For a creature made up of only a single cell, the stentor is a giant. This trumpet-shape organism is among the largest unicellular organisms, stretching as long as a sharpened pencil tip. But sometimes it has a hard time vacuuming up the swimming bacteria and microscopic algae it eats to survive. New research reveals that…
The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick — the influenza viruses that send us to bed and the smallpox viruses that may send us to the grave. But healthy people are rife with viruses that don’t make us ill. Scientists estimate that tens of trillions of viruses live inside of…
Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist who proposed that cities should grow food in high-rises, popularizing the term “vertical farming” — an idea that crossed over from the realm of the purely fanciful to become a reality around the globe — died on Feb. 7 in Manhattan. He was 84. His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed the death,…
Louis Pasteur was at his most comfortable when working in his Paris laboratory. It was there that he had some of his greatest scientific triumphs, including experiments that helped confirm germs can cause disease. “Everything gets complicated away from the laboratory,” he once complained to a friend. But in 1860, years before he became famous…
With TV cameras pointed at her, Felisa Wolfe-Simon began speaking at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2, 2010. “I’ve discovered — I’ve led a team that has discovered — something that I’ve been thinking about for many years,” Dr. Wolfe-Simon said. She was at that time a visiting researcher with the U.S. Geological…
The first great white shark was found dead in August 2023 on a beach in a national park on Prince Edward Island, Canada: a young male, 500 pounds, 8 feet 9 inches from snout to tail. Park workers soon arrived with a pickup truck, loaded the carcass and drove it to a cooler at the…
Today, however, a small but growing number of Americans prefer to drink their milk raw. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, now stands at the vanguard of this movement. Kennedy has said he drinks raw milk and has criticized what he describes as the…