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Biden got the vaccine rollout humming, with Trump’s help

Biden got the vaccine rollout humming, with Trump’s help

The New York Times reports: When President Biden pledged last week to amass enough vaccine by late May to inoculate every adult in the United States, the pronouncement was greeted as a triumphant acceleration of a vaccination campaign that seemed to be faltering only weeks earlier. And it is true that production of two of the three federally authorized vaccines has sped up in part because of the demands and directives of the new president’s coronavirus team. But the announcement…

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DNA databases are too white

DNA databases are too white

Tina Hesman Saey writes: It’s been two decades since the Human Genome Project first unveiled a rough draft of our genetic instruction book. The promise of that medical moon shot was that doctors would soon be able to look at an individual’s DNA and prescribe the right medicines for that person’s illness or even prevent certain diseases. That promise, known as precision medicine, has yet to be fulfilled in any widespread way. True, researchers are getting clues about some genetic…

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Electric cars’ looming recycling problem

Electric cars’ looming recycling problem

By Perry Gottesfeld In September, Tesla announced that it would be phasing out the use of cobalt in its batteries, in an effort to produce a $25,000 electric vehicle within three years. If successful, this bold move will be an industry game changer, making electric vehicles competitive with conventional counterparts. But the announcement also underscores one of the fundamental challenges that will complicate the transition to electric vehicles. Without cobalt, there may be little financial incentive to recycle the massive…

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Des Moines Register reporter acquitted in trial stemming from arrest as she covered George Floyd protest

Des Moines Register reporter acquitted in trial stemming from arrest as she covered George Floyd protest

Des Moines Register reports: Andrea Sahouri says her acquittal Wednesday on two criminal charges sends an important message about recognizing the rights of journalists to do their jobs. “The jury made the right decision,” said Sahouri, a reporter for the Des Moines Register. “They made the decision to uphold democracy, a just democracy, the freedom of the press, First Amendment rights, the list goes on.” Sahouri was arrested while covering the George Floyd protests in May 2020, and charged with…

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Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy

Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy

Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev write: To read the diary of Gustave de Beaumont, the traveling companion of Alexis de Tocqueville, is to understand just how primitive the American wilderness once seemed to visiting Frenchmen. In a single month, December 1831, Tocqueville and Beaumont were on a steamship that crashed; rode a stagecoach that broke an axle; and took shelter in a cabin—one of them bedridden from an unidentified illness—while the nearest doctor was a two-day hike away. Yet they…

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Tracking the coronavirus’s evolution, letter by letter, is revolutionizing pandemic science

Tracking the coronavirus’s evolution, letter by letter, is revolutionizing pandemic science

Sarah Zhang writes: In the beginning, there was one. The first genome for the virus causing a mysterious illness we had not yet named COVID-19 was shared by scientists on January 10, 2020. That single genome alerted the world to the danger of a novel coronavirus. It was the basis of new tests as countries scrambled to find the virus within their own borders. And it became the template for vaccines, the same ones now making their way to millions…

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The new Republican war on voting rights, explained

The new Republican war on voting rights, explained

Vox reports: President Joe Biden is the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state of Georgia in nearly three decades. He’s the first Democrat to win Arizona in nearly a quarter of a century. And both of these former Republican strongholds just sent two Democrats to the United States Senate. So it’s probably not surprising that GOP lawmakers in these states and elsewhere want to rewrite election laws to prevent Democrats from repeating Biden’s success in the future. According…

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Republican donations surge despite corporate boycott after Capitol riots

Republican donations surge despite corporate boycott after Capitol riots

Reuters reports: Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies announced they would halt political donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential election loss. Two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising. If anything, the biggest backers of Trump’s false election-fraud narrative – such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – have been…

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Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was in direct contact with rioters before and during Capitol breach, U.S. alleges

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was in direct contact with rioters before and during Capitol breach, U.S. alleges

The Washington Post reports: U.S. prosecutors alleged Monday that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was in direct contact before, during and immediately after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach with members since charged with plotting to prevent Congress from confirming the results of the 2020 presidential election. In a late-night court filing, prosecutors alleged that Rhodes directed the right-wing anti-government group to rally during the riot to the southeast steps of the Capitol, after which several members forcibly entered the east…

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What is life? Its vast diversity defies easy definition

What is life? Its vast diversity defies easy definition

Carl Zimmer writes: “It is commonly said,” the scientists Frances Westall and André Brack wrote in 2018, “that there are as many definitions of life as there are people trying to define it.” As an observer of science and of scientists, I find this behavior strange. It is as if astronomers kept coming up with new ways to define stars. I once asked Radu Popa, a microbiologist who started collecting definitions of life in the early 2000s, what he thought…

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Brood X cicadas are about to put on one of the wildest shows in nature. And D.C. is the main stage

Brood X cicadas are about to put on one of the wildest shows in nature. And D.C. is the main stage

The Washington Post reports: They’ve been buried — alive — for 17 years. And now, Brood X, one of the world’s largest swarms of giant fly-like bugs called cicadas, is ready to rise. When the ground warms to 64 degrees, they’ll stop gnawing on tree roots and start scratching toward the surface by the hundreds of billions. Georgia and other Southern states will probably be where they first emerge around the end of March, experts say. But residents of the…

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Biden administration backs nation’s biggest wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard

Biden administration backs nation’s biggest wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration took a crucial step Monday toward approving the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm to date about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., a project that officials say will launch a massive clean-power expansion in the fight against climate change. In completing a final environmental review of Vineyard Wind, the Interior Department endorsed an idea that had been conceived two decades ago but had run into a well-funded and…

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Asbestos could be a powerful weapon against climate change

Asbestos could be a powerful weapon against climate change

James Temple writes: On a scorching day this August, Caleb Woodall wielded his shovel like a spear, stabbing it into the hardened crust of an asbestos-filled pit near Coalinga, California. Woodall, a graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, was digging out samples from an asbestos mine that’s been shuttered since 1980, a Superfund site on the highest peak in the state’s Diablo Range. He extracted pounds of the material from several locations across San Benito Mountain, shoveled them…

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Unlocking the mysteries of long COVID

Unlocking the mysteries of long COVID

Meghan O’Rourke writes: The quest at mount sinai began with a mystery. During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City, Zijian Chen, an endocrinologist, had been appointed medical director of the hospital’s new Center for Post-COVID Care, dedicated both to research and to helping recovering patients “transition from hospital to home,” as Mount Sinai put it. One day last spring, he turned to an online survey of COVID‑19 patients who were more than a month past…

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