a red light on his drive home from work, Karl Deisseroth contemplates one of his patients, a woman with depression so entrenched that she had been unresponsive to drugs and electroshock...
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Big Idea: Tap The Healing Power of Poop
It’s flushed down dark pipes into malodorous sewers. It is the very definition of “waste.” But it turns out that human feces may also have amazing healing properties, due to the trillions of colon...
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How to Heal a Scarred Heart
Molecules called microRNAs are the body’s orchestra conductors, directing genes involved in the development of cells. Exploiting that power, researchers are now using microRNAs to convert the scar...
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How the Woman/Man Ratio Affects Sex, Facial Hair, and Politics
It may be hard to believe in the midst of another contentious election cycle, but the next quarter century in the United States promises to be a period of increasing moderation and stability—at least...
View ArticleHow a Deadly Snake’s Venom Could Mean Pain Relief
At first you might feel a slight sting as the fangs enter. Then, a tingling will spread throughout your limbs. But within minutes your central nervous system will start shutting down, culminating in...
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Brutal Truths About the Aging Brain
As a graduate student at Harvard University, I worked with one of the most influential behavioral scientists of all time, B. F. Skinner. Beginning in the summer of 1977, we worked together nearly every...
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A Love Supreme
Ellie Santos-Smith grabs a clean white coat as spring dawn brightens her worn oriental rug and streaks with sun her only luxury, a grand piano.She runs a comb through her jet-black hair, cut short...
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Vital Signs: A Rip Van Winkle Virus
Ay-yi-yeee! the pain running down the back of my arm—like a jolt of current traveling a frayed electric cord—caught me off guard. I had never felt a sensation quite like it. On the other hand: Why not?...
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The Crack Team That Removes & Preserves People's Brains Just Hours After They...
On average, the residents of Sun City, Arizona, occupy their domiciles for a dozen years. When they depart—almost always by dying—they often leave their brains behind. The stages of physical and mental...
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The Recipe For Immortality
The yearning for immortality dates back at least to ancient times. As human brain size increased rapidly over the past million years, our ancestors began to think increasingly about the inevitability...
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Earth's Last Unexplored Wilderness: Your Very Own Home
Touring a building with Jessica Green can be an unsettling experience. “We live nearly 90 percent of our lives indoors, but we know almost nothing about that environment,” she says as we push through...
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