Science

Lila Gleitman, whose pioneering work in linguistics and cognitive science broadened our understanding of how language works and how children learn it, died on August 8 in a Philadelphia hospital. She was 91.Her daughter Claire Gleitman…

Underestimating Wildfire’s EffectThe specific effects of wildfire pollution on the skin are less clear, in part because every wildfire is unique depending on what it burns (building materials? trees? bushes?), its intensity and its…

The floods that killed at least 20 people in Tennessee last weekend arrived with shocking speed and force — seemingly a case study of the difficulties of protecting people from explosive rainstorms as climate change gets worse.A closer look…

Invisible work is no stranger to an adult female Jacobin hummingbird.When she lays an egg, the male hummingbird, which played an equal role in conception, is nowhere to be seen. It is only thanks to their hours of weaving that the egg has…

For Moira Smith and her mother, after months of isolation, July promised a glimmer of normalcy. The two flew from Alaska to Houston and visited the family to celebrate their cousin's granddaughter's first birthday. Ms. Smith's mother…

Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine has been linked to an increased risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, confirms a major new study from Israel. But the side effect remains rare, and Covid-19 is more likely to cause…

Beijing has tightly controlled the World Health Organization's efforts to investigate the origin of the outbreak, rejecting the health agency's recent request for a second phase of an investigation that would examine laboratory theory in…

TOWNER, N.D. — Darrell Rice stood in a field of corn he’d planted in early June, to be harvested in the fall and chopped up to feed the hundreds of cows and calves he raises in central North Dakota.“It should be six, seven, eight foot…

About a third of adults in the United States have high blood sugar levels, a condition called prediabetes that often precedes type 2 diabetes and can progress to a full-blown disease. Most are unaware that they have the condition that…

Most pesticides will kill them, and they are easy to catch and shatter. They also die easily when the heat or frost arrives. The most aggressive and effective way to stop their spread is to remove one of their favorite food sources: the…