Reset14 — Why sleep matters for personal and public health
Event | Health & Disease

Why sleep matters for personal and public health

EVENT: Disrupted sleep ups the risks for heart disease, cancer and depression. How? And what can be done about the inequities that leave communities of color and poor people at greater risk? 

Photograph of a large blue glass headrest decorated with gold.
Society

The ancient origins of glass

By Carolyn Wilke

Featuring ingots, shipwrecks, pharaohs and an international trade in colors, the material’s rich history is being traced using modern archaeology and materials science

An illustration shows a diverse group of overweight people
Health & Disease

What does it mean to have prediabetes?

By Lola Butcher

It’s complicated: Prediabetes has multiple definitions and there may be different subtypes. But for many people who develop it, changes in lifestyle drastically lower the risk of progressing to diabetes.

A short repeating movie clip shows a cyclist riding down a bike path in the dark; the path glows green.
Technology

Will glow-in-the-dark materials someday light our cities?

By Kurt Kleiner

Substances that persistently luminesce are already used in some bike lanes, and in the future could be applied to sidewalks, streets and buildings — saving energy and reducing urban heat

An English landscape, with hedgerows separating fields and pastures
Food & Environment

What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge

By Katarina Zimmer

Hedgerows were historically planted as barriers between fields, but in a human-dominated world, they are critical havens, corridors and connectors for wildlife

Living World

Wild robots: Five ways scientists are using robotics to study animal behavior

Biomimetic bots can teach researchers a lot about how creatures interact in the natural world

By Bob Holmes
Opinion | Society

Let’s change how we pay for hospitals

OPINION: Many health facilities were already in fiscal straits before Covid-19 — except in Maryland. The state’s innovative and sound approach could be the answer to rescuing systems nationwide.

By John Colmers and By Sherry Glied
A close-up photo shows a small fuzzy spider looking out from atop a person’s fingertip. The spider is black with white spots and green pedipalps, and smaller than the width of the fingernail.
The Mind

Spiders are much smarter than you think

By Betsy Mason

Cognition researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids

Reset 13 — The science of viral variants
Event | Health & Disease

Viral variants: From Covid to the flu

VIDEO: Some variants of SARS-CoV-2, such as Delta, will drive new waves of COVID-19 infections. What can previous studies of the flu, HIV and SARS tell us about the course that this pandemic may take?

Photo shows a furry bat, caught mid-flap with wings wide, flying behind a small moth.
Living World

Prey tell: How moths elude bats

By Lesley Evans Ogden

Millions of years of coevolution have given the insects a bag of tricks to escape their predators — from signal-jamming and decoys to acoustic camouflage

An artistic display of five creatures: zebra finch, fungus gnat, sea lamprey, roundworm and bandicoot.
Living World

The curious case of the shrinking genome

By Alla Katsnelson

Scientists are exploring why some creatures throw away bits of their DNA during development

Close-up photo of two bees eating honey from a comb
Living World

Bee gold: Honey as a superfood

By Berly McCoy

From pesticide detox to increased longevity, the benefits of the sweet stuff go well beyond simply nourishing the hardworking insects in the hive

Artist’s conceptual illustration of several green chloroplasts in a cell, along with other cellular structures in pink, blue, yellow and orange. To the right we see part of a large, blue nucleus.
Living World

Chloroplasts do the darndest things

By Diana Kwon

As if harvesting the sun’s energy to sustain life on Earth weren’t enough, the small green organelles and their relatives are involved in a broad range of other tasks, from manufacturing nutrients and signaling stress to fostering plant immunity

Multimedia

Three frames from a virtual reality simulation show a man entering a room, knocking a phone off a table and looming menacingly toward the viewer.
The Mind

Using virtual reality to help counter domestic abuse

By Dinsa Sachan

In immersive interventions, batterers can experience what it’s like to be attacked and learn some empathy

A UCLA staff member collects a free Covid-19 self-test from an on-campus vending machine.
Video | Health & Disease

Why Covid-19 testing went so wrong in the US, and what to do now

By Hunni Media for Knowable Magazine

VIDEO: Delays, errors and a fragmented response initially kept public health officials in the dark about the spread of SARS-CoV-2. More tests and easy access could still play a critical role in slowing the virus.

A young person accompanies an older one across a bridge as memories of the old person’s earlier life hover above them.
Society

Dignity therapy: Making the last words count

By Lola Butcher

Guided conversations with the terminally ill are popular with patients, families and doctors who’ve experienced them. But are they truly beneficial? Researchers are looking beneath the anecdotal appeal.

Conceptual illustration combines a graph representing stock prices diving over time, a globe, wind turbines and a relief map of the sea floor.
Food & Environment

Now is the time to prepare for the economic shocks of battling climate change

By Eryn Brown

Shedding reliance on fossil fuels is key to making the leap from a carbon-intensive present to a greener future. Experts say that smart planning and transparent policymaking can ease the transition — and balance the worst financial risks.

Collage of worried-looking youth witnessing a car in a flood, a copy of the Financial Times with a grim headline, fire and bad weather.
Food & Environment

How to handle climate anxiety

By James Gaines

Worry over the planet’s future is taking a toll on emotional well-being, researchers say. Here’s how to cope so we don’t lose hope for our planet and for ourselves.

Opinion | Health & Disease

Why we are developing a patent-free Covid antiviral therapy

OPINION: During global health crises such as pandemics, drug discovery should be publicly funded and open, with no research secrets locked away

By Alpha Lee and By John Chodera and By Frank von Delft
Society

Can ranked-choice voting heal our poisoned politics?

The electoral reform also known as instant-runoff voting promises bridge-building and broad appeal instead of culture war and gridlock

By M. Mitchell Waldrop
Photograph of tubeworms and other encrusting animals growing on a flat plate that was immersed in the ocean.
Living World

Animals that take advice from bacteria

By Bob Holmes

The larvae of many marine creatures drift in the plankton, then settle to the seafloor and transform into adults. Bacteria often help the critters pick where to settle — and that may be just a snippet of a far more extensive conversation.

Illustration of a mouth with megaphone and collage of items representing conspiracy theories coming out of it.
Event | Society

The psychology and politics of conspiracy theories

VIDEO: In the past year, conspiracy theories have had a big impact on politics and public health. What makes them so appealing? How can we disrupt their influence? Join us to explore these issues and more.

Elementary school students wear face masks while they sit at their own desks in a classroom in Los Angeles in April 2021. Their masked teacher walks amongst them, with a Welcome Back sign on the wall behind.
Video | Health & Disease

Covid’s main lesson? For this journalist, it’s unpredictability

Video by Hunni Media for Knowable Magazine

VIDEO: New York Times science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli chronicles the rise of the delta variant, the latest of many twists in the pandemic that she’s covered since it began. Delta has left parents in an especially tough spot, with schools opening but young children still vulnerable.

Composite mage shows a solar filament that ribbons from a glowing red sun with areas of yellow eruptions against a black sky.
Physical World

Are we ready? Understanding just how big solar flares can get

By Christopher Crockett

Recasting the iconic Carrington Event as just one of many superstorms in Earth’s past, scientists reveal the potential for even more massive, and potentially destructive, eruptions from the sun

Conceptual illustration of envy. A set of balance scales in the middle, with a sour-looking person sitting on the floor in the dark on the left. That person is looking enviously at a person on the right side of the scales, who is standing in a spotlight smiling brightly and and wearing a “First Place” rosette.
The Mind

The two sides of envy at work

By Lesley Evans Ogden

When workers feel envious of their peers, it can undermine collaborations — or inspire them to do better on the job. Can organizations harness the green gremlin to boost productivity?

Colorized image of a single Salmonella bacterium. It is shaped like a stubby rod and has multiple slim, whip-like fibers coming from it. The rod is colored red and the whips — flagella — are colored yellow. The background is dark.
Food & Environment

Salmonella: Why it’s a chicken and egg thing

By Maureen O'Hagan

Eliminating this food-poisoning bacterium from poultry is tricky — not least because rapid, precise tests are still unavailable. Researchers are looking at vaccines, probiotics, prebiotics and even essential oils as ways to reduce contamination on the farm.

Physical World

To understand airborne transmission of disease, follow the flow

Viruses and bacteria travel in fluids, such as the air we breathe. Studying exhalations, toilet flushes and rain drops, with math and modeling, can sharpen the big-picture view of how to prevent infections.

By Anil Ananthaswamy
Health & Disease

Why don’t kids tend to get as sick from Covid-19?

Some children have been hospitalized and some have died, but at a tiny fraction of the adult rate. As children head back to school, scientists are hoping that research will provide answers.

By Sara Reardon

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