Even though the total area burned was relatively small, 2025 was the most economically damaging wildfire year on record, according to a new analysis published on Sunday. The Los Angeles fires and a handful of severe blazes in other countries, including South Korea and Spain, drove up losses worldwide to at least $54 billion, the…
Trackers that ping satellites every time a whale surfaces for air. Thermal cameras that can detect the animals day and night. Acoustic devices that monitor their calls. These and other emerging technologies could help protect the world’s last surviving North Atlantic right whales from collisions with vessels, a leading threat to their survival. And the…
This month, a pair of viruses seized the headlines. First came a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, which caused as many as 13 infections, three of which were fatal. Then an Ebola outbreak flared in Africa, so far leading to more than 900 infections and 220 deaths. In both cases, the news has been…
In a small, preliminary study, an experimental gene-editing treatment dramatically lowered cholesterol levels, perhaps permanently, after just one infusion, scientists reported on Monday. If confirmed in larger studies, researchers hope the findings may lead to a one-and-done way to prevent heart disease in large numbers of people. Most gene therapies target rare diseases, but cardiovascular…
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…
