Starship — the spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — is back on a launch mount in South Texas and ready for its eighth test flight. On Monday night, SpaceX flight controllers halted their countdown with about 30 seconds to go, and then decided several minutes later that they … Read more
At a confirmation hearing for Dr. Marty Makary on Thursday, senators focused heavily on the safety of the abortion pill, with Republican lawmakers urging him to restrict access and Democratic lawmakers demanding that he maintain its current availability. Dr. Makary, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, signaled that he shared Republicans’ … Read more
NASA is aiming to send astronauts back to the moon, because that is what President Trump set as the destination of the agency’s human spaceflight program during his first term. On Dec. 11, 2017, Mr. Trump signed what the White House called Space Policy Directive 1, which stated that “the United States will lead the … Read more
The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency filed a motion in federal court on Thursday pulling back the safety regulations, introduced last year under former president Joe Biden. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that … Read more
On Feb. 8, Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in psychology at Emory University, nervously announced to the online world that she was planning a national protest in defense of science. “I’ve never done this before, but we gotta be the change we want to see in the world,” she wrote in a post on Bluesky, … Read more
Dr. Marty Makary may face sharp questions from senators about whether he will defend the Food and Drug Administration against staff cutbacks and industry pressure on Thursday, although he is still expected to sail through his confirmation hearing to become the agency’s commissioner. Dr. Makary built his reputation as a contrarian in the medical field, … Read more
Novo Nordisk will cut the price of its blockbuster weight loss medication Wegovy to $499 per month for certain patients who pay using their own money instead of going through insurance, the drug maker said on Wednesday. The move could cause more patients to start taking the drug. But the impact stands to be limited, … Read more
Postpartum depression affects about one in every seven women who give birth, but little is known about what happens in the brains of pregnant women who experience it. A new study begins to shed some light. Researchers scanned the brains of dozens of women in the weeks before and after childbirth and found that two … Read more
Women’s brains are superior to men’s in at least in one respect — they age more slowly. And now, a group of researchers reports that they have found a gene in mice that rejuvenates female brains. Humans have the same gene. The discovery suggests a possible way to help both women and men avoid cognitive … Read more
Florida’s insurance regulator has demanded an unusually intrusive trove of data on millions of prescription drugs filled in the state last year, including the names of patients taking the medications, their dates of birth and doctors they’ve seen. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation in January sought this information from pharmacy benefit managers like UnitedHealth’s … Read more