Elon Musk threw federal workers into further confusion and alarm on Saturday when he ordered them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation. Shortly after his demand, which he posted on X, civil servants across the government received an email from the … Read more
Outbreaks of measles in parts of Texas and New Mexico have sickened nearly 100 people, according to state health officials who warned that the number of cases was expected to rise. An outbreak has been spreading through the South Plains region of Texas since late January, the Texas Department of State Health Services said on … Read more
Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab. But, earlier … Read more
The science journalist and author Ed Yong likes to joke that during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, the impact and reach of his reporting for The Atlantic turned him into “a character in the season of ‘Pandemic.’” Indeed, his Covid journalism — which documented the earliest stages of the pandemic and made him … Read more
As the reality sets in that the United States is drastically diminishing its foreign assistance to developing countries, an urgent conversation is starting among governments, philanthropists, and global health and development organizations. It is centered on one crucial question: Who will fill this gap? Last year, the United States contributed about $12 billion to global … Read more
The Trump administration has blocked key parts of the federal government’s apparatus for funding biomedical research, effectively halting progress on much of the country’s future work on illnesses like cancer and addiction despite a federal judge’s order to release grant money. The blockage, outlined in internal government memos, stems from an order forbidding health officials … Read more
A federal judge on Friday agreed to extend an order blocking the National Institutes of Health from reducing grant funding to institutions conducting medical and scientific research until she could come to a more lasting decision. Judge Angel Kelley of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts had temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s … Read more
In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration hired experts in surgical robots and pioneers in artificial intelligence. It scooped up food chemists, lab-safety monitors and diabetes specialists who helped make needle pricks and test strips relics of the past. Trying to keep up with breakneck advances in medical technology and the demands of a … Read more
The banks of the Thames River have hosted human settlements for thousands of years, from Neolithic huts to the soaring skyscrapers of London. Evidence of bygone civilizations has been steadily deposited on the river’s muddy bottom for modern archaeologists to mine. Now, researchers in London have dated dozens of bones dredged from the river, creating … Read more
Two dairy workers in Michigan may have transmitted bird flu to their pet cats last May, suggests a new study published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In one household, infected cats may also have passed the virus to other people in the home, but limited evidence makes it difficult to … Read more