5 tips when consulting ‘Dr.’ ChatGPT
For better or worse, many people are asking artificial intelligence chatbots for health information and advice. According to a June 2024 poll from the health research group KFF, about 1 in 6 adults do...
Top senators slam Pentagon boat strikes
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the Pentagon had refused for weeks to share with Congress key information about its strikes on marine vessels that the...
Nasa gets moon lander plan from SpaceX, Blue Origin
Nasa wants ideas of how to speed up the return of its astronauts to the surface of the moon. And now, it has some. On Wednesday, the space companies owned by two of the richest people on Earth —...
Losing international students could devastate many US colleges
Xiaofeng Wan, a former admissions officer at Amherst College, now works as a private consultant to international students who want to come to the United States. This week, as he held meetings in China...
A mathematician who makes the best of things
The words “optimal” and “optimize” derive from the Latin “optimus,” or “best,” as in “make the best of things.” Alessio Figalli, a mathematician at the university ETH Zurich,...
6 things we get wrong about sleep
There’s no question that sleep is important for your health. Without enough of it, your risk of developing diseases such as dementia, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes can increase, and...
Cable car drops passengers onto mountain in Türkiye
A cable car ferrying passengers in a mountainous area of southern Türkiye broke apart after colliding with part of the metal structure supporting it on Friday. It sent its eight terrified occupants...
Patients hate ‘forever’ drugs. Is Wegovy different?
Most people, study after study shows, don’t take the prescribed medicines. It doesn’t matter what they are — statins, high blood pressure drugs, drugs to lower blood sugar, asthma drugs. Either...
Turning to an old model to cut screen time
This time of year, everyone asks what you like least about your life, but they phrase it as, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” My biggest regret of 2023 was my relationship with my...
At Meta, millions of underage users were an open secret
Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users younger than 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019, yet it “disabled only a fraction” of those accounts, according to a newly...
How to Know if you’re iron-deficient, and what to do about it
Iron is an essential nutrient for many things our bodies do every day, and yet more than one-third of adult women of reproductive age in the United States are deficient. Menstrual bleeding and...
Why your grip strength matters, and how to improve it
A solid grip is a huge help when playing sports or doing household chores — but it has also been repeatedly tied to a longer, healthier life. Partly this is because people with strong hands tend to...
Do you really need to shower every day?
If you feel the need to shower daily, you’re certainly not alone: In one 2021 survey of more than 5,700 U.S. adults, over 60% of the respondents said that they showered at least once each day. ...
Palestinian reporter is killed with 11 family members
Mohammed Abu Hatab, a correspondent for a Palestinian television channel, and 11 members of his family were killed in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday. Palestine TV,...
Electric planes start to take to the skies
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Chris Caputo stood on the tarmac at Burlington International Airport in Vermont in early October and looked to the clouds in the distance. He had piloted military and commercial...
The average human body temperature is not 98.6 degrees
Over the past few decades, evidence has been mounting that the average human body temperature is not really 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, most people’s baseline is a little bit cooler. The...
Infecting mosquitoes before they infect us
In a laboratory in downtown Medellín, Colombia, it is lunchtime: A technician in a white coat carries a loaded tray into a steamy nursery. She walks between rows of white mesh cages, each the size of...
How a series of ATC lapses nearly killed 131 people
On a foggy Saturday morning in February, an air traffic controller cleared a FedEx cargo plane to land on Runway 18L at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. A Southwest Airlines jet was on...
New AI tool diagnoses brain tumors on the operating table
Once their scalpels reach the edge of a brain tumor, surgeons are faced with an agonizing decision: cut away some healthy brain tissue to ensure the entire tumor is removed, or give the healthy tissue...
Afghans mourn unimaginable loss from quake
ZINDA JAN DISTRICT, Afghanistan — Wails echoed across what was left of the village when the ambulance arrived. Inside was the body of a 12-year-old girl, Roqia. She had died in a nearby hospital...