In the balmy cloud forests of Central and South America, nightfall is marked by operatic calls of Alston’s singing mouse, a small, short-tailed rodent famous for its courteous communication. These minuscule mice, each of which weighs less than a lightbulb, sing unique, chirp-filled songs to one another that can last as long as 16 seconds….
If deforestation and global warming continue unchecked, the Amazon rainforest could begin a gradual transition to a degraded, grassland-like ecosystem in just a few decades, according to new research published on Wednesday. The study, published in the journal Nature, provides new insight into when the forest might start to slip over a so-called tipping point…
In a sterile Bristol Myers Squibb lab about an hour north of Boston, scientists in scrubs and hairnets transfer living cells to a 2,000-liter stainless steel bioreactor that grows them for weeks. The goal is to produce proteins that are genetically engineered to attack cells that cause disease. Tiny variations in heat, light or pH…
Hantaviruses have most likely been around as long as rodents, but little was known about these pathogens before the 20th century. This rare family of viruses that rodents carry has been cited as the source of a deadly outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The virus is zoonotic, meaning it can be…
Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed. The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency,…
Banning cellphones was supposed to improve many of the problems ailing American education, including distraction, bullying, declining test scores and absenteeism. The idea attracted rare, bipartisan support, and over the past three years, two-thirds of states passed laws restricting cellphones in schools. But the bans have achieved only some of the goals that educators and…
Enough time had passed since the patient’s previous colonoscopy that she met the criteria to undergo another, said Dr. Steven Itzkowitz, a gastroenterologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She was in “reasonably good health,” and the risks of the procedure — bleeding, reaction to anesthesia, perforation of her…
A National Institutes of Health employee who was put on paid leave after organizing a public letter that criticized the Trump administration said on Friday that she had been reinstated — a move that followed the reinstatement of 14 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who had signed a critical letter of their own. The employee,…
Journalists from News24 checked the new immigration document and found that 102 out of 148 references are completely fake. Two independent law firms will run the disciplinary hearings and check every policy document the department wrote since November 2022. The Department of Home Affairs has suspended two senior officials. They face action because they used…
Inside a low-slung building on the outskirts of this town in north-central Washington State, federal scientists are examining how tree seedlings are responding to a drier, hotter climate, collecting important data as officials brace for what is expected to be an intense wildfire season. But this federal research station and 56 others in 31 states…
