You are in a desert and dying of thirst. All of a sudden, storm clouds appear overhead, and the sky starts to spit tiny drops of liquid. How would you quickly make the most of the potentially lifesaving precipitation? One more thing, you don’t have any hands. Prairie rattlesnakes have evolved an easy solution to…
When the letter arrived at Westil Gonzalez’s prison cell saying that he had been granted parole, he couldn’t read it. Over the 33 years he had been locked up for murder, multiple sclerosis had taken much of his vision and left him reliant on a wheelchair. He had a clear sense of what he would…
Chimpanzees live only in African rainforests and woodlands. Orangutans live only in the jungles of Indonesia. But humans live pretty much everywhere. Our species has spread across frozen tundras, settled on mountaintops and called other extreme environments home. Scientists have historically seen this adaptability as one of the hallmarks of modern humans and a sign…
More Americans are surviving cancer, but the disease is striking young and middle-aged adults and women more frequently, the American Cancer Society reported on Thursday. And despite overall improvements in survival, Black and Native Americans are dying of some cancers at rates two to three times higher than those among white Americans. These trends represent…
The number of Americans receiving psychotherapy increased by 30 percent during the pandemic, as virtual sessions replaced in-person appointments — but new research dampens the hope that technology will make mental health care more available to the neediest populations. In fact, the researchers found, the shift to teletherapy has exacerbated existing disparities. The increase in…
Among both men and women, drinking just one alcoholic beverage a day increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer and various types of injuries, according to a federal analysis of alcohol’s health effects issued on Tuesday. Women face a higher risk of developing liver cancer at this level of drinking, but a…
A culture flourished along the central Peruvian coast from about A.D. 900 to 1500. Called the Chancay, they left behind a wealth of cultural remains, including intricate tattoos that are preserved to this day on the skin of mummified individuals. New details of these tattoos that were previously hidden to the naked eye, including finely…
The number of people in the United States who develop dementia each year will double over the next 35 years to about one million annually by 2060, a new study estimates, and the number of new cases per year among Black Americans will triple. The increase will primarily be due to the growing aging population,…
There were more than 32,000 cases of whooping cough in 2024, the highest tally in a decade. In California alone, the disease struck 2,000 people between January and October last year. More than 60 infants younger than 4 months were hospitalized in the state. One died. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is just the most stark…
Most American parents hardly give thought to polio beyond the instant their child is immunized against the disease. But there was a time in this country when polio paralyzed 20,000 people in a year, killing many of them. Vaccines turned the tide against the virus. Over the past decade, there has been only one case…
