April 1, 20254 min readNIH Director Removes Four Main Scientists amid Massive Staff PurgeThe Trump Administration has fired four leaders and thousands of employees at the National Institutes of Health in "one of the darkest days"By Max Kozlov & Nature magazine Jay Bhattacharya took office as director of the US National Institutes of Health on April 1, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesOn health economist Jay Bhattacharyas first day as head of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the chiefs of four of the 27 institutes and centres that make up his agencyincluding the countrys top infectious-diseases officialwere removed from their posts. The unprecedented move comes amid massive cuts to research at the NIH.The directors of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) were informed late on 31 March that they were being placed on administrative leave. Together, these leaders were in charge of US$9 billion in funding at the NIH.At least some directors were offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that provides medical care to Indigenous people living in the United States. (The HHS is the parent agency of the NIH.) HHS proposes to reassign you as part of a broader effort to strengthen the Department and more effectively promote the health of the American people, reads an e-mail to the directors that Nature has obtained. This underserved community deserves the highest quality of service, and HHS needs individuals like you to deliver that service, it says, offering reassignment to locations such as Alaska, Montana and Oklahoma.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.These large-scale reassignments are unheard of for the NIH, the worlds largest public funder of biomedical research: although the director of the NIH and the director of one of its institutes, the National Cancer Institute, are political appointees chosen by the US president, the other 26 directors of the NIHs institutes and centres are not typically replaced when presidential administrations change. (NIMHD director Eliseo Prez-Stable, for example, had been in his role for nearly 10 years, under three different US presidents.) But US President Donald Trump, who took office in January, has not been following the norms of past administrations during his second presidency.This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history in my 50 years in the business, says Michael Osterholm, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. These are going to be huge losses to the research community.When asked for a response, the NIH directed Nature to the HHS for comment. The NIHs top communications officer, Renate Myles, was also placed on administrative leave, according to an agency staff member, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press. The HHS did not respond to Natures queries by publication time.A consolidation of powerThe removal of the directors follows an announcement last week by HHS chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr that his agency, which includes the NIH, would be reducing its workforce by 20,000 employees, or about one-quarter of its staff members. Layoffs have largely been targeted at administrative staff, but many scientists, including those that run HIV prevention programmes and research have also been affected.The layoffs will challenge the longstanding status that the NIHs institutes and centres have had within the agencyas semi-autonomous entities. Legislative, communications, IT and other administrative workers within each institute received termination notices early on 1 April, a move designed to consolidate power under the NIH director. NIH will cease to function after the RIFs [reductions in force]; it will take months to get things back online administratively, says another NIH official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.In his first e-mail to agency staff members on 1 April, which was obtained by Nature, Bhattacharya wrote: These reductions in the workforce will have a profound impact on key NIH administrative functions ... and will require an entirely new approach to how we carry them out.Bhattacharya also wrote that he wanted the NIH to focus on reproducibility and rigour, transparency and academic freedom, even as the agency on 28 March scrapped its scientific integrity policy aimed at prohibiting political influence on government science.Meanwhile, in the past month, the NIH has terminated more than 700 research grants funding studies of an ever-growing list of topics: projects on transgender populations; gender identity; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce; COVID-19; vaccine hesitancy; and environmental justice.Of these grant cancellations, a disproportionate number come from research funded at the NIAID, the NICHD, the NIMHD and the NINR. These institutes fund many projects that clash with Trumps political ideology, a possible explanation for why these directors were targeted.The NIAIDwhich was being led by infectious-disease physician Jeanne Marrazzo and, before her, by Anthony Faucihas been especially scrutinized by Trump and other Republican politicians for its alleged deficiencies in the oversight of grants funding research on risky pathogens and the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Conservative policymakers introduced a bill in February that proposes dismantling the NIAID and splitting it into three separate institutes.The treatment of these directors is frankly unconscionable, says Monica Bertagnolli, former NIH director under Trumps predecessor, Joe Biden, a Democrat. These are all outstanding leaders, who were let go without accounting for the harm that could be done with the loss of research productivity and the loss of programmes delivering life-saving treatments.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 1, 2025.

March 31, 20253 min readSpaceX Hits New Milestone with Fram2, the First-Ever Crewed Polar MissionThe privately funded Fram2 mission is the first ever to take astronauts into polar orbitand the latest sign of a new normal for human spaceflightBy Lee Billings edited by Dean VisserA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Fram2 mission astronauts aboard soars into a polar orbit after lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on March 31, 2025. Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty ImagesIn some respects, the most notable thing about Fram2, the private four-person space mission that launched on Monday night on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is its polar orbit. Named after the Norwegian polar-exploration vessel Fram, the Fram2 mission marks the first time humans have occupied this particular slot around our planet, a swooping ellipse that takes a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft between Earths North and South Poles in about 45 minutes. Especially when seen from a panoramic cupola attached to the spacecraft, the unique views offered by Fram2s 430-kilometer-high orbital perch are breathtakingly cooleven leaving aside the vast expanses of polar ice far below.But the notional noteworthiness of Fram2s three-to-five-day stay in polar orbit ironically belies something even more remarkable: privately funded human spaceflight is now considered so routine that any such mission seeking to make headlines desperately needs some attention-grabbing first.Why Did Fram2 Go to Polar Orbit?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.None of the 22 life-science-focused experiments carried onboard Fram2 demanded that it reach polar orbit, which hadnt been attempted in previous crewed missions because of the increased amount of fuel required to get there. (Fram2 flew southward from its launch site, whereas most space missions have targeted more equatorial orbits and have launched toward the east to receive a fuel-saving boost from Earths rotation). Simply put, aside from the desire for some novel gimmick, there was no clear rationale for SpaceXs mission planners or Fram2s leader, cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, to have chosen a polar orbit in the first place.Why This MattersNone of this means that sending humans into that orbit isnt a legitimately impressive feat. It isall the more so because SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket not only safely delivered the Crew Dragon to polar orbit; it also had enough leftover fuel to still perform a pinpoint soft landing on an awaiting barge in the Atlantic Ocean. But Fram2s polarity overshadows the more mundane but no less astonishing new normal, in which private human spaceflight has rapidly shifted from the stuff of science fiction to a decidedly unexceptional reality.Two screen captures from the livestream of SpaceXs launch of the private Fram2 mission, showing the glowing nozzle of the Falcon 9 rocket (left) and the spacesuit-clad Fram2 crew in the Crew Dragon capsule (right).SpaceXConsider that this is SpaceXs 17th crewed mission, of which about a third have been privately funded. Wang and his three crewmatesfilmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, roboticist Rabea Rogge and polar explorer Eric Philipsall rode in Resilience, the Crew Dragon vehicle that has flown three other crews (two of them private) to space. Resiliences previous private missions were both commanded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who has since parlayed his SpaceX-powered passion for spaceflight into a nomination to lead NASA on behalf of the Trump administration. And the Fram2 launch occurred scarcely two weeks after the liftoff of SpaceXs NASA-funded Crew-10 mission to the International Space Stationthe shortest gap yet between the companys crewed launches, all of which have taken place as SpaceX has maintained a frenetic record-setting pace of uncrewed commercial launches and has continued the wildly ambitious development of its potentially revolutionary Starship vehicle.Whats NextOne might be tempted to think this is merely a reflection of SpaceXs success, but the rising numbers of legitimate competitors for the companys launch-industry dominance suggest otherwise. Even if SpaceX somehow falters, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, United Launch Alliance and other launch providers all appear on track to offer broadly similar services in coming years, suggesting that this bold new era of spaceflight is here to stay.

April 1, 20253 min readTrump Administration Cancels NIH Scientific Integrity PolicyThe National Institutes of Health said it pulled the policy because of language on diversity and inclusion, in line with directives from the Trump administrationBy Ariel Wittenberg & E&E News Mark Wilson/NewsmakersCLIMATEWIRE | The National Institutes of Health has rescinded a scientific integrity policy intended to protect research and communications from political interference, citing the policy's commitment to diversity and inclusion.The policy was rescinded Friday evening to ensure alignment with the administrations priorities, according to a notice posted by NIH. The notice says NIH, which is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world, will now follow the Department of Health and Human Services' broader scientific integrity policy.NIH, the notice says, remains committed to upholding the principles of scientific integrity.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The NIH policy, which was last updated during the final months of the Biden administration, included a commitment that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) are integral components of the entire scientific process."Attention to DEIA can improve the success of the scientific workforce, foster innovation in the conduct and use of science, and provide for more equitable participation in science by diverse communities," the policy said.No such diversity language is included in the HHS policy NIH is now meant to follow.HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the policy was pulled due to the diversity language. The NIH policy, he said, had been weaponized by the Biden administration to inject harmful DEI and gender ideology into research.Rescinding the policy, he said, will allow NIH to restore science to its golden standard and protect the integrity of science through the HHS policy.The move has alarmed scientists and public health experts who argue that the Trump administration has already politicized science by eliminating HHS offices focused on health equity and climate change, canceling research grants on racial health disparities and other topics the administration does not like, and removing health data from the HHS website.When someone rolls back a policy, the natural question is if they are doing that because they know they would be violating it were it to remain in place, said Liz Borkowski, director of health policy management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.The agency's rescission of its scientific integrity policy came during NIH Director Jay Bhattacharyas second week on the job.Bhattacharya himself has conducted federally funded research into racial health disparities, including authoring a 2012 paper that found black patients had higher mortality rates following heart transplants than white patients. During his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya told senators that he would not allow NIH to be influenced by President Donald Trumps executive orders to restrict funding and communications for initiatives that promote diversity, inclusion and equity.The health needs of minorities in this country are a vital priority for me, he told Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.). I dont see anything in the presidential orders that contradict that.Environmental and climate health researchers who receive funding from NIH are already fearful that the Trump administration could target their grants. Many NIH grants for climate-related research examine how the health effects of climate change, like heat-related illnesses, can have outsize impacts on communities of color and marginalized communities.Rescinding the NIH scientific integrity policy puts all science at risk, said Jennifer Jones, director for science and democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.In the last week alone, she said, HHS cut 10,000 staff members and forced out the Food and Drug Administrations top vaccine official. In his resignation letter, Dr. Peter Marks accused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of pushing misinformation about vaccine safety as measles continues to spread across the country.It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies, Marks wrote.Marks departure underscores the need for scientific integrity policies throughout each of HHSs agencies, Jones said, arguing that workers at NIH should be able to report accusations of political interference to integrity officials within their own agency.We need policies in place to protect the scientists who remain at the agency and who remain funded, and to protect us from this conspiracy-minded administration, she said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

April 1, 20254 min readFour-Year Olds Respond to Misinformation by Exercising Instinctive Skepticism MusclesChildren ages four to seven demonstrate natural fact checking skills when put to a test with zebras and space aliensBy Gary Stix edited by Dean Visser Sanjeri/Getty ImagesSocial scientists have long studied how children develop a sense of trust in others and how they judge whether someone they are talking to is telling the truth. Less attention has been devoted to how young children judge what is true or false in their early encounters with social media.That has started to change as the online world has become a routine fixture of childrens lives. By the time they reach the age of nine, one third of American children have come into contact with at least one social media platform. By the teen years, social media has become young peoples main source of news about the world around them. An immediate challenge for these neophytes is distinguishing between what is real and fake onlinea struggle exacerbated by AI-based chatbots that deliver relentless streams of untruths.One obvious solution is to isolate a child from such lies and distortions, but a safe refuge has proved elusive. The YouTube Kids channel faced parents outrage in 2017, when inappropriately sexual, lewd and violent content turned up after the platforms filters labeled it child-friendly. (YouTube Kids responded by increasing parental controls.) Another possible approach involves prebunking: inoculating kids to misinformation by letting them know that what they are about to see is false. Similar techniques are used to alert adults about falsehoods related to climate change or vaccinations.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.A different and perhaps more inventive tack entails accepting the inevitability of children spending time online and prodding them to become their own fact-checkers. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, tested such an approach by asking whether children could learn to recognize misinformationand to use that ability to develop their own fact-checking skills.Evan Orticio, a graduate student in the research group of Berkeley psychologist Celeste Kidd, and colleagues designed a study to investigate the natural fact-checking abilities of young children. The researchers went to parks near campus to interview families who might be willing to participate and recruited 122 children from four to seven years of age for a gamified fact-checking exercise. We were looking, Orticio says, at whether children can adjust their level of skepticism according to the quality of information theyve seen before and translate that into a reasonable policy for how much they should fact-check new information.The kids who joined the study were handed a tablet with content that was presented in the format of either an e-book or a search engine. They were shown a series of statements with accompanying images.Hippos swim in water, read one statement.Hippos swim in outer space, read another.For each statement, the kids were asked to indicate whether they thought it was factual while they inspected realistic images of, say, zebras or hippos.Then they were asked to look at a different page on the tablet that showed 20 space aliens called zorpies. One zorpie had its face exposed to reveal that it had three eyes. The kids then were asked to confirm whether the statement all zorpies have three eyes was, in fact, true. They were given the opportunity to tap on any number of the 20 zorpies to remove the aliens sunglasses and count their eyes before deciding whether the claim was factual.Children who had been exposed to more falsehoods when they were being quizzed about animals in the first part of the exercise removed the glasses from more zorpies, on average, to count the number of eyes. They were more careful to fact-check claims, so they spent longer and sought out more evidence before just accepting this claim about aliens, Orticio says. Kids who had less exposure to false claims did little fact-checkinga conclusion further bolstered by a computer simulation of the games. The results of this research were published in Nature Human Behaviour last October.The conclusions drawn from this research, Orticio says, suggest that oversanitizing childrens media consumptionallowing exposure only to sites labeled kid-friendlymay be a mistake. It can prevent the development of skills that allow a child to discriminate between true and false.Slowly but steadily, the need to teach children to identify misinformation at a young age is gaining recognition. Finlands public school system, for example, now incorporates lessons on media literacy (including how to spot fake news) that begin in preschool.Judith Danovitch, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Louisville, who was not involved in the research, called the studies methods clever. The results are a great starting point for solving the puzzle of how to help children become informed consumers of information, she says. But, she adds, more research is needed before the authors methods can be adapted into a practical intervention. As the authors point out, it has yet to be seen whether these effects last or extend into other domains.One way to achieve that goal, Orticio proposes, would be to distribute something like the researchers fact-checking game on social media or even on childrens websites such as YouTube Kids. Childrens skepticism is context-specific, Orticio says, so the key is to give them safe opportunities to practice critical thinking in the real, digital world.

OpinionApril 1, 20253 min readAs Happened in Texas, Ignoring EPA Science Will Allow Pollution and Cancer to FesterTrump administration plans to destroy EPA science will leave the air we breathe and the water we drink more pollutedBy Jennifer Sass Cows graze near the Oak Grove Power Plant in Robertson County, Texas, subject to EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules to reduce carbon emissions and mercury pollution under the Biden administration. Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesIve spent my scientific career asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set stronger, lawful public-health protections from toxic chemicals. I do not always agree with EPAs final decisions, but I respect the scientific process and am always grateful for the agencys scientistsour public brain trust.In one of the most dangerous acts against facts and science, the Trump administration announced in March that it will shutter the EPAs independent research office. This will cut more than 1,000 scientists and technical experts who help the agency determine if, for example, a chemical poses a cancer risk, or a factory is polluting a nearby river. At the same time, Trumps EPA has installed former oil and chemical industry lobbyists to write the rules to regulate those industries.Theres a lot of empty talk about making us healthy coming from this administration. Future generations will be even worse off.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What is left unsaid by the Trump EPA is this: eliminating scientists from the EPA is kneecapping environmental safeguards. Every major environmental statutethe Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Superfund law governing cleanup requirementsrelies on EPA scientists to calculate how hazardous chemicals are, how people and wildlife may be exposed and what health and ecological harms may occur. Questions critical to environmental and community protections are researched, such as: Will exposure to this chemical in my workplace increase my risk of breast cancer? Is the air quality from power plant emissions safe for the neighboring community? What is an acceptable standard for PFAS forever chemicals in our drinking water?A drone view of the Sulphur Bank mercury mine Superfund site in Clearlake Oaks, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024.Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty ImagesInstead, the Trump team is yet again swinging its chainsaw, this time against independent science to favor polluting industries. Consequent to gutting scientific inquiries by the government and decimating academic scientific research, only one type of scientific research will be available for setting environmental standards: polluter research. And thats trouble. The public is right to distrust polluter-sponsored science; see tobacco science and the myth of safe nuclear waste for starters.Just ask Texas. The state of Texass vigorous defense of ethylene oxide, a well-known carcinogen, provides an ongoing example of the perils to public health from science done by a polluting industry with a financial interest in the outcome and the support of a state government hell-bent on rewriting scientific facts about a cancer-causing chemical.In 2016, after nearly 10 years of research and analysis, the EPA determined ethylene oxide, a chemical widely used in facilities in Texas and Louisiana to sterilize medical equipment, was linked to cancerwith a 30 times greater risk than the EPA had previously found. EPAs new risk evaluation included a study of over 300 breast cancer cases in women working with the chemical and adjusted for added risks where children may be exposed.EPAs report was finalized after multiple internal reviews, and reviews from other government agencies, with public input including from Texas and the industry on many occasions. There were also two rounds of public review by the agencys science advisory board.Rather than accept that finding, the chemical industry and Texas regulatory agency issued its own alternative report in 2020 on ethylene oxide. In stark contrast with EPAs evaluation, the Texas assessment is a contractor product sponsored by the ethylene oxide industry with limited public review. It fails to account for the risk of breast cancer and could allow over 3,000 times more air pollution to be emitted, which would drastically increase illnesses and deathsincluding from cancerfor workers and nearby communities.In an effort to compel EPA to adopt Texas cancer-friendly risk estimates nationally, Texas requested a review of its findings by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the nations top source of high-quality trusted science and health advice.In March, the National Academies issued its final report, rebuking the foundations of the Texas analysis, finding it repeatedly deviated from best scientific practices and failed to offer a credible basis for its findings, specifically its determination that ethylene oxide was not associated with breast cancer.Texas efforts to rewrite the history of cancer-causing ethylene oxide as a benign, no-big-deal chemical, is just the beginning of the toxic mayhem and misinformation we can expect from the Trump team to support the financial interests of toxic polluters.Erasing cancer evidence, fudging data, and pretending wild claims are the truth will become the norm, undermining every environmental law and regulation in the nation, and compromising our right to health.All of us will suffer for it.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

March 31, 20253 min readAs Measles Continues to Rise, CDC Muffles Vaccine MessagingBy burying an assessment with updates and recommendations about the U.S.s current measles outbreaks, the CDC has signaled an alarming shift in its public messagingBy Jen Schwartz edited by Jeanna BrynerA health worker prepares a dose of the measles vaccine at a health center in Lubbock, Texas, on February 27, 2025. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty ImagesAs measles outbreaks have continued to spread in 19 U.S. states, leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have buried a new assessment by their own experts that found there is a high risk of catching measles in areas where vaccination rates are low, according to an article published by ProPublica on March 28. The assessment had also called for a messaging strategy to encourage vaccination against the potentially deadly disease. But that plan was aborted, signaling a shift in how the agency may be responding to pressure from vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is now secretary of health and human services.Why It MattersMeasles, caused by a highly contagious and dangerous virus, is very effectively prevented by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. But rates of vaccination in the U.S. have been declining in recent years. Historically, the CDCs messaging strategy for encouraging vaccination emphasized the importance of protecting both oneself and the community at large, especially vulnerable people who cannot yet get vaccinated such as young babies. Whats alarming about the CDCs recent inaction is not just its decision to bury the news, health experts say, but also the agencys justification for doing so: in a statement to ProPublica, a CDC spokesperson wrote, The decision to vaccinate is a personal one, a message that does not reflect long-standing scientific consensus but rather echoes the sentiment of vaccine critics such as Kennedy.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Why Vaccine Skepticism Remains a Big ProblemVaccines, especially the MMR vaccine, have been a target of rampant misinformation in recent years. A single fraudulent study had claimed a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, but that link was debunked years ago. Many other studies have searched for a connection and failed to find one. But lack of trust in vaccine safety remains a big public health issue: A recent survey conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that the percentage of people who believed that already-approved vaccines were unsafe jumped from 9 percent all the way up to 16 percent between 2021 and 2023. Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, which means it does not circulate on its own. But outbreaks are becoming more common. The total number of people who have tested positive for measles so far this year is already higher than any full year since 2019.What This means for the CDC and Public Health MessagingPublic health officials learned a lot from the COVID pandemic. Chief among those lessons was that frequent and transparent communication is key to establishing and maintaining trust with the public, say public health educators. Withholding essential updates and best practices undermines those goals. It can also prevent data and guidance from reaching local public health services in a timely manner.What You Can Do to Protect YourselfIf youre an adult who was vaccinated against MMR as a child, you can check to see if youre still protected with a simple blood test. If you were born between 1957 and 1975, you likely only got one dose of the vaccine instead of the standard two doses that are given today. The second dose boosts the efficacy of the vaccines protection against measles from 93 percent to 97 percent. If you had only received one dose and live in an area where an outbreak is occurring or work in certain environments such as health care facilities, you might want to talk to your health care provider about your risk and consider an additional dose.

March 31, 20252 min readWatch SpaceX Launch Historic Fram2 Crewed Mission over Earths Poles TonightFram2, a first-of-its-kind private mission to send four astronauts into polar orbit around Earth, is about to launchBy Mike Wall & SPACE.com A close-up view of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Crew Dragon spacecraft before a launch at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The four-person Fram2 crew is set to ride similar hardware into polar orbit on the evening of March 31, 2025. Evgeniy Baranov/Alamy Stock PhotoSpaceX plans to launch the Fram2 astronaut mission over Earth's poles tonight (March 31), and you can watch the action live.Fram2's Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule are scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida tonight at 9:46 p.m. ET (0146 GMT on April 1). If that timeline isn't met, there are three additional opportunities available over the next roughly 4.5 hours, at 11:20 p.m. ET (0320 GMT), 12:53 a.m. ET (0453 GMT) and 2:26 a.m ET (0626 GMT).SpaceX will stream the launch live via its website and X account, beginning about an hour before liftoff. Space.com will air the webcast as well.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Fram2 will send four people from four different nations to low Earth orbit for three to five days. Those crewmembers all of them spaceflight rookies are mission commander Chun Wang of Malta, vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway, pilot Rabea Rogge of Germany, and Australian Eric Phillips, Fram2's medical officer and mission specialist.The quartet will circle our planet over both of its poles a trajectory no human spaceflight mission has ever taken before. Fram2 will also break ground with several of its 22 science experiments. For example, the mission will attempt to grow mushrooms and take X-rays of the human body in orbit for the first time."Additionally, after safely returning to Earth, the crew plans to exit from the Dragon spacecraft without additional medical and operational assistance, helping researchers characterize the ability of astronauts to perform unassisted functional tasks after short and long durations in space," SpaceX wrote in a Fram2 mission description.Fram2 will be SpaceX's 17th human spaceflight overall and the sixth conducted for private customers. Among the company's other commercial human flights were Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, both of which were funded and commanded by Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next NASA chief.SpaceX's 11 other crewed missions to date have been voyages to and from the International Space Station for NASA.Copyright 2025 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

March 31, 20256 min readIts Not in Your HeadWhy 50-Degree-F Days Feel Warmer in Spring Than in FallThere are real, physiological reasons why the same temperature feels different in April and OctoberBy Allison Parshall & Kelso Harper edited by Dean Visser Toshi Sasaki/Getty ImagesIn the first few weeks of spring, a 50-degree-Fahrenheit (10-degree-Celsius) day might call for a light jacket or no jacketor even short sleeves, depending on the person. But in the fall, the same weather might have you reaching for a parka.Its not just in your head. The relative warmth of spring is physiological as well as psychological; after a long, biting winter, your body has changed in ways that can make 50 degrees F seem downright balmy.I fully experience this on a regular basis with my work, says Cara Ocobock, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, who studies how the human body adapts to cold. Her work often takes her to Finland, where she studies populations of reindeer herders who spend lots of time in extreme cold.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The human body is very good at acclimatizing to different environmental situations that are not permanentand the changes that your body experiences during this time also arent permanent, she says. Some of these changes involve a heat-generating organ that was only recently discovered in adults.Scientific American spoke with Ocobock to learn more about the changes our bodies undergo during winterincluding to that strange, newfound organand how these changes affect us when the winter chill finally gives way to the warmth of spring.Have you personally experienced this 50 degrees feels warm phenomenon?Yes, I have a story from my last trip to Finland. I was 300 kilometers [185 miles] north of the Arctic Circle during what should have been the coldest time of the year. There were maybe four or five days where it didnt get above 20 degrees Fahrenheit [29 degrees Celsius]. But then five days later, it was in the positive 40s Fahrenheit [or five to 10 degrees C], which should not exist that far north that time of year. After those days of extreme cold, I started sweating [when it went] above freezing. I wouldnt even wear a coat. My body just kind of reversed courselike, We need to cool you down; this is not what we have been used to.How quickly do these physiological changes happen when someone is exposed to more extreme temperatures?Theres always going to be individual and populational variation, but we see the changes start happening pretty quickly. It can start within 24 hours, but they dont fully set in for about seven to 10 days. You will maintain those changes until you go and switch environments again, and then youll lose your acclimatization. This can be to heat, cold, humidity, dryness or high altitude as well. For example, when I [returned to sea level from] field work in the Rocky Mountains, I was able to do two full lengths of an Olympic swimming pool without breathing. Within two weeks, that was gone.So how do our bodies change when we are exposed to cold weather?Theres a constant balancing of several different systems going on here. One of the quick changes is an increase in your resting metabolic ratethe baseline number of calories your body burns in order to survive. Your body is kind of increasing its own thermostat to produce more heat because you are losing more heat to the environment.We also see changes in the way your blood vessels [tighten or expand] to respond to the cold. In the cold, [vessels constrict to] reduce how much blood is flowing through and the heat that can potentially be lost to the environment. And when youre cold, blood will be shunted more to the deep blood vessels that are further away from the surface, whereas in a hot climate, the opposite happens.We also see and increase in brown adipose tissue activitythis is an active area of research. Brown fat, as we call it colloquially, is a type of fat that burns only to keep you warm during acute cold exposure. In adult humans, its located [just above your clavicles], as well as along your major deep blood vessels. This organ, and we do consider it kind of its own organ, uses energy to produce heatnot energy to [activate your muscles] to go run a mile or anything like that. We used to think that human adults never have brown fat. We knew that babies have it [for the first few months of life], but we thought that once they burned through it, that was it. But we are now seeing brown adipose tissue everywhere we look in adult human populations.How is brown fat different from regular fat?Brown adipose tissue is very, very rich in mitochondria. Instead of being the powerhouse of the cell, those mitochondria are the furnace. It basically short-circuits the typical process so that this tissue produces heat rather than energy.In adults, to date, we have seen brown fat in populations in Russia and Finlandcold climates, which makes sense. Weve seen it in Albany, N.Y.temperate climate but cold winters. And weve also seen it in Samoaa tropical island climate. So were beginning to think that brown adipose tissue might be a very deeply ancient tissue and that it could have been around in our evolutionary history for a very long time.How does brown fat activity change during cold seasons?One study on seasonal changes in brown adipose tissue [was] conducted by my former graduate student, Alexandra Niclou. She looked at seasonal variation in a brown adipose tissue among folks in Albany. She found that people were able to maintain higher body temperatures from brown fat in the winter but at a reduced caloric cost. And so it seemed the brown fat actually got more efficient the more it was being used to maintain body temperature in the winter. So there does seem to be a physiological difference in how brown fat is responding between the seasons. Im going back to Finland this spring [to measure this further] among reindeer herders and indoor workers.Given all of those factors, what do you think is happening to our bodies on that first warm spring day?In the winter, youre going to have an increase in resting metabolism. You might see an increase in your brown adipose tissue activity in order to keep you warm. Then all of a sudden its 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but your resting metabolic rate is still going to be higher, [and your brown fat might be more active], which means your body is producing more heat than it typically would have been. Thats probably why you feel like its way warmer out and start sweating. That acclimatization process is going to take a week or more to get you used to this new, warmer temperature setting.Theres also a developmental aspect of thiswhere you grew up likely has a massive, massive impact on how your body responds to different extremes and changes in seasonal temperatures. Im a college professor [in Indiana], and walking around campus this time of year, you can tell the kids from the East Coast and the Midwest versus those from the South and the West Coast [by who is wearing] short T-shirts and sandals when its, like, 50 degrees and [who is] still in puff jackets. It always cracks me up. And we might actually see happening with brown adipose tissue as wellthat the more you are exposed to cold during critical developmental periods as a child, the more active and responsive your brown adipose tissue may be as an adult.Do these seasonal changes still impact you if you spend most of the winter indoors?They are definitely still impacting you. It might not be as much, obviously, and this is part of what were doing with our work in Finland with reindeer herders, who spend more time outside in the extreme cold, and indoor office workers in the same region. But because you still go outside, you still experience acute cold, [even if its not] for hours and hours on end.Why is it important to understand how our bodies acclimatize to extreme temperatures?Understanding how bodies rapidly respond [to changes in temperature] is going to be even more important in the face of climate change, when we have highly and dramatically variable environments where you get ice storms in Texas, for example. [Helping people acclimatize via what we know about] biology, behavior and technology is going to be critical, I think, because no matter what, our bodies are going to be physiologically limited in coping with both extreme cold and extreme heat. Our bodies are not limitless, so we have [to adjust our] behavior and turn to technology to make up for what our bodies cant do.

March 31, 20254 min readBig Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic WarmingMorgan Stanley, JPMorgan and an international banking group have quietly concluded that climate change will likely exceed the Paris Agreement's 2 degree goal and are examining how to maintain profitsBy Corbin Hiar & E&E News PM Images/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | Top Wall Street institutions are preparing for a severe future of global warming that blows past the temperature limits agreed to by more than 190 nations a decade ago, industry documents show.The big banks' acknowledgment that the world is likely to fail at preventing warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is spelled out in obscure reports for clients, investors and trade association members. Most were published after the reelection of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to repeal federal policies that support clean energy while turbocharging the production of oil, gas and coal the main sources of global warming.The recent reports from Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance show that Wall Street has determined the temperature goal is effectively dead and describe how top financial institutions plan to continue operating profitably as temperatures and damages soar.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today."We now expect a 3C world," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote earlier this month, citing "recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts."The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time that would bring deadly risks to people who work outdoors.The global Paris Agreement, from which the U.S. is withdrawing under Trump, aims to limit average temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that permanently exceeding 1.5 degrees a threshold the world breached for the first time last year could lead to increasingly severe climate impacts, such as the demise of coral reef ecosystems that hundreds of millions of people rely on for food and storm surge protection.Morgan Stanleys climate forecast was tucked into a mundane research report on the future of air conditioning stocks, which it provided to clients on March 17. A 3 degree warming scenario, the analysts determined, could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3 percent to 7 percent until 2030."The political environment has changed, so some of them are conforming to that," Gautam Jain, a former investment banker who is now a senior research scholar at Columbia University, said of Wall Street's increasingly dire climate projections. "But mostly it is a rational business decision."The new warming estimates come as heat-trapping gases continue to rise globally and as international commitments to limit the burning of oil, gas and coal that's responsible for the bulk of emissions have stalled. Meanwhile, megabanks like Wells Fargo are backsliding on their previous climate pledges and exiting from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-backed group that encouraged members to slash their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.Morgan Stanley, which in October watered down its climate-related lending targets, declined to comment.Betting on potentially catastrophic global warming is both an acknowledgment of the current emissions trajectory and a politically savvy move in the second Trump era, according to Jain."Nobody wants to be seen as going against" the administration's pro-fossil-fuel energy policy, he said. "These banks are businesses, so they have to look at the risk that they have in their portfolio and the opportunities that they see in the most likely environment."'Recalibrate targets'Morgan Stanley's frank assessment of the air conditioning market follows a trade association briefing in February in which industry officials argued that the financial sector needs a coordinated messaging campaign to regulators, investors and the public that the Paris targets are no longer within reach and banks should not be expected to pursue them."The world is not on track to limit temperature rise below 2C and limiting warming [to] 1.5C is almost certainly unachievable," the Institute of International Finance wrote in bolded text, citing analyses from the energy research firm the Rhodium Group and the Climate Action Tracker, an environmental collaborative."Financial institutions need to recalibrate targets to reflect that 1.5C are no longer suitable as strategic goals," the briefing said. "Reputational concerns may arise in the absence of an aligned view amongst stakeholders on how such processes should be handled, and what criteria may need to be applied."The banking industry can support the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy but capital will only move "at scale when the economics make sense," Mary Kate Binecki, a spokesperson for the Institute of International Finance, said in an email. The institute represents about 400 members from more than 60 countries, including JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.JPMorgan, the world's most valuable bank, has been describing to investors how it evaluates climate risks in a detailed report published annually since 2022.* At that time and in subsequent reports, the bank said it vets investments using "baseline" scenarios that assume global warming of 2.7 degrees to more than 3 degrees by the end of this century.In JPMorgan's most recent report, released in late November, CEO Jamie Dimon outlined the bank's commitment to financing a global transition to cleaner energy. But he also hinted at the role Trump and other political leaders could play in slowing climate progress."Constructive government leadership and policy is also necessary, particularly on taxes, permitting, energy grids, infrastructure and technological innovation," Dimon said in a foreword to the report.A JPMorgan spokesperson emphasized that, while the bank stress tests its investments using a variety of potential climate scenarios, it remains committed to zeroing out its emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement.Wall Street knows how to run the numbers, and right now the smart money expects warming to exceed 2 degrees, explained Jain, the former investment banker."These guys are not making assumptions out of the blue," he said. "They are following the science."Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.*Editors Note (3/31/25): Our partners at E&E News have edited this sentence after posting to correct the description of JPMorgans climate report.

March 31, 20253 min readTop U.S. Scientists Speak Out against Climate of Fear Wrecking U.S. ResearchDespite fears that speaking out will make them targets, top researchers warn that the Trump administrations wholesale assault on U.S. science will harm the nationBy Dan Vergano edited by Dean VisserDemonstrators take part in a "Stand Up For Science" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on March 7, 2025. Alex Wroblevski/AFP via Getty ImagesIn an SOS to the public, about 1,900 top U.S. scientists are warning that the Trump administrations moves against researchers imperil the nations health, economy and national security. In this open letter, released on Monday, the signatorieswho are all members of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and include Nobel Prize winnerscall on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science.The letter notes that its signatories are speaking out as individualsnot as representatives of the National Academies or their home institutions.The full text of the letter is below.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLEWe all rely on science. Science gave us the smartphones in our pockets, the navigation systems in our cars, and life-saving medical care. We count on engineers when we drive across bridges and fly in airplanes. Businesses and farmers rely on science and engineering for product innovation, technological advances, and weather forecasting. Science helps humanity protect the planet and keeps pollutants and toxins out of our air, water, and food.For over 80 years, wise investments by the US government have built up the nations research enterprise, making it the envy of the world. Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.The voice of science must not be silenced.The undersigned are elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, representing some of the nations top scientists, engineers, and medical researchers. We are speaking out as individuals. We see real danger in this moment. We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nations scientific enterprise is being decimated.The administration is slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration. The funding cuts are forcing institutions to pause research (including studies of new disease treatments), dismiss faculty, and stop enrolling graduate studentsthe pipeline for the next generations scientists.The administrations current investigations of more than 50 universities send a chilling message. Columbia University was recently notified that its federal funding would be withheld unless it adopted disciplinary policies and disabled an academic department targeted by the administration. Destabilizing dozens of universities will endanger higher educationand the research those institutions conduct.The quest for truththe mission of sciencerequires that scientists freely explore new questions and report their findings honestly, independent of special interests. The administration is engaging in censorship, destroying this independence. It is using executive orders and financial threats to manipulate which studies are funded or published, how results are reported, and which data and research findings the public can access. The administration is blocking research on topics it finds objectionable, such as climate change, or that yields results it does not like, on topics ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends.A climate of fear has descended on the research community. Researchers, afraid of losing their funding or job security, are removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as climate change) that agencies are flagging as objectionable. Although some in the scientific community have protested vocally, most researchers, universities, research institutions, and professional organizations have kept silent to avoid antagonizing the administration and jeopardizing their funding.If our countrys research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge. Other countries will lead the development of novel disease treatments, clean energy sources, and the new technologies of the future. Their populations will be healthier, and their economies will surpass us in business, defense, intelligence gathering, and monitoring our planets health. The damage to our nations scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse.We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call. Share this statement with others, contact your representatives in Congress, and help your community understand what is at risk. The voice of science must not be silenced. We all benefit from science, and we all stand to lose if the nations research enterprise is destroyed.The views expressed here are our own and not those of the National Academies or our home institutions.Here is a link to the signatories.

OpinionMarch 31, 20256 min readIs There a Plus Side to Mental Labor?Women shoulder most of the work in managing a family and tell us its exhausting, but some also say it has benefitsBy Julie Holliday Wayne Willie B. Thomas/Getty ImagesIts Monday, and my alarm buzzes at 6:00 A.M. I groggily get up, already running through the day in my head. I am a business professor, so I have a full schedule of classes to teach, e-mails to answer, and research deadlines to meet, but before I can start working, there are 100 other things I have to think aboutDid my son pack his gear for his lacrosse game tonight? Hell be starving when he gets home. What do we have in the fridge? I make a mental note to check before I leave.Then theres my daughter, knee-deep in college applications. Weve scheduled campus visits and spent weeks talking about applications and reviewing financial options. Shes stressed, which means Im stressed.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.And my oldesthes doing well in college classes, but I can tell somethings off. Is it just the normal pressure of being a young adult, or is something more going on? Whens the last time we had a real conversation? I need to check in with him.By the time Ive made coffee, Ive already thought through my kids schedules, their needs and well-being. Isnt parenting supposed to get easier as they get older? Now it is less about the physical caregiving tasks that consumed me in their younger years, and it is more about the emotional labor, planning and problem-solving.This is what is sometimes called the invisible family load, the mental labor, invisible labor or mental load. It is the behind-the-scenes, keep you up at night work that is crucial to the smooth functioning of families. Yet it is work that often goes unnoticed and unappreciated, and it is disproportionately shouldered by women.The conversation around mental load became more prominent in 2017 because of a cartoon depicting the invisible and exhausting nature of mom as household project manager. Since then, the many popular discussions paint a disheartening picture of the invisible family load as a never-ending, energy-zapping, exhausting burden that causes struggling and suffering, ranging from depression and anger to substance abuse and divorce.But is it true?At the time, there hadnt been much scientific research, so my colleagues and I decided to extensively research the topic. What we learned confirmed popular assumptions in some ways but turned them on their head in others. The bottom line: running a household is unsung and frustrating work that can bleed into our professional lives, but it can also be rewarding.Our research identified three types of invisible family load. Managerial load involves organizing, planning, and scheduling family activities or appointments, such as college visits, parties or vacations, or managing the day-to-day family activities. Cognitive load is the mental effort required to keep track of tasks, remember important dates, make decisions and anticipate future needs, such as keeping up with every family members academic, social, emotional and/or physical needs, all while remembering to buy eggs and toilet paper. Emotional load involves worrying about the needs and well-being of family members, such as worrying about your childrens health, well-being or futures, resolving sibling disputes, or being the emotional anchor for your family.Our research found some not-so-surprising news. Women disproportionately report higher levels of each type of invisible family load than do men; and carrying a higher invisible load than ones partner strains the relationship and decreases satisfaction in it. People, particularly mothers, commented that they felt frustrated, angry and resentful at the chronic imbalance of the mental load in their relationships, and this may be a warning sign for relationship trouble.We also found that carrying high levels of emotional load, such as worrying about family needs, is particularly problematic because it is associated with a host of harmful outcomes, including poor sleep, feeling exhausted and burned out, and being less satisfied in ones family and with ones life overall.One thing that really surprised us is that having a lot of emotional family load doesnt just affect people and their families, but it also spills over to work. Parents who carry high levels of emotional load are more likely to report that their family interferes with work and that they are more exhausted while at work. Importantly, we saw these negative effects after controlling for peoples general tendency to worry.There is good news, though. Contrary to the popular belief that managing the invisible family load is entirely negative, we found potential benefits. Some people told us that they enjoy and get benefit from being the leader of their family, find joy in caring for their families in these ways, and that it brings them closer to their family members. Our survey research confirms that, on average, people find a sense of meaning and purpose when taking on more of the remembering and deciding work of cognitive load, fostering a sense of enrichment in their family and greater satisfaction with their family lives. This doesnt mean the emotional load is not hard or frustrating, but people may also experience benefits from doing the cognitive load.So how can you experience more of the positives of the invisible family load?Curb excessive worry: Instead of dwelling on endless "what-ifs," create a worry list, writing down concerns and reviewing them for a set, limited time daily to prevent constant rumination. Embracing a good enough mindsetacknowledging that a happy, well-adjusted family doesnt require perfectionhelps reduce unnecessary emotional load.Reframe the load as leadership: Recognize the invisible work you do as leadership, where you are anticipating needs, making and communicating decisions, organizing family work, and empowering and growing others, within one of the most important teams of which youll ever be a part. Pause to appreciate the moments, even small ones, when your efforts lead to growth, joy or a sense of security for your family members.Delegate strategically: Great leaders dont do everything themselvesthey set priorities, empower others, and focus on the highest-impact tasks. Rather than trying to do it all, look for ways to delegate and teach, such as kids scheduling things for themselves when age-appropriate or empowering decision-making to a partner. Results wont happen instantly, so this will require patience and a mindful focus on the benefits to others from their new responsibilities.Communicate and appreciate: If you are in a partnered relationship, weekly check-ins about responsibilities, particularly the invisible ones, can prevent resentment. Make the invisible visible. Write down each invisible task on notecards, and physically sort them so that each partner has approximately the same number of cards. Acknowledge and express appreciation for each others efforts, noting progress over perfection. Children can also benefit from this transparency by learning that managing a household is a shared responsibility rather than a one-person job in a two-parent household.Use technology to plan and organize: Using a shared digital calendar keeps everyone on the same page with appointments, events and activities, reducing the mental strain of keeping track of everything.Avoid decision fatigue: Parents make countless decisions every day. To reduce mental overload, streamline routine choices by setting defaults (e.g., a weekly meal rotation such as Taco Tuesday or a regular meal planning/grocery shopping day) and making important decisions at your best time of the day.Prioritize self-care: Taking even small moments for a favorite hobby, a short walk, prayer/meditation or quiet time with a book can restore energy that might be depleted from the invisible family load. Building a support networkfriends, family or parenting groupscreates an outlet for sharing challenges and solutions. Modeling self-care also teaches children the importance of health and well-being.Recognizing and addressing the invisible family load is crucial for maintaining mental and emotional well-being, fostering positive family dynamics and even enhancing the workplace. By acknowledging these invisible tasks and taking proactive steps to manage them, you can create a more balanced and fulfilling life for yourself and your family.Julie Holliday Waynes research on this subject was conducted with Maura Mills, Russell Matthews and Marilyn Whitman , all at the University of Alabama, and Yi-Ren Wang of the Asia School of Business .This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

March 31, 20254 min readTime Spent in Nature Can Be Goodand Sometimes Bad for Your BrainA Goldilocks measure of green space might help stave off dementia, but an excess could lead to cognitive declineBy Teresa Schubert edited by Gary Stix Bob Pool/Getty ImagesThere's nothing like a good walk through your local park to unwind and release stress from a busy day. Taking some time in nature is undeniably good for you, with well-documented benefits to physical and mental health. But new research suggests that when it comes to the risk of dementia and Alzheimers disease, easy access to nature can sometimes help but, at other times, can be too much of a good thing.The causes of dementiaa broad category of conditions that can affect memory, language and other brain capacitiesare multifaceted and complex. There is often a genetic component, but there are also contributions from health risk factors that arise throughout life. In 2024 the Lancet Commission on dementia identified 14 such factors that reliably increase the risk of developing dementia. These include physical health factors such as cardiovascular disease, high LDL cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity and traumatic brain injury, as well as psychological factors such as depression and social isolation.Thousands of studies provide solid evidence about the dangers of these risk factors, but researchers are far from having all the answers about dementia. In the past 10 or so years, researchers have begun looking beyond these established risks to the effect of an individuals physical and social environment, which might be more under our control than factors such as genetic predisposition. You might not be able to change your genes, but in some cases, you can change where you live or your hobbies or habits. According to Marco Vinceti of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, there is growing and convincing evidence that risk of neurodegenerative disease, including cognitive impairment and dementia, can be substantially reduced by environmental and behavioral factors, and this may even be true in individuals having high genetic susceptibility. Studying the role of environmental factors has led to the recent discovery that exposure to air pollution (such as from wildfire smoke or heavy traffic) increases your chances of developing dementia. This is also the line of questioning that led researchers to discover the positive effects of green space.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The benefits of green space for mental and brain health are numerous. Living near and spending time in green space (including parks, wooded areas and even farmland) can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes and is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia later in life. According to Anjum Hajat, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington School of Public Health, access to green space is important because it provides people with an easy, low-cost option to improve their health. Spending time in nature may have other benefits, too, like increasing physical activity or increasing time spent with friends and family; both of these things have many health benefits.Based on this research, you might be ready to give up city life. You might presume that more green space is better, and that living on a few wooded acres with nothing but trees for miles around will lead to the lowest possible chance of dementia. It turns out this is not so simple. A 2022 research study led by Federico Zagnoli of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia revealed that more green space is not always better. The researchers found a U-shaped association between exposure to green space and dementia risklow levels of green space were associated with a higher likelihood of developing dementia, and medium levels were linked to a lower risk. But the highest level of green space exposure didnt reduce dementia risk relative to the medium leveland in some cases even increased it! In other words, too little green space has an adverse effect, but so might too much of it.Why might more of a good thing be bad? Living out in nature can mean lower access to medical and social services, fewer places to socialize and higher chances of social isolationcircumstances that would otherwise support brain health and reduce dementia risk. Although research on some of these factors is still ongoing and not yet certain, there is solid evidence for the risks of social isolation. As Vinceti puts it, The higher risk of dementia associated with extremely high green spaces around the place of residence is likely attributable to social isolation and socioeconomic disadvantage in certain rural areas. Rurality may also be correlated with other risk factors, such as lower socioeconomic status or high pesticide exposure. So the conclusion is that green space itself is not bad for your brain health, but living on a few acres of land surrounded by forest and farmland might increase your risk of dementia in other ways. Although trees have a positive effect, they are no substitute for a nearby hospital, local community center and a walkable neighborhood with friendly neighbors. Aiming for the lowest possible dementia risk is all about a balance: enough neighborhood density to have easy access to services and social support but plenty of trees for a walk in the park..

March 31, 20259 min readDoes Intermittent Fasting ImproveHealthBeyond Weight Loss?Intermittent fasting has gained a following, in part because of tantalizing hints that it can boost cognition, fend off cancer and even slow agingBy Nic Fleming & Nature magazine TanyaJoy/Getty ImagesAs anyone seeking to lose weight knows, diets come in and out of fashion. The Sexy Pineapple diet, launched by a Danish psychologist in 1970, never really took off. Kelloggs no longer promotes the Special K diet, which swaps out two meals a day for a bowl of the breakfast cereal of that name. These days, you dont hear much about eating according to blood type, cutting out acidic foods or following the potato diet.Intermittent fasting has, however, had unusual staying power for more than a decadeand has grown even more popular in the past few years. One survey found that almost one in eight adults in the United States had tried it in 2023.The enduring popularity of intermittent fasting has been fed by celebrity endorsements, news coverage and a growing number of books, including several written by researchers in the field. More than 100 clinical trials in the past decade suggest that it is an effective strategy for weight loss. And weight loss generally comes with related health improvements, including a reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes. What is less clear is whether there are distinct benefits that come from limiting food intake to particular windows of time. Does it protect against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers disease, enhance cognitive function, suppress tumours and even extend lifespan? Or are there no benefits apart from those related to cutting back on calories? And what are the potential risks?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Neuroscientist Mark Mattson at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and author of the 2022 book The Intermittent Fasting Revolution, has been studying fasting for 30 years. He argues that, because ancient humans went for long periods without food as hunter-gatherers, we have evolved to benefit from taking breaks from eating. Were adapted to function very well, perhaps optimally, in a fasted state, he says.Fastings deep rootsFasting is far from new. Periodic abstentions from food have long been practised in many religions. In the fifth century bc, the Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates prescribed it for a range of medical conditions.Recent scientific interest in fasting has its roots in questions raised by research on calorie restriction. Since the 1930s, studies have shown that putting rodents on low-calorie diets can increase their lifespans. Hypotheses proposed to explain this effect include that calorie restriction slows growth, lowers fat intake or reduces cellular damage caused by unstable free radicals.But an observation made in 1990 by researcher Ronald Hart, who was then studying ageing, nutrition and health at the US National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Arkansas, highlighted another intriguing possibility. Calorie-restricted rodents fed once daily consumed all their food in a few hours. Perhaps the calorie-restricted rodents lived longer because they repeatedly went for 20 or so hours without eating.In the immediate aftermath of a meal, cells use glucose from carbohydrates in food as fuel, either straight away or following storage in the liver and muscles as glycogen. Once these sources are depletedin humans, typically around 12 hours after the last mealthe body enters a fasted state during which fat stored in adipose tissue is converted to ketone bodies for use as an alternative energy source.Intermittent fasting generally refers to various diets that include repeated periods of zero- or very low-calorie intake that are long enough to stimulate the production of ketone bodies. The most common are time-restricted eating (TRE), which involves consuming all food in a 4- to 12-hour window, usually without calorie counting; alternate-day fasting (ADF), whereby people either abstain from food every other day or eat no more than around 500 calories on that day; and the 5:2 diet, which stipulates a 500-calorie limit on 2 days per week (see Three forms of fasting).Some researchers say the resulting shift between sources of energy, called metabolic switching, triggers key adaptive stress responses, including increased DNA repair and the breakdown and recycling of defective cellular components. Those responses, the thinking goes, provide health benefits beyond those from reduced calorie consumption alone. Observational studies have suggested that some religious fasters who fast long enough for metabolic switching to occur see such health benefits, although these studies have a lot of limitations.Getting slim fastControlled diet trials are notoriously difficult to conduct. Peoples diets and behaviours, together with their genetic inheritance and baseline health, make for a lot of variables. Often, people dont stick with the study, and getting participants to track calorie intake accurately is a known challenge.Still, the weight of the evidence suggests that intermittent fasting can help people to lose weight. In 2022, for example, Courtney Peterson, who researches nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and her colleagues reported results from a trial involving 90 adults with obesity who also received counselling to help them lose weight. She found that those who followed TRE for an average of 6 days per week over 14 weeks lost an average of 6.3 kilograms, compared with the 4 kg lost by participants who ate over 12 or more hours. Peterson says that many people find following a rule about when to eat and when not to eat easier than counting calories or eating healthier. We and others have found that TRE also makes people less hungry, so they tend to naturally eat less and lose weight, says Peterson.Also in 2022, nutritionist Krista Varady at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and her colleagues reviewed 22 randomized trials looking at the effects of ADF, the 5:2 diet and TRE on body weight. ADF and the 5:2 diet produced 48% weight loss after 812 weeks in those with obesity, whereas TRE helped people to lose 34% of their body weight over the same period.Varady has a long-standing interest in fasting. The cover of one version of her 2013 book The Every Other Day Diet features pizza, a doughnut and a burger to illustrate that those doing ADF dont need to cut out unhealthy foods. In the book, Varady argues that restricting intake to no more than 500 calories every other day is a more effective way to lose weight than conventional calorie counting and cutting out fatty and sugary foods.Although most researchers who study intermittent fasting agree that it can help people to lose weight, theyre split on whether there are any benefits beyond those that come from simply eating less. Michelle Harvie, a research dietitian at the University of Manchester, UK, sought to address this question in collaboration with Mattson in a 2010 trial. They found that overweight women who followed a 5:2 diet for 6 months had larger reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance than did those on a reduced-calorie diet. Both groups had the same weekly calorie intake and lost an average of around 6 kg. But the difference in insulin levels was small, and the researchers relied on participants to track consumption by keeping food diaries.In a 2018 study, Peterson and her team carefully monitored the diets of prediabetic, overweight men, matching their diets to energy consumption. The participants ate all their food either within 6 hours before 3 p.m. daily, or over 12 hours, for 5 weeks before switching to the other eating schedule. Although both regimes resulted in equivalent small weight loss over the study period, when men were on the more time-restricted diet, they had improved insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and reduced oxidative stress, a form of molecular damage.We showed for the first time that intermittent fasting has health benefits and effects beyond weight loss in humans, says Peterson. But the study was relatively small: only 12 adults started the trial, only 8 completed it, and all were male and overweight.Adding to the uncertainty is that other trials have reached seemingly contradictory conclusions. Nisa Maruthur, a physician at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and her colleagues asked 41 obese adults with pre-diabetes or diabetes to consume diets that matched their energy needs, eating either during a 10-hour daily window or according to their normal schedule. After 12 weeks, there was little difference between the two groups in the average changes to weight, glucose regulation, blood pressure, waist circumference or lipid levels. Weight loss seen in prior studies of TRE was probably the result of eating fewer calories, says Maruthur, whose study was published in 2024. If so, metabolic switching might not come with added health benefits.Peterson, a co-author of that study, disagrees and suggests that the 10-hour eating window might have been too long to achieve the results seen in trials of shorter TRE windows.Even though Varady thinks that intermittent fasting can help people to lose weight, she remains unconvinced that it has effects independent of calorie restriction. Based on current human evidence, I dont think that there are any benefits of intermittent fasting beyond weight loss, she says.Mattson is equally sure of the opposite: There is considerable evidence of benefits of intermittent fasting that cannot be explained by reduction in calorie intake.Mattson and others have looked to animal research in their efforts to understand the physiology of fasting, and to identify mechanisms that could underpin any extra health benefits.Beyond the waistlineAs early as 1999, Mattson and his team began finding evidence that ADF protects rodents against damage linked to neurodegenerative diseases and acute brain injuries such as stroke. Fasting has been shown to increase production of -hydroxybutyrate, a ketone body that protects neurons from damage in rodent models of Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. Studies in rodents show that intermittent fasting can improve cognitive functions, such as working memory, spatial learning and memory retention. It can also reduce tumour occurrence as the animals age and increase their sensitivity to chemotherapy.Other results have come from Satchin Pandas lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Panda became interested in fasting almost by accident, through his research on circadian rhythms. In a series of experiments beginning in 2009, he and his team found that changing the feeding times of mice had more effect than light cycles did on circadian rhythms in liver gene expression. When mice on high-fat diets were restricted to feeding during eight hours at night (the natural feeding time of mice), they were protected from obesity, elevated insulin levels, fatty liver disease and inflammation, compared with mice that ate the same number of calories but fed whenever they wanted during both day and night.I realized these mice didnt have diet-induced obesity as others had concluded; rather, they had circadian-rhythm-disruption-induced obesity, says Panda.Eating in time with circadian rhythms also seems to affect longevity in mice. In a 2022 study, neurobiologist Joseph Takahashi at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and his colleagues reported that whereas calorie-restricted mice that fed during the day lived 20% longer than did controls that fed as much as they liked, those on calorie-restricted diets fed at night lived 35% longer, on average.There are hints of a circadian effect in humans, too. In a 2024 review of TRE trials, Peterson found that study participants who ate before 6 p.m. had improved blood-sugar and insulin control, but she did not see the same effect in those who adopted later eating windows. Most peoples blood-sugar control is best in the mid- to late morning, so eating early, in alignment with these circadian rhythms, results in lower overall blood-sugar levels, she says.Research into the physiology of intermittent fasting also suggests that its effects might not be simply a function of calorie restriction. Stem-cell biologist mer Yilmaz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and his colleagues have shown how stem-cell activity increases in the intestines of both calorie-restricted and fasted micean effect triggered by the breakdown of fatty acids. Both caloric restriction and fasting improved intestinal stem-cell activity and health, but the mechanisms involved are very different, he says. If the mechanisms are different, the health implications might vary, too.The work in animals also points to possible downsides of fasting. Because intestinal stem cells can divide frequently, they are a source of precancerous cells. In mice with cancer-gene mutations, there was more tumour development in those that fasted and then ate for a day than in mice that did not fast, Yilmaz and his colleagues reported in 2024. Other animal work suggests that long fasts could blunt immune responses.Researchers say there needs to be more work to understand the implications of animal experiments for humans. For now, doctors caution that fasting could cause blood-sugar levels to drop dangerously in those with diabetes; affect milk supply in people who are breastfeeding; harm growth in children; and increase the risk of complications for those on blood-pressure and heart-disease medications.Although researchers remain intrigued by the physiology of fasting, would-be dieters probably care more about whether intermittent fasting works than why it does so. In her job as a primary-care physician, Maruthur advises people to try it even though she thinks its effects are entirely the result of eating less.If you restrict the window of time in which you eat, then youre likely to consume less, she says. If youre the kind of person whos going to eat fewer calories as a result, it might be worth giving it a go.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 25, 2025.

March 30, 2025Shark Sounds, Molecules on Mars and Continued Federal CutsCuts to federal health and science agencies continue. Plus, we discuss the sounds of sharks, the meaning of Martian molecules and one big dino claw. Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, Im Rachel Feltman. Lets kick off the week and wrap up the month with a quick roundup of the latest science news.[CLIP: RFK Jr. announces the planned cuts on Thursday in a HHS video: We're gonna eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies.]Feltman: Last Thursday the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to cut 10,000 full-time jobs across the department. Another 10,000 individuals have already accepted voluntary retirement and buyouts. The layoffs will hit the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.[CLIP: RFK Jr.: Twenty-eight great divisions will become 15. The entire federal workforce is downsizing now, so this will be a painful period for HHS as we downsize from 82,000 full-time employees to around 62,000.]Feltman: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that the aim of these cuts is to save money and boost efficiency.Meanwhile, last week the Trump administration also moved to cancel more than $12 billion in federal grant funding to state and local health departments. Axios reports that the main targets are grants for COVID testing, initiatives aimed at tackling health disparities, and vaccinations. As of last Thursday those cuts had reportedly already led to layoffs at the Virginia Department of Health.Well, of course, be watching these developments and keeping you posted. But for now, lets move on to some exciting news from Mars. According to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, NASAs Curiosity rover has found the biggest carbon-based molecules ever seen on the Red Planet. The long-chain alkanes are thought to have come from fatty acids, which are the building blocks of cell membranes in living organisms on Earth.Now, these long molecules arent necessarily a smoking gun for Martian life. We know that fatty acids can form by way of chemistry instead of biology. In fact, some scientists think we first got fatty acids on Earth thanks to the interaction of water and minerals in hydrothermal vents. So while fatty acids are necessary for life as we know it, its possible they formed on Mars without life ever finding a way. Still, this finding is another point for Mars in the quest to determine potential past habitability. Plus, since these compounds were found preserved in a 3.7-billion-year-old rock, the discovery gives scientists hope that if microbial life once existed on Mars, we might still be able to find signs of it.Speaking of size superlatives: paleontologists are showing off a really freaking big dinosaur claw in pristine condition. It belongs to a new species of therizinosaur, which was described in a study published in the journal iScience last Tuesday.Writing for National Geographic, Riley Black explained that therizinosaurs were, generally speaking, a weird bunch. The dinosaurs were descended from carnivores but had come to eat plants. They were kind of slothlike, apparently, down to their three giant clawsexcept that they were also giant and covered in feathers. But a specimen found in Mongolia's Gobi Desert back in 2012 has revealed a new species that stands out for having just two fingers instead of three.One of the fingers still has a sheath of keratin that would have protected the actual bone of the claw. This protective covering also added length, creating a talon nearly a foot long. Scientists think the new species likely lost its third digit as a result of evolution. While the creatures sharp claws look like something a raptor would use to tear at prey, these oddballs probably used them to hook branches while foragingwhich the authors of the new study think could have been done more efficiently with a two-fingered grasp than a three-fingered one.Well keep the animal theme rolling to wrap us up with a couple of new papers on animal behavior under the sea. First, a new study on sharks. The predators are known for their stealth, but research published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science is absolutely blowing up their spot. While the study authors note that sharks and other elasmobranchs, which is a group that also includes rays, are not historically viewed as active sound producers, the researchers managed to catch rig sharks making little clicking noises.The studys lead author reportedly heard some unusual sounds while working with sharks back in grad school but wasnt able to investigate further until recently. In the new study she and her colleagues observed 10 rig sharks in tanks tricked out with underwater microphones. They caught the sharks making extremely shortlike, shorter-than-a-human-blink short so literally blink and youll miss it stuff. And those noises reached a maximum of 156 decibels, on average. The sharks made a lot more noise when handlers first touched them, and the noises tended to subside as they got used to being held. That could mean these are deliberate sounds, like a whats the big idea or a guys, heads-up, these humans are pretty handsy. But well need a lot more research to be sure.And in case youre wondering those clicks sound like this:[CLIP: Rig sharks make clicklike sounds.]Feltman: Sharks lack the swim bladder that most fish use to make noises, but researchers suspect the rigs make these clicks through the forceful snapping of their teeth. As a habitual tooth grinder I can certainly relate. Since sharks are, generally speaking, a pretty toothy bunch, it stands to reason that other species could be producing sounds similar to these.And while sharks are potentially using sound to communicate, cuttlefish are apparently using visual tricks to mesmerize their prey. Cuttlefish are known for having specialized skin cells that allow them to rapidly change color and create patterns for camouflage. Last month a group of researchers published examples of different visual displays that one cuttlefish species might use to trick prey. The scientists recorded broadclub cuttlefish seemingly mimicking floating leaves and branching pieces of coral, as well as generating some pulsing patterns, an effect that makes it look like a dark stripe is moving down a cuttlefishs body. That's kind of a surprising tactic because to human eyes its like a flashing sign that says cuttlefish incoming. But in a new study published last Wednesday in Science Advances, the same researchers argue that this passing-stripe display helps a cuttlefish hunt by overwhelming a prey animals senses. From the perspective of a crab, for example, these fast-moving stripes could distract from the actual movements of the approaching cuttlefish. So its all very pay no attention to the cuttlefish behind the striped curtains!Thats all for this weeks news roundup. Well be back on Wednesday with special guest Wendy Zukerman from Science Vs to talk about the science behind a big debate surrounding a certain sexual phenomenon.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

March 28, 20254 min readCOVID Research Funding to Be Slashed, NIH Documents ShowStudies on COVID, climate change and South Africa are on the latest list of terminated grants by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to updated documents obtained by NatureBy Max Kozlov & Nature magazine Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (greenish brown) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (pink), isolated from a patient sample. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/FlickrThe US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have begun cancelling billions of dollars in funding for research related to COVID-19.COVID-19 research funds were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic, according to an internal NIH document that Nature has obtained and that provides the agencys staff members with updated guidance on how to terminate these grants. Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary, the document states. It is not clear how many of these grants will be ended.The crackdown comes as the NIH, under US President Donald Trump, has halted nearly 400 grants in the past month. An earlier version of the documents, obtained by Nature on 5 March, directed staff to identify and potentially cancel projects on transgender populations; gender identity; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce; and environmental justice.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The NIH, which is the worlds largest public funder of biomedical research, has awarded grants to nearly 600 ongoing projects that include COVID in the title, worth nearly US$850 million. Together, these projects make up nearly 2% of the NIHs $47-billion budget. And the CDC plans to cancel $11.4 billion in funds for pandemic response, NBC News reports.SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has killed more than 7 million people globally, including more than 1.2 million in the United States, and continues to infect and kill people. Studying the virus, its mode of infection and the governments response to the pandemic is crucial to preventing the next one, say scientists.Among the terminations at the NIH is a $577-million programme to identify and develop antiviral drugs against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and six other types of virus with pandemic potential.These terminations are clearly shortsightedwe desperately need new treatments against viruses, says Jason McLellan, a structural virologist at the University of Texas, Austin, whose project to develop broad-spectrum treatments that work against several types of virus was part of the programme and terminated on 24 March. To cancel the entire grant because a small portion involved SARS-CoV-2 is going to be dangerous for future pandemic preparedness.The NIH did not respond to Natures queries about the grant terminations or scientists concerns about them. Its parent organization, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told Nature that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.Updated guidanceThe updated documents that Nature obtained (see Supplementary Information below) were sent on 25 March to grants-management specialistsNIH staff members who oversee the business side of awarding funding. This document includes COVID-19 on a list of research activities that NIH no longer supports, in addition to research on China, DEI, transgender issues and vaccine hesitancy. The latest guidance also says that grants related to South Africa and climate change should be terminated.The document also outlines a new category of research that should be terminated: any project on a list sent by the NIH director or the HHS, which is currently helmed by long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Such large-scale grant terminations are unprecedented; the agency typically cancels only a few dozen projects each year in response to serious concerns about research misconduct or fraudand does so only as a last resort, after taking other actions such as suspension.Grants-management specialists will be tasked with identifying and terminating projects, because the NIHs current leadership considers its scientific staff members too biased to make these determinations, says an NIH official who requested anonymity because they werent authorized to speak to the press.But some scientists fear that the guidance for NIH employees is too vague and that any research project associated with certain keywords could be on the chopping block without consideration of its merit. Theyve been taking a chainsaw to grants and not a surgical laser, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who studies SARS-CoV-2.Long COVIDUnder the new directive, its unclear whether the NIH plans to shut down long-COVID research, including its $1.6-billion RECOVER initiative, which aims to find the root causes and treatments for the disease. The Trump administration seems to be deprioritizing long COVID: this week, the HHS will close its Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, which coordinates the US governments response to the disease, according to e-mail correspondence that Nature has obtained.This is a real slap in the face of the many patients struggling with the long-term health effects of COVID infections, says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.Kennedy has vowed to make America healthy again, in part by overhauling US health agencies to focus on chronic diseases. This wholesale crackdown on COVID research is not in the spirit of the campaign, Nuzzo says. We should be studying how infections cause some of the worst diseases that society endures, she says, adding that research has linked infection with a common herpesvirus called EpsteinBarr to the development of multiple sclerosis.Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies immune responses in people with long COVID and other post-viral conditions, says: If we dont figure this out now with this pandemic, Im afraid we will be much less prepared for future pandemics.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 26, 2025.

March 28, 20254 min readClimate Researchers Wait for the Ax to FallClimate experts whose research is funded by federal grants hide, whisper and wait for their jobs to disappearThe Trump administration has slashed jobs and funding at the National Institutes of Health. Mark Wilson/Newsmakers/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | The National Institutes of Health has canceled grants for research on diversity, Covid-19 and vaccines. Climate scientists are hoping their work wont be next but fear it could be.We are holding our breaths because we know we are on their list of targets, said Marsha Wills-Karp, chair of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. It feels like its been slash and burn. We are hopeful they wont get to climate, but we know its not likely.Researchers in her department have received NIH grants to study the effects of wildfire air pollution on preterm birth rates and how hotter weather is affecting the health of babies at birth, measured by their weight and potential complications. Theyre also studying how climate change is affecting nutrition.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.At the University of Washington, Kristie Ebi is fearful that NIH could cut grants that fund studies about which populations are more vulnerable to extreme heat a project that the team is planning to expand to include the dangers of wildfire smoke.Were working to provide information that departments of health, communities and individuals can use, Ebi said. The more you know, the more of those lives you can save.None of those programs havent been cut yet. But theres reason to think they could be, and soon.Earlier this week, ProPublica reported on an internal NIH memo that outlined how the agency will no longer fund research on the health effects of climate change. It followed a story in Mother Jones showing that NIH had ended three climate-related programs, including the Climate Change and Health Initiative. The program was created in 2022 and has had annual congressional appropriations of $40 million, according to a December NIH report that was taken offline by the agency earlier this year.HHS is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities, said Emily Hilliard, a department spokesperson.As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, its important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans, she added. We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root cause of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.She did not respond to questions about whether HHS believes that research into the health effects of heat and other types of extreme weather are aligned with agency priorities or whether HHS believes that heat waves affect the health of Americans. NIH did not respond to a request for comment.Heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency within HHS. Heat caused or contributed to at least 2,300 deaths in 2023, CDC records show.In addition to turbocharging temperatures, climate change can affect people's health by increasing the prevalence of vector-borne diseases and the number of wildfires, whose smoke has been shown to increase asthma and cause cardiovascular problems.Those connections have long been studied with funding from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. Then in 2022, NIH broadened the scope of federal funding for climate health research, directing each of the agencys 26 centers and institutes to study the dangers of climate change. At the time, the agency said a mounting number of assessments and reports provide undeniable evidence that climate change is resulting in direct and indirect consequences for human health and well-being.Most of the climate researchers contacted by POLITICO's E&E News declined to talk publicly about their funding, citing concerns about their grants being rescinded if they spoke to the media.One researcher who was awarded federal funding said some experts in the climate and health field are pausing work related to their grants, like hiring.Others have turned down speaking requests because they're concerned about attracting attention from the Trump administration. Their work often focuses on how extreme weather has disproportional effects on the health of communities of color, according to several researchers who were granted anonymity for fear of retribution. One said that they declined a speaking invitation to avoid accidentally us[ing] language we are not supposed to and then be told our language is not compliant with various executive orders on diversity and equality.Weve been told we need to comply with those executive orders as federal grantees, but its hard to do if you are funded for something that the name is something you are not allowed to say, the researcher said. No one wants to do a social media post or a webinar or an event that might get them in trouble.An annual conference hosted by NIH, Boston University and the Harvard School of Public Health was postponed earlier this month.Linda Birnbaum, who led the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences until 2017, said that during the first Trump administration, researchers were able to circumvent directives by wording grant applications as climate and health rather than climate change.It worked then. I dont think that will work anymore, she said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

March 28, 20254 min readWhy Was the Earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand So Devastating?A magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Myanmar caused widespread shaking and likely considerable damage because of a lack of buildings built to withstand temblorsBy Robin George Andrews edited by Andrea ThompsonA resident carries belongings over debris next to a damaged building in Naypyidaw on March 28, 2025, after an earthquake in central Myanmar. Sai Aung MAIN/AFP via Getty ImagesOn March 28, at around midday local time, tens of millions of people in Southeast Asia felt the earth below their feet violently rupture. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake, centered just 12 miles away from Mandalay, Myanmar, shook the regioncausing streets to buckle, ancient pagodas to crumble, bridges to shatter and houses to collapse. Entire neighborhoods were devastated in a matter of seconds.The earthquakes energy release was comparable to that of several hundred nuclear weapon explosions. The magnitude of this event was so high that it was felt in neighboring countries, says Amilcar Carrera-Cevallos, an earthquake scientist at the Vicente Rocafuerte Secular University of Guayaquil in Ecuador. A 30-story skyscraper under construction in Bangkok600 miles from the quakes epicenterdisintegrated. According to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, there will be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of casualties, as well as tens of billions of dollars of economic damage.Many factors conspired to make this earthquake a disaster, including a lack of quake-proofing measures in buildings across the region. Few of the structures could withstand this monster of a temblor, which was a really big, shallow earthquakemeaning it occurred relatively close to the Earths surface, says Judith Hubbard, an earthquake scientist at Cornell University.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What caused the Myanmar earthquake?Around 45 million years ago, the Indian tectonic plate collided with the Eurasian plate before the former started to descend beneath the latter. The crumbled crust in the middle is what we refer to as the Himalayas today. This mountain range, and the entire region, is filled with faults generated by that epic geological pileup. The Indian plate is still very slowly running into Eurasia, and those myriad faults take on a lot of stress as a result. From time to time, they rupture.The March 28 event was an especially gargantuan rupture along one specific schism. All available data so far strongly suggest a rupture on the Sagaing Fault, says Robin Lacassin, an earthquake scientist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics. This is a major north-south strike-slip fault, one in which two blocks of the crust slide past each other (a bit like the San Andreas Fault in California). The Sagaing Fault is the main strike-slip boundary on that side of the Indian plate, Lacassin says. And it has been responsible for many strong and destructive earthquakes in the past.Cars pass a damaged road in Naypyidaw on March 28, 2025, after an earthquake in central Myanmar.Sai Aung Main/AFP via Getty ImagesHubbard points out that, just in May 2023, the very same fault ruptured and generated a magnitude 5.8 temblor, causing a modest degree of destruction. Its a particularly perilous fault, not least because Nay Pyi Taw, the capital city of Myanmar, lies directly atop it.Todays magnitude 7.7 rupture was exponentially more powerful than the 2023 event. Earthquakes are measured on the modified Mercalli intensity scale, which gauges the shaking intensity based on surface observations. Close to the epicenter, nearly a million people felt this quake as IX, or violent, on the scale: many buildings werent just damaged but also thrown about, with some literally shifted off their foundation.Slightly farther from the epicenter, the shaking ranked as severe or very strongand onlookers in Thailand were shocked to see buildings there receive damage as well. Preliminary data suggest that seismic waves traveled so far from the source because they were channeled along the southern section of the Sagaing Fault. This would explain the damage in Bangkok and reports that it was felt far away, Carrera-Cevallos says.Why was the Myanmar earthquake so damaging?Earthquakes like this are a horrific reminder of why disasters cannot purely be referred to as natural. Todays quake was powerful, yesbut the cities in the blast zone didnt stand a chance because of a decidedly human factor. This earthquake occurred in an area with no earthquake-resistant buildings and inadequate building codes, Carrera-Cevallos says.Although you cannot design a building to guarantee that it will hold up against the mightiest of earthquakes, you can fit dampeners into their architecture to allow them to safely sway in the event of a temblor. Even older structures can be retrofitted to include various forms of quake-resistant technology.The damage in Thailand is shocking but is unlikely to be too severe. The shaking there was less intense than in Myanmar, and the high-rise skyscraper that collapsed in Thailand was under construction, so it is probably an outlier. We can expect much worse in Myanmar, Hubbard says.Myanmars political situation will work against its recovery efforts. A military coup in 2021 and an ongoing civil war had already displaced millions of people from their homes. This quake is going to dramatically inflate that number, exacerbating an already extensive humanitarian crisis. Strong aftershocks will shake cities, towns and villages for several weeks to come, also impeding the likely chaotic recovery efforts.

March 28, 20253 min readNearly Half of People in the U.S. Have Toxic PFAS in Their Drinking WaterNew data released by the EPA show that nearly half of people in the U.S. have drinking water contaminated by toxic forever chemicals, or PFASBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean Visser Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty ImagesNew data recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that more than 158 million people across the U.S. have drinking water contaminated by toxic forever chemicals, scientifically known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).Drinking water is a major source of PFAS exposure. The sheer number of contaminated sites shows that these chemicals are likely present in most of the U.S. water supply, said David Andrews, deputy director of investigations and a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit advocacy organization, in a recent press release.What Are PFAS?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.There are more than 9,000 known PFAS compounds, and more than 600 of them are used in a wide range of common products, from cookware to cosmetics to pesticides.These compounds have a very strong carbon-fluorine bond, which means they are extremely stable and are useful for repelling grease and water. But the strength of that bond is also part of what makes them a dangerous pollutant.Why Are PFAS Dangerous?The stability of PFAS molecules means they do not readily biodegrade in the environment and can linger and build up over years and decadeshence the moniker forever chemicals.Several PFAS compounds have been linked to a significant variety of health issues, including several cancers, reproductive disorders, thyroid disease and a weakened immune system. Testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 99 percent of people in the U.S., including newborn babies, have PFAS in their bloodstream.Where Did the EPA Find PFAS?The EPA is requiring U.S. water utilities to test for 29 PFAS compounds. The latest results from that work show that 15 million more U.S. residents are exposed to these compounds in their drinking water than had been reported in the previous update. More data are expected to be released in the coming months because only 57 percent of water systems had reported full test results by March.The currently available results bring the known number of people in the U.S. exposed to PFAS through drinking water to 158 million, which is nearly half of the nations total population of about 340 million. PFAS contamination has been found in drinking water in locations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories.How Do PFAS Get in the Environment?PFAS can enter the environment from pollutants discharged into rivers and lakes by industrial facilities, as well as firefighting foam that seeps into the ground. Experts are also concerned that pesticides containing PFAS are a growing contributor to the problem.Does the EPA Regulate PFAS?In 2024 the EPA finalized a rule to set limits for six PFAS compounds in drinking water as part of a PFAS Strategic Roadmap laid out under the Biden-Harris administration. The rules provide for three years of testing and two years to remove PFAS from drinking water. This action will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses, said then EPA administrator Michael Regan during a call with reporters when the rules were announced last April.In another rule, two of the most harmful PFAS, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid), were labeled hazardous substances. This designation has allowed the agency to use Superfund money to clean up contaminated sites.It is unclear whether the current Trump administration might try to rescind or weaken those rules as part of a broader deregulatory campaign at the EPA. Some states had PFAS regulations prior to the limits that the EPA implemented that would still be in place if the agencys standards were rescinded. But the testing underway shows that 53 million people in states without PFAS regulations would be exposed to levels above current EPA limits.How to Avoid PFASSome utilities already treat water for PFAS by using filters that contain granulated activated charcoal or reverse osmosis membranes. Some home filters are also designed to reduce PFAS levels, but regular filter replacement is key, the EWG, which has tested several filters, says.

March 28, 20255 min readSafe, Cheap and Non-Invasive: Ultrasound Could Treat Cancer, Psychiatric Disorders and MoreA bioengineer highlights the potential of low-intensity ultrasound for multiple uses, from enhanced drug delivery to the brain to combating cancerBy Rachel Nuwer edited by Gary Stix Naeblys/Getty Images.If you are a parent, then you probably first laid eyes on your child through an ultrasound procedurethe technology that uses high-frequency sound waves to view soft tissue. It is undeniably one of the most popular imaging tools. But its uses now extend far beyond just prenatal care.One of the best examples is low-intensity focused ultrasound, or LIFU, which delivers sound at lower energetic intensities than traditional ultrasound. It is quickly emerging as a safe, low cost and non-invasive approach for a range of treatments. Researchers are most excited about three promising uses for LIFU that are currently being studied: getting drugs past the blood-brain barrier, improving treatment for some cancers and addressing certain psychiatric conditions.Scientific American talked to Elisa Konofagou, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University, about promising current research and the direction the field is headed. Konofagou designs ultrasound-based technologies for better image and signal processing, and she also specializes in measuring changes to tissues that have been subjected to therapeutic ultrasound. She frequently collaborates with physicians to conduct clinical investigations and to translate the technologies she develops in her lab to real-world settings.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]When did scientists begin to realize that low-intensity focused ultrasound had potential for a broader range of health applications? Theres a paper in Science from 1923 where scientists used focused ultrasound waves to destroy bacteria and red blood cells in frogs. So they knew that there was something happening with ultrasound and biological tissues. By the 1930s, they had started to try to treat nerves with therapeutic ultrasound, and in the 1950s, the brain.What attracted you to the field and made you want to dedicate your career to studying this? The fact that its completely non-invasive, and the fact that you can actually focus it down to a millimeter-size region. It's almost like science fiction to me, because usually if you want to treat somewhere deep in the body, you will have to perform surgery. In this case, you're able to go into a very small region deep in an organ without surgery. This includes the brain. Its a bit difficult to fathom, but LIFU does go through the skull.Your lab is studying how LIFU can be used to get drugs past the blood-brain barrier. Can you tell me more about that work? Some of our work focuses on temporarily opening the blood-brain barrier, a structure that is almost like a filter in the brain and doesnt allow drug molecules to go through. We are partnering with drug companies that have products that arent as efficacious as they are expected to be because theyre stopped by the blood-brain barrier. We have these small micro-bubbles that we inject into the bloodstream. Theyre designed to resonate at the frequencies of ultrasound. We use them in combination with LIFU to mechanically engage the blood vessels at the blood-brain barrier. This relaxes the vessels so the drugs can go through.Were trying to apply this method for Alzheimers treatment, for example. Others have opened the blood-brain barrier to allow an antibody that is aimed to reduce beta amyloid, the plaques that form in the brains of people with the disease, with the objective to increase both the dose of the antibody and the volume of the brain that receives treatment. It was found that the volume of beta amyloid reduces with the volume of opening, and thus the dose of the antibody received. But even without an antibody treatment, our group has found that opening the blood-brain barrier with focused ultrasound alone induces an intrinsic immune response in the brain that reduces beta amyloid and tau. So there are multiple avenues to harness ultrasound for Alzheimers that are worth investigating further.Ive heard that a similar approach can also be used for more targeted cancer treatments? Yes, thats also a very interesting aspect of how you can use LIFU. Very similar to the way that drugs for Alzheimers, Parkinsons and other neurodegenerative diseases do not penetrate the brain in a sufficient therapeutic dose, cancer drugs cant adequately reach tumors in the brain.Our group was the first, for example, to apply LIFU for opening the blood-brain barrier and delivering drugs for the treatment of Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas, a rare type of brain tumor that is 100 percent lethal within a year in pediatric patients. We treated six patients aged six to 17 years old in a soon-to-be-published safety study.The patients were initially debilitated because of the tumors occurrence in the area of their brains responsible for mobility. Although we werent able to demonstrate tumor control, we were able to show that the patients exhibited higher ease and comfort with movement immediately after treatment. This is important, because it improves quality of life for these patients. Theyre able to feed themselves, play on their iPad and hug their family members. Were starting a second study next month pairing LIFU with a generic drug to determine whether this combination results in better tumor control.Are you familiar with much of the psychiatric work thats going on with LIFU? Yes, the psychiatric applications seem even more like science fiction! You just have ultrasound reaching into the brainso no bubbles, no drugs, just sound itself. The ultrasound activates neurons and other types of brain cells such as microglia and astrocytes, which are basically there to keep the brain healthy. The cells respond to these mechanical waves, and their connectivity changes. In very layman terms, the ultrasound rewires the brain temporarily. More research is needed on how this works, but we think the rewiring helps by either stimulating or inhibiting brain circuits, which are known to have beneficial effects in treating such conditions.Some psychiatric disorders seem to respond to this. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is the one we know of that responds the most. Some people are also looking at anxiety disorders by focusing the ultrasound on the amygdala. .Weve also seen that, by opening the blood-brain barrier, you can stimulate the brain itself and have whats called neuromodulatory consequences. Were looking at this for treating depression and pain sensation. Our lab is also looking at using LIFU to treat pain by peripheral nerve stimulation outside the brain and spinal cord. Instead of treating the brain, you treat the region of the nerve that causes the pain sensation. Working with neurosurgeons at Columbia, weve shown that LIFU can relieve pain in carpal tunnel syndrome patients for a few days. Were also working with people with neuropathy and nerve tumors.Aside from the fact that this technology is non-invasive, what are some of the other advantages for patients? It is very portable. This means we can take the treatment to the patient, as opposed to taking the patient to the treatment. This is a big advantage especially for elderly patients and those with Alzheimer's. Being portable also means its much less costly, because you dont have to have technicians who maintain it.In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges for moving the field forward? The biggest challenge is convincing the FDA that LIFU is safe, and then getting practitioners to use it more readily. The good news is that high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has been approved and gotten reimbursement in the U.S. for treating prostate cancer and essential tremors. [HIFU uses higher energy levels to destroy targeted tissue, like tumor cells.] LIFU just stimulates tissue so its safer than HIFU, which ablates tissue. But its newer, so we need to get the FDA to embrace it.Where do you hope the field will be going forward with LIFU? In the future, I think hospitals will have a therapeutic ultrasound suite where you can get treatment for whatever application you needwhether its facilitating and increasing a drug dose in the targeted area, or treating mood and psychiatric disorders.

March 28, 20258 min readIn a Sky Full of Satellites, Astronomers Find Creative Ways to Observe the StarsSwarms of satellites launched by SpaceX and other companies are disrupting astronomical observations. Here's how scientists are copingBy Alexandra Witze & Nature magazine Satellite streaks appear in a photograph taken above the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park, Western Australia. Joshua RozellsIn the next few months, from its perch atop a mountain in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin surveying the cosmos with the largest camera ever built. Every three nights, it will produce a map of the entire southern sky filled with stars, galaxies, asteroids and supernovae and swarms of bright satellites ruining some of the view.Astronomers didnt worry much about satellites photobombing Rubins images when they started drawing up plans for the observatory more than two decades ago. But as the space around Earth becomes increasingly congested, researchers are having to find fresh ways to cope or else lose precious data from Rubin and hundreds of other observatories.The number of working satellites has soared in the past five years to around 11,000, mostly because of constellations of orbiters that provide Internet connectivity around the globe (see Satellite surge). Just one company, SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, has more than 7,000 operational Starlink satellites, all launched since 2019; OneWeb, a space communications company in London, has more than 630 satellites in its constellation. On paper, tens to hundreds of thousands more are planned from a variety of companies and nations, although probably not all of these will be launched.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Satellites play a crucial part in connecting people, including bringing Internet to remote communities and emergency responders. But the rising number can be a problem for scientists because the satellites interfere with ground-based astronomical observations, by creating bright streaks on images and electromagnetic interference with radio telescopes. The satellite boom also poses other threats, including adding pollution to the atmosphere.NatureWhen the first Starlinks launched, some astronomers warned of existential threats to their discipline. Now, researchers in astronomy and other fields are working with satellite companies to help quantify and mitigate the impacts on science and society. There is growing interest in collaborating and finding solutions together, says Giuliana Rotola, a space-policy researcher at the SantAnna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.Timing things rightThe first step to reduce satellite interference is knowing when and where a satellite will pass above an observatory. The aim is to minimize the surprise, says Mike Peel, an astronomer at Imperial College London.Before the launch of Starlinks, astronomers had no centralized reference for tracking satellites. Now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a virtual Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (CPS), which serves as an information hub and to which researchers, including Peel and Rotola, volunteer their time.One of the centres tools, called SatChecker, draws on a public database of satellite orbits, fed by information from observers and companies that track objects in space. Astronomers can use SatChecker to confirm what satellite is passing overhead during their observations. The tool isnt perfect; atmospheric drag and intentional manoeuvring can affect a satellites position, and the public database doesnt always reflect the latest information. For instance, the BlueWalker 3 satellite from telecommunications firm AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched in 2022 and was sometimes brighter than most stars; yet uncertainty of its position was so great at times that astronomers had difficulty predicting whether it would be in their field of view for their night-time observations.Starlink satellites leave streaks in a 2019 image taken by a 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/DECam DELVE SurveyTools such as SatChecker help telescope operators to avoid problems by allowing them to target a different part of the sky when a satellite passes overhead or by simply pausing observations as it flies by. It would aid astronomers if SatChecker had even more accurate information about satellite positions, but there are constraints on improving the system. SatChecker data come from the US Space Force, which draws on a global network of sensors that tracks objects in orbit and issues updates on satellite locations as often as several times a day. The frequency of these updates is limited by factors such as how often a sensor can observe an object and whether the sensor can distinguish what its looking at.Currently, satellite streaks are a relatively minor issue for telescope operators. But the problem will grow as satellite numbers continue to increase drastically, meaning more observation time will be lost, and this issue will be magnified for Rubin.Fixing the streaksRubin, which cost US$810 million to build, is a unique case because it scans large swathes of the sky frequently meaning it can detect rapidly changing phenomena such as incoming asteroids or cosmic explosions. Astronomers dont want to be fooled by passing satellites, as happened in 2017 when researchers spotted what they thought was a -ray burst high-energy flashes of light from a distant galaxy but turned out to be sunlight reflecting off a piece of space junk.Rubins powerful camera, coupled with its 8.4-metre telescope, will take about 1,000 nightly exposures of the sky, each about 45 times the area of the full Moon. Thats more wide-field pictures of the sky than any optical observatory has ever taken. Simulations suggest that if satellite numbers in low Earth orbit rise to around 40,000 over the 10 years of Rubins survey a not-impossible forecast then at least 10% of its images, and the majority of those taken during twilight, will contain a satellite trail.SpaceX took early steps to try to mitigate the problem. Working with Rubin astronomers, the company tested changes to the design and positions of Starlinks to try to keep their brightness beneath a target threshold. Amazon, the retail and technology giant based in Seattle, Washington, is also testing mitigations on prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper constellation. Such changes reduce, but dont eliminate, the problem.To limit satellite interference, Rubin astronomers are creating observation schedules to help researchers avoid certain parts of the sky (for example, near the horizon) and at certain times (such as around twilight). For when they cant avoid the satellites, Rubin researchers have incorporated steps into their data-processing pipeline to detect and remove satellite streaks. All these changes mean less time doing science and more time processing data, but they need to be done, astronomers say. We are really looking forward to getting data from Rubin and seeing how it turns out, Peel says.For other observatories, the IAU CPS is working on tools to help astronomers identify and correct satellite streaks in their data. One is a new database of crowdsourced observations of satellite brightnesses called SCORE, which is currently being beta tested and is planned for wider release in the coming months. This will help scientists to work backwards they might see something puzzling in their past observations and be able to work it out, Peel says.The database is definitely a very valuable tool because its one of few that have data freely available, says Marco Langbroek, a space-tracking specialist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. As a beta tester, Langbroek has added a number of entries to SCORE, including measurements of a NASA solar sail that changes in brightness as it tumbles through space. Going forwards, he says, SCORE will be most useful if a lot of astronomers contribute high-quality observations to the database, thereby building up a resource over time.Tuning things outAstronomers who work in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum face extra challenges when it comes to satellites.Big radio telescopes are typically located in remote regions, to be as far as possible from mobile-phone masts and other technological infrastructure that leak radio emissions. But satellites cant be avoided. If signals are coming from the sky, theyre always there, says Federico Di Vruno, an astronomer at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Jodrell Bank, UK, and co-director of the IAU CPS.When satellites transmit signals, the electromagnetic interference can overwhelm faint radio signals coming from the cosmos. One solution is to re-direct or temporarily turn off satellite transmissions. The US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and SpaceX have been working on ways to accomplish this, and the company now momentarily redirects or disables transmissions when Starlinks pass above sensitive telescopes including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The method requires voluntary buy-in by all partners, plus a lot of data sharing and intensive programming by the companies and by the astronomers, but it does reduce interference. It has been successful enough that small group of radio astronomers visited China last month to discuss the strategy with satellite operators and scientists there.An image made from multiple exposures shows streaks from Starlink satellites, the International Space Station and other satellites over a site in Wales.Max AlexanderBut as soon as one solution is found, fresh challenges appear. One is the rise of direct-to-cell satellites, which function like mobile-phone towers in space and can transmit to areas on the ground that otherwise dont have coverage. Optical astronomers worry about these because they are physically large and therefore bright, and they are a big problem for radio astronomers because direct-to-cell transmissions are extremely powerful. If one of those hits a radio observatory, the telescope might be blind for a little bit, Di Vruno says. So astronomers and satellite operators are discussing how they can share information about these as well, to avoid each other when a satellite passes over an observatory.Another emerging challenge is unintended emissions which happen when satellites leak radiation in wavelengths far outside the bands typically used for transmissions and other tasks. Early tests for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescopes, which are under construction in Australia and South Africa, discovered such leakage coming from Starlinks and other satellites.Many of these unintended emissions are at the low frequencies that are used in some studies including those of the early Universe. So far, astronomers havent come up with a good solution, other than scheduling telescopes to not record data when a satellite passes through the part of the sky being observed. In the future, it is possible that authorities such as the International Telecommunication Union might be able to issue regulations on this, as it already does for other shared uses of the electromagnetic spectrum.Cleaning up the atmosphereAstronomers arent the only researchers concerned about the impacts of satellite constellations. In the past few years, a growing number of atmospheric scientists have been warning that these fleets will pollute Earths upper atmosphere during launches and then when their orbits decline and they burn up. Researchers are just starting to get to grips with the scope of this pollution, says Connor Barker, an atmospheric chemist at University College London (UCL).The point of satellite constellations is to have lots of satellites in orbit, but refreshing them when new technology comes along means that the pace of launches and re-entries will accelerate. In February alone, an average of four Starlink satellites a day re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.Each re-entry adds chemicals to the upper atmosphere. In a 2023 study, researchers reported that measurements made during high-altitude aeroplane flights detected more than 20 chemical elements in Earths upper atmosphere that probably came from satellite re-entries, including aluminium, copper and lead. Other work has found that satellite constellations contributed around 40% of many types of carbon emission from the space industry in 2022, including black carbon particles and carbon dioxide that could contribute to warming the atmosphere. Its not yet clear how much this warms the planet or contributes to other environmental problems. Some early analyses suggest that satellite launches could contribute a small but measurable amount of ozone destruction.There are no regulations on satellite atmospheric pollution. Barker and his colleagues at UCL say a good first step towards a solution is to get better estimates of the scope of the problem. They have been building an emissions inventory for rocket launches and satellite re-entries, carefully tallying up the contaminants involved and estimating the altitudes at which they enter the atmosphere. Even though this is currently a relatively small industry thats having a relatively small impact on the atmosphere, we should still be aware of it, says Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemist at UCL.Researchers are trying to raise the profile of these and other concerns linked to satellite fleets. Some of these issues were discussed in February in Vienna, at a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It was the first time that the committee formally discussed the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy.No major actions were taken, as expected for these early discussions. But now all of the member states know of dark and quiet skies, Di Vruno says. That in itself, he says, is a success.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 18, 2025.

March 28, 20253 min read76 Ways Pregnancy and Giving Birth Change a Person's BodyData from 300,000 births reveal how essential biological measurements are altered by carrying and delivering a babyBy Celeste Biever & Nature magazine Womens bodies undergo vast physiological changes during pregnancy that can last for more than a year after birth. Catherine Delahaye/Getty ImagesBiologists have built up one of the most detailed pictures ever of the changes that occur in womens bodies before and after pregnancy, by pooling and studying around 44 million physiological measurements from more than 300,000 births.The gigantic study1, which used the anonymized results of blood, urine and other tests taken before, during and more than a year after pregnancy, reveals the scale of the toll that carrying a baby and childbirth take on the body from the myriad changes made to support a fetus to the effects of its abrupt departure from the body during birth. The research was published in Science Advances on 26 March.The study suggests that the postnatal period in the body is much longer than people tend to assume, says Jennifer Hall, who researches reproductive health at University College London. Theres a societal expectation that you bounce back quickly after childbirth, she says. This is like the biological proof that you dont.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The results also suggest that it might be possible to identify women at risk of certain common complications of pregnancy including the blood-pressure condition pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes before conception. Currently, these conditions are diagnosed during pregnancy.The power of dataThe researchers used anonymized data from medical records supplied by Israels largest health-care provider, and spanning the period from 2003 to 2020. To build up a picture of a typical pregnancy, they used test results only from women aged 2035 years who were not taking medication or experiencing chronic disease.NatureThe team gathered results from 76 common tests including measures of cholesterol, immune cells, red blood cells, inflammation and the health of the liver, kidneys and metabolism taken up to 4.5 months before conception and up to 18.5 months after childbirth. This allowed them to establish average values for each test for every week in that period.It took my breath away to see that that every test has this dynamical profile that is so elaborate, week by week, and has never been seen before, says Uri Alon, a systems biologist at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Rehovot, Israel, who led the study.The researchers found that, in the first month after birth, 47% of the 76 indicators stabilized close to their pre-conception values. But 41% of the indicators took longer than 10 weeks to stabilize. These included several measures of liver function and cholesterol that took around six months to settle, and an indicator of bone and liver health, which took a year (see The bodys slow recovery from childbirth). The remaining 12% took 410 weeks to stabilize.Several measurements including a marker for inflammation and several indicators of blood health settled but did not return to their pre-conception levels even after 80 weeks, when the study ended. Whether such long-lasting differences result from pregnancy and birth themselves or from behaviours changing after the arrival of a child is a question for future research, say the scientists.The researchers classed the indicators into four groups according to their trajectories. Some measures rose during pregnancy, then dropped post-partum; others did the opposite. Others still didnt just drop or rise to meet pre-conception levels: they over- or undershot their pre-pregnancy values at delivery, before settling at roughly their pre-conception levels. That could be explained by the body overcompensating for changes.Pre-conception changesThe scientists found distinct changes in the body that began even before conception. Some of these including a reduction in a marker of inflammation and increases in folic acid were beneficial. The researchers attribute this to the tendency for people to take supplements and live more healthily when trying to conceive.The researchers also isolated tests from women who developed complications that are currently not diagnosed until pregnancy, including gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia, a condition that results in high blood pressure and can be life-threatening. They found that these women had different profiles for certain markers compared with tests from healthy pregnancies, and in some cases, the differences were most significant before conception.This finding is exciting, says Hall, because it raises the possibility of being able to identify and help women at risk of these conditions before they conceive.The findings show the power of anonymized biomedical information to uncover fresh insights, says Alon. His team is now taking a similar approach to studying menopause. We can ask any statistical question we want, he says. It's like paradise.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 26, 2025.

March 28, 20255 min readPhysicists Catch a Quantum Butterfly Spreading Its WingsIn a first, physicists have directly seen Hofstadters butterflya long-sought-after fractal in the quantum realmBy Gayoung Lee edited by Lee BillingsA team of scientists from Princeton University has measured the energies of electrons in a new class of quantum materials and has found them to follow a fractal pattern known as Hofstadters butterfly, which has long been predicted, but the new study marks the first time it has been directly observed experimentally in a real material. Yazdani GroupAlmost 50 years ago, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter predicted that a butterfly would spread its wings in the quantum world. Under the right conditions, tiny electrons in a quantum system could produce an energy spectrum composed of fractals, intricate self-repeating structures that would form a very striking pattern somewhat resembling a butterfly, he wrote in a seminal 1976 paper.Many physicists have attempted to create Hofstadters butterfly in different formats, with varying degrees of success; the first such spectra emerged about 25 years ago. The difficulty in observing the effect was, in part, because Hofstadters initial prediction posited that it would require colossal magnetic fields beyond the reach of any laboratory. Most experimental efforts consequently sought to summon the butterfly in silico, within the confines of computer simulations, and those reliant on physical quantum systems studied its properties using largely indirect measurements.Now, however, what may be the first-ever direct, real-world observation of the butterfly has emerged from the complex quantum dance of electrons sandwiched between two microscopic layers of graphene. The results, published recently in Nature, are all the more remarkable because they were unexpectedthe researchers involved werent even trying to hatch Hofstadters butterfly from its quantum chrysalis.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.I think it was happy accident, says study co-author Kevin Nuckolls, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I think this is common for physics experiments [in which] you see something weird. You spend a couple hours on it and decidelike, Ill give it a couple more days.At the time of their experiment, Nuckolls and his co-authors were all part of the same Princeton University lab, studying how superconductivitythe resistance-free flow of electricitymanifests in graphene, a two-dimensional crystal formed by a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern. When two sheets of graphene are stacked one atop the other, with a slight rotational offset of about 1.1 degrees so that the hexagons dont exactly overlap, a so-called magic-angle configuration is formed. When subjected to a magnetic field, the electrons within each sheet zip back and forth between the carbon atoms, exhibiting superconductivity and other bizarre properties.Manufacturing such twisted bilayer graphene is as much art as science. It often yields off-kilter duds that dont have the proper angle. So for each attempt, the researchers checked their work by directly probing the sheets with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The resulting images show the flow of electrons through the material and can indicate whether any given assemblage has hit the magic angle.Generally when were making these devices, we dont know what angle this twisted bilayer graphene comes out at until we put it into our microscope, explains Dillon Wong, a co-author of the study and formerly a researcher at Princeton. And most of the time its at a completely wrong angle, and were just disappointed.As expected, things went wrong this time around, tooa first look showed that the graphene was undershooting the intended angle of 1.1 degrees. But because this particular graphene bilayer was closer to another known but slightly smaller magic angle, Nuckolls decided to keep imaging it anyway with the STM.This plot shows how the energies (vertical axis) of electrons change as a function of magnetic field (horizontal axis), and cluster into separated Hofstadter electronic bands (multi-colored shaded regions). Nuckolls and his colleagues were able to identify how the energy levels of electrons were self-repeating on different scales, as was predicted would be the case in the formation of "Hofstadter's butterfly," a type of quantum fractal.Yazdani groupThe first images werent that impressive, Nuckolls admits, but once the researchers zoomed out to see a fuller picture of the system, they became more intrigued. They only realized several days later, however, that the sandwiched electrons appeared to be fulfilling Hofstadters half-century-old prediction. Their delay isnt so surprising, given that they werent looking for the pattern in the first placeand that it only became apparent through careful tracking of the electrons collective behavior.The idea behind Hofstadters butterfly is that youre looking at how the [band structure of electrons] moves when you have the magnetic field on one axis and the electrons energies on the other, and plotted on that diagram, the band forms a fractal structure that looks like a butterfly, explains Myungchul Oh, study co-author and now a physics professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. Past experiments were indirect, Oh says, in the sense that they werent looking at the actual energy transformations but rather proxy measurements, such as the spatial distributions of electrons.Once Nuckolls, Wong and Oh decided this particular system was worth deeper scrutiny, they tasked Michael Scheer, a graduate student in theoretical physics at Princeton, to come up with more robust models of the notional interactions at work to better understand exactly what was occurring and how.Hofstadters butterfly is kind of like a fingerprint, Scheer says. Its really detailed, informational and very sensitive to the model that you have and, on the other hand, to the material that youre measuring and its physical parameters. That interplay between theory and experiment can reveal an enormous amount of information that researchers can use to learn about the materials properties, Nuckolls adds. In other words, studying Hofstadters butterfly in twisted graphene bilayers could be of broader utility, opening the way for further enlightening investigations of the phenomenon in other systems and materials.One of the biggest merits of this work is that its ... really managed to go in a very special regime of parameters to be able to see new physics, says Cristiane Morais Smith, a condensed matter physicist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who wasnt involved in the new work. What was very special was that [they] could go to a situation in which these small magnetic fields [like those of an STM] were enough to probe what [they] wanted to probe, she says, which should allow other groups to easily replicate and elaborate on the experiment.Hofstadter, now age 80, politely declined Scientific Americans request for comment about the new result, noting that he had only rarely revisited his prediction ever since making it about half a century ago and would be unlikely to properly comprehend the paperwhich, he added, he had no plans to read. Over the years I have seen many claims of experimental replication of the [predicted] recursiveness, he says. But they are all extremely coarse-grained, and none of them has come close to detecting a genuine recursively nested structure. That will perhaps happen in another few decadesif humanity still exists at that point.Even so, the new work takes humanity at least several footsteps (or wing flaps?) toward realizing Hofstadters predictions. This initial result is ripe for follow-up studies, Oh says, such as examining whether Hofstadters butterfly will still take flight in graphene sandwiches subjected to far stronger magnetic fields. Id love to see how and whether the Hofstadter pattern would be emulated on higher-scale magnetic fields, he says.Theres something very satisfying about us working on this problem 50 years after Hofstadters calculation, Nuckolls says. In Hofstadters original paper, he basically concludes that what Ive calculated and predicted is really awesome, but no ones ever going to see it because the necessary magnetic fields are never going to be achieved. Yet 25 years after that, researchers started seeing the first evidence supporting his calculations. Now our work is able to probe exactly what he had predicted.

March 27, 20255 min readWhen Was the First Exoplanet Discovered?Evidence of alien worlds goes back farther than you thinkBy Phil Plait edited by Lee BillingsThis artists concept shows an exoplanet and debris disk orbiting a polluted white dwarf. NASA/JPL-CaltechFor centuries, humans have wondered if planets exist around other stars and dreamed of what these alien worlds might be like.Eventually technology began catching up with our imagination. Despite many false starts and dead ends over all that time, astronomers announced the first discovery of exoplanets in 1992. These planets were not like Earth, nor were they orbiting a star like the sun, but they were confirmed to exist. It was the first evidence ever found of worlds beyond those of our solar system.But there is an argument that the first evidence was actually obtained years before, in 1988, when astronomers announced the detection of a planet around the nearby star Gamma Cephei A, 45 light-years from Earth. That claim was later retracted because of uncertainty in the data. In 2003, however, further observations showed that the planet did indeed exist. Surely this was the first evidence of alien worldsor so many textbooks and articles would have you believe.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.But thats not quite true either. In a paper published in the proceedings of an astronomical conference, American astronomer Ben Zuckerman showed that the first evidence was arguably found much earlier than that.In 1917 Dutch-American astronomer Adriaan van Maanen was looking for stars that happened to be near the sun in space. To do this, he searched for stars that had high proper motion, meaning they moved more rapidly across the sky than the stars around them. The idea is that stars closer to Earth will appear to move faster than ones farther away, just as trees alongside a road appear to zip past you faster then distant hills when youre in a car.He found one, and it turned out to be weird. Observations at the time indicated it was decently close to us, about 13 light-years away. (Modern measurements put it at 14.1.) But that didnt make sense: these observations also indicated it was a hot star, hotter than the sun, and those kinds of stars are very luminous. Yet this one, later named van Maanen 2, was much too dim. Based on temperature alone, it shouldve been among the brightest stars visible in the sky, but instead it was so faint that it couldnt be seen without a telescope!Over the next couple of decades, this mystery was solved. Van Maanen 2 is an example of a white dwarf, the remnant of a relatively low-mass star like the sun after it exhausts all the nuclear fuel in its core, then expands into a swollen red giant and blows away its outer layers. Whats left is the hot stellar core exposed to space. From a distance it looks like an ordinary star, and its temperature mimics that of one with much higher mass. Such a white dwarf is small but extraordinarily dense, squeezing about as much mass as our sun into an orb only about the size of Earth! A cubic centimeter of white dwarf material roughly the size of a six-sided die can weigh as much as a metric tonthats about 100,000 times as dense as lead.Van Maanen 2 is the closest solitary white dwarf to the sun, so its studied quite intensely. (Two others are closer but orbit other stars.) White dwarfs are so faint that they become difficult to study at greater distances, and having one so nearby is a boon to astrophysics.But such studies revealed another mystery about this star. Astronomers can examine many characteristics of a cosmic object by creating a spectrumbreaking its incoming light into many individual wavelengths (or colors). Different elements and molecules absorb light at very specific wavelengths, so its possible to measure the presence of such material in stars by looking for areas of the spectrum where there is less light. (These features are called absorption lines.) At the time Van Maanen 2 was found, such spectra were recorded in a similar fashion as images; the light from the telescope was projected onto a glass plate and sprayed with photographically sensitive chemicals.When astronomers examined the spectrum of Van Maanen 2 on one of these plates, they were astonished to see spectral features usually associated with much more massive starsnamely, a strong calcium absorption line in the stars atmosphere. To a modern astronomers eye, thats very odd indeed.Calcium simply shouldnt be present in a white dwarfs atmosphere; the stellar corpse has monstrously strong surface gravity. Standing on the surface, a typical human would weigh about 7,000 metric tonsmore than 20 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty! Despite that intense gravity, a white dwarf can have an atmosphere almost entirely composed of extremely hot hydrogen and helium above its surface. Any heavier, less buoyant elements, such as iron or calcium, should fall to the surface rapidly on astronomical timescales, scrubbing the atmosphere clean. Indeed, most white dwarfs are seen to have extremely pure atmospheres of just those two lighter elements.But not allsome are polluted with heavier elements, with van Maanen 2 being the first example known to science. The next piece of this exoplanetary puzzle fell into place in the early 2000s, when astronomers found an infrared excess for some white dwarfs; that is, these white dwarfs give off more infrared light than expected. Such things have been seen in normal stars and indicate the presence of a starlight-warmed debris disk emitting an infrared glow. For white dwarfs, this result was unexpected but was quickly attributed to the remains of asteroids torn apart by the dead stars fierce gravity. The asteroids themselves were likely part of the planet-forming process that occurred billions of years earlier, when the white dwarf was still a young, vigorous star like the sun. After the star died, asteroids could have been gravitationally deflected by any lingering gas giant planets into close-in orbits and torn apart. Over time, that heavy elementenriched debris rained down on the white dwarf, polluting the atmosphere.Many of these white dwarfs are old but still show this signature of debris in their spectra. This means the rain of asteroidal debris is an ongoing process! Otherwise that heavier material would long ago have been cleaned from the atmosphere.And this is why the calcium-spiked spectrum of van Maanen 2 was so bizarre: besides mimicking a hotter star, it was also contaminated with debris from an ancient planetary system.While World War I raged on Earth, a very different war of the worlds was occurring 14 light-years away. A tiny spark of light collected by a telescope and recorded on a small glass plate showed that planets existed around other stars.So in some sense, alien worlds were not first discovered in the 1990s or even the 1980s. It took nearly a century to fully understand it, but the first evidence for exoplanets was found in 1917.

OpinionMarch 28, 20255 min readMaking America Ableist AgainBy going after Social Security, Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Education, Donald Trump is signaling his belief that having good genes means not having a disabilityBy Megha Satyanarayana A girl holds a sign supporting disability awareness at a 2019 parade in New York City. Recent actions by the Trump administration could undermine protections and accommodations for people with disabilities across the nation. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty ImagesWhen I was a teenager, I took voice lessons from a musician who was blind. I drove over to her apartment to sight-read music, sing scales and work on vocal exercises, and I wondered how the heck she managed with our wretched bus system, how she got to the store, to campus, or just out for a walk. I was too afraid to ask.One summer, I spent a lot of time with a genetics doctor who worked in a clinic that was part of what the state then called the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. I learned about dozens of genetic diseases that left children with permanent intellectual disabilities. I learned about the history of institutionalization in our state. It wasnt pretty. No states is. We talked about her caseload each week, what caused the diseases, and how she handled each kids medical needs. It was eye-opening, to say the least.Then, in my last year of high school, I worked with a child with developmental delays in motor skills. We played ball, games, anything to help him move his body, because his parents could see that it helped him regulate, helped him gain dexterity.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.My teenage brain began to put it all together the ways we tuck people with disabilities out of sight and out of mind. Special education at different schools, few extracurricular activities, the complex and coordinated steps needed to carry out day-to-day lifeall hidden. A lot has changed since then; children with disabilities go to mainstream schools, extracurriculars are more inclusive, other transportation options exist, and we adjust our infrastructure and workplaces (by law, if not desire) to make it easier for anyone who is differently abled to manage, if not succeed.But now our president and his administration are waging war on people with disabilities in the name of government efficiency. Yet, its about more than that. Whether through rhetoric about normalizing institutionalization again or by making Social Security benefits harder to get, this is nothing other than ableism, eugenics doctrine at work in the highest level of government, and its already making life much harder for the 70 million adults in our country who have a disability, the 7.5 million children who get help at school for one, and the millions of able-bodied people who care for them. Lets be clear about how egregious this is; the Trump administration is targeting services and protections that affect nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population, saying it isnt the federal governments responsibility to set standards of care and consideration for these Americans, to ensure they are being treated equally.Whether the endgame is the privatization of more services, or, shifting the responsibility of caring for people with disabilities to charities and private donations, or leaving it up to states to decide who is worthy of assistance and who is not, the message is crystal clear: To have good genes in Trumps world, its not just being white that mattersas the administration has tried to eliminate racial diversity in government and elsewhere with a McCarthyesque zealbut being able-bodied and of sound mind. Everyone else can just rot.That Trump and his administration are doing this shouldnt surprise anyone. This is a president who, while campaigning for his first term in office, imitated the arm motions of a New York Times reporter who is differently abled. He was telling us then that he scorned disability. And recently, only 10 days into his second term, as part of an antidiversity rant, he baselessly blamed a mid-air collision in Washington D.C. on air traffic controllers with severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems, saying people with that job needed to be naturally talented geniuses.On top of the cuts to the Social Security Administration, which helps some 67 million people of all ages with disability insurance, Trumps appointees are slashing the Department of Veterans Affairs and dismantling the Department of Education, both of which serve people with disabilities. As well, his Department of Justice is removing guidance documents that help businesses better serve people with disabilities. One of the documents is about making new hotels ADA-compliant. Another is about communicating with clients or customers with disabilities. The Republican budget plan in Congress calls for cuts that are certain to impact Medicaid, which provides health care to both children and adults with disabilities.Of the 16 million veterans in the U.S., about one third get disability benefits. Many seek help with mental health after trauma, injury and much more, and are already dealing with the fallout of changes to the VA. About 15 million people with disabilities use Medicaid.Of course all this will play out in court. And there is the chance that the administration wont take all these steps, given that much of what they are doing requires an act of Congress to legally happen. And there are those who think its fine to shrink the federal government and push all decision-making to states. But then what happens when states decide to stop caring for people with disabilities?Texas and 16 other states recently challenged the constitutionality of Section 504, an antidiscrimination statute that is perhaps better known to parents as the law that makes possible educational accommodations for children with ADHD, autism and epilepsy, not to mention children with mobility issues or diabetes. Why? Those states objected to the Biden administration adding gender dysphoria to its protections. The suit has been paused, but not withdrawn, and some legal analyses see this case as a preview to efforts to overturn Olmstead v. L.C., the Supreme Court case that made it discriminatory to institutionalize people with disabilities when they can live in the community. Out of sight, out of mind might soon be back on the table for some of our most vulnerable people.Meanwhile, the president might do to states what hes doing to universitiestry to withhold federal funding to get what he wants in terms of disability protectionsas a note, many of the states that get the most funding for educating children with disabilities tend to vote Republican. And its not just race-based diversity research the administration is trying to pull the plug on. Social securityfunded research into disability was just canned last month. The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education that studies, among other things, special education, has been devastated.In 2020, one poll indicated 51 percent of people with disabilities in the U.S. voted for Trump. This president, his administration, and his supporters have made it abundantly clear through his words and their actions that their vision of the U.S. does not serve people who are not perfect physical and emotional specimens of whiteness. And the last time our country went down that path, the results were catastrophic for Americans and the world.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

March 27, 20255 min readUrban Wildfire Smoke Sensors Miss Some Harmful ChemicalsAs fires burned in Los Angeles this year, newer toxin monitors found contaminants that arent measured by standard methods. Now scientists and officials are pushing for better detectionBy Katharine Gammon & KFF Health News edited by Josh FischmanSmoke from this year's Los Angeles fires contained hazardous chemicals. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty ImagesWhen the catastrophic Los Angeles fires broke out in January of 2025, John Volckens suspected firefighters and residents were breathing toxic air from the burning homes, buildings, and cars, but it was unclear how much risk the public faced. So, the professor of environmental health at Colorado State University devised a plan to get answers.Volckens shipped 10 air pollution detectors to Los Angeles to measure the amounts of heavy metals, benzene, and other chemicals released by the flames, which burned more than 16,000 homes, businesses, and other structures, making it one of the countrys costliest natural disasters.These disaster events keep happening. They release pollution into the environment and to the surrounding community, said Volckens, who shared his results with local air regulators. We have this kind of traumatic experience, and then were left with: Well, what did we just breathe in?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientists and public health officials have long tracked the pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, and other environmental health hazards and shared them with the public through the local Air Quality Index. But the monitoring system misses hundreds of harmful chemicals released in urban fires, and the Los Angeles fires have led to a renewed push for state and federal regulators to do more as climate change drives up the frequency of these natural disasters.Its questionable whether the Trump administration will act, however. Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced what he described as the biggest deregulatory action in history, which critics warn will lead to a rollback of environmental health regulations.While Air Quality Index values are a good starting place for knowing whats in the air, they dont provide a full picture of pollutants, especially during disasters, said Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at UCLA. In fact, the AQI could be in a healthy range, but you could still be exposed to higher air toxins from the fires, she added.Heavy smoke from the Eaton fire in Los Angeles.Josh EdelsonAFP via Getty ImagesIn February, nearly a dozen lawmakers from California called on the EPA to create a task force of local and federal authorities to better monitor whats in the air and inform the public. Locals are unsure of the actual risks they face and confused by conflicting reports about how safe it is to breathe the air outside, which may lead to families not taking adequate protective measures, the lawmakers wrote in a letter to James Payne, who was then the acting EPA administrator. The EPA press office declined to comment in an e-mail to KFF Health News.Lawmakers have also introduced bills in Congress and in the California legislature to address the gap. A measure by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) would direct the EPA to allocate grant money to local air pollution agencies to communicate the risks of wildfire smoke, including deploying air monitors. Meanwhile, a bill by Democratic state Assembly member Lisa Calderon would create a Wildfire Smoke Research and Education Fund to study the health impacts of wildfire smoke, especially on firefighters and residents affected by fires.The South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regional air pollution control agency, operates about 35 air monitoring stations across nearly 11,000 square miles of the Los Angeles region to measure pollutants like ozone and carbon monoxide.During the fires, the agency, which is responsible for the air quality of 16.8 million residents, relied on its network of stations to monitor five common pollutants, including PM2.5, the fine particles that make up smoke and can travel deep inside the body. After the fires, the South Coast AQMD deployed two mobile monitoring vans to assess air quality in cleanup areas and expanded neighborhood-level monitoring during debris removal, said Jason Low, head of the agencys monitoring and analysis division.Local officials also received the data collected by Volckens devices, which arrived on-site four days after the fires broke out. The monitors about the size of a television remote control and housed in a plastic cover the size of a bread loaf were placed at air monitoring stations around the fires perimeters, as well as at other sites, including in West Los Angeles and Santa Clarita. The devices, called AirPens, monitored dozens of air contaminants in real time and collected precise chemical measurements of smoke composition.Researchers replaced the sensors every week, sending the filters to a lab that analyzed them for measurements of volatile organic compounds like benzene, lead, and black carbon, along with other carcinogens. Volckens devices provided public health officials with data for a month as cleanup started. The hope is that the information provided can help guide future health policies in fire-prone areas.Theres not one device that can measure everything in real time, Low said. So, we have to rely on different tools for each different type of purpose of monitoring.ASCENT, a national monitoring network funded by the National Science Foundation, registered big changes after the fires. One monitor, about 11 miles south of the Eaton fire in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, detected 40 times the normal amount of chlorine in the air and 110 times the typical amount of lead in the days following the fires. It was clear the chemical spikes came from urban wildfire smoke, which is more dangerous than what would be emitted when trees and bushes burn in rural areas, said Richard Flagan, the co-principal investigator at the networks site in Los Angeles.Ultimately, the purpose is to get the data out there in real time, both for the public to see but also for people who are doing other aspects of research, said Flagan, adding that chemical measurements are critical for epidemiologists who are developing health statistics or doing long-term studies of the impact of air pollution on peoples health.Small, low-cost sensors could fill in gaps as government networks age or fail to adequately capture the full picture of whats in the air. Such sensors can identify pollution hot spots and improve wildfire smoke warnings, according to a March 2024 U.S. Government Accountability Office report.Although the devices have become smaller and more accurate in the past decade, some pollutants require analysis with X-ray scans and other costly high-level equipment, said J. Alfredo Gmez, director of the Natural Resources and Environment team at the GAO. And Gmez cautioned that the quality of the data can vary depending on what the devices monitor.Low-cost sensors do a good job of measuring PM2.5 but not such a good job for some of these other air toxins, where they still need to do more work, Gmez said.UCLAs Zhu said the emerging technology of portable pollution monitors means residents not just government and scientists might be able to install equipment in their backyards and broaden the picture of whats happening in the air at the most local level.If the fires are predicted to be worse in the future, it might be a worthwhile investment to have some ability to capture specific types of pollutants that are not routinely measured by government stations, Zhu said.KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

OpinionMarch 27, 20256 min readFat Doesn't Deserve Its Bad RapFat is one of the most active, dynamic organs we have. Why cant we learn to love it?By Bethany Brookshire smartboy10/Getty ImagesWe starve it. Sweat it off. Freeze or carve it out. We claim that two thirds of Americans have too much of it, and then we take weekly injections just to shrink it. Body fat is generally demonized, and the way we treat people with larger bodies fills me with wrath. We build tiny airplane seats and complain when people cant fit in them; we watch as total strangers mock and concern troll larger people about their health, for daring just to exist. We push people to feel shame for a body part some of us think is too large.The way we stigmatize fat is especially galling given how important our fat cells are. One type secretes hormones that affect metabolism, while others help keep us warm. Where fat sits in our body provides support and structure, from arteries to anus.We are used to thinking of fat as this passive thing we try to stuff into our jeans. But what if we saw it as it is: a biological organ and one of the most adaptable in the human body? Adipose tissue communicates with the gut, brain, immune system and more to keep us moving and healthy. What if we gave it the same research funding, care and attention we gave our hearts, livers or brains? Knowing us, wed probably use the knowledge to make more drugs to get rid of it. But maybe we could reduce stigma and shame, and find value in our flexible and fascinating fat. And then wed be a little less eager to throw it away.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.It might seem odd to think of fat as an organ, in part because many of the organs we think about are so contained. There is only one liver, only two kidneys. But adipose tissue is stored all over the body. The most abundant form, white adipose tissue, lives partially in places like the omentum, folds of connective tissue that form a fatty, protective apron over the organs in your abdomen. Most white adipose tissue80 percent of our total fat massis subcutaneous, or beneath the skin, and tends to be concentrated in the stomach, hips, butt and thighs.We wrongly associate this tissue with laziness. Instead, it is full of energy. Each cell contains a large droplet filled with multichained molecules called triglycerides, which it releases as fuel. White adipose tissues ability to grow and shrink is a feature, not a bug. It is constantly swelling and draining, taking up energy and sending it out again multiple times per day. Thanks to fat, our biochemistry hums along smoothly.It's taken us a long time to see fat as a dynamic organ that isnt just squishy storage for extra calories. About 30 years ago, with the discovery that it releases the hormone leptin, scientists finally began to understand fat as an actual organ. Leptin tells our body, Hey, we have enough stored energyno rush to get more. In the years since, weve learned that white adipose tissue secretes other hormones and immune signals. It helps to regulate metabolism, promote insulin sensitivity, and increase or reduce inflammation.But we dont just have white fat; there is also brown adipose tissue, concentrated in the neck and armpit, around the trachea, lining the blood vessels, surrounding the kidneys, and more. While white adipose tissue has one large fatty droplet, brown tissue has many tiny droplets, and lots of mitochondria. It is thermogenic, increasing energy use to keep us warm. These relatively small fat depots can increase energy expense in humans by between 40 and 80 percentrunning hard to make sure we run hot.And in between there is beige fat. This adipose tissue starts white, but if its constantly exposed to cold temperatures, some of it decides on a career change. It makes more small fat dropletsand becomes capable of creating heat. These beige fat cells can then convert back to white fat cells when summer comes again.Fat is versatile. In bone marrow, it helps bone cells turn over and generate new blood. Fat lines the outsides of our blood vessels, giving them support and helping to regulate dilation. Fat pads in our knees spread the weight of our body over our lower legs and help control blood flow in the area. In our anus, fat pads are essential to maintain fecal continence.So why have we hated it so much and for so long? Fat phobia has existed throughout history, with even Shakespeare telling fat jokes, long before we understood anything about metabolic health. Now we associate a lot of visible fat on people as something unhealthy. But this fat we can see is not necessarily the fat we should care about. Overall fat mass is correlated with disease, but correlation is not causation. In fact, white adipose tissue that expands easily can protect against diabetesone of the diseases most people fear they will get if they carry too much fat. But its the invisible visceral fat, particularly around the heart, that is most associated with cardiovascular problems.Even how adipose tissue grows matters. Individual fat cells can grow larger if they become too full of triglycerides. This is linked to inflammation and metabolic syndrome. But adipose cells can also divide without ill effects. In both cases, the tissue is getting bigger, and a person is growing larger. But only one is linked to poor health. Increasing brown and beige fat in mice can actually decrease overall fat mass and increase how sensitive bodies are to insulin.Because of this, measures of simple size, whether body mass index, waist measurement or anything else arent a reliable predictor of health. Around 32 percent of people designated obese are metabolically healthy, and around 24 percent of normal weight people are not.But diets or drugs dont focus on brown fat levels, or fat around the heart. While new drugs like GLP-1 agonists have wonderful effects on insulin resistance, most of their skyrocketing popularity isnt because they can treat type 2 diabetes, which is what many of them were developed to treat. Instead its because of how much weight people on these drugs can losewhether or not that weight changes someones health at all.Diets and weight-loss drugs are marketed with health halos. But the real drive to lose weight is the societal stigma around this organ. There are plenty of studies showing that weight stigma has its own harmsand that the stress associated with it is, ironically, associated with weight gain.Diets and drugs sell the public on losing weight, without regard for which kinds of tissue are being lost, or how that loss might affect the rest of the body. The hatred we have for other peoples adipose tissue affects how we treat them, and what we as a society demand people who carry more fat will tolerate to lose it. While a male contraceptive pill can be pulled from trials for low mood and acne, side effects like nausea, diarrhea, malnutrition, bleeding and more are considered normal and appropriate prices to pay for various forms of weight loss.We would never treat our heart, liver or brain in such a way. We see these organs as complex, with positive and negative effects through the rest of the bodyeffects that need to be carefully considered every time we attempt to treat a condition. Fat deserves the same consideration.Our stigma causes harm, and it also causes incuriosity. What do we lose by not considering the benefits of fat? What scientific questions are understudied or even ignored in our haste to label body size alone a disease? If we approach our squishy organ with more appreciation, we might be able to develop more treatments that target the metabolic disease and inflammation itself, rather than assuming less weight will solve all problems. We might learn more about how our own bodies use adipose tissue. We might gain a different view of larger bodies. We might do better for science and society, if we could only stomach a different view of fat.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

March 27, 20254 min readDisaster Officials Are Facing a World without FEMARevelations that Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem plans to abolish or shrink the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent shock waves through state and local emergency respondersMembers of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood damaged area with a search canine in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene along the Swannanoa River on October 4, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina. Mario Tama/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | State officials were urged Wednesday to prepare for the possible abolition of the Federal Emergency Management Agency following a report by POLITICOs E&E News that senior Trump officials were taking steps to dissolve or shrink the agency.The head of an emergency managers association told state and local disaster agencies to start planning to operate in a world without FEMA.Think: Worst of Worst (WOW) scenario, Carrie Speranza, U.S. president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, wrote on her LinkedIn page.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.She advised emergency managers to determine what their disaster programs would need from state and local governments if no federal funding, technical assistance, or staff support, is available beginning April 15.If the federal government is going to back out of all support, my industry needs to be really serious about finding ways to fund themselves, Speranza said in an interview after she posted her guidance online.E&E News reported Wednesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem privately voiced support Tuesday for abolishing or dramatically shrinking FEMA, which spends tens of billions of dollars a year to help people and states recover from disasters.President Donald Trump has assailed the agency and in the days after taking office suggested abolishing it. Facing opposition from lawmakers and governors in both parties, Trump appeared to shift his focus to reducing FEMAs role in disaster response and giving states more authority an idea that has been suggested before.But on Monday, Noem startled lawmakers, officials and FEMA itself when she said at a televised cabinet hearing, Were going to eliminate FEMA. Neither Noem or Trump, who was running the meeting, said anything else about FEMA, creating widespread confusion about her comment.Confusion turned to concern Wednesday when it emerged that Noem had met a day earlier with FEMA acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski at DHS headquarters in Washington.Noem told Hamilton that she wanted to start planning to drastically revise FEMA, possibly by dissolving the agency and shifting its functions to other departments, agencies or the White House, six people who are familiar with the deliberations told E&E News.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem outlined plans Tuesday to dramatically reduce the mission of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.Alex Brandon/POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesThe goal would be to have FEMA, or another agency, help states respond to emergency conditions during and immediately after disasters by providing food, water, shelter and life-saving operations such as search-and-rescue, said the people, who were granted anonymity to talk about internal discussions. The agency would operate out of the White House.FEMAs multibillion-dollar programs that help communities prepare for disasters and rebuild over the long-term would be curtailed or moved elsewhere, such as the Department of Defense.We are grateful the press is covering Secretary Noems efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the Department of Homeland Security, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. Noem flew Wednesday to El Salvador to visit a high-security prison holding migrants that were deported from the U.S. American officials have accused them of belonging to a violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.The Trump administration is considering whether to cancel a FEMA review council that Trump created in January to analyze the agency and recommend changes by late July. Trump put Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in charge of the council, which has not met but published a notice Wednesday inviting public input on experiences with FEMA disaster response.To hear she [Noem] had suggested they were not going to wait for Congress and rescind the review council, that is really concerning, Speranza said. That just means theyre going to act and do whatever it is they choose to do without getting input from industry.On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were skeptical that FEMA and all of its functions would be eliminated.Everybody is going to spin it as, Theyre ending FEMA. Everybody knows that's nonsense, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, told E&E News on Wednesday. There's no way Republicans and Democrats are supporting that. It's a matter of refining it, making it more efficient.Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican who has fiercely criticized FEMA, said in an interview: Whether the secretary keeps FEMA as it is, whether she changes it, whether she gets rid of it, some entity is going to have to play the role of working with the states in terms of distributing disaster money. I mean, just as a practical matter, that has to be done.At two House hearings on FEMA earlier this month, experts and lawmakers from both parties agreed that the agency needs an overhaul to make it operate more quickly. But no one supported abolishing FEMA and its programs.Eliminating FEMA would be disastrous for victims of fire, for victims of flooding, for victims of natural disasters anywhere in the country, California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said in an interview Wednesday.Although FEMA was created through an executive order by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the agencys programs and activities are governed by a 96-page law enacted in 1988 and revised regularly.I look forward to her proposing legislation to the Congress, where these things are decided, said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat, referring to Noem. One thing I do know is if you want to change the way FEMA operates, its Congress job to make a new law.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

March 26, 202511 min readA Near-Miss with a City-Killer Asteroid Highlights Gaps in Earths DefensesThe threat from near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 may have subsided, but discoveries of other hazardous space rocks are set to soar as new observatories come onlineBy Robin George Andrews edited by Lee Billings Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Alamy Stock PhotoIn mid-February 2025 astronomers announced that 2024 YR4a recently discovered asteroid big enough to severely damage or even destroy a citystood a 3.1 percent chance of hitting Earth in 2032. At that moment, it officially became the most dangerous space rock known to science. But its reign of terror was brief: just a week later, additional telescopic observations allowed astronomers to refine their projections of 2024 YR4s orbital path, and the asteroids impact odds crateredto most everyones great relief.But theres more to this story besides the chills and thrills of a near miss. 2024 YR4s threat was no exercise; it tested the mettle of Earths staunchest planetary defenders in ways all too real. And although they passed with flying colors, theres always next time. Astronomers have, to date, found about 16,000 asteroids roughly the size of this one in near-Earth orbits around the suna seemingly impressive figure, save for the fact that some 215,000 more are thought to still be out there undiscovered.Sooner or later, chances are that astronomers will find a menacing asteroid on an actual collision course with our planet. The saga of 2024 YR4 offers a cautionary preview of how the worlds spacefaring nations would need to react when that happens.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.This would have been a delicate case, says Juan Luis Cano, an aerospace engineer with the European Space Agencys Near-Earth Object Coordination Center (NEOCC) in Italy. And thats because, while stopping an asteroid striking Earth is already difficult, doing it in under eight years could have easily pushed our technological capabilities to their outermost limits.This is effectively something we didnt really say to the public because we were pretty sure the risk would be removed, but if it didnt, the situation was not really ideal, says Patrick Michel, principal investigator of Hera, an ESA mission helping to test and characterize asteroid deflection techniques. A successful mission to deflect or destroy 2024 YR4 was not infeasible, Michel says. But it would not have allowed us any error.A Global ResponseAstronomers discovered 2024 YR4 on December 27 of last year, two days after the asteroid made a close approach to Earth. Initial observations quickly put its size between 40 meters and 90 meters. Soon after, three independent orbital dynamics groupsNASAs Center for Near Earth Object Studies in California, ESAs NEOCC and the privately owned Near Earth Objects Dynamics Site in Italydetermined that the odds of an impact on December 22, 2032, reached 1 percent.This is an important threshold, says Kelly Fast, acting planetary defense officer at NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office. An asteroid around this size that stands a 1 percent or greater chance of hitting Earth within the next half century is officially a cause for concern under prevailing planetary defense protocols. And, Fast says, everything happened the way it should.The United Nationssupported International Asteroid Warning Network, or IAWNan authority that, among other things, keeps the world informed about impact threatsissued a global alert. Another U.N.-backed group, the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), composed of countries with space agencies, began to discuss possible mitigation responses. Many U.N. countries who currently do not get along super well were discussing this together, says Michel, who is a member of IAWNs steering committee.Astronomers all over the world began tracking the asteroid and sharing their data, while NASAs Sentry and ESAs Aegis orbital dynamics software programs autonomously and continuously refined 2024 YR4S orbit and its impact odds in full view of the press and public. Interagency cooperation went swimmingly. You had these independent ways of calculating the orbit, Fast says. And to be able to check each other was great.But for the worlds planetary defense groups, the frenzy of activity for the first few weeks of 2025 was all-consuming. 2024 YR4 easily overwhelmed everything else that we were doing, says Kathryn Kumamoto, head of the planetary defense program at the nuclear physicsfocused Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Imagine, for a moment, if there had been two or more different threatening asteroids to track rather than just one.Besides such the more the merrier concerns, uncertainties over the size and trajectory of 2024 YR4 posed additional problems.Initial observations of the asteroid relied on its reflected sunlight, and a small, shiny space rock can bounce back the same amount of light as a larger, duller one. This led to 2024 YR4s relatively wide 40-to-90-meter size estimate, which left lots of wiggle room for projections of how much damage it could cause. If a 40-meter asteroid were to score a direct hit on a city, it would cause widespread damage and some fatalities but wouldnt wipe that metropolis off the map. A city-striking 90-meter asteroid would be an order of magnitude more destructive; it would vaporize the impact site and spark a mass casualty event while spreading destruction tens of miles further afield.Astronomers enlisted the giant, infrared-attuned James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for follow-up observations. They hoped to pin down the actual size before mid-April, when the asteroids orbital path would take it beyond the sight of JWST and all other telescopes. But by the time JWST turned its gaze to 2024 YR4 in early March, better estimates of the asteroids trajectory had already ruled out a 2032 impact.Thankfully, the improved forecast eliminated one particularly worrisome scenario in which 2024 YR4 would fade from view while still bearing a significant impact risk. Otherwise astronomers could have been forced to wait until the asteroids next close approach, in 2028, to get more definitive observations. That wouldve been four long years in which all that could be said was that the asteroid might hit Earth in a projected impact corridor that stretched from remote patches of ocean and uninhabited desert to densely populated cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Mumbai, India.For those hoping to stave off disaster, we couldnt afford to wait for four years for it to come back and then say, okay, we know the answer, Kumamoto says. Given enough time, we can definitely deal with that size of object. And then time was the interesting question here.Deflection and DisruptionRather than wait until 2028 for more information, the planetary defense community wondered if a reconnaissance probe could be launched (or coopted from current active space missions) to catch up to 2024 YR4 ahead of time. Such scouting could determine the asteroids size and its mass and gather crucial hints about its overall structure, which could range from weakly bound rubble pile to mechanically rigid, monolithic rock.All wed need is a camera and some thrusters, Kumamoto says. To save time, groups assessed the potential emergency usage of several spacecraft already enroute to different asteroids, including NASAs OSIRIS-APEX and Lucy spacecraft, ESAs Hera mission and Japans Hayabusa2# probebut none proved to be a good fit for the orbital maneuvers required to reach 2024 YR4.That raised the prospect of something entirely unprecedented: building and launching a threat-mitigation mission against a target about which little was known and that could ultimately prove to be totally harmless.Assuming, however, that 2024 YR4 was bound for Earth in this what-if scenario, we still could have gotten relatively lucky. If its on the smaller end, and its going to hit in the middle of the ocean, maybe thats fine, Kumamoto says. Such an outcome would have produced a powerful shockwave but in an uninhabited area; not even a tsunami would have been guaranteed because most of the asteroid wouldve likely broken apart and burned to ashes while traversing Earths atmosphere. In that case, a good option would have been to do nothing.If the impact site had been narrowed down to a populated area, though, the choice could either have been to evacuate the locality and take the hit or, more likely, to try deflecting or destroying 2024 YR4 before it could strike. Planetary defenders tend to prefer deflection because its gentler and more predictable. Destroying the asteroid (experts use the term disrupting) involves breaking it into pieces, and this only works if the resulting debris misses Earth or is small enough to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. Disrupting a larger asteroid into smaller, but still sizable, shards would still be a disasterit would merely transform a cannonball into a spray of buckshot still speeding toward our planet.Another reason many experts prefer deflection is that its the only mitigation method thats been tested on an actual space rock: in 2022 NASAs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission spectacularly showed how slamming an uncrewed kinetic impactor spacecraft into a large asteroid can change its orbit. But this method isnt like playing billiards in space, with a single kinetic impactor bashing an asteroid into a radical new direction; rather, such impacts impart small nudges so that one small orbital shift adds up over years to change an Earth-striking asteroid into an Earth-avoiding one.Computer simulations by researchers at Lawrence Livermore suggest that a 90-meter asteroid could be confidently deflected away from Earth by one single DART-esque kinetic impactorbut that this orbital shift would take 10 years to unfold. Asteroid 2024 YR4 may have been 90 meters in length and may have struck Earth in 2032. Eight years is tight, Kumamoto says. And so both deflection and disruption were under consideration for 2024 YR4.Lets say 2024 YR4 was smaller, about 50 meters in size. If it was bound to hit Earths edge as a glancing blow, then a gentler nudge by a single DART-like spacecraft might have succeeded. But if it was destined for a more direct hit, then a more powerful kinetic impactorperhaps several of themmight have been required.If you needed to move it a significant distance, then we run into the possibility that we end up fragmenting the asteroid, says Kumamotoand you dont want to accidentally break it and risk a larger fragment still impacting Earth. But at that 50-meter size range, if you attacked 2024 YR4 with enough force, then you could shatter it into inconsequentially sized pieces that might only startle onlookers and shatter a few windows. If somethings 50 meters and a few 10-meter objects hit [Earth], thats maybe not so terrible, says Andy Rivkin, an astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who helmed the proposal to use JWST to observe the asteroid.Going NuclearSome experts argue, however, that something as fraught as asteroid mitigation would demand the assurances that seemingly only one extreme measure can provide. When in doubt, going nuclear should suffice.These nuclear options ... are always brought up by our American colleagues, Cano says. Thats to be expected. Various national labs that help maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal have conducted complex supercomputer simulationsand even some lab-based experimentsdesigned to (safely) work out the efficacy of using nukes to deflect or disrupt asteroids. And that work suggests nukes can be remarkably effective.For example, recent Lawrence Livermore research has shown that the close-up detonation of a one-megaton nuke could vaporize a 100-meter asteroid, which would have covered the largest possible version of 2024 YR4. But why stop there? One could opt for an even more ludicrously powerful nuclear blast to ensure the entire asteroid would be reduced to insignificant smithereens. During the high-level discussions about 2024 YR4, disruptioneither using a kinetic impactor or a nuclear devicewere kind of both on the table, Kumamoto says.Nukes can serve for deflection scenarios, too. Irradiating one side of an asteroid with a nuclear blasts x-rays would yield an incandescent jet of rock vapor, which, like a short-lived rocket, would push 2024 YR4 to the side more forcefully than a DART-like impact.Of course, although going nuclear may on paper appear as the best shot at protecting the planet, policy matters complicate things. Aside from the fact that its technically illegal to use nukes in space, the geopolitical precariousness (and environmental risks) associated with strapping them to giant space rockets could be particularly problematic. If we had ourselves in a situation where that was the only option, it would be really challenging, Fast says.If 2024 YR4 was on the larger end of the size range and had remained a danger even after it was observed again in 2028, SMPAG and the community could have presented world leaders with a stark choice: use multiple DART-like kinetic impactorseach requiring a perfect launch and a flawless journey through space to 2024 YR4or deploy a single spacecraft armed with one powerful nuclear bomb. Which choice would be more palatablethe one with more possible points of failure or the simpler one that risks inflaming tensions between nuclear-armed nations?Fortunately, for 2024 YR4, we wont have to find out. But dont rest too easy: more Earth-threatening asteroids are coming.Thats perhaps the most important takeaway lesson from the case of 2024 YR4, says Richard Binzel, an asteroid hazards expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Soon this same sort of situation will shift from being a novelty to becoming routine.NASAs asteroid-hunting Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope will be launched by the end of the decade, and with the U.S.-funded, multipurpose Vera Rubin Observatorywhich will find millions of asteroids in just a few months of operationscoming online this year, many potentially hazardous space rocks will be identified. Because our eyesight is improving with these new surveys, well begin to see whats always been there, Binzel says. Expect more news stories to feature asteroids with rapidly fluctuating impact odds in the coming years.Another lesson? Time is the most important factor for planetary defense, bar none. Most if not all dangerously sized asteroids will miss the planet. The hope is that, with these next-gen telescopes, the few that might hit Earth will be spotted with decades rather than mere years of lead timeallowing scientists and policymakers to muster Earths defenses with considerably less time pressure.Technically, we have never been more aware of the threat of asteroid strikes, nor have we ever been more capable of detecting and preventing them in advance. But perhaps the most concerning lesson to be gleaned from 2024 YR4, and Earths planetary defense readiness, has nothing to do with scientific know-how.Leviticus Lewis was, until recently, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) detailee at NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office. He retired at the end of last year, but he is a veteran of many asteroid strike tabletop exercises conducted by NASA and its national and international partnerssimulated impact scenarios designed to see how relevant experts would handle such a threat. As such, he was kept in the loop throughout the 2024 YR4 saga.The good news, he says, is that the planetary defense fraternity took it pretty seriously. The system kind of worked as it was supposed to. The bad news is that the Trump administration is threatening to gut NASAs funding while taking an axe to other agencies that could help mitigate this type of natural disaster. FEMAs under attack, Lewis says.Although Europe is making moves to shore up its own planetary defense capabilities, the U.S. isfor nowthe leader in planetary defense. It has a dedicated asteroid-hunting observations program, and it has intensively funded and researched the use of DART-like kinetic impactors and nuclear devices to prevent asteroid strikes. But just, for a moment, imagine that 2024 YR4 proved to be a danger with additional observations. The corridor of possible impact locations has never been over U.S. territory but instead stretches over swaths of central Africa, south Asia and parts of South America. Some in the community have wondered if, in todays world, the U.S. government would have offered help freely or instead demanded some quid pro quo for assistanceor simply turned a blind eye, leaving those in danger to fend for themselves.The universe has given us a break now, Lewis says. But what about the next time? What if the U.S. takes its eyes off the ball? The asteroid doesnt care. Its just going to keep coming. We cant depend on the world not being crazy when it happens.

March 27, 20254 min readMathematicians Find Proof to 122-Year-Old Triangle-to-Square PuzzleA long-standing shape mystery has finally been solvedBy Lyndie Chiou edited by Clara MoskowitzIllustration of shape shifting polygons. Emil WikstrmAbout a decade ago Tonan Kamata, now a mathematician at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), stood mesmerized in front of a math museums origamilike exhibit. It featured a triangular tile cut into four pieces that were connected by tiny hinges. With a simple swivel, the pieces spun around to transform the triangle into a square.Jen Christiansen; Source: Animation of Dudeneys Dissection Transforming an Equilateral Triangle to a Square, by Mark D. Meyerson (reference)The exhibit traces its origin to a mathematical puzzle published in a 1902 newspaper. Henry Dudeney, a self-taught English mathematician and puzzle columnist, asked his readers to dissect an equilateral triangle into the smallest number of pieces that could be rearranged into a square. In his next column two weeks later, he noted that a Mr. C. W. McElroy of ManchesterCharles William McElroy, a clerk who frequently wrote to Dudeney with puzzle solutionshad a four-piece solution. After two more weeks, Dudeney reported that none of the newspapers other readers had bested the solution, and since then, the record has stood. It remained unproven, however, whether a solution with fewer pieces existed.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The puzzle became known as Dudeneys dissection or the haberdashers problem, and it was even featured in Scientific Americans June 1958 issue. Martin Gardner, a mathematician and longtime columnist for the magazine, wrote about the quandary.[Now, more than 122 years after it was first proposed, Kamata and two other mathematicians have finally proved that a solution with fewer pieces is impossible. Their result was posted to the server arXiv.org in a December 2024 preprint entitled Dudeneys Dissection Is Optimal.I believe many who appreciate mathematics would agree that the simpler an unsolved problem appears, the more profoundly captivating it becomes to those who love mathematics, Kamata says.Together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician Erik Demaine and JAIST mathematician Ryuhei Uehara, Kamata had been developing a new approach to tackle origami-folding problems using graph theory. In graph theory, a graph is essentially a collection of lines, or edges, and vertices, the points where edges meet. The edges and vertices of one graph can be compared with those of another to explore deeper relationships between the two structuresan approach that Kamata thought might help to resolve Dudeneys dissection.One part of the problem is fairly simple: a two-piece solution can be ruled out by thinking about the problems constraints. For starters, the triangle and square must have equal areas because the pieces are the same. For a square, its longest possible cut is across the diagonal. A bit of pen-and-paper math shows that, unfortunately, the diagonals length is too short for the edge of its equal-area triangle, which rules out a two-piece solution.Proving that there are no three-piece solutions is much trickier, however, and thats the reason for the century-long delay. Although it is a simple three-piece puzzle, there are an infinite number of ways to cut up the triangle, Demaine says. Each of those pieces could have arbitrarily many edges to it, and the coordinates of those cuts start at arbitrary points, he says. You have these continuous parameters where theres lots and lots of infinities of possible choices that makes it so annoyingly hard. You cant just brute-force it with a computer.To tackle the problem, the group categorized possible dissections of an equilateral triangle based on how the cuts intersect the triangles edges. First, the researchers sorted the infinity of ways to cut the triangle into five unique classifications. They then repeated the exercise for a square and found 38 distinct classifications.Jen Christiansen; Source: Dudeneys Dissection Is Optimal, by Erik D. Demaine, Tonan Kamata and Ryuhei Uehara. Preprint posted to arXiv.org on December 5, 2024 (reference)Next, the researchers tried to match a triangular graph to a square one by tracing all the possible paths in each shape and comparing the resulting collections of edge lengths and angles. If one of the squares paths had matched that of a triangles, it would have meant that the researchers had discovered a three-piece solution.The approach transformed the continuous problem into a discrete onealmost. Within each classification, there are still infinitely many places all these vertices could go, Demaine says. In the end, the group derived a collection of complex lemmas, or intermediate steps in a theorem, that, together with the categories, used proof by contradiction to find no matching paths.Smith College computer scientist Joseph ORourke, who has wrestled with the puzzle on and off for decades and was not involved with the current work, thinks the groups proof can probably be simplified. He notes that it took a messy collection of highly specific lemmas to eliminate all the possibilities, Many other researchers would have given up..Crucially, if the authors can simplify their proof, the matching-diagrams technique could unravel a slew of related origamilike open questions. These problems remind us how much there is yet to discover, Kamata says. Anyone can become a pioneer in this frontier.

March 26, 202516 min readRebel Doctor Evangelina Rodrguez Improved Lives and Courted Controversy on her Return to the Dominican RepublicAndrea Lily Whear (composite); Nathaly Lerma (image)Andrea Evangelina Rodrguez Perozo, the Dominican Republics first female doctor, got a warm welcome on her return to the country from Paris in 1925. And she went straight to work, introducing her new ideas about health care for women and children. She set up a new medical practice and managed to get farmers to provide free milk for poor infants. But her proselytizing about contraception and her work with prostitutes made even her friends uncomfortable. Her ideas were ahead of her time, and those around her failed to keep up.LISTEN TO THE PODCASTOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.TRANSCRIPTLaura Gmez: Its the mid-1930s, in the Eastern Dominican Republic. A flock of children shriek and giggle as they chase each other around a small house. Inside, their mother is in labor. She lies on a bed, on the verge of delivering another baby.Crouched at the foot of the bed is a middle-aged woman with an air of quiet authority. Dr. Evangelina Rodrguez Perozo. She expertly coaches the mother through her contractions. There's a push, and suddenly, a newborn's first cry replaces the mother's moans.After attending to the mother and baby, Evangelina looks around for a small package she'd brought with her. It's missing.She finally finds it in the bathroom, where two older children are playing with some of its contents. They look like little rubber balloons."These arent playthings!" Evangelina scolds.She heads back into the bedroom and hands the package to the woman on the bed. She tells her:"You're still young and could have many more children. But you need to take care of yourself and the children you already have. They say every child is born with a loaf of bread under their arm, but we both know that's not true. These are condoms. Use these when you have sex with your husband to avoid getting pregnant again."The young woman looks at Evangelina, wide-eyed. No one has ever told her anything like this before.This is Lost Women of Science, and I'm your host, Laura Gmez. In this five-part series, we're examining the little-known life of Dr. Evangelina Rodrguez Perozo, the first woman doctor in the Dominican Republic.Elizabeth Manley: She worked with mothers and poor mothers, and she told them the things that no one else would tell them.Laura Gmez: She was an early advocate of family planning in her country; in ways that sometimes pitted her against the powers that be.Elizabeth Manley: Women were not being told not to get pregnant, right? They were being told to do what their husbands told them.Laura Gmez: But Evangelina wasn't going to stand for that.This story is serialized, so if you haven't heard Episodes 1 and 2, go back and listen to them first.And now, for Episode 3 of her story: The Rebel Doctor Returns.In 1925, Evangelina Rodrguez stepped off a steamship in her hometown of San Pedro de Macors. Shed just spent four years in Paris, soaking up modern ideas about how to build and care for a healthy society. She came back a transformed woman, light years away from the little girl selling gofio on the street.Now, wearing a fashionable dress and a feathered hat, she projected smart confidence. This version of Evangelinathe one thats the picture of propriety is the one that has endured until now. In the one surviving photograph of her from this time, Evangelina is young and put together, wearing earrings and a string of pearls, her curly hair parted in a stylish bob.As the Caribbean sun warmed her skin, Evangelinas head swam with new ideas and dreams for her people. She'd long imagined what her country could become, and her mind was looking straight towards the future. Here are historians, April Mayes and Mercedes Fernndez, who we heard from in previous episodes.April Mayes: She comes back with, Hey guys, we should, you know, build a maternity clinic and we should give milk to poor children.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): She immediately comes up with the idea that she wants to have her clinic, she wants to have this, she wants to have that. Weve got a dreamer.Laura Gmez: Under the U.S. occupation, there had been efforts to develop healthcare services and bring in doctors and nurses from the U.S., but these were mostly concentrated in urban centers. Smaller towns and rural areas remained neglected. Evangelina dreamed of introducing the ideas she learned in Paris about disease prevention, contraception, and maternal and infant care. She dreamed of bringing all women safety and support in navigating pregnancynot just wealthier city residents.And in her mind, the number one thing her hometown needed was a maternity clinic. The San Pedro City Council liked the idea. But unfortunately, that wasnt enough to make it happen.April Mayes: It's just the funding. I mean, by the time this comes up, San Pedro is kind of on the decline economically.Laura Gmez: The reality is, the San Pedro that Evangelina found at her return from Paris in 1925 was not the same city as the one she left.Sugar prices, which had soared during World War I due to global shortages, crashed back to their pre-war lows. And sugar-producing hubs like San Pedro fell on hard times. U.S. occupation ended in 1924, but it left the country mired in debt and dependent on an unstable global market. Plus, many of the American doctors and nurses who had come to the island during the occupation had left.So, when Evangelina returned to San Pedro, what she found was a healthcare system in decline. And when she petitioned the city for funding to open a maternity clinic, her request was denied.Evangelina got a position in a hospital with a small city stipend, but she wanted to start her own practice. And if she couldn't get the funds from the city council to open a clinic, she would do it on her own dime. So she moved into a wooden house in San Pedro, and opened her practice there.Evangelina's house was cozy and welcoming, with rocking chairs and a large china cabinet. Her framed diplomas hung on the walls, and she kept a miniature copy of a famous sculpture called The Thinker, by the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Outside, she had a garden full of plants. She used the largest room of her house for her medical consultations. It wasnt her dream clinic, but she loved what she did. Mercedes Fernndez.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): When she becomes a doctor, that's when she achieves happiness. When she realizes that she is useful to society, is when she adopts this role of mother of the patient.Laura Gmez: In addition to delivering babies, Evangelina launched many of the innovations she hoped to bring back from Paris. She taught informal classes on basic hygiene, and instructed midwives on ways to prevent infection during and after childbirth. Her home country had a long way to go in that regard. April Mayes again.April Mayes: You know, dirty instruments, not using sanitized instruments to cut umbilical cords, leaving women in labor too longLaura Gmez: Evangelina also educated expectant mothers on how to care for their newborns: She showed them how to sterilize bottles by soaking them in boiling water, and talked about the importance of washing their hands and breasts before breastfeeding. Things that may seem obvious to us today, but weren't for many people in the Dominican Republic at the time.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): much less the initial care of the newborn, that attention to detail that you have to have afterward, the advice about how to start feedingLaura Gmez: This is Claudia Scharf, a Dominican pediatrician and medical professor who we heard from in the previous episodes.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): ...hygiene care, the part that has to do with prevention. All of that was just beginning, so it was still in its infancy. So people didnt necessarily have that information.Laura Gmez: Evangelina knew that these seemingly simple actions had the power to save infant lives. And for her, the work was deeply personal. She likely saw many babies die for reasons that could have been prevented. And her own dear friend, Anacaona Moscoso, had died due to complications from childbirth years earlier. So Evangelina poured her whole self into her work. She traveled far and wide, sometimes for hours by foot, to deliver babies and visit new mothers with their infants.Then, a year later, after months of badgering authorities, Evangelina finally got the funds to open her dream maternity clinic. Located in a bright yellow house in the center of town, it was nicknamed La Casa Amarilla. All women were welcome there, regardless of income or class.For all her success, at times, Evangelina still faced tragedy. In 1929, she delivered a baby girl named Selisette. Selisette was the daughter of sugar workers from Puerto Rico. Doctors had warned Selisette's mother that she might not survive another pregnancy. Just as they had warned Anacaona.The memory of Anacaona must have been on Evangelina's mind when she attended to Selisette's mother and spent two days after the delivery desperately trying to save her. But despite her best efforts, the young woman died. As for Selisette's father...Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): Selisette's father can't take care of her or doesn't want to take care of herit is not clear.Laura Gmez: Thats Mercedes Fernndez again. At this point, Evangelina, who was abandoned by both of her parents at birth, couldn't bear to leave an infant in these circumstances. She took in Selisette.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): Evangelina raises her as if she were her own daughter. So, even though she never married, I believe she was able to make this idea of motherhood come true with this girl, with Selisette. She loved her like her own daughter.Laura Gmez: Now, as Evangelina raised this little girl under her own roof, her work became especially personal. Like many of her patients, she too was a single mother raising a daughter in a struggling economy. Political instability loomed: after the collapse of sugar prices and years of U.S. military occupation, the promise that free trade and foreign investments would bring progress and development rang hollow.But Evangelina was all the more invested in her countrys future, which was now also her daughters future. And she had big plans.From another room in her wooden house in San Pedro, Evangelina launched her most ambitious initiative yet. It was inspired by the French program that distributed free milk for infants and had impressed her so much when she was in Paris. She called it La Gota de Leche, meaning Drop of Milk.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): She organized what today we could call milk banks.Laura Gmez: Claudia Scharf again.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): And she arranged for the delivery of large quantities of milk for mothers so that they would have something to feed their children and in some way help prevent malnutrition, or help with the treatment of those who were already malnourished.Laura Gmez: Once again, Evangelina had no funding or assistance from authorities. So she rolled up her sleeves and personally visited dairy farmers from the area to convince them to donate milk.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): She talked with people she knew. Maybe she made relationships with ranchers, with people who had milk to give, farm owners, etcetera. And through her connections and acquaintances, she could go around gathering milk.Laura Gmez: Little Selisette witnessed much of this as she grew up in Evangelinas house, watching patientsand milk jugscome and go. The historian Perdita Huston once interviewed Selisette for a book about pioneers in womens health, published in the 1990s. Heres how Selisette recalled this time. Her words are read by a voice actor.Selisette Snchez (Voiceover): Our house was on Calle Independencia; it served also as her doctor's office. The largest room was used for consultations and there was another where the milk distribution was organized. Mother was afraid it would be given unpasteurized to the children if she didn't supervise its pasteurization right there, before distribution. The milk was donated by ranchers, but Mother paid neighborhood women to help her prepare and distribute the milk.Laura Gmez: Evangelinas insistence on pasteurization was life-saving. Pasteurization is the process of heating liquids or foods, in order to kill microbes that can cause spoilage and disease. It was discovered by French chemist Louis Pasteur, in the 1860s, and was initially used on wine and beer before being applied to raw milk. Pasteurizing milk killed microbes that were commonly associated with typhoid, diphtheria, and devastating intestinal diseases. By strictly supervising the pasteurization process, Evangelina ensured that no infants would die due to tainted milk supplies.Having a steady supply of milk was a godsend for poor families that struggled to feed their babies, and many people in San Pedro, especially mothers, were enormously grateful for Evangelina's work. Here are Claudia Scharf and April Mayes again.Claudia Scharf (Voiceover): Among mothers and women, she was really well-received, because they saw the positive effect. They saw the benefit in their children.April Mayes: I think she fulfilled a long-held desire on the part of a few people on the city council, not everybody, not all the time, but to really address poverty, and especially poverty in children.Laura Gmez: Evangelina had support, and she was doing work she loved and believed in passionately. Her friend Petronila Gmez, the founder of the feminist magazine Fmina that Evangelina wrote for during her time in Paris, published a glowing article about her work. Things seemed to be looking up.Buoyed by her success, Evangelina ventured into slightly more... controversial... territory. That same year, she and other women from San Pedro's Feminine League petitioned the San Pedro City Council to host a prophylaxis fair in the city's central park. And by prophylaxis, Evangelina meantApril Mayes: Birth control! I mean, well, condoms.Laura Gmez: April Mayes again.April Mayes: I was shocked when I'm, you know, reading the city council minutes and finding, So, we've been asked tothe ladies of so and so, they want to host this prophylaxis fair in the Central Park, and I'm like, this is fascinating that they would go to the city council and ask for supportand they get it!Laura Gmez: In the socially conservative, deeply Catholic Dominican society of the time, sex and contraception were largely taboo subjects. But there was one important reason why the city council of San Pedro might have been receptive to the idea of a prophylaxis fair. Thered been a rise in prostitution during the U.S. military occupation period. And that had led to a spike in venereal diseases like syphilis.April Mayes: Of course, no one believed that men had venereal disease. So it was only women who had it. And there was, you know, a desire to protect male soldiers from venereal disease. And so I think that allows for, for these ladies to come in with this idea pitched as This is for the good of public health and may even be for the good of protecting, you know, you men from the women who will infect you. And yeah, they go, they go forward with it. I, I couldn't even believe it.Laura Gmez: It must have been quite a sight: a group of well-coiffed ladies in long skirts and hats, selling trinkets and talking about using contraception and preventing venereal disease. It was all part of Evangelina's drive to improve Dominican society and usher her island into the modern era.But soon, Evangelina would learn that being a woman ahead of her time came with consequences...That's in Act 2.[Mid-roll]Laura Gmez: By 1929, Evangelina had earned a strong reputation as a family doctor with a special focus on expectant mothers. She saw patients both in her maternity clinic and in her home practice.But she wasnt just working with mothers and babies. She had a side hustle one that wasnt getting glowing reviews in papers and magazines.Elizabeth Manley: She spent time working with women in the sex trade, women who most medical professionals would not treat, would not attend to, would not look at. And even those that, you know, associated with them were perceived as kind of tainted by their presence.Laura Gmez: This is Elizabeth Manley, a professor of Caribbean history we heard from in Episode 2.Elizabeth Manley: She was not affected by those social mores and was very interested in, in helping women within the sex trade.Laura Gmez: If Evangelinas prophylaxis fair had already ruffled some feathers, now people were truly shocked. Sex workers were seen as enemies of society because they contributed to the spread of venereal disease. And Evangelina had once seen them that way too. But in Paris, shed had a change of heart. Shed come to see them as women with no better choices, and little to no access to medical care. Heres Mercedes Fernndez.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): So, when she comes back, she supports helping them, educating them, giving them ideas on how to take care of themselves, on how not to transmit these venereal diseases and, especially, these unwanted pregnancies, right?Laura Gmez: Evangelina began visiting prostitutes in brothels and offering them free medical care and condoms. Contraceptives, she had realized, were far more effective at stopping the spread of disease than moral hand-wringing and threats of punishment. But the backlash was fierce.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): This work that she insists on doing with prostitutes clashes with the society of the time. Many people went up against her, including the Catholic Church.Laura Gmez: Polite Dominican society was shocked. Catholic priests fiercely denounced Evangelina's efforts. But the more people balked at her work, the less Evangelina seemed to care about pleasing them. According to Francisco Comarazamy, one of Evangelina's longtime neighbors and friends who was also interviewed by historian Perdita Huston in the 90s, Evangelina's entire demeanor began to change. Here's how he described it. His words are read by a voice actor.Francisco Comarazamy (Voiceover): When she began to do social work, working with prostitutes and providing family planning for the poor, she became careless in her appearance. Her work with the needy convinced her that it was more important to be generous than to be a fancily dressed woman.Laura Gmez: Evangelina stayed the course, and never hid her work with prostitutes. In fact, she spoke of it openly. In a biography published in 1980, she's quoted as saying: "Yes, I go there. They are not bad women. They are just poor women who cannot find other work."And there was another controversial topic that Evangelina and the Catholic Church butted heads on: family planning. Condoms used to stop procreation, not just disease.In traditional Catholic doctrine, sex that's not for the purpose of procreation is sinful. Even between husband and wife, the use of any contraceptives was frowned upon and still is, officially.But ever since her return from France, Evangelina had begun counseling her patients to space out their pregnancies, and even handed out condoms. Here's what her adopted daughter Selisette remembers about this:Selisette Snchez (Voiceover): Whenever we visited the homes of families with many children, Evangelina talked about the benefits of family planning. She said that they shouldn't have more children than they could care for, or could feed. I would then see her give them a little package.Laura Gmez: Evangelina was one of the first proponents of family planning on her islandand in fact, in much of the world. In the United States, birth control activist Margaret Sanger opened her first family planning clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, but it was promptly shut down by authorities. In some parts of Europe, like France, modern family planning efforts didnt begin in earnest until the 1950s and 60s. It seems Evangelina had gotten a little too ahead of her time. Here's Mercedes Fernndez.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): Evangelina little by little starts losing notability within the society.Laura Gmez: Even Evangelina's friends, like feminist editor Petronila Gmez, who'd once been so supportive of her work and her career, now fell silent.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): None of that is going to appear in Fmina. None of it. So, that also shows you that Petronila knows what she can publish and what she can't publish.Laura Gmez: Evangelina's actions were controversial, and she was becoming increasingly so herself, as her efforts to empower women to take control of their bodies and pregnancies pitted her in direct conflict with the Catholic Church. She became the subject of hateful attacks.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): People attack her, calling her a butch because she never marries. And that was a normal attack at the time. When a woman didn't marry she was automatically butch or a lesbian. So, imagine a woman who gets a medical degree and also wants to help prostitutes, I mean, she was considered crazy at the time. It was like, Oh, yeah, she comes from Paris and she thinks she can do whatever she wants.Laura Gmez: Evangelina was taunted and mocked for her dark skin, her plain clothes, the men's Oxford shoes she chose to wear instead of women's heels. According to her biographer Antonio Zaglul, one day she broke down crying to a friend. She's quoted as saying:Because I don't have a husband, a man to protect me, they accuse me of being a lesbian. I get poison pen letters under my door. Even in the street when I pass by, people throw insults at me. For them I'm either kept by a man or not interested in men."No one could deny that the work Evangelina was doing with expectant mothers and poor children was important. But in the deeply Catholic, conservative Dominican society, her advanced ideas on family planning and keeping sex workers healthy were just too much.Mercedes Fernndez Asenjo (Voiceover): Deep down, what I see is that she is a very misunderstood woman. She is a woman who really, perhaps, was too far ahead of her time. I think if she had been born now or at the end of the 20th century, things would have been very, very different.Laura Gmez: And things for Evangelina were about to get much worse. It was one thing to anger local priests another thing entirely to come into the crosshairs of one of the most dangerous enemies she could have had in her country at the time the man who would soon seize power through a military coup: Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.That's next week.This episode of Lost Women of Science was produced by Lorena Galliot, with help from associate producer Natalia Snchez Loayza. Samia Bouzid is our senior producer, and our senior managing producer is Deborah Unger.David De Luca was our sound designer and engineer. Lizzie Younan composed all of our music. We had fact-checking help from Desire Ypez.Our co-executive producers are Amy Scharf and Katie Hafner. Thanks to Eowyn Burtner, our program manager, and Jeff DelViscio at our publishing partner, Scientific American. Our intern is Kimberly Mendez.Lost Women of Science is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We're distributed by PRX.For show notes and an episode transcript, head to lostwomenofscience.orgwhere you can also support our work by hitting the donate button.Im your host, Laura Gmez. Thanks for listening, and until next week!Host Laura GmezProducer Lorena GalliotSenior Producer Samia BouzidGuests:April MayesApril Mayes is Associate Dean and Professor of Afro-Latin American history, Pomona College.Mercedes Fernndez AsenjoMercedes Fernndez Asenjo, PhD, is a foreign language educator at The Catholic University of America.Claudia ScharfClaudia Scharf is Director of the School of Medicine, Universidad Nacional Pedro Henrquez Urea.Elizabeth ManleyElizabeth Manley is Chair of the Department of History and a professor of Caribbean history, Xavier University of Louisiana.Further Reading:Despreciada en la vida y olvidada en la muerte: Biografa de Evangelina Rodrguez, la primera mdica dominicana. Antonio Zaglul. Editora Taller, 1980Motherhood by Choice: Pioneers in Womens Health and Family Planning. Perdita Huston. The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1992Granos de polen. Evangelina Rodrguez. 1915The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity. April J. Mayes. University Press of Florida, 2014