Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Explainer: What is a vaccine?

    Vaccines give the body’s natural defense system a boost against infectious disease.

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  2. Climate

    Hunting the mysterious source of a global illness

    Doctors and scientists around the world are scouring the environment for the elusive cause of Kawasaki disease, a harmful childhood illness.

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  3. Brain

    Adolescents are brain-dense — and that’s good

    Gray matter is densely packed in adolescents, brain researchers now find. This may explain how developing adults cope with decreasing gray matter volume.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Therapeutic robots may soon swim within the body

    Scientists are designing tiny robots that may one day do work inside the human body.

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  5. Brain

    Tongues ‘taste’ water by sensing sour

    Water doesn’t taste like much, but our tongues need to detect it somehow. They may do it by sensing acid, a new study shows.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Think you’re not biased? Think again

    Everyone holds some unconscious bias about certain social groups, even when they don’t mean to. Scientists are learning how people can fight such implicit biases.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Your gut’s germs may decide whether white bread or whole wheat is best — for you

    Surprise! Gut microbes may determine how your body responds to starches in the diet.

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  8. Animals

    Orangs nurse young for more than eight years!

    Orangutan moms and babies have been tricky to study in the wild, so researchers used dental tests to reveal a record setting nursing period.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Scientists Say: Acoustic

    Acoustic is an adjective used to describe something involving sound. It’s also a noun that refers to the branch of physics that studies sound.

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  10. Animals

    Popular pesticide may harm bee flight

    In a lab experiment, honeybees flew sluggishly after eating pesticide-tainted food.

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  11. Animals

    How a flamingo balances on one leg

    Flamingos are so good at balancing on just one leg that they can snooze that way with little effort.

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  12. Chemistry

    To test pill coatings, try a stomach in a flask

    Which pain reliever should you buy? The tablet, gel tab or compressed caplet? A teen did an experiment to find out.

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