Health

The future of fertility, from artificial wombs to AI-assisted IVF

A look back at the history of infertility treatments and ahead to the tech that could change everything we thought we knew about reproduction.

Kristin Houser

Overlay of hands and abstract patterns in purple and blue tones, symbolizing hope for Parkinson's cure.

Drugs

The exciting research that may cure Parkinson’s

GeneCode is developing a drug it hopes won’t just alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms but also protect and restore patient’s neural health.

Kevin Dickinson

A child sitting on a couch in a dimly lit room, holding and looking intently at a tablet, as if testing the Goldilocks hypothesis for the perfect screen brightness.

Mental Health

Beyond screen time: Rethinking kids’ tech use with the “Goldilocks hypothesis”

The “Goldilocks hypothesis” asks parents to think beyond screen time and consider the habits that teens build around technology use.

Kevin Dickinson

Medicine

Insulin pills could end the need for painful injections

Insulin pills designed to be dissolved in the mouth appear to overcome a major hurdle holding back the development of oral insulin.

Kristin Houser

Mental Health

This 20-year chart of depression diagnoses shows an incredible shift

People are being diagnosed with depression earlier than in the past because of a decrease in stigma and better diagnostic guidelines.

Saloni Dattani at Our World in Data

First-of-its-kind trial shows AI beat humans at analyzing heart scans

Echonet, an AI trained to assess a measure of heart function, has outperformed trained technicians in both accuracy and efficiency.

Kristin Houser

The genome of the immortal jellyfish has been sequenced

Researchers have sequenced the genome of the immortal jellyfish, revealing insights into its ability to reverse its life cycle.

B. David Zarley

Synthetic DNA nasal spray could stop COVID, flu, and other viruses

Cal-Berkeley researchers have developed a nasal spray which uses DNA-like molecules to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from replicating.

B. David Zarley

Coronavirus

FDA authorizes updated COVID-19 boosters

The FDA has authorized Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s updated COVID-19 boosters, which target the now-dominant Omicron subvariants.

Kristin Houser

Psychology

An ancient technique can improve your attention span

Life's modern distractions, such as news and social media, have overwhelmed our evolutionarily designed attention spans.

Kevin Dickinson

Researchers are fighting to clear brain fog

Brain fog’s prevalence among long COVID patients has researchers focusing on understanding, and treating, it.

B. David Zarley

Medicine

5 drugs that changed the world (and what went wrong)

Anesthesia, penicillin, antibiotics, diazepam, and the birth control pill have all radically changed our lives.

Philippa Martyr

Medicine

“Synthetic biomarkers” could catch your cancer in the future

When the body’s own biomarkers aren’t enough, researchers have begun creating their own to help fight cancer.

B. David Zarley

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