Last week North Carolina became the first state to pass a law requiring transgender individuals (including students) to use only bathrooms that match their biological (rather than identified) gender. They did so in response to an ordinance...

If we are serious about long-term human presence in space, such as manned bases on the moon or Mars, we must figure out how to streamline human-robot interactions.

Right now, even the most basic of robots seem to have...

Imagine you went to your basement and dusted off the laptop or mobile phone that you used in 2002. What would happen if you tried to turn it on? We don’t have to guess. Around the country this election year, people are going into storage, pulling out computers that date back to 2002 and asking us to vote on them.

Following an election meltdown...

The worlds of science, technology and patent law eagerly await the U.S. government’s decision on who deserves patents on what many have referred to as the biotechnology invention of the century: the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique.

Scientists hail CRISPR/Cas9...

Think back to the last time you had a checkup with a doctor. He or she might have asked you about how often you exercise, how well you sleep and whether you drink or smoke. But does your doctor ask you about sex?

Asking patients about sexual matters is universally recognized as an...

Editor’s note: This article kicks off our collaboration with Point Taken, a new program from WGBH that premieres Tuesday, April 5 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show will feature fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.

The American Dream that has existed in this country for over 50 years is on life support. For...

As a toddler growing up in the 1950s, Richard Wawro threw violent tantrums. Often, he would tap the same piano key for long stretches of time.

When he was three, his parents took him for testing at a nearby hospital. They were told that he was moderately to severely retarded. His...

You might think the only people who wind up in a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) are at the brink of death and in dire need of specialized care. ICUs are designed to look after patients who need ventilators, medications to support blood pressure, high-tech treatments and...

Following the March 2016 bombings in Brussels, Donald Trump stated:

We have to be smart … We’re taking in people without real documentation. We don’t know where they are coming from … they could be ISIS-related.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Ted Cruz added:

We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim...

Last month, my colleagues and I were moved by a beautiful and tragic New York Times editorial by Kate Bowler, a religion professor from Duke Divinity School who was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

Bowler recently wrote a book – Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel –...