You’d think the end of the world would be enough to get us scared. Humans have always been an exceedingly risk-averse species—which is how we came to survive as a species at all. If there are lions on one part of the savannah, we go to another. If crocodiles keep coming out of the river, we fish somewhere else. So when it comes to the loss of the entire planet, well, we ought to tak…
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Alzheimer’s patients and their families welcomed the news on Jan. 6 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab, marketed as Leqembi, is made by Eisai and Biogen for people in the early stages of the disease. The FDA granted lecanemab accelerated approval based on early phase testing results, and it’s now reviewi…
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One moment during the summer of 2020, Nick Kharufeh was enjoying an Independence Day party with his family in California. The next, he couldn’t see out of his left eye.
Kharufeh, now 26, was struck in the face by a malfunctioning firework, causing severe damage to and blindness in his left eye—damage his doctors said they could do little about. “I thought my life was over,” says K…
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It’s no secret that air pollution is a serious problem facing the world today. Just how serious? A new study on global daily levels of air pollution shows that hardly anywhere on Earth is safe from unhealthy air.
About 99.82% of the global land area is exposed to levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) — tiny particles in the air that scientists have linked to lung cancer and…
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A graduate student in Florida waited 11 days. Positive. A 14-year-old in California waited 24 days. Negative. A writer in New York has waited for four days—and is still waiting.
As the United States struggles to control the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the country are using Twitter to announce the arrival of their virus test results. The point of these tweets is not just to bro…
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Greta Thunberg might have been been named TIME’s Person of the Year for drawing global attention to climate change, but the climate continues to speak for itself. Last month was the second-hottest November in recorded history, and 2019 is likely to be the second warmest year ever.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month was …
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