By Dani Blum Patients keep asking Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco,...

By Catrin Einhorn This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, according to scientists in Australia who released new research on heat in the surrounding ocean. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and is often called the largest living structure on Earth. The study, published last Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperature

By Dana G. Smith and Alice Callahan People who regularly eat processed red meat, like hot dogs, bacon, sausage, salami and bologna, have...

By Kenneth Chang When a NASA spacecraft passes over Shackleton Crater on the moon and peers in, it sees a sea of blackness. The sun never rises high above the horizon, and the rim of Shackleton blocks the sun’s rays from ever shining directly onto the crater floor. There are more than 300 such craters on the moon, and the darkness hides an intriguing mystery: oases of frozen water, which could provide a key resource for astronauts living there in the future. Scientists have n

By Carl Zimmer For generations, physicists have puzzled over life. Their theories about matter and energy have helped them understand how the universe produced galaxies and planets. But physicists have struggled to understand how lifeless chemical reactions give rise to the complexity stored in our cells. In a new book, “Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence,” out Tuesday, Sara Walker, a physicist at Arizona State University, offers a theory that she and he

By Gina Kolata The United States spent $43 billion annually on screening to prevent five cancers, according to one of the most...

By Nikki Campo As we age, our bodies break down more bone tissue than they build. This can increase the risk of osteoporosis, a condition...

By Danielle Friedman We’ve all encountered that person who comes back from the gym or a run seemingly high on life. In fact, scientists...

By Talya Minsberg If you wear a smartwatch or fitness tracker, you probably already have access to a steady stream of data about your...

By Daisuke Wakabayashi and Jin Yu Young Lee Saedol was the finest Go player of his generation when he suffered a decisive loss, defeated not by a human opponent but by artificial intelligence. Lee was beaten by AlphaGo, an AI computer program developed by Google’s DeepMind unit. The stunning upset, in 2016, made headlines around the world and looked like a clear sign that artificial intelligence was entering a new, profoundly unsettling era. By besting Lee, an 18-time world c