“I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.” - Alexander Fleming

Natural products have been the basis of medicine for centuries. Aspirin is based on a chemical in willow tree bark. Morphine comes from the opium plant....

What should a self-driving car do when a nearby vehicle is swerving unpredictably back and forth on the road, as if its driver were drunk? What about encountering a vehicle driving the wrong way? Before autonomous cars are on the road, everyone should...

When 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, it was just the latest in a tragic list of mass shootings, many of them at schools.

Then something different happened: Teens began to speak out. The Stoneman Douglas students held a press conference appealing for gun control. Teens in Washington, D.C.,...

“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

In December 2017, the Department of Justice formally proposed adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. This question would ostensibly help to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

However, census experts, over 10...

As the price tag of a college education continues to rise along with questions about academic quality, skepticism about the value of a four-year college degree has grown among the American public.

This has led both the federal government and many state governments to...

Since 20 children were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, we’ve seen public calls for the release of crime scene photos – the idea being that the visceral horror evoked by images of young, brutalized bodies could spur some sort...

For many young adults, the college years are filled with excitement, as students gain independence and establish new adult identities and behaviors. However, not all behaviors are healthy. Typical changes in college student behavior...

On Feb. 21, Billy Graham, the evangelical Christian minister who was widely regarded as “America’s pastor,” died at the age of 99.

Graham is best known for his global “crusades” – rallies that attracted crowds in the millions – and for the spiritual counsel he...

At the beginning of each school year, before the students arrived, teachers from every school in the Atlanta Public Schools district were placed on school buses and taken to the old...

While some countries struggle with safety, U.S. airplane travel has lately had a remarkable safety record. In fact, from 2014 through 2017, there were no fatal commercial airline crashes in the U.S.

But those years were fraught with other kinds of...