Hospital infections affect almost two million people in the United States every year, 100,000 of whom die. Up to 70 percent of these infections could be prevented if health care workers follow recommended protocols, which include hand hygiene.

To me as a physician who studies health quality, it often...

There are more than 865 encryption tools in use worldwide, all addressing different aspects of a common problem. People want to protect information: hard drives from oppressive governments, physical location from stalkers, browsing history...

Imagine you’re a cat, and, every time you meowed, the loud voice of a snooty-sounding British gentleman kindly informed your human guardian of your every thought and feeling (well, the thoughts and feelings you had before you were terrified by the sound of the...

A professor repeatedly tells sexist jokes in class. The dean comments admiringly on a student’s appearance every time he sees her. A student’s advisor sends her emails with sexual pictures and innuendo.

So what? Can’t students take a joke? Can’t they...

Politicians and pundits in America wonder where the rip-roaring popularity of protest candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders originated. The answer may lie in Europe.

Trump and Sanders, in defying conventional political expectations, follow a long list of European populist leaders. Over the last two decades, the continent has seen the rise of Ma...

Editor’s note: In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have provided a broad review of available information on genetically engineered (GE) crops and their impacts on the environment and human health.

The study, produced by a committee of 20 experts from diverse fields, found...

In the wake of the damaging Alberta fires, there has been a lot of attention paid to what role climate change plays in wildfires. Yet 2016 is also a powerful El Niño year, which has created ideal conditions for the extraordinary fires in Alberta.

So what climate phenomena could have led to the persistent warm, dry conditions and the extreme...

Was May 2016 the month that faith in print newspapers finally died?

On May 6, The New Day, a tabloid print-only newspaper launched by publisher Trinity Mirror in the U.K., shut down. The paper was the first new national daily newspaper in the U.K. for 30 years. It closed after just nine weeks.

The...

Big data offers us a window on the world. But large and easily available datasets may not show us the world we live in. For instance, epidemiological models of the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa using big data consistently overestimated the risk of the disease’s spread...

Among the millions of people enslaved in the United States before 1865, hundreds of thousands attempted to flee from those who held them in bondage.

Some left temporarily to protest...