Seventeen years ago, when she was in her thirties, Cindy and her female partner decided they wanted to have children. The couple spent hours pouring over sperm donor profiles, finally settling on an anonymous man with a clean medical record and few health issues in his family. He was an anonymous donor, and they knew…
REEDS BEACH, N.J. — On a recent spring day at this remote beach, hundreds of shorebirds flapped frantically beneath a net trapping them on the sand. Dozens of volunteers rushed to disentangle the birds and place them gently in covered crates. On a nearby sand dune, teams of scientists and volunteers attached metal leg bands,…
Image CreditVictoria Roberts Q. To keep things in my ice chest cold, should I drain the cold water as the ice melts or leave it in the chest? A. Under most conditions, it is better to keep the cold water in the chest, most scientists, campers, and manufacturers and retailers conclude. Campers have even conducted…
There has been a lot of worry about adolescents and social media over the past couple of weeks, with new studies and reports raising questions about mental health and vulnerability, sleep and suicide. I recently wrote about the question of whether the word “addiction” is helpful in understanding our worries about adolescents and their relationships…
When a child is born with a rare disorder that few doctors recognize or know how to manage, it can pay big dividends for parents to be proactive, learn everything they can about the condition, and with expert medical guidance, come up with the best way to treat it. That is the approach Lara C.…
Image New graduates of Fayetteville State University last month in North Carolina. A college degree is linked to higher life expectancy, but does it cause it?CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times Education is associated with better health outcomes, but trying to figure out whether it actually causes better health is tricky. People with at…
If you’re lucky enough to have a terrace or a sizable deck, what else do you really need? Maybe an outdoor sofa. As Peter Dunham, an interior and textile designer in Los Angeles, put it: “The ideal thing is to have somewhere for a nap outside.” A sofa will also help anchor any outdoor seating…
The glaciers are melting, the coral reefs are dying, Miami Beach is slowly going under. Quick, says a voice in your head, go see them before they disappear! You are evil, says another voice. For you are hastening their destruction. To a lot of people who like to travel, these are morally bewildering times. Something…
Christiane C. didn’t think anything of it when her 10-year-old daughter and a friend uploaded a video of themselves playing in a backyard pool. “The video is innocent, it’s not a big deal,” said Christiane, who lives in a Rio de Janeiro suburb. A few days later, her daughter shared exciting news: The video had…
