Science

The history of autism research has long been haunted by a discouraging assumption: if the brain is wired differently during early development, then by adulthood those circuits are essentially locked in place. You cannot rebuild a foundation that was laid wrong in the first years of life. Therapy, under that view, can only teach compensation […]

For decades, the architecture of global generic drug manufacturing followed a predictable pattern. When a pharmaceutical company in the Global North decided to license a patented medicine for the developing world, it turned to Indian manufacturers. Indian firms had the scale, the regulatory expertise, and the supply chains. Sub-Saharan African manufacturers, if they entered the […]

On the evening of July 24, 2026, the upper stage of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft descended over the Indian Ocean, executed a precision flip maneuver, and settled upright into the water in what the company described as its softest ocean landing yet. Hours later, the company’s chief executive posted publicly that unless data review uncovered problems, […]

For the first time in the history of the HIV epidemic, the world has a tool that could, in principle, drive new infections toward zero. It is not a vaccine. It is not a cure. It is an injection given twice a year, and in clinical trials it stopped HIV transmission completely. Lenacapavir, sold under […]

The White House released a new national science strategy on July 24 titled “Science: A New Golden Age,” and the research community response has been anything but unified. The document, produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy under director Michael Kratsios, outlines a vision for American science that shifts emphasis dramatically from biomedical […]

Every smartphone user knows that GPS satellites tell you where you are. What almost nobody noticed is that the same constellation has been silently measuring the invisible hazards of space for more than two decades. The 31 operational GPS satellites orbiting Earth at roughly 20,000 kilometers altitude each carry a small radiation detector. These instruments […]

For decades, archaeologists looked at the El Plomo boy and saw a child who froze to death. Discovered in 1954 on a Chilean mountain at 5,400 meters elevation, the 8-year-old Inca sacrifice victim was incredibly preserved. His skin, his clothing, even the contents of his stomach had survived five centuries in the Andean cold. The […]

Every home has dozens of lasers. They read the data on Blu-ray discs, carry phone calls through fiber optic cables, scan groceries at the checkout counter, and guide surgical instruments to sub-millimeter precision. Their cousin the maser, the microwave counterpart of the laser, has no such résumé. Seven decades after its invention, the maser remains […]

For a decade, the central promise of CRISPR-based gene editing has been clear: rewrite the DNA instructions that cause disease. But there has always been a catch. The molecular machines that do the editing (proteins borrowed from bacteria and retooled for human cells) do not always hit their target. They sometimes edit the wrong gene, […]

In April 2026, a team of University of Washington researchers stood before a roomful of security experts in Rio de Janeiro and delivered a diagnosis that should unsettle anyone who has handed their browsing over to an AI assistant. The problem is not a bug. There is no patch coming. The tension runs straight through […]