Sarah Zhang
What Mormon Family Trees Tell Us About Cancer
By searching the church's famed family trees, scientists have tracked down a cancer-causing mutation that came west with a pioneer couple—just in time to save the lives of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.
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Chip East / Reuters A Plane Quarantine in New York Started Out Like a Sci-Fi Nightmare
100 supposedly sick passengers ended up only being 10. But the story tapped into potent fears about flying.
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Joel Berger The 'Bloody Business' of Wildlife Conservation
A veteran conservationist reckons with his career studying animals in the most extreme places on Earth.
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Steve Gschmeissner / Science Photo Library / Getty The Patients Who Don't Want to Be Cured
A hemophiliac says his genetic disorder is part of his identity, and therapies like CRISPR threaten to erase it.
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Wade Payne / AP Naked-Mole-Rat Queens Control Their Subjects by Having Them Eat Poop
Feces turn subordinates into better caretakers for the colony’s pups.
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Phil Noble / Reuters Should You Take a DNA Test?
Kits from companies like 23andMe can reveal unpleasant surprises.
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Juliane Zeidler Fog Is Full of Microbes
“A fog droplet isn’t a bad environment to live in"
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Thomas Higham / University of Oxford Scientists Stunned by a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave
The extraordinary find is rewriting the story of archaic and modern humans.
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Brandon Martin / Rice University The Parasitic Vine That Slowly Sucks the Life Out of Wasps
“Pretty freaky”
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Michael Virtanen / AP The Mystery of the Ancient Volcano That May Have Inspired Atlantis
Experts still vehemently disagree over when one of the biggest eruptions of the Holocene actually happened.
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Toru Hanai / Reuters Why Is Buying Pet Food So Hard?
A new start-up is making vegan food for dogs and lab-grown mouse meat for cats. It wants to change the way all pets eat.
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Kyselova Inna / Shutterstock Blueberry Earth: The Delicious Thought Experiment That's Roiling Planetary Scientists
“A roaring ocean of boiling jam, with the geysers of released air and steam likely ejecting at least a few berries into orbit.”
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Phil Noble / Reuters Big Pharma Would Like Your DNA
23andMe’s $300 million deal with GlaxoSmithKline is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Jorge Silva / Reuters Why Did 11 Babies Die in a Generic Viagra Trial?
On the many attempts to repurpose a drug best known for treating erectile dysfunction
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Reuters The Deleted WeChat Post That Fueled China's Vaccine Scandal
It alleged a complex web of corruption going back decades.
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Nikola Solic / Reuters The Mystery of How Neanderthals Got Fire
Fifty-thousand-year-old tools suggest that modern humans weren't prehistory's only pyros.
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Catherine St. Clair / Prokrida / Shutterstock / ... When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity
“Each person comes into our group thinking they are a freak.”
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David Parry / Reuters The Farcical Battle Over What to Call Lab-Grown Meat
The FDA held a public meeting to talk about it, but no one could agree on what to call it.
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Anthony Pagano / USGS How to Train a Polar Bear to Walk on a Treadmill
“It takes a lot of patience.”
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Herbert Mayrl / Courtesy Gran Acuifero Maya Project The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Panic
A veteran cave diver explains the unique risks—and rewards—of his deadly pursuit.
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Claudia Torrens / AP Which Company Will Test the DNA of Separated Families?
And other unanswered questions about the HHS’s new plan to reunite migrants separated at the border.
