Katherine J. Wu
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Henrik Sorensen / Getty How Disgusting Are Mosquitos?
A bug might not make you vomit, but can still evoke a distinct, avoidant reaction.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic Your Vaccinated Immune System Is Ready for Breakthroughs
Getting COVID-19 when you’re vaccinated isn’t the same as getting COVID-19 when you’re unvaccinated.
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Bing Guan / Bloomberg / Getty 4 Reasons I’m Wearing a Mask Again
Our vaccines are extraordinary, but right now they need all the help they can get.
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Getty; The Atlantic We’re Zeroing In On the ‘Holy Grail’ of COVID-19 Immunity
There’s no good way of measuring whether your vaccine worked—yet.
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Valerio Ferraro / REDA&CO / Universal Images Group … Why Do Mammals Kill Each Other?
A grisly census hints at a few reasons some of our closest kin might take each other’s lives
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Biosphoto / Alamy The Mystery at the Base of One of Biology’s Strangest Relationships
Little crustaceans called tongue biters drain the blood from the tongues of fish. Then things get weird.
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Hector Ruiz / Alamy Lizards Took ‘This Is Fine’ Way Too Literally
When flames erupt on the Iberian Peninsula, reptiles don’t sweat a thing. The mites that suck their blood are far less thrilled.
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The Atlantic Post-vaccination Infections Come in 2 Different Flavors
Lumping all breakthroughs together, regardless of symptoms, miscasts what our COVID-19 vaccines can do.
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Julian Baur The Pros and Cons of Spiky Genitals
Seed-beetle sex seems like a classic conflict between males and females, but new research gives it a twist.
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Hannah Beier / Reuters Doctors Are Puzzled by Heart Inflammation in the Young and Vaccinated
Weighing the balance of risks is a shade more challenging when it affects the youngest among us.
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Colleen Reichmuth The Extremes a Walrus Will Go to for Love
In pursuit of a mate, Sivuqaq produced such stupendously loud sounds that researchers had to understand how they worked.
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The Atlantic Why No One Is Sure If Delta Is Deadlier
The variants are spreading faster, but they don’t necessarily have incentive to kill more often.
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Alex Merto The Only Way We’ll Know When We Need COVID-19 Boosters
Research can tell us only so much. The rest is a waiting game.
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Ed Reschke / Getty / The Atlantic The Immune System’s Weirdest Weapon
For decades, neutrophils have been miscast as mindless grunts. They’re more like super-soldiers.
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Brock Fenton A Hint About How Life Made It Onto Land
Our fishy ancestors might have gotten a cognitive boost just by leaving the water.
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Getty Immune Cells Are More Paranoid Than We Thought
Healthy birds watched their friends get sick with a bacterial disease. Their immune cells freaked out.
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Kateryna Kon / Getty / Katie Martin / … Coronavirus Variants Have Nowhere to Hide
Our tests will need frequent touch-ups to make sure that no mutations get past them.
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Bettmann / Getty One More Reason to Admire Elephant Trunks
New research confirms that elephant trunks don’t just blow—they can also suck.
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Lisa Maree Williams / Getty What Breakthrough Infections Can Tell Us
Post-vaccination infections reveal how effective vaccines are—and which variants are sneaking past our defenses.
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Robert Lewis / IT Catalysts, Inc. Can Electric Fish Talk Like Obama?
Yes, they can.
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