Science Friday

A More Delicious COVID Screener One of the most bizarre symptoms of COVID-19—a nearly surefire way to know if you have been infected—is a loss of taste or smell. Estimates of how many people are impacted range wildly, with the highest estimates reaching  75 to 80%  of COVID-19 survivors. There’s still a lot scientists don’t understand about why this happens and what part of the olfactory system or...

Blunting The Force Of Disease Is Complicated  COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease. But their efficacy in lab-controlled trials may not exactly correlate to how well they work in the real world. David Kaslow, chief scientific officer at the global public health nonprofit PATH, explains that a factor known as the “force of infection” plays a role in determining how we...

Here’s How Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Addresses Science President Joe Biden signed a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill into law this Monday. The measure focuses on a range of sectors. It would funnel billions into cleaning up pollution in the air and water with efforts that include eliminating lead service lines and cleaning up old, polluted manufacturing sites. The bill will also invest $7....

As Wildfire Intensity Rises, So Does The Human Toll Of Blazes It was Labor Day 2020, and Mammoth Pool Reservoir, in California’s Sierra Nevada, was buzzing with campers. Karla Carcamo and her parents, siblings, cousins, and countless others, mostly from the Los Angeles area, have been coming here every Labor Day for 17 years. “Most of it is my family, and family that’s invited family, and those fa...

Psilocybin Effective In Treating Serious Depression Depression is often treatable with medication, therapy, or a combination of the two. But some 30% of patients don’t respond well to existing medications—and may try multiple antidepressant drugs with little or no improvement. This week, researchers reported that a new trial suggests psychedelics may be an effective therapy for treatment-resistant...

Fact Check My Feed: More Kids Can Get COVID-19 Vaccines. Now What? Many parents around the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief—or an even more intense emotional reaction—at the long-awaited news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had signed off on advising the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 this week . The recommendation came after a unanimous vote fro...

Behind The FDA’s Decision To Vaccinate Kids Under 12 This week, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 12 was officially recommended by the CDC , after a unanimous vote from its independent advisory committee and the FDA’s authorization based on safety and efficacy data. In their analysis, the FDA said the benefits of the vaccine “clearly outweigh” the risks. The risks, which were referenced in...

Younger Kids Next In Line For COVID-19 Vaccines This week, an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer vaccine be approved for children as young as 5. If the FDA concurs and the CDC agrees, lower-dose Pfizer vaccinations could soon be available for children ages 5 to 11, via local pediatricians . Just who will be immediately eligible for the doses,...

The Science Behind Cryptid Sightings People around the world have long been fascinated by the idea that there are strange creatures out there, ones that may or may not exist. Tales circulate about cryptids–animals whose existence can’t be proved—like Bigfoot hiding out in American forests, or sea serpents lurking just below the water in coastal towns. Despite the best efforts of monster hunting T....

The Ancient Neanderthal Traces Hidden In Your Genome Just how much of your genome is uniquely human? It turns out the number of genetic components in the human genome that trace back only to modern humans, and not to other human lineages or ancient ancestors, are surprisingly small.  In a paper published recently in the journal S cience Advances,  researchers estimate the uniquely human portion of...

Biden’s Administration Preps For A Crucial Climate Conference This week, CDC advisers gave their support to approve COVID-19 vaccine boosters for those who received Moderna and J&J vaccines. The recommendations would follow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of “mixing and matching” booster shots from different vaccine developers. Ira provides new updates on the latest vaccine b...

On Long Island, A Tribal Nation Faces Growing Pressures The Hamptons on Long Island are known as a mansion-lined escape for wealthy New Yorkers. But the area is also home to the Native residents of the Shinnecock Tribal Nation. An estimated 1,500 Shinnecock members are left in the U.S., and about half live on the Nation’s territory on Long Island. As with the rest of the island, Shinnecock Nation...

More Boosters, For More People This week, an FDA advisory committee met to pore over data and debate the role of COVID vaccine boosters. And on Thursday, they voted to recommend Moderna boosters for older Americans, as well as people in certain at-risk groups . This recommendation came just a few weeks after the FDA authorized a Pfizer booster for similar individuals. The recommendations of the pa...

The Hot And Cold Past Of The Air Conditioner In the Northeast, the leaves have started changing colors, heralding the season of pumpkins, sweaters, and the smell of woodsmoke. But in some parts of the country, the heat hasn’t let up. In cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, temperatures were up in the high 80s and low 90s this week—and with climate change, the U.S. is only getting hotter.  But h...

First Malaria Vaccine Is Approved by WHO The malaria parasite is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, killing on average about 500,000 people per year—half of them children under the age of 5, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, the World Health Organization has finally approved RTS,S or Mosquirix, the first vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum, which is the most deadly st...

Looking Back On A Century of Science In 1921, the discovery of radium was just over 20 years in the past. And the double helix of DNA was still over thirty years in the future. That year, a publication that came to be the magazine Science News started publication, and is still in operation today. Editors Nancy Shute and Elizabeth Quill join Ira to page through the magazine’s archives , with over 8...

Healthcare Is Hard Enough to Get. If You’re A Trans Youth, It’s Even Harder Healthcare can be difficult to access for anyone—that’s been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for transgender youth, the barriers are exponentially higher. A new study from the journal JAMA Pediatrics shows that trans youth don’t get the care they need because of a variety of obstacles. Those range from laws th...

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant To Say Goodbye To Its Radioactive Waste Just before Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth is expected to reach a historic milestone. All the radioactive fuel that generated electricity—and controversy—for nearly half   a century will finally be removed from the reactor building. It will be stored outside in special steel and cement casks. The rare oc...

Ice-Hunting Lunar Rover Robot Gets A Landing Site This week, NASA announced that it had selected a destination for a planned robotic lunar rover called VIPER, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. The mission is planned for launch in 2023, and will rove about the Moon’s south pole, mapping the location and concentration of water ice deposits. The plan is for a commercial spaceflight...

Nighttime Streetlights Are Stressing Out Urban Insects As insect populations—including bees, moths, and other pollinators—decline worldwide, researchers have established a variety of potential causes, including climate change, pesticides, and habitat loss. But now, new findings suggest yet another culprit may be part of the equation: night-time lighting, like street lights in populated areas . A t...

Scientists Potty Train Cows To Lower Greenhouse Gasses Scientists have known it for a long time: Cattle are a major source of nitrogen emissions, contributing to the global warming crisis. Alternatives have been tossed around for years: from eating less meat to feeding cows seaweed. Now, a new study out of Germany and New Zealand has a more outside-the-box solution: potty-training calves. Scientis...

New Policies Emerge In The Wake Of Climate-Connected Disasters This week, people across the United States continued to be reminded of the results of a shifting climate—with people in the Gulf states still recovering from Ida, northeastern states dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida-induced flooding, and western states battling wildfires and smoke. With climate-related disasters as a backdro...

To Breed An Oyster In the ocean, climate change involves more than just warming temperatures. Water levels are shifting, and ocean chemistry is changing.  Changes to ocean salinity caused by shifting amounts of freshwater could have big effects on the health of oysters, who need a certain range of saltiness in the water to be happy.   As part of her doctoral work at Louisiana State University, res...

Fact Check My Feed: Why Are People Taking Discredited Horse Medicine For COVID-19? If you’ve been online at all in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen discussion about the drug ivermectin. It was originally developed as an antiparasitic treatment for livestock, and in 2015, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to scientists who found that it helped control parasitic diseases in humans as well. Bu...

Nation Grapples With Several Climate Disasters At Once Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on the eastern U.S. this week. It all started in Louisiana, leaving daunting damage and a long road to recovery for residents . Even though Ida was downgraded to a tropical storm after leaving the state, it left a trail of destruction through the eastern U.S. and mid-Atlantic , flooding cities and damaging homes. In...