Is the Future of Lab-Grown Meat in Luxury Products?
While production of cultivated meat is banned in several countries, one Australian company’s lab-grown alternative to foie gras offers a controversial future for the cultivated meat industry: as a...
View ArticleThe Technology for Autonomous Weapons Exists. What Now?
How autonomous and semi-autonomous technology will operate in the future is up in the air. But experts say it has the potential to fundamentally change how war is waged: In the future, humans may not...
View ArticleThe Upside of Climate Pessimism
Hope is said to get people through tough times and motivate them to act. Without it, despair and apathy take over. When it comes to climate change, though, one environment-focused journalist discusses...
View ArticleBook Review: The Many Bounties of Collaboration in Nature
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Serviceberry” is a meditation on the abundance that sharing and mutual exchange can create in nature and human society. A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi...
View ArticlePodcast: Cannabis and Severe Mental Health Disorders
This week on Entanglements: Is cannabis safe for people with severe mental health disorders? Our hosts explore this question in conversations with a psychiatrist from Yale School of Medicine and a...
View ArticlePost-election, Controversial Health Movement Gains Newfound Steam
Public health leaders say the emerging Trump administration’s interest in elevating the sometimes unorthodox concepts of Make America Healthy Again could be catastrophic, eroding decades of scientific...
View ArticleGeoengineering Could Alter Global Climate. Should It?
Some scientists, environmentalists, political officials, and business leaders are increasingly open to testing geoengineering technologies that could one day be used in an ambitious, or perhaps...
View ArticleWhat Does It Mean to Be In the ‘Post-Genomic’ Age?
Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the announcement of the first draft human genome. In his column for Selective Pressure, C. Brandon Ogbunu reflects on what it means to be in a “post-genomic”...
View ArticleBook Review: Bringing the Universe Into Ever-Sharper Focus
Ever since it opened its infrared eyes in mid-2022, the James Webb Space Telescope has been dramatically expanding our understanding of the universe. In “Pillars of Creation,” Richard Panek lays out...
View ArticleAre Weight-Loss Drugs Contributing to a Fall in the Obesity Rate?
Results from a government survey have prompted questions about whether weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1s could be exerting a broad influence on the weight of U.S. adults. A close look at the available...
View ArticlePodcast: Is the Misinformation Crisis Overblown?
This week on Entanglements: Is the misinformation crisis overblown? Our hosts explore this question in conversations with a social psychologist from the University of Cambridge and a cognitive...
View ArticleIn the Trump Administration Crosshairs: Cell Phone Radiation
In 2020, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president-elect Trump’s nominee to lead HHS, called for the 5G network to be discontinued until more evidence proves its safety. But many experts say that research has...
View ArticleThe Long, Contentious Battle to Regulate Gain-of-Function Work
When, if ever, is it okay to engineer more dangerous pathogens in the pursuit of public health goals? The question continues to divide researchers — even as it gets more attention from Congress and the...
View ArticleCaring for Patients from Conflict Zones
Health care workers in regions experiencing war often must treat patients under the most difficult circumstances. For one physician who works half the world away, in a Toronto clinic serving new...
View ArticleBook Review: The Alchemy That Powers the Modern World
Two recent books — “Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium,” by Lucy Jane Santos, and “Power Metal: The Race for Resources That Will Shape the Future,” by Vince Beiser — explore the lengths to...
View ArticleThe Data Dragnet: A New World of Technological Surveillance
The typical questions surveillance tends to animate — questions about privacy and consent, and even the existential worry over the creep of artificial intelligence into government surveillance — belie...
View ArticlePodcast: Should We Unleash GMO Mosquitoes?
This week on Entanglements: Should we unleash GMO mosquitoes? Our hosts explore this question in conversations with a molecular biologist from the University of California, San Diego, and a social...
View ArticleThe Destructive Legacy of Failed Aquaculture
For decades, British Columbia’s open-net-pen salmon farmers have faced criticism that their activities are harming the environment by promoting the spread of disease and fostering parasitic sea lice...
View ArticleHome Foundations Are Crumbling. This Mineral Is to Blame.
The highly reactive mineral pyrrhotite has caused foundations to crack in New England, Canada, and Ireland. Those issues have undergirded a nascent area of scientific inquiry. But researchers have only...
View ArticleMost College Science Professors Aren’t Trained to Teach
It’s college application season, and many high school seniors are making big decisions about their future. Students interested in STEM should know that university faculty often have little to no formal...
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