The FDA approves a powerful gene therapy to fight a resistant cancer.
Immunotherapy, the hottest field in cancer research, seeks to supercharge the body’s natural defenses against deadly tumors. Two different approaches are driving the buzz, and one of them got a big boost in August when the Food and Drug Administration approved a “living drug” to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children and young adults who’ve stopped responding to chemotherapy. The prod ...read more
The solar event that transfixed Americans from sea to shining sea.
Two things were inescapable this summer: the Latin single “Despacito,” and the looming eclipse. The first total solar eclipse in the continental United States since 1979, it was also a uniquely American event, with no other countries getting a peek at totality, and at least a partial eclipse visible in all 50 states. As the moon’s shadow crisscrossed the country on Aug. 21, about 154 million American adults ...read more
Our ancestors’ origin story is being refined.
For decades, schoolchildren across the globe were taught our origin story went something like this: An archaic form of Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa. By about 100,000 years ago, the population had become anatomically modern humans who, around 50,000 years ago, headed across Eurasia and met up with our distant cousins the Neanderthals (and the closely related Denisovans, not known to science until 2010). Like a gam ...read more
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Lose some sleep over the weekend, and you’re likely to come into work Monday feeling a little off. Whether that’s zoning out in a meeting, missing typos in an email or something more dangerous like drifting off at the wheel, sleep deprivation blunts our cognitive abilities.
But it’s not a level playing field. Some people turn into zombies if they don’t get their eight hours, and others get by on just five or six hours a night. Expert ...read more
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Michael Bisping has fought professionally in mixed martial arts since 2004. Last year, the journeyman won his first title. He knocked out Luke Rockhold in the first round to win the middleweight belt in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, the most popular of several MMA organizations.
On Nov. 4 of this year, at age 38, Bisping defended his title for a second time. His opponent was the Canadian Georges St. Pierre, a former UFC champ. The fight, held in New York&rs ...read more
The spattering surface of the lava lake in the Halema’uma’u crater at Kilauea. HVO/USGS
The ballots are in and the votes have been counted. Time to count down to the winner of the 2017 Pliny Award for Volcanic Event of the Year. Last year’s champion was Bogoslof in Alaska and its activity continued into 2017, so can we have our first back-to-back champion or did another volcano’s rumblings take the crown?
First, some honorable mentions from the voting (which was done wi ...read more
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The bananas your grandparents ate were different than the ones you eat today. And the bananas your grandchildren know will probably be entirely different as well.
For the moment, we are in the age of the Cavendish, a banana cultivar that accounts for 99 percent of imports to the Western world. But the Cavendish is in trouble. Like its predecessor the Gros Michel, the Cavendish may soon pass from our lives, potentially taking with it an entire industry ...read more
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When the solar eclipse swept across the continental U.S. in August, it carved a subtle, but noticeable path through our atmosphere.
For the first time, researchers confirmed that that moon’s shadow generates a pair of bow waves in Earth’s ionosphere, similar to the wake a boat leaves as it travels through the water. The waves are caused by the sudden drop and rebound in incoming energy from the sun, and they ripple through the atmosphere ahead ...read more
