Peter H. Raven, a renowned botanist and author who remade the Missouri Botanical Garden into a premier research institution and became one of science’s most influential voices on threats posed by climate change, deforestation, overpopulation and unchecked development, died on Saturday in St. Louis. He was 89. His death, in a hospital, was from congestive…
A few weeks ago, I set out to understand the breadth of scientific research conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s nearly defunct Office of Research and Development. For more than a half-century, this prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking work aimed at saving American lives. About 125 scientists had recently been told…
Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, has been indicted on charges of skirting federal record-keeping laws and concealing emails related to the origins of the coronavirus outbreak in China. The indictment, unsealed on Monday by the district court in Maryland, represents a victory…
Before the new obesity drugs came on the market, almost no one used the term food noise. Researchers studying and developing drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound analyzed doses, side effects, weight loss and improvements in conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and sleep apnea. Incessant thoughts about food and internal dialogues about what…
For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats. In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled. One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has…
Early this year, I attended a longevity science conference in Miami hosted by the academy that Sinclair helped found. That weekend, about 65 scientists from around the world compared notes and waited in line for coffee and complained about the weather in the city, which was experiencing a freakish cold snap. Iguanas, stunned by the…
The Trump administration on Friday dismissed members of an independent board that oversees the National Science Foundation, which finances much of the public scientific research in the United States. On Friday afternoon, National Science Board members received a terse email “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump” that said their position was “terminated, effective immediately.”…
Eugene Braunwald, a groundbreaking cardiologist whose research helped transform heart disease from a near-certain killer into a condition often manageable with medications, procedures and careful monitoring, died on Wednesday in Newton, Mass. He was 96. His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Jill Braunwald Porter. He lived in Weston, Mass. Widely regarded…
Brightening clouds. Refreezing the Arctic. Floating a giant parasol in outer space. To the ranks of out-there ideas for countering climate change, two Dutch scientists have added this: building a 50-mile-long dam across the Bering Strait, the shallow waterway that separates Russia and Alaska. In a study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances,…
Explorers sent a robot two miles under the ocean’s surface near Alaska to look for odd creatures, and unexpectedly struck gold. To be more specific, they found a golden blob, smooth and shiny with a perplexing hole in it, stuck to a rock on the seafloor. Was it coral? A sea sponge? An alien? No,…
