When I was a child in India, we were the first family on our street to get a television: a huge black and white affair. Occasionally, we’d have neighbors and friends round to watch Bollywood movies filmed in Shimla, the Himalayan city that was once the summer capital of India. With its stunning colonial architecture,…
ImageAlmost all stories about poisoned candy have been found to be hoaxes or folk tales. Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock American children are more likely to be hit by cars on Halloween than on any other night of the year. But many of the concerns expressed each October — in the news media and among family…
About a decade ago, Michael Valenti of Woodstock, N.Y., suddenly developed severe pain in the lower right side of his abdomen. He had a slight fever and thought he had appendicitis. So did his doctor, who sent him to the emergency room, where an M.R.I. revealed not appendicitis but diverticulitis, an infection in an outpouching…
In the early 1990s, Joost Elffers, a successful Dutch book packager, met an American expatriate living in Amsterdam named Gary Goldschneider. Mr. Goldschneider was a brilliant but scattered polymath who completed his studies at Yale medical school but never practiced medicine and later became a concert pianist. He once played all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas…
When Alexis Grafakos moved to a small town in western New York in 2013, she couldn’t find empanada dough anywhere. One day while shopping in Geneseo at her local supermarket, Wegmans, Ms. Grafakos mentioned to the staff how she wished she could buy some of the ingredients for her Caribbean dishes that she could find…
Flo and Clue, two popular period-tracking apps, recently introduced health tools that evaluate a woman’s risk for the hormonal imbalance known as polycystic ovary syndrome. In September alone, more than 636,000 women completed the Flo health assessments, said the app’s developer, Flo Health. The app then recommended that 240,000 of those women, or about 38…
Good morning. I write from Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, where I’m with my colleague Carolyn Ryan to visit with colleagues at the Vineyard Gazette and address friends new and old at the Martha’s Vineyard Wine and Food Festival. (Missed the Derby, sadly, but was excited to learn they’re moving toward catch-and-release competition.) It’s beautiful here,…
Using sound cues, scientists have made study participants solve puzzles in their sleep. New research sheds light on the cognitive processes that occur in the brain as we sleep. In dreams, fragments of reality, imagination, and memory intermingle in timeline-agnostic narratives that make little sense upon waking. It seems to have something to do with…
The alt-meat industry has created quite a sizzle, promising delicious burgers, steaks and even sushi that is grown from animal cells in the lab. But most cellular agriculture still looks like mush. The manufacturing process — which starts with animal muscle and fat grown from stem cells in petri dishes — is fine for making…
Type 1 diabetes has no cure, and although there are several treatment options available, many people find managing the condition challenging. New technology could help reduce that burden. Share on PinterestMany people find managing type 1 diabetes inconvenient, but new research may change this. More than 1 million children and adults in the United States…