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Peanut allergies have the potential to seriously impact a child’s life. In some cases, the mere presence of a peanut-product can create a life threatening situation. Over the years, doctors have released a variety of recommendations designed to limit the…

by Rebecca Senft figures by Michael Gerhardt and Rebecca Senft If you’ve ever seen a long line of ducklings waddling across a road, you know that they follow their mother dutifully, even in the face of oncoming traffic. Ducklings, like many species of…

Hurricane Matthew, a category 4 storm, hit Haiti on October 4, 2016 [Image: Hurricane Matthew Hits Haiti/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center under CC-BY licence]In 2012, Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest hurricane in United States history, caused the…

by Steph Guerra figures by Rebecca Clements It has been one year since President Obama announced the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Since then, the Moonshot has convened a Blue Ribbon panel to brainstorm ten recommendations to be completed over the course…

Physicists at CERN have observed the light emitted from antimatter for the first time, bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the longest-standing problems in physics today – why is it that regular matter is so much more abundant than…

Gene therapy is an approach to treating genetic diseases by re-introducing a functional copy of a gene into cells to replace the mutated, disease-causing gene. To get these genes into the cells, scientists create a vector by packaging the DNA encoding…

According to the CDC, 70.7% of the US population is overweight or obese (BMI>30), with 37.9% being obese. Obesity related health expenses accounted for an estimated $147 billion in healthcare spending in 2008 alone. The dire health consequences for…

by Gabriel W. Rangel figures by Michael Gerhardt How many times per day do you wash your hands? Do you ever think about the type of soap you use? We all know handwashing with soap is an impactful way to maintain health by decreasing the risk of becoming…

High-resolution microscope image of the Ebola virus, falsely colored for clarity [‘Ebola virus’ from CDC Global]2016 was a tumultuous year in many respects, but it ended with a major victory against Ebola hemorrhagic fever.  Ebola’s most…

The AMS Experiment on the International Space Station In 2011 the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, was launched into space. AMS, housed by the International Space Station and led by a Nobel Prize winning principle investigator, is commonly referred…