A healthy man in his 30s starts lifting weights, and his physical condition worsens. Jay, a physician in his early 30s, was a healthy guy who ran 6 miles a day, loved nature and animals, and spent free time hiking and biking. One summer, he decided to start weight training. The problem started simply. He had finished a training session at the gym, doing upper and lower body exercises with barbells and finishing with sit-ups. A few days later, he felt more sore than usual. “My neck fee ...read more

A band of Seattle computer scientists is on a mission to make artificial intelligence actually intelligent. Nestled among Seattle’s gleaming lights on a gloomy September day, a single nonprofit wants to change the world, one computer at a time. Its researchers hope to transform the way machines perceive the world: to have them not only see it, but understand what they’re seeing. At the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), researchers are working on just that. AI2, ...read more

Sample Drill Like the Mars Curiosity rover, AREE’s drill would let scientists see into Venus’ interior — and past. Wind Turbine Venus’ winds would spin AREE’s fan blades, generating energy that’s stored in a spring. Seismometer Astronomers know little about Venus’ interior, and that impedes our understanding of how planets form. So one prime objective is to set up “Earth’s Twin” with a seismometer, which measures geologic activity. ...read more

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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