Category: Story

The year 2004 was a simpler time to be an infectious disease doctor in the US. Zika and chikungunya hadn’t yet emerged. Mystery RNA viruses weren’t spreading by tick bite around America’s heartland, killing farmers and ranchers. Certainly no one was on the lookout for a meat allergy caused by a tick with a white…

A human cell carries in its nucleus two meters of spiraling DNA, split up among the 46 slender, double-helical molecules that are its chromosomes. Most of the time, that DNA looks like a tangled ball of yarn—diffuse, disordered, chaotic. But that messiness poses a problem during mitosis, when the cell has to make a copy…

When I ask Bradley Worthington to tell me about that one time people in the southwest thought his trucking company, McCollister's, was moving a UFO across the country, he laughs. There’s not a “that one time.” “It happens frequently,” he says, “especially with oversized things.” And McCollister's hauls a lot of oversized things. From astronaut…

In 2011, biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published a landmark paper introducing the world to Crispr. The arcane family of bacterial proteins had a talent for precisely snipping DNA, and one of them—Cas9—has since inspired a billion-dollar boom in biotech investment. Clinical trials using Cas9 clippers to fix genetic defects are just beginning, so…

This one’s going to be gross. Bear with me. According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, 1,200 security personnel at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang have been confined to quarters after 41 of them started vomiting and experiencing diarrhea. Tests showed they were infected with norovirus, the last best reason you need to avoid…

This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Gotham Greens’ boxed lettuces have been popping up on the shelves of high-end grocers in New York and the Upper Midwest since 2009, and with names like “Windy City Crunch,” “Queens Crisp,” and “Blooming Brooklyn Iceberg,” it’s clear the company is selling a story as…

Now that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on DVD (and digitally), I think it's safe to discuss one very interesting scene in the spirit of May the Fourth. However, there is a chance you haven't seen it—so this is your spoiler alert. In this scene, Leia's ship is attacked by the First Order.…

Rock-Paper-Scissors works great for deciding who has to take out the garbage. But have you ever noticed what happens when, instead of playing best of three, you just let the game continue round after round? At first, you play a pattern that gives you the upper hand, but then your opponent quickly catches on and…

A journalist, a soup exec, and an imam walk into a room. There’s no joke here. It’s just another day at CrisprCon. On Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of scientists, industry folk, and public health officials from all over the world filled the amphitheater at the Boston World Trade Center to reckon with the power of…

This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Russia, buildings are sagging and crumbling. In Greenland, a wildfire broke out last year. And in Alaska, entire villages may be relocated because the land upon which they’re built is no long trustworthy. All across the North, the very ground is changing, and the…