“But hasn’t TB been eradicated?,” my seatmate on a recent flight to South Africa asked me. This question crops up pretty frequently when I tell people what I do for a living. I research the development of diagnostic tests for diseases using breath, sputum, blood and urine, and at the moment I am working on a diagnostic breath...

Many regions of the United States are struggling with water shortages. Large areas of the West are contending with moderate to severe drought, while California is now in the fifth year of one of the most extreme droughts in its history. Even non-arid regions, such as the Southeast, are...

Economic inequality is now firmly on the public agenda as candidates and voters alike look for someone to blame for stagnant wages, entrenched poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor.

Bernie Sanders blames Wall Street. Donald Trump points his finger at companies...

The Justice Department has managed to unlock an iPhone 5c used by the gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December. The high-profile case has pitted federal law enforcement agencies against...

Filter-feeding fish accomplish a feat that human technologies cannot: species including goldfish, menhaden and basking sharks filter tiny algal cells or shrimp-like prey from huge volumes of water without clogging their oral filters.

Since fish have been...

With the recently announced shutdown of Al Jazeera America, the alternative cable news scene is in flux.

Launched as a corrective to the politicized and spectacle-heavy programming of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, Al Jazeera America positioned itself as a fact-based, unbiased news source. Even though the network won awards for reporting, the Qatari...

Gender is generally thought of as a stable trait: we are born male or female and we stay that way as we grow from small children to adults.

It turns out that for young children, initial concepts about gender are quite flexible. In my own research, I’ve found that children don&rs...

Two attacks in Brussels last week left 31 dead and many others wounded. They also produced a barrage of criticism about the apparent laxity of Belgium’s intelligence and security services.

It is easy to criticize the many lapses that allowed this tragedy to unfold. Observers may wonder why Belgium security forces failed to heed an explicit...

If there is one area on which the more extreme representatives of the political left and right can agree, it is the nefarious character of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the comprehensive trade deal signed last month by President Barack Obama and the leaders of 11 other Pacific nations.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump calls TPP “a...

Back in 2008, carbon nanotubes – exceptionally fine tubes made up of carbon atoms – were making headlines. A new study from the U.K. had just shown that, under some conditions, these long, slender fiber-like tubes could cause harm in...