Science

Dr. Sanjay Gupta tries to stay above the political fray, said CNN anchor Jake Tapper, but he couldn't remain silent on his opposition to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

"You know, it's not often that the entire medical and public health community will be in lock-step on something, but they're pretty close on this in terms of their significant concerns, horror even," about RFK Jr., said Gupta.

Donald Trump announced Thursday that he's nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services — and the reaction hit fast.

Kennedy is an open conspiracy theorist who, among other things, has shared his belief that vaccines cause autism. He also seeks to remove fluoride from drinking water, and wants to close down the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the safety of drugs and food for the American people.

Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."

The percentage of adults suffering from diabetes across the world has doubled over the past three decades, the biggest rises coming in developing countries, a study said Wednesday.

The serious health condition affected around 14 percent of all adults worldwide in 2022, compared to seven percent in 1990, according to the new analysis in The Lancet journal.

Scientists say they have found the world's largest coral near the Pacific's Solomon Islands, announcing Thursday a major discovery "pulsing with life and colour".

The coral is so immense that researchers sailing the crystal waters of the Solomon archipelago initially thought they had stumbled across a hulking shipwreck.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) taunted Defense Department officials by declaring "the Earth is flat" at a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

During Wednesday's House Oversight Committee hearing, Boebert said she had been cautioned not to discuss the Defense Department's Immaculate Constellation program, which collects information about UAP encounters.

Anyone following the rhetoric around artificial intelligence in recent years has heard one version or another of the claim that AI is inevitable. Common themes are that AI is already here, it is indispensable, and people who are bearish on it harm themselves.

In the business world, AI advocates tell companies and workers that they will fall behind if they fail to integrate generative AI into their operations. In the sciences, AI advocates promise that AI will aid in curing hitherto intractable diseases.

Astrocytes — named for their star-like shape — are a type of brain cell as abundant as neurons in the central nervous system, but little is known about their role in brain health and disease.

Many neurological diseases are caused by or result in the loss of cells in the central nervous system. Some diseases are a result of the loss of specific cells, such as the loss of motor neurons in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the loss of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson’s disease and the loss of GABAergic neurons in Huntington’s disease.

Almost half of all warm-water species of coral are threatened with extinction -- and climate change is the chief culprit, a new report said on Wednesday.

The updated risk assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was announced at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, which is being skipped by the leaders of many top polluting nations.

"We used to hate elephants a lot," Kenyan farmer Charity Mwangome says, pausing from her work under the shade of a baobab tree.

The bees humming in the background are part of the reason why her hatred has dimmed.

Covering your surfboard in bright lights sounds like an open invitation to great white sharks, but research released Tuesday by Australian scientists found it might actually stave off attacks.

Biologist Laura Ryan said the predator often attacked its prey from underneath, occasionally mistaking a surfer's silhouette for the outline of a seal.

Imagine a robot that can detect scents in the air and track down their sources as efficiently as a dog or a mouse. If realised, it could detect small wildfires in dense forests, find people buried in debris after an earthquake, or even hunt for truffles!

Our research team has brought this vision one step closer to reality, by creating a compact electronic nose capable of identifying odours within milliseconds.

Across the animal kingdom, birds are some of the most colourful creatures of all. But how did all the amazingly coloured different bird species arise?

Nearly all birds with bright red, orange, and yellow feathers or bills use a group of pigments called carotenoids to produce their colours. However, these animals can’t make carotenoids directly. They must acquire them through their diets from the plants they eat. Parrots are the exception to this rule, having evolved an entirely new way to make colourful pigments, called psittacofulvins.