Category: Technology

Massive cost overruns. Key deadlines slipping out of reach. Problems of unprecedented complexity, and a generation’s worth of scientific progress contingent upon solving them. That’s the current state of Mars Sample Return, the ambitious yet imperiled NASA mission whose rapidly ballooning budget has cost jobs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and […]

After months of speculation about her recent health challenges, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed Friday that she has cancer. The video announcement was short on specifics, prompting a new set of questions about her condition. She said she was initially told her “condition was non-cancerous.” Learning otherwise after medical tests had been conducted “came as […]

Our dogs understand us better than they’ve been given credit for — and scientists say they have the brain wave evidence to prove it. By placing electrodes on the heads of 18 pet dogs, researchers found striking evidence that the animals did not merely recognize the patterns of sound that come out of their owners’ […]

To help California fight climate change, air quality regulators would like to see 20% of the state’s farmland go organic by 2045. That means converting about 65,000 acres of conventional fields to organic practices every year. But depending on how that transition happens, the change could lead to an overall increase in the amount of […]

A power outage that forced hundreds of patients to be evacuated at a Boyle Heights hospital last summer was the result of lapses in maintaining the facility, a “deficient practice” that could put patients at risk of not getting needed care, state investigators found. In August, Adventist Health White Memorial lost power hours after Southern […]

In a Dec. 2 tweet, Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, stated that Anthony Fauci, the respected virologist and retired official of the National Institutes of Health, “is likely a murderer and provably a felon.” In another tweet a few weeks earlier, he had compared Fauci to the […]

The measles virus is resurging in the U.S. despite the long-standing availability of a vaccine that provides nearly life-long immunity. In the past few weeks, hundreds of people were exposed to a child with the virus in a Northern California healthcare facility; our state is one of 17 jurisdictions with reported measles cases in 2024, […]

As Indiana officials struggled to contain an outbreak of HIV among people who injected drugs, then-Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly followed the urgings of public health officials and cleared the way for an overwhelmed county to hand out clean syringes. Pence was far from enthusiastic about launching the program in Scott County, but after it rolled […]

For five years, an elusive tormentor of animals hid from authorities in east Riverside County as 10 dogs were injured and another killed. The victims hailed from Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties, while the suspect maintained a strong alibi: It had never visited California. It took authorities years to discover the one key detail […]

The SpaceX rocket that is intended to take humans back to the moon and someday to Mars completed its third and most successful test flight Thursday morning. Stacked on top of a Super Heavy booster, the Starship rocket lifted off flawlessly at 6:25 a.m. PDT from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, launchpad, with all 33 […]

A molecular lookalike of the intoxicating compound found in marijuana has become popular among teens in the United States, especially in areas where marijuana use is illegal, a new study shows. More than 11% of high school seniors who took part in a national survey last spring said they had used delta-8 THC, a psychoactive […]

As measles cases pop up across the country this winter — including several in California — one group of children is stirring deep concerns among pediatricians: the babies and toddlers of vaccine-hesitant parents who are delaying their child’s measles-mumps-rubella shots. Pediatricians across the state say they have seen a sharp increase recently in the number […]

NASA does difficult, inspiring and ambitious things — and it does them, in the immortal words of President Kennedy, because they are hard. NASA’s most ambitious planetary project yet is Mars Sample Return, a partnership with the European Space Agency to robotically collect and bring back to Earth scientifically invaluable rocks from Mars for study […]

Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics. In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their […]

A bipartisan congressional agreement on NASA’s final budget for the current fiscal year offers a glimmer of hope that the space agency’s ambitious but troubled effort to bring pieces of Mars to Earth can recover from devastating cuts that led to hundreds of layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. This week, […]

Los Angeles anesthesiologist Dr. Marilyn Singleton was outraged about a California requirement that every continuing medical education course include training in implicit bias — the ways in which physicians’ unconscious attitudes might contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Singleton, who is Black and has practiced for 50 years, sees calling doctors out for […]

Maria Mercado’s 5- and 7-year-old daughters haven’t been to the doctor for a check-up in two years. And it’s not for lack of trying. Mercado, a factory worker in South Los Angeles, has called the pediatrician’s office over and over hoping to book an appointment for a well-child visit, only to be told there are […]

SAN FRANCISCO —  County by county in California, as fentanyl overdoses escalate, local prosecutors are turning to a novel legal strategy to stem the spiraling death toll: charging drug dealers with murder. In July, Placer County reached a landmark plea deal that sent a man to prison for 15 years-to-life on charges of second-degree murder after […]

Is a frozen embryo a child? The Alabama Supreme Court says yes. In ruling this month that three couples who lost frozen embryos in a storage facility accident could sue for wrongful death of a minor child, the court wrote that the “natural, ordinary, commonly understood meaning” of the word “child” includes an “unborn child” […]

Think of meticulously handcrafted objects, and certain things come immediately to mind: fine art, exotic cars, luxury timepieces. But Pasadena native Steve Barajas spends his days building a bespoke item that’s on another level entirely: NASA’s Europa Clipper. BUSINESS What do you do for work? That’s the question My L.A. Workday answers. The series takes […]

A child’s individual differences, skills and experience matter a lot in the learning process, and learning to read is no exception. That’s why new legislation based on the erroneous assumption that there is only one way to teach reading is so dangerous for California’s students. Although well-intentioned, the measure would prevent teachers from addressing children’s […]

Paul Maley has spent much of his life chasing solar eclipses. He has witnessed 83 solar eclipses from 1960 to 2023. On April 8, he plans to see the 84th aboard a cruise ship in Mexico, located right in the path of totality — the swath where the moon fully blocks the sun. “It’s more […]

Roots Community Health Center was slammed in 2020, with lines for its COVID-19 testing stations stretching around the block and exam rooms full of people struggling to breathe. Patient after patient at the East Oakland clinic extended their fingers so that healthcare workers could clip on a pulse oximeter, a device that measures the degree […]

Given the long list of major catastrophes in the world — melting polar ice, raging wars, the disappearance of early-bird specials, etc. — I’m not sure why so many people want to live forever. But they do, and the multibillion-dollar longevity industry is booming. Supplements, skincare products, cosmetic surgery, books, diets, podcasts, workout routines — […]

An estimated 2.8 million people in the U.S. contract infections each year from bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. More than 35,000 of them die. Despite the mounting toll — and the prospect of an eventual surge in superbug fatalities — the development of new antibiotics has failed to […]

Public health officials in Alaska have disclosed the first known human death from Alaskapox, a virus typically found in small mammals. No human-to-human transmission of Alaskapox has been detected so far, and there have been no known cases outside the state for which the virus is named. California health officials confirmed there’ve been no reports […]

In a darkened Amsterdam conference hall this summer, a panel of industry and academic scientists took the stage to announce a plan to radically expand the definition of Alzheimer’s disease to include millions of people with no memory complaints. Those with normal cognition who test positive for elevated levels of certain proteins that have been […]

People who have had COVID-19 have a significantly higher risk of suffering chronic fatigue than those who haven’t had the disease, a new study published Wednesday shows. “Our data indicate that COVID-19 is associated with a significant increase in new fatigue diagnoses,” according to the study, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]

Lawmakers and regulators in Washington are starting to puzzle over how to regulate artificial intelligence in healthcare — and the AI industry thinks there’s a good chance they’ll mess it up. “It’s an incredibly daunting problem,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco. “There’s a risk we come […]

It was the last hour of a 30-hour dive, nearly two murky miles below the ocean’s surface. A remotely operated vehicle called the Hercules was exploring the foothills of the Davidson Seamount, an underwater volcano 75 miles west of San Simeon. Aboard the boat carrying the researchers who were monitoring the Hercules, it was expected […]

When Nicole Villagran signed up to do her first Tough Mudder course, she thought she’d be getting an entertaining, if messy, workout. She got that — and much more. Villagran has spent the last 10 days dealing with a pustular rash covering her arms, legs and torso. The El Sobrante resident was one of thousands […]

As the movie “Oppenheimer” has shown to millions, scientists disagree, have fragile egos, experience office politics and have problems in their personal lives. And they do something else that all humans do — make mistakes. That’s because science is a process, not a set of fixed facts. It doesn’t fall out of the sky fully […]

After recovery comes identification. With new rapid DNA technology, investigators no longer have to send all their material to labs with sophisticated equipment, highly skilled technical operators and huge backlogs — a process that can take months or years. For the record: 10:08 a.m. Sept. 1, 2023An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that […]

SAN FRANCISCO —  Isaias Lopez was dying, but he didn’t know it. Lopez was slumped against a wall in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, where the concentration of homelessness and drug use have divided this city politically. A baby blue baseball cap and a white hoodie covered his head, making him just another human lump […]

Halfway through what will be the biggest purge of Medicaid beneficiaries in a one-year span, enrollment in the government-run health insurance program is on track to return to roughly pre-pandemic levels. Medicaid, which covers low-income and disabled people, and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program grew to a record 94 million enrollees as a result […]

Brianna Mckenzie was feverish and shaking in her bed as night drew near at MLK Community Hospital. The pregnant woman was a week and a half past her due date. She had come to the Willowbrook hospital to be induced a day beforehand and was only halfway to the needed dilation. Her mother, Francine Tomlinson, […]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will lay off hundreds of employees this week in anticipation of massive funding cuts in the next federal budget, JPL director Laurie Leshin told staff on Tuesday. Despite pleas to NASA and the White House from California lawmakers anxious to preserve jobs at the La Cañada Flintridge research institution, the lab […]

Los Angeles County has become the latest local government to accuse pharmacy benefit managers — the little-known middlemen of the prescription drug industry — of stoking the opioid crisis by helping flood the nation with highly addictive pills. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the county alleged that Express Scripts […]

Sharri Shaw walked out of the CVS on Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles in 2019 believing she had a prescription for the pain reliever acetaminophen. Instead the bottle held a medicine to treat high blood pressure, a problem she did not have. Shaw began taking the pills, not learning of the mistake until six […]

Pharmacists are trained to safely dispense medications and avoid mistakes. But in recent years, a chorus of pharmacists have spoken out about how heavy workloads, especially at the big chain pharmacies, have led to dangerous errors. In California alone, an estimated 5 million pharmacy errors happen every year, according to the state’s Board of Pharmacy. […]

Cutting-edge NASA imaging technology can detect early signs of a plant virus that, if unaddressed, often proves devastating for wineries and grape growers, new research has found. While the breakthrough is good news for the wine and grape industry, which loses billions of dollars a year to the crop-ruining disease, it could eventually help global […]

Do you sleep with animals? No, I don’t mean people who, you know, do wild and crazy things in bed. I am talking about actual animals: dogs, cats, bunnies, guinea pigs and maybe — bear with me — Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. Opinion Columnist Robin Abcarian Every few years, new research reveals that human-animal co-sleeping is […]

Flu season is just around the corner, and the time is fast approaching for residents to consider getting their annual vaccine. While the flu is often relatively mild, infection can carry dangerous — and even deadly — consequences for some. And that risk is one of the major reasons health officials encourage most everyone to […]

The Los Angeles Zoo has released about 170 endangered frogs to their native habitat in the San Gabriel Mountains as part of ongoing conservation efforts for the species. The release of the southern mountain yellow-legged frogs on Aug. 29 and 30 capped a trademark breeding process at the zoo, where the eggs of the rare […]

As a fourth-year ophthalmology resident at Emory University School of Medicine, Dr. Riley Lyons’ biggest responsibilities include triage: When a patient comes in with an eye-related complaint, Lyons must make an immediate assessment of its urgency. He often finds patients have already turned to “Dr. Google.” Online, Lyons said, they are likely to find that […]

A recently arrived traveler at Los Angeles International Airport is the source of the first case of measles in L.A. County since 2020. Measles is a highly infectious disease, and health experts say the best way to evade infection is immunization. The Los Angeles resident was a passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight that arrived […]

Tucked into a state Senate bill revising aspects of the Medical Board of California is a brief but unambiguous clause undoing a controversial law that was intended to curb “dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.” If the bill passes as expected this week, it will put an end to the saga of Assembly […]

For climate change deniers, it was confirmation of a long-held suspicion: Scientists cannot be trusted. Days after publishing research that found global warming had boosted the risk of fast-growing California wildfires by 25%, scientist and lead author Patrick T. Brown announced that he’d withheld the full truth to maximize the article’s chances of being published […]

A new bill would require California workplaces to stock their first-aid kids with a nasal spray that can prevent opioid overdoses, greatly expanding the range of locations that have the lifesaving medication on hand. Naloxone, commonly sold under the brand name Narcan, can halt a deadly overdose if administered promptly. When the medicine reaches the […]

Chinese food has been an American favorite for well over 100 years, but it wasn’t until the success of Panda Express that the cuisine became a staple at seemingly every suburban mall. Now, the chain’s founders, Peggy and Andrew Cherng, are looking to transform how Americans undergo treatment for cancer, drawing on traditional Chinese medicine, […]

We are all familiar by now with the movement to eradicate the names of racists and other villains from the buildings, institutions and public spaces where they were once honored. Caltech excised the name of Robert A. Millikan, its longest-serving president and a known eugenicist, from its campus; Princeton removed Woodrow Wilson’s name from its […]

Inside the glassy waiting room of a Hollywood clinic, a 33-year-old man sat and listened for his number to be called over the beats of a Mariah Carey song. “It’s just really easy. You don’t have to make an appointment,” said the man, who comes to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation clinic every two or three […]

With a little work, you may be able to see a rare celestial sight in the next few days just as the sun is setting over Southern California: an emerald dot gliding across the sky. Comet Nishimura, discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura in early August, is expected to reach peak brightness on Saturday, […]

As a chronic pain sufferer, I sometimes surprise people by telling them that my pain doesn’t have a physical cause. It’s a mind-body thing, I say, related to stress and emotions. To many, this sounds like admitting to being a little bit crazy. And when I up the ante by suggesting they’ve probably had this […]

A new coronavirus shot will be available starting this week, but the big question is how many people will get one. Attitudes about COVID-19 are clearly shifting, as is to be expected since it long ceased to be the sort of suffocating public health threat that ground the globe to a halt. But health officials […]

NASA’s new official instruction to the U.S. public regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena — the odd things in the sky that used to be called UFOs — boils down to a version of the popular security poster. “If you see something, say something,” David Spergel, the head of the agency’s UAP study team, said Thursday. And […]

Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers have voted to authorize a strike if no agreement is reached with their unions by the end of September, union officials announced Thursday. SEIU United Healthcare Workers West said nearly 60,000 workers in California had approved a possible strike, teeing up what could be the biggest strike by […]

It wasn’t a bird! It wasn’t a plane! It was a rocket that lit up the Southern California sky Thursday night. The mission, dubbed Victus Nox — Latin for “conquer the night” — launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. Base officials said Friday that it was part of a successful effort […]

Those pandemic puppies are growing up to be a public health concern. The latest California data shows increased rates of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths from dog bites, with new records set after COVID-19 lockdowns. In 2022, there were 48,596 ER visits for dog bites in California, or 125 visits per 100,000 residents, a […]

The latest government advisories on the new monovalent COVID-19 vaccines were not much of a surprise. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccines as safe and effective, and a day later the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the shots for all Americans over the age of 6 months. Even less […]

As the toll from the COVID-19 pandemic continued to mount, antiviral medications such as Paxlovid were hailed by health officials as an important way to reduce the risk of severe illness or death. Yet the drugs have remained underused, studies have found. In Boston, a group of researchers wanted to know why — and what […]

Although shipments of the newest COVID-19 vaccines started arriving in Southern California pharmacies and clinics last week, Kaiser Permanente members will need to wait just a little longer to get their shot from the healthcare provider. Kaiser Permanente, which serves more than 9 million Californians, is not yet offering its members the newest booster — […]

At least 32 people attending a union conference at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles last month were sickened from an outbreak of Shigella bacteria, according to California health officials. Six of those people were hospitalized, officials said. The outbreak was first reported through an alert by the Alameda County Public Health Department, which […]

Nearly a century ago, when global dominance in scientific research began shifting to the United States from Europe, our nation built an empire firmly grounded in the natural sciences. America’s research universities and institutes flourished and provided the discoveries leading to the Manhattan Project, Silicon Valley’s tech industry, NASA and space exploration, vaccines to fight […]

Inside the row of workshops in an industrial stretch of Pacoima, men labored over hefty slabs of speckled stone, saws whining over the sounds of Spanish-language rock. Pale dust rose around them as they worked. Many went without masks. Some had water spurting from their machines, but others had nothing to tamp down the powder […]

To anyone who has paid even a modicum of serious attention to COVID-19 and its treatment, ivermectin is the zombiest of zombie drugs. Used to treat parasitic diseases in animals and humans, the drug became a darling of anti-vaccination activists and conspiracy-mongers, who pushed it as a treatment for the pandemic disease and claimed it […]

No cause of death has been disclosed for Dianne Feinstein, the longtime California senator who struggled with evident health problems in her final years before her death Friday. She was absent from the U.S. Senate for nearly three months earlier this year while recovering from a case of shingles that led to encephalitis, a rare […]

The California Department of Public Health recently updated its COVID guidance to allow people who have tested positive to exit isolation sooner than before. Specifically, officials say that as long as you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of medications, and other symptoms are mild or improving, you can exit isolation with a […]

The plagiarism accusations first struck Claudine Gay when a right-wing activist published several examples of unattributed text from the Harvard president’s academic writings. Though insufficient attribution wasn’t the only controversy swirling around Gay — her response to congressional questions about antisemitism on campus played a much bigger role — it was the tipping point that […]

Late last year, a spacecraft containing samples of a 4.6-billion-year-old asteroid landed safely in the desert after a 1.2-billion mile journey. There was only one little problem: NASA couldn’t get the canister containing its prized rocks open. After months of tinkering, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston finally dislodged two stuck fasteners that […]

Katalin Karikó and Dr. Drew Weissman, American scientists whose long collaboration has revolutionized the making of vaccines and raised the prospect of new treatments for a range of afflictions, were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for their work on messenger RNA. Hungarian-born biochemist Karikó, 68, spent nearly a decade at BioNTech, […]

Los Angeles was once the best place in the world to see the universe. The most important things we know about the cosmos were discovered in the early 20th century at Mt. Wilson Observatory. It was here, 100 years ago, that Edwin Hubble noted a light in the distance that would lead to one of […]

The orchestra tuned as the last musicians ambled into Schoenfeld Hall at USC. On a muggy Sunday afternoon in September, they were rehearsing a new symphony, “Unforgettable Sunrise,” by an unknown local composer. Conductor Daniel Newman-Lessler snapped them all to attention: Today they’d run through the symphony’s second movement, “Page Turner.” “This is more like […]

At the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, scientists are eager to explore whether a psychedelic chemical found in a toad could help people whose depression has not eased with typical treatments. Patients regularly call or send emails about joining clinical trials to test that and other compounds, but the research center is turning them […]

Arthur Yu was exhausted, but he chalked it up to being a new father. Usually active, Yu was finding himself winded by the afternoon. He negotiated with his wife Alice to get just a little bit more sleep, thinking his fatigue was just a passing phase. But four months after the birth of their son […]

More than 75,000 nurses, nursing assistants, technicians, pharmacists and other healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente went on strike in California and beyond this week. Their unions say it’s the largest healthcare strike in recent U.S. history. It is indeed unusual for American medical workers to go on strike. Lives are, after all, in their hands, […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged Wednesday to hold the line against a proposed law that would ban youth tackle football in California, saying in a statement to The Times that he’d veto any such legislation. Assembly Bill 734 was introduced last year by state Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) and cleared its first hurdle a week ago […]

An unusual disc-shaped object from space landed last month on the barren sands of a U.S. military testing ground. Scorched from its fiery journey through the atmosphere, the capsule was lifted by helicopter and taken to a custom-built clean room at the Utah Test and Training Range, where it sat unopened under a continuous flow […]

SACRAMENTO —  California is the first state to ban doctors and medical examiners from attributing deaths to the controversial diagnosis known as “excited delirium,” which a human-rights activist hailed as a “watershed moment” that could make it harder for police to justify excessive force. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Oct. 8 to prohibit coroners, […]

REDDING —  Five days after giving birth, Melissa Crespo was already back on the streets, recovering in a damp, litter-strewn water tunnel, when she got the call from the hospital. Her baby, Kyle, who had been born three months prematurely, was in respiratory failure in the neonatal intensive care unit and fighting for his life. The […]

If life exists elsewhere in the solar system, it may well reside in the ocean of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. The mysterious world appears to have the necessary ingredients for life as we know it. Beneath its frozen exterior is a single body of water that’s so deep it may hold more liquid than all […]

BLUFF, Utah — When Mayor Ann Leppanen learned that the moon would cross in front of the sun above her home on Saturday, she foresaw calamity: a tidal wave of tourists engulfing her tiny town as they pursued the annular eclipse, with its spectacular ring of fire. The town’s economy has long relied on a […]

In the preface of the new book by vaccine expert and pro-science crusader Peter Hotez, there are several acknowledgments of a kind that may never have appeared before in a book like it. There, Hotez expresses gratitude to the Houston Police Department, the Texas Medical Center Police Department and the security force of the Texas […]

A new book by a Stanford neurobiologist offers a jarring proposition: that humans do not have free will and thus cannot be considered morally responsible for our actions. In “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will,” Robert Sapolsky contends that much harm comes from our belief in free will: needless anxiety and guilt, unjust […]

Space shuttle Endeavour’s giant orange fuel tank that propelled astronauts into space on more than two dozen missions was lifted by crane on its final journey and lowered back to Earth early Saturday at its final resting place at the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. The massive fuel tank — dubbed ET-94 — […]

One of California’s riskiest volcanoes has for decades been undergoing geological changes and seismic activity, which are sometimes a precursor to an eruption, but — thankfully — no supervolcanic eruptions are expected. That’s according to Caltech researchers who have been studying the Long Valley Caldera, which includes the Mammoth Lakes area in Mono County. The […]

The removal of a species from the government’s endangered species list is often a cause for celebration, as it means a plant or animal variety has somehow beaten the odds and recovered from its parlous condition. That’s not the case for 21 animal species just delisted from the Endangered Species Act by the U.S. Fish […]

Over the weekend, as I pondered a volume of forgotten lore — it was Emily Wilson’s gripping translation of Homer’s “Odyssey,” actually — my email inbox started filling up with the curious news that a long-discredited and retracted paper claiming that the COVID vaccines had killed nearly 300,000 Americans had been “reinstated.” It did not […]

With Halloween just days away, and the wider autumn and winter holiday season fast approaching, now is the time for most everyone to get their updated COVID-19 vaccine, officials say — especially since initial supply shortages have eased. There are some indications the winter respiratory virus season is just beginning, exacerbating the threat not only […]

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 100 contractors last week and will scale back part of the first-ever effort to bring pieces of Mars to Earth, after a cost-cutting order from NASA that lawmakers called “short-sighted and misguided.” In an email to staff on Thursday, JPL director Laurie Leshin said that NASA is bracing for […]

It seems anywhere scientists look for plastic, they find it: from the ice in Antarctica, to the first bowel movement produced by newborn babies. Now, researchers are finding that the amount of microscopic plastics floating in bottled drinking water is far greater than initially believed. Using sophisticated imaging technology, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty laboratory […]

It used to be fairly easy to dismiss Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, as a clownish anti-vaccine quack posing a danger mostly to residents of his home state. That has become harder to do as time goes on, as Ladapo has moved from promoting useless treatments for COVID-19, such as the drugs hydroxychloroquine […]

Are we alone? Is life around us a cosmic accident that only happened once on this lonely planet, making human beings the only technological civilization anywhere? Or is the universe teeming with life, and perhaps even intelligence and self-awareness? These questions have haunted humanity for millennia. Science is now poised to take a fantastic leap […]

When Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of COP28, unveiled plans for a first-ever Day of Health at the upcoming United Nations-sponsored climate summit, he noted his “resolute” determination to “address the challenges posed to health by climate change.” The announcement was welcome given the climate-fueled health crises that now regularly strike our patients, including heat […]

An elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo died this week, the second in about a year and just days before a vigil is set to be held by animal activists at the zoo to mourn elephants who have died in captivity. Shaunzi, a 53-year-old female Asian elephant, was euthanized early Wednesday morning, according to zoo […]

The first SpaceX launch of 2024, which took place Tuesday night, included something that none of the company’s prior launches did. The Falcon 9 rocket carried 21 low-orbit satellites for its sister company, Starlink, including six that, for the first time, feature direct-to-cell communications. The satellites are designed to eliminate cellphone service “dead zones” with […]

The pandemic is far from over, as evidenced by the rapid rise to global dominance of the JN.1 variant of SARS-CoV-2. This variant is a derivative of BA.2.86, the only other strain that has carried more than 30 new mutations in the spike protein since Omicron first came on the scene more than two years […]

Under a microscope, this drug-resistant superbug looks as benign as a handful of pebbles. Yet carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, or CRAB, is a nightmare for hospitals worldwide, as it kills roughly half of all patients who acquire it. Identified as a top-priority pathogen by both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control […]

As scientific breakthroughs go, the one announced last March by a team from the University of Rochester was especially eye-opening. Led by physicist/engineer Ranga P. Dias, they reported in an article in Nature the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor — a material that can conduct electricity with no loss of efficiency from friction and no […]

At long last, the final journey of the last space shuttle ever built, Endeavour, and its giant orange external tank are expected to begin this month — the capstone to a historic journey to an ambitious museum exhibit in Los Angeles. It’ll be a momentous occasion for the California Science Center, the state-run museum just […]

Individuals who are skeptical of vaccines for themselves are also more likely to question the need or efficacy of getting shots for their four-legged companions, according to a recent study. In the study, published in the medical journal Vaccine, researchers asked 2,200 Americans their thoughts on vaccines and whether they were dog owners. If they […]

Advertisement Advertisement Nathan Gray is an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an artist who draws comics on medical topics. @NathanAGray

June Voros sprang from her couch as a high-pitched beep warned that she needed a quick dose of sugar. Her blood sugar was plummeting, and the beep came from a continuous glucose monitor attached to her abdomen. The small but powerful device alerts Voros when her blood sugar is dangerously high or low. “My blood […]

A pair of months-old mountain lion siblings who were orphaned about a week ago found a temporary home at the Oakland Zoo on Friday morning. The female cubs, Maple and Willow, were discovered after wildlife officers found an adult female mountain lion hit and killed by a car along Interstate 280 in the Hillsborough/Burlingame area […]

SpaceX’s Starship Mars rocket and spacecraft launched for the second time early Saturday morning, making it through liftoff and a planned separation of the uncrewed ship and rocket booster before both ended up exploding. The massive Starship rocket launched around 5:03 a.m. Pacific from SpaceX’s launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas. On a livestream of […]

When Wendy Solano first heard the word “silicosis,” her husband Jose Raul Garcia Leon was already suffering from the incurable disease that would kill him. After immigrating from Mexico, the father of three had provided for his family by cutting countertops. His illness began as a dry cough — something the couple had chalked up […]

The San Francisco Bay Area fared better during the COVID-19 pandemic than many other largely populated areas, with a cumulative COVID-19 death rate among the lowest of the nation’s most populous counties, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. Of the nation’s 88 counties with a population greater than 750,000 people, San Francisco and neighboring […]

Coronavirus transmission is once again spiking in California entering the winter holiday season — and a new subvariant may be partly to blame, officials say. This latest subvariant, JN.1, is now estimated to account for roughly 44% of COVID-19 cases nationally, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. […]

At first glance, Matt Smith seems too chill to be a knight. His “shining armor” is just a backpack, a floppy bush hat and a pair of hightop Vans skate shoes designed by his friend, pro skateboarder Lizzie Armanto. But talk to him for just a minute and you can easily spot the determined zeal […]

Los Angeles County public health officials are investigating a mysterious respiratory illness affecting a rising number of dogs. Its origin, transmission and treatment are unknown. Reported incidents of the disease have emerged in several states, including Colorado, Oregon and New Hampshire, and it has been fatal in some instances. At least 10 cases have been […]

A star neuroscientist at USC is facing allegations of misconduct after whistleblowers submitted a report to the National Institutes of Health that accused the professor of manipulating data in dozens of research papers and sounded alarms about an experimental stroke medication his company is developing. The accusations against Berislav V. Zlokovic, professor and chair of […]

For Briana Jones, a young Black mother in San Francisco, a city program called the Abundant Birth Project has been a godsend. Designed to counter the “obstetric racism” that researchers say leads a disproportionate number of African American mothers to die from childbirth, the project has provided 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander San Franciscans […]

The planet has experienced an astounding six-month run of record-breaking temperatures, including the hottest November on record, federal officials announced Thursday. Global average temperatures last month were 2.59 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average — 0.68 degrees above the previous record from November 2015, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose records […]

Rising rates of suicide among older adults drove the number of such deaths to a historic high in the United States last year, even as suicide declined among youth, according to a report released Wednesday by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 49,000 people died by suicide in 2022 across […]

Cuando Wendy Solano oyó por primera vez la palabra “silicosis”, su marido José Raúl García León ya padecía la incurable enfermedad que acabaría con su vida. Tras emigrar de México, el padre de tres hijos había mantenido a su familia cortando cubiertas de piedra. Su enfermedad comenzó como una tos seca -algo que la pareja […]

Respiratory virus season is ramping up in California, prompting health officials to renew their calls for residents to get vaccinated in hopes of reducing potential pressure on health systems across the state. While conditions so far are nowhere near as daunting as last autumn — when hospitals labored under the strain of a “tripledemic” spawned […]

When man bites steak, nobody cares. But when a steak bites back (in a manner of speaking) the world pauses, as it should, to take notice. That’s essentially what happened when a Northern California man died in early December — a demise that his brother archly and elegantly recounted in an obituary published in The […]

Scientists have developed an antibody treatment that shows promise in blocking the potentially deadly effects of fentanyl for nearly a month, raising hopes for a new tool to combat overdoses. Tests in animals found that the treatment could block the effects of fentanyl, laying the groundwork for assessing whether the medication will prove effective in […]

Every day for the last eight months, someone I love dearly has strained to find a reason to live. There is no trauma that caused this, no single reason that can be fixed, not even really a desire to die. It’s just nothingness. My loved one has serious depression, and being in this world feels […]

In recent times, whenever a government lawsuit swears at common sense, at the facts and at the public interest, it has been a safe bet that Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton has his fingerprints on it. Sure enough, here comes Paxton with a lawsuit charging Pfizer Inc. with systematically misrepresenting the efficacy of its COVID-19 […]

This week, Simon & Schuster finally published “The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life,” the highly anticipated book by USC’s Dr. David Agus whose release was suspended after the manuscript was found to contain numerous instances of plagiarism. The new version of the book differs subtly from the one […]

Some of those taking Ozempic or Wegovy are learning that too much of a good thing is never good. Semaglutide, the medication prescribed under the brand names Ozempic, for treating Type 2 diabetes, and Wegovy, for weight management, works by mimicking the hormone GLP-1, which is released by the gut after eating. The hormone has […]

Rock Hudson’s death in 1985 from AIDS started a robust and overdue public discussion about the disease. Until then, despite pleas from those in the most affected communities, AIDS had been in the shadows. A decade later when Ronald and Nancy Reagan announced that the former president suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and would recede from […]

Forecasting the future is difficult. But here’s an easy prediction: The anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. and globally is going to result in the deaths of more children. This grim portent comes to us courtesy of UNICEF, which is reporting that 30,601 confirmed cases of measles have been reported in Europe and Central Asia this […]

Not long ago, comparative psychologist Christopher Krupenye and a colleague visited the Leipzig Zoo in Germany, where both had worked on a research project several years before. The 145-year-old zoo gets roughly 2 million visitors per year, and its bonobos are used to a parade of human faces passing their enclosure. But as Krupenye and […]

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the annual cost of family health insurance jumped to nearly $24,000 this year, the greatest increase in a decade. While insurance executives and employers may cite a plethora of reasons, one of the chief culprits is lack of oversight over the Wild West of healthcare prices. My friend […]

Earth has millions of fungi species, but the official emoji library has only one: Amanita muscaria, the red-capped, white-spotted mushroom found in fairy tale picture books and Super Mario Brothers. A staggering 180,000 species of butterflies and moths flit about this planet, yet their lone emoji avatar is a generic blue butterfly that looks like […]

When Megan Costello heard on the radio this fall that a newly approved vaccine for pregnant people could protect their babies from RSV, the Los Angeles resident immediately started asking how she could get the shot. As a person with asthma, Costello said, she takes any kind of respiratory infection very seriously. So does her […]

During the Fox News debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a study published in the scientific journal the Lancet was highlighted as vindication for the Sunshine State’s loose pandemic policies. As the two traded barbs over who was a “lockdown governor,” DeSantis crowed about his state reopening quickly and said: […]

To understand the path forward in regulating social media, it’s helpful to look to a transformative technology from the previous century: the car. A car is an essential tool for getting to places we want and need to go. It’s also an exceptionally powerful one that can be dangerous if handled irresponsibly. We require education […]

Here we go again. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether the Food and Drug Administration has wrongly loosened the rules for abortion pills, which have been used safely for decades and now account for half of all U.S. abortions. Opinion Columnist Robin Abcarian The case against the drug, mifepristone, was […]