Science

Explaining the Global Warming Hiatus

Grappling with climate-change nuance in a toxic political environment

Its a climate-change mystery: As global warming has plateaued, scientists are more certain than ever about the long term trend. But where did the heat go?

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ADHD meds like Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, and Vyvanse have been called "smart pills" for their ability to bestow superhuman powers of concentration. In the U.S. especially, where about 11 percent of schoolchildren have an ADHD diagnosis, parents and teachers embrace the drugs as a way to get kids to sit still and pay attention.

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The Supreme Court decided today that human gene sequences cannot be patented, invalidating some of Myriad Genetics's patent claims on the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. But it was only a partial victory for scientists and patients' rights advocates—the Court upheld the company's patents on the cDNA versions of those genes. What's cDNA? Clearly the Court doesn't understand, or else wouldn't have made such a ruling. 

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I don’t have a whole lot in common with Angelina Jolie, but we do share a terrifying family history of breast cancer. Like Jolie, I lost my mother to cancer—mine at 49, Jolie’s at 56. Also like Jolie, I decided to have the genetic test for the BRCA1 and 2 mutations, which, if present, indicate a severely increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer over a lifetime.

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The Lethality of Loneliness

We now know how it can ravage our body and brain

For the first time in history, we understand how isolation can ravage the body and brain. Now, what should we do about it?

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TMI Science

How much do you want to know about your gut?

We are in collective denial about what ingesting a meal really entails.

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Why Do Grandmothers Exist?

Solving an evolutionary mystery

By the cold logic of evolutionary science, post-menopausal women lack obvious utility. That they manage to attain old age is a mystery that requires explanation.

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I can say with a fair degree of certainty that there is no wisdom in psychopathy.

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How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society

The scary consequences of the grayest generation.

We are having kids later than ever. We have no idea what we're getting into.

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Cahalan understands her memoir as an illumination of absence more than an act of retrospection.

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