Latest posts
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How Computational Methods Search for New Materials
Simulation can predict properties of materials that have never been made. The bottleneck has shifted from computing properties to deciding which candidates are actually makeable.
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How Ocean Noise Affects Marine Life
Sound travels far and fast in water, and many marine animals depend on it. Human activity has raised background levels in ways that overlap with the frequencies animals use.
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Why Measurements of the Universe’s Expansion Disagree
Estimating how fast the universe expands can be done from nearby objects or from the early universe. The two routes give different answers, and the discrepancy has resisted explanation.
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Why Allergies Have Become More Common
Allergic disease rose substantially over the second half of the twentieth century. Several explanations fit parts of the pattern, and none accounts for all of it.
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How Monoclonal Antibodies Are Made
An antibody treatment begins with identifying one binding site among billions of candidates, then turning it into a molecule that can be manufactured identically at scale.
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What Xenotransplantation Has to Solve Before It Is Routine
Using animal organs for human transplantation would address a shortage that has persisted for decades. The barriers are immunological, infectious and ethical, and they are largely separate problems.
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Why New Psychiatric Treatments Are Hard to Develop
Psychiatric conditions are defined by symptoms rather than by measurable pathology, which shapes everything downstream: diagnosis, trial design and what a treatment effect even means.
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What Makes a Disease Eradicable
Eradication has been achieved for very few diseases. The conditions that made those cases possible explain why most diseases will not follow the same path.
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How Power Grids Stay Balanced With Variable Generation
Electricity supply and demand must match continuously. Adding generation that follows the weather changes what has to be done at every timescale, from seconds to seasons.
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Why Some Viruses Resist Vaccine Development
Vaccines work where the immune response they induce matches what protection requires. For several viruses that alignment has proven difficult to achieve, for distinct reasons.