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In all the talk about the Supreme Court’s impending health care reform ruling, one question is often overlooked: What might happen to the many patient safety and quality of care provisions sprinkled through the Affordable Care Act? They include a new Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, more reporting of infections, injuries and mistakes in hospitals, and incentives for doctors and other providers to improve the care they provide. Those among the nation’s 50 million uninsured who manage to get health coverage will also get better medical care than piecemeal or nonexistent version they now receive....

Last summer, as the second wave of COVID-19 cases was sweeping the United Kingdom, a man in his 70s was admitted to his local hospital where he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. He was sent home, but a month later he checked into the hospital at Cambridge University, unable to shake the virus. Like many people who develop severe COVID-19, the man was immunocompromised. He had lymphoma and had previously received chemotherapy treatment....

While “size does not matter” is a universally preached dictum among the politically correct, everyday experience tells us that this can’t be the whole story—under many conditions, it clearly does. Consider the size of Woody Allen’s second favorite organ, the brain. Adjectives such as “highbrow” and “lowbrow” have their origin in the belief, much expounded by 19th-century phrenologists, of a close correspondence between a high forehead—that is, a big brain—and intelligence....

Since the discovery of DNA, scientists have sought a simple, reliable, affordable way to change the genetic code. Jennifer Doudna, together with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Virginijus iknys, won the 2018 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for their invention of the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. This technique arose from research into how bacteria track down and destroy intruder DNA when infected by a virus. Now, scientists can reprogram the tool to disable or change almost any gene in order to research its function, heal an error, or add a helpful new trait....

Most of us think little of hopping on Google Maps to look at everything from a bird’s-eye view of an entire continent to an on-the-ground view of a specific street, all carefully labeled. Thanks to a digital atlas published this week, the same is now possible with the human brain. Ed Lein and colleagues at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle have created a comprehensive, open-access digital atlas of the human brain, which was published this week in The Journal of Comparative Neurology....

WASHINGTON—NASA on Tuesday (Oct. 15) unveiled new prototypes of the spacesuits that will be worn by the first woman to walk on the moon. In an event at the space agency’s headquarters here, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine and spacesuit engineers share the first up-close look at two next-generation spacesuits designed for for the agency’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024....

Thanks to a genetic manipulation, three color-blind mice recently gained the ability to see the world in the same hues as humans do. Mice and nonprimate mammals—much like color-blind people—see relatively few hues, because their retinas contain photoreceptors (cells with a light-sensing protein pigment) that only absorb blue (short) and green (medium) wavelengths of light. Scientists say that most primates, including humans, have a third receptor that also absorbs red, or long wavelengths, thanks to a primate ancestor who passed along a gene mutation for it an estimated 40 million years ago....

Early this year, as vast segments of the global economy shut down but before the death toll climbed, many of those privileged enough to feel relatively secure indulged a fantasy that the pandemic would paradoxically make the world more beautiful. Smog cleared from the skies, unveiling the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas; an octopus was spotted in one of Venice’s formerly murky canals; and the undersea cacophony of transoceanic shipping quieted, allowing whales to revel in one another’s songs more than they had in half a century....

Four score and seven years and four score and nine more years ago, a tortoise hatched in the Galpagos. She spent the past half a century known as Harriet. For more than a century before that, she was called Harry. Before that she almost was called dinner, but fate had other plans. Her heart, which began beating when Abraham Lincoln was barely out of his teens, finally stopped on June 23....

Many of the greatest challenges the U.S. faces in coming years—from climate change to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria—require scientific expertise to develop workable solutions. For the past eight years, nonprofit organization ScienceDebate.org has spearheaded a grassroots effort to push presidential candidates to discuss these issues, which are every bit as important to America’s future as international affairs or tax policy. This year the campaigns of the Democratic and Republican nominees have once again provided answers to 20 questions developed by leading scientific, engineering, health and other groups....

This year, according to the Hybrid Truck Users Forum, manufacturers will sell more than 5,000 hybrid trucks, compared with fewer than 200 just three years ago. These vehicles range from medium-duty package delivery vans to cherry-pickers, garbage trucks and even massive “18-wheelers” used for long-haul shipping. Slide Show: Hybrid Trucks Hybrid trucks use 20 to 50 percent less diesel than conventional vehicles do, depending on how they’re used, and that adds up: FedEx calculated that its fleet of 170 hybrid–electric trucks has racked up 3....

In 1945, as World War II came to a close, scientists logged a record drop in carbon dioxide emissions. They reckoned that global CO2 emissions fell by some 790 million metric tons—a record that stood for more than 70 years. Then 2020 rolled around. Global emissions fell 1,550 million metric tons in the first half of 2020, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Communications, obliterating the 1945 record and underlining the depths of the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic this year....

Kaylee, a structural biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, stays quiet when her colleagues talk about politics and religion. As a Catholic with conservative tendencies, she feels that her beliefs are unwelcome in academic institutions, where liberal views often prevail. The strain is particularly acute this year: Kaylee favours Donald Trump for US president. Trump, a Republican, has run a brash, often divisive, campaign that has prompted some leading members of his own party to disavow him....

Archaeologists thought the last burial chamber in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings had been discovered even before Howard Carter opened the unsullied tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. Tut ruled Egypt for only a decade, from 1332 to 1322 B.C., and died around age 19. Untouched by looters before its discovery, the tomb’s dazzling golden artifacts captured the public’s imagination and made him one of Egypt’s most famous and intensively studied mummies....

One day recently Helene K., a 50-year-old occupational therapist, received a call at home from a former patient. It took her several minutes to remember the man, who had been discharged from her clinic more than a year earlier. He said he would like to see her again, but Helene firmly rejected the idea: she wanted no further contact with him. Then came more phone calls from the man, as well as letters declaring his love for her....

Mother needs something today to calm her down And though she’s not really ill There’s a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper AS THESE LINES of the 1966 Rolling Stones song “Mother’s Little Helper” remind us, Valium and other members of the benzodiazepine class of tranquilizing drugs have long been a part of popular culture. But how well do these medications work, and what are their dangers?...

In the policy tug of war between trying to avoid a further slowdown of economic growth and at the same time cutting emissions, the Chinese government will likely stay away from making a clear choice between the two. Figures help illustrate the situation. A circular of the State Council, or the Cabinet of China, showed in August that more than $370 billion would be invested to cut pollution by reducing the use of 300 million tons of standard coal by 2015....

Polar: A Photicular Book by Dan Kainen and Carol Kaufmann Workman, 2015 (($25.95)) The ground at the earth’s polar regions may be frozen, but the stillness stops there. Open Polar, and the icy expanses of the top and bottom of the world melt into motion: penguins waddle in packs, snowy owls swoop down on prey and auroras swirl in the nighttime sky (left). The reader actually sees the mirage of motion....

Firm convictions dominate news headlines these days, but because of a phenomenon called the hypercorrection effect, strongly held ideas that turn out to be factually incorrect are actually easier to amend . Brain imaging is now shedding light on how people change their minds during hypercorrection, potentially revealing the best ways for us to learn from our errors. To understand hypercorrection, says cognitive psychologist Janet Metcalfe at Columbia University, “suppose I ask you, ‘What is the capital of Canada ?...

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Chicago coroner’s office was swimming in corpses. It began as a trickle, when four bodies were discovered in poorly ventilated homes and low-rent apartments on Monday, July 13, 1995. The temperature was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, but it felt like 126. Then it got hotter. As temperatures spiked—peaking at 115 degrees that Tuesday—so did the death count. By the end of the week, 735 more victims—mostly elderly and poor—succumbed to unbearable heat and humidity, making the 1995 Chicago heat wave one of the deadliest climate disasters in U....