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Science Misinformation, Its Origins and Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies
A new report provides a comprehensive assessment of the literature on science misinformation, its origins and impact, and strategies for mitigating its spread and potential harms.
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AI-driven Gait Analysis Bridges Health Care and Security Fields
The analysis of a person’s individual walking pattern, or gait, can reveal details about their identity and reflect differences between individuals, groups and even populations.
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More States Require Energy Companies to Pay for Damages Caused by Climate-Related Disasters
In recent years, several U.S. states have enacted laws to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for damages resulting from climate change. These actions reflect growing concerns about the connection between corporate practices, climate change, and disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods.
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20th Century Lead Exposure Damaged American Mental Health
In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being. Exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood altered the balance of mental health in the U.S. population, making generations of Americans more depressed, anxious and inattentive or hyperactive.
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Early Warning Tool Will Help Control Huge Locust Swarms
The migratory locust can reach plague proportions, and a swarm covering one square kilometer can consume enough food in one day to feed 35,000 people. A new tool that predicts the behavior of desert locust populations will help national agencies to manage huge swarms before they devastate food crops.
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Which Infectious Disease Is Likely to Be the Biggest Emerging Problem in 2025?
With COVID in retreat (thanks to highly effective vaccines), the three infectious diseases causing public health officials the greatest concern are malaria (a parasite), HIV (a virus) and tuberculosis (a bacterium). Between them, they kill around 2 million people each year. And then there are the watchlists of priority pathogens –especially those that have become resistant to the drugs usually used to treat them.
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How Should We Look to History to Make Sense of Luigi Mangione’s Alleged Murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?
When I and most other historians talk about parallels between the Gilded Age and today, the comparisons are structural. They reflect broad conditions affecting millions of people. It’s when pundits pull particular examples from the past to explain the actions of individuals today that trouble arises.
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Vaccine Misinformation Distorts Science – a Biochemist Explains How RFK Jr. and His Lawyer’s Claims Threaten Public Health
Vaccinations provide significant protection for the public against infectious diseases and substantially reduce health care costs, but it’s easy to forget why many infectious diseases are rarely encountered today: The success of vaccines does not always tell its own story. RFK Jr.’s potential ascent to the role of secretary of Health and Human Services will offer up ample opportunities to retell this story and counter misinformation.
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Vaccination Gaps Widen in English Kids, with Those in Poorest Areas 20 Times More Vulnerable to Measles
Childhood vaccination disparities are worsening in England, with coverage of five important vaccines lower in young children living in low-income areas and 20 times more children vulnerable to measles in the poorest areas.
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House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Releases Final Report
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recently published its final report. The more than 500-page document covers a variety of topics, including vaccines, use of pandemic relief funds, and public health guidance.
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Mathematical Models Tackle Covid Infection Dynamics
Even years after the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the workings of SARS-CoV-2 infection inside the human body, including the early activity of the virus and the role of the body’s immune response, has proved difficult to precisely ascertain.
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AI, Bioterrorism and the Urgent Need for Australian Action
Experts worry that, within a few years, AI will put that capability into the hands of tens of thousands of people. Without a new approach to regulation, the risk of bioterrorism and lab leaks will soar.
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Collaborative Planning for Australian Food Security Preparedness
Australia’s food security, commonly assumed safe thanks to our being a net food exporter, is increasingly vulnerable in a world marked by geopolitical and environmental instability.
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An Idea Whose Time Should Never Come: Using Special Forces Against the Cartels Would Be a Colossal Mistake
While this idea is not new, it has become hazardous now given the Mexican drug cartels’ increased military capacity and tactical competence.
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Bipartisan Effort to Make Plum Island a National Monument Advances in Congress
Plum Island, off the north-eastern coast of Long Island, has been, since 1954, home to a high-security biolab researching pathogens threatening humans and animals. The lab has been relocated to Manhattan, Kansas. A bill calling on the Department of the Interior to consider adding Plum Island to the National Park system is advancing in Congress.
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The long view
What We’ve Learned from Survivors of the Atomic Bombs
Q&A with Dr. Preetha Rajaraman, New Vice Chair for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Combatting the Measles Threat Means Examining the Reasons for Declining Vaccination Rates
Measles was supposedly eradicated in Canada more than a quarter century ago. But today, measles is surging. The cause of this resurgence is declining vaccination rates.
Social Networks Are Not Effective at Mobilizing Vaccination Uptake
The persuasive power of social networks is immense, but not limitless. Vaccine preferences, based on the COVID experience in the United States, proved quite insensitive to persuasion, even through friendship networks.