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Tracing each illness back to the start of symptoms, Frankovich has managed to find clusters: groups of children from the same school or neighborhood who had all come down with the condition in the same month; individuals with a true, physical connection, like the family of three brothers Swedo had studied years before. In the course of her investigation, a host of alternate infections have emerged: not just strep, but bacterial mycoplasma, influenza, sinusitis, pneumonia and others. By 2015, Fra ...read more

Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of LifeBy Haider Warraich Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of LifeBy Jessica Nutik Zitter Two physicians, each gifted, thoughtful observers, tackle a subject that’s rarely discussed ahead of the event: death. Zitter, whose work in an Oakland ICU was the subject of the recent Netflix documentary Extremis, has a deft directness. She presents multiple perspectives — the anxious family, a confused patient, clashing opinions bet ...read more

Armadillos are expanding their range northward. Armadillos roamed the Western Hemisphere during the Ice Age. But by the time naturalist John James Audubon first noted their presence in 1854, the mammals had just a tiny toehold north of the U.S.-Mexico border along Texas’ hot Rio Grande Valley, with a broader range across Mexico and countries farther south. Since then, armadillos have been ceaselessly marching north and east, with scientists citing climate change as a likely factor. Th ...read more

Just one twister can cause devastation. But when outbreaks bring dozens of tornadoes over days, they can leave a path of death and destruction across vast regions. And new research shows tornado outbreaks are getting more dangerous: More tornadoes are hitting during each round, even though the overall annual number of American twisters hasn’t changed. Scientists aren’t sure yet if there’s a climate change connection, or whether things will continue to get worse. ...read more

About twice each century, a star in our galaxy explodes in a supernova. Only a few of those explosions happen close enough to Earth to be visible with the naked eye. By comparing ancient observations with today’s spacecraft data on supernova remains, scientists hope to nail down when those stars exploded. Here’s a look at eight supernovas that caught earthlings’ attention throughout history. RCW 86 (A.D. 185): Chinese and possibly Roman astronomers recorded a strange new star i ...read more

10. On Saturn itself, as well as Jupiter, droplets of helium rain may fall from the gas giants’ outer layers toward the interior, according to research published in 2010 in Physical Review Letters. 11. But nowhere on Earth, Saturn or anywhere else has it rained cats and dogs. There’s a flood of theories about the origin of the popular saying, which was first recorded in the mid-17th century. 12. Some etymologists think the phrase refers to dead animals washed into the streets after a ...read more

Russian-born entrepreneur co-founded the Breakthrough science prize. Yuri Milner was pretty much destined to do something in science. Born in Moscow in November 1961, he was named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who, about six months earlier, had become the first person to venture into outer space. Inspired by Carl Sagan and others, Milner majored in physics at Moscow State University. Then, in the middle of earning a Ph.D. in particle physics, he quit. Eventually, he started his own i ...read more