Explore
Sessions
The average annual cost of cancer drugs in the US now exceeds $100,000 and the price of more than 200 generic drugs doubled from 2013 to 2014. That puts them far out of reach for countess ailing people, including many with decent insurance. The industry argues that it needs the revenue for the complex and expensive research that leads to better treatments, but pharmaceutic...
If we are lucky enough to reach age 85, we face a 25 percent chance of dementia, and the odds worsen with time. Some 50 million people worldwide were living with dementia in 2017, and that number is predicted to double every 20 years so that by 2050, the afflicted population will reach 132 million. The most common cause is Alzheimer’s disease, an invariably progressive con...
Physicist Brian Greene explains the Higgs boson particle, also known as the "God Particle," and why you should care about it. This energetic and delightful talk will make you wish your high school physics teacher taught like this. Greene says the feat of finding such a particle is akin to "trying to hear a tiny, delicate whisper over the massive thundering, deafening din o...
Polio is likely to be wiped off the planet in the next two years, a huge triumph for global health. Seventy-four cases of polio were reported in 2015, in contrast to 350,000 when eradication efforts began in 1988. Although polio remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is now a push towards the finish line, with creative strategies in place to attract religious l...
The deaths of children under age five fell by 50 percent to below six million in 2015, the first time that has happened; in 1990, there were 12.7 million under-five deaths. In the same period, there have been major gains in reducing child malnutrition and improving maternal health. Those successes are a reminder that simple, affordable solutions are within reach, and that...
Headline news was made in 2016 when the detection of gravitational waves, caused by the collision of two black holes, was confirmed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). And earlier this month, another ripple was detected! The observed ripples in the fabric of space-time validate a key prediction in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativit...
Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR — a revolutionary new technology that she helped create — to make heritable changes in human embryos. The cheapes...
The ability to endure is the essential trait in every extreme athletic endeavor. Hundred-mile races, Himalayan Mountain expeditions, and cross-continental treks all require humans to push harder and achieve more than we ever thought possible. How important is the delicate interplay between mind and body in the struggle to keep pushing despite an agonizing will to stop? Wha...