"Relationships with animals are simple," notes one researcher. In a year when life feels fraught, pets have been healers, helping human companions get exercise, quell anxiety and make new friends.
A newly approved drug can extend the lives of children with progeria, a rare disorder that causes rapid aging. The drug is the result of one family's effort to help a child with the fatal condition.
When Kansas issued a mask mandate, 81 counties opted out. Researchers found coronavirus infection rates rose sharply in the opt-out counties, while falling in those that required masks.
This week’s Medical Minute, Dr. Joseph Hobbs, discusses research into how radiation and chemotherapy can be prevented from damaging or killing healthy cells near the cancer it is supposed to combat.
In 2015, the mosquito-borne virus Zika exploded in South America. Health experts predicted it would erupt in Africa. But a major outbreak never happened. Now scientists think they understand why.
Scientists have used a NASA probe way out in space, beyond Pluto, to measure visible light that's not connected to any known source such as stars or galaxies.
People who get more deep sleep appear less likely to develop Alzheimer's. That may be because this phase of sleep allows the brain to clear out waste products.
There's growing evidence that a lack of deep sleep increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Scientists say that's because during deep sleep, the brain removes toxins associated with Alzheimer's.
This week’s Medical Minute discusses the mechanism by which CBD helps battle the often-deadly lung inflammation and damage that can accompany a COVID-19 infection.
Harold McGee talks about how our sense of smell affects taste, why things smell the way they do and the ways different chemicals combine to create surprising (and sometimes distasteful) odors.
Gen. Gustave Perna says as soon as the FDA deems a vaccine safe and effective, his team is ready to coordinate deployment of tens of millions of doses as early as next month.
COVID-19 can cause symptoms that go well beyond the lungs, from strokes to organ failure. To explain these widespread injuries, researchers are studying how the virus affects the vascular system.
A team of independent advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a science-based outline for deploying a vaccine when it's ready. The goal is to stop deaths and viral spread fast.
Duke anthropologist Brian Hare argues that humans evolved in a way that left us more cooperative and friendlier than our now extinct human cousins, like Neanderthals and Denisovans.
