The cartoon archetype of a drunk person is a disheveled mess, with droopy eyelids, an erratic gait, and bubbles coming off their head—for some reason. If only it were so easy to tell if someone’s blitzed out of their mind. If a cop pulls you over, they can only objectively determine intoxication on the roadside […]

There are a few ways a leaf response could play out. For one thing, the leaves might reflect more or less light, or change in color—getting greener or even red, for example. “We’re definitely looking at green, but we’re also looking at all wavelengths within visible light, and then also those on either side of […]

Given testing delays, treatment decisions may take a while—and that could mean more days that a patient occupies a hospital bed, and possibly an intensification of illness that causes that patient to need a yet-more-scarce ICU bed instead. “Labs are already at or near capacity for testing of respiratory specimens, and it’s going to be […]

Last month, I took a road trip to North Carolina. The area had just experienced an extremely wet and rainy spring, and the Airbnb I was staying in had been unoccupied since Covid-19 halted almost all travel in March. When I unlocked the door, a putrid smell hit my nose immediately, like a wet beach […]

Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US’s testing strategy has failed over and over again to provide an accurate picture of how fast and how far the disease is spreading. State and city officials are often left flying blind, not knowing how bad things are until hospital beds start filling up. The evidence […]

“All of the postdocs and graduate students in my lab are fantastic people and fantastic scientists,” says Anna Mapp, a professor of chemical biology at the University of Michigan and the associate dean of the university’s Rackham Graduate School, which offers more than 180 degree programs. “But, as a mentor, I worry what is in […]

“It is unlikely that herd immunity can eliminate SARS-CoV-2,” he and his co-authors wrote in the report. “Although it is possible that subsequent infections may be milder than the first infection, as for this patient.” Throughout the pandemic, doctors and researchers around the world have documented a handful of presumed Covid-19 reinfections. In the first […]

For parents and teachers, the reopening of schools has been a chaotic mess. Guidelines and procedures seem to change daily. Classroom policies or even whether in-person learning occurs at all depends on where you live and often the politics of who sits in the governor’s mansion. But for epidemiologists, this fall is proving to be […]

Advocates are worried that the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill will be left without reliable access to medicine. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when so many older adults and people with underlying health problems are isolating at home to stay safe, the dangers of being forced to visit a pharmacy are particularly worrying. “It’s really critical […]

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that in light of the overall lack of efficacy data, the FDA would not issue an Emergency Use Authorization to allow anyone with Covid-19 to be treated with convalescent plasma, even beyond the Mayo-led program. (In an emailed statement, Anand Shah, deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs […]

Other reports rolled in—a death in France, a cluster in Italy—and in the US, the CDC put together what had been observed of the unusual condition and asked physicians to report cases that matched to state health departments. Coming up with a case definition is a first step in conducting surveillance for what might be […]

For the past few years, up until the pandemic hit, Bill Ristenpart, a chemical engineer at UC Davis (and next-level coffee geek), had been bringing a team of researchers and crates of expensive instruments across the country each summer to New York City and into the lab of Nicole Bouvier. An infectious disease physician and […]

As both a clinician and a scientist, Fox is particularly interested in using the network approach not only to better understand particular diseases, but also to treat them. He has spent years working to optimize brain-stimulation treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and depression. The two primary approaches to brain stimulation—deep brain stimulation (DBS), which involves […]

The question is when, exactly, vaccine makers should start that process—especially with the pandemic scrambling most normal procedures. Part of the concern is having enough safety data in hand to rule out rare complications. Even side effects that may look mild in adults, like a fever or slightly constricted airways, can be more serious in […]

Thanks to the reliable laws of physics that describe the relationship between the size of a particle and the amount of light it gives off when it gets scattered by a laser beam into the lens of a camera, Fischer was able to back-calculate the size of the smallest particle they could detect: half a […]

Thanks to the reliable laws of physics that describe the relationship between the size of a particle and the amount of light it gives off when it gets scattered by a laser beam into the lens of a camera, Fischer was able to back-calculate the size of the smallest particle they could detect: half a […]

Since the pandemic started to hit the US in full force in March, speculation about the link between vaping and Covid-19 has flourished. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse both issued warnings. Anecdotal reports of young vapers coming down with severe coronavirus infections began to crop up. But there […]

Davis thinks that the inclusion of young people is a strength of prize competitions. “I have great faith in youth,” he says, “because they’re always asking the questions that nobody else will look at.” He adds, with a laugh, “Let’s face it, I’m 77. I think my real creative days were back when I was […]