If you are an athlete, you may gain greater immunity from a flu shot than people who are less active, according to two complementary and timely new studies of exercise and vaccinations. The two studies, which involved the same group of elite runners, swimmers, wrestlers, cyclists and other athletes, suggest that intense training amplifies our…
Hello, NYT cooks! I’m taking over this newsletter from Tejal Rao, and somehow we will get through the last gasp of summer together. (Sam Sifton will return after Labor Day.) And what a summer it has been: waiting on a 40-yard-long line for farmstand tomatoes, staying locked inside my car during a drive-in showing of…
Many antibiotics may be linked to unintended pregnancy in women taking hormonal contraceptives. It has long been known that certain drugs, including the antibiotics rifampin and rifabutin as well as various antifungal, anti-epileptic and antiretroviral drugs, cause the liver to produce enzymes that can reduce the efficacy of hormonal contraceptives. Now a new analysis of…
As Covid-19 heightens the anxieties of cancer patients, online support groups step up efforts to help by means of social networking. One such group, Twist Out Cancer, sponsors an innovative program called Brushes With Cancer that matches patients with artists who create a unique piece of artwork to capture the experience of their disease. When…
The photo in a recent newsletter from Katherine Tracey, a garden designer in Massachusetts, filled me with longing, and not a small amount of regret. Why didn’t I think to fill my pots with succulents as she did — plants like Echeveria, Senecio, Sempervivum and even certain Sedum that deliver a long show with relatively…
I was reading Michael Smith’s chronicle of designing the Obama White House, feeling serene, marinating in a luxurious world of wine-colored swatches and embossed mohair velvet and carpet border details desperately in need of tweaking. Suddenly, I was confronted with violence. Beneath a black-and-white picture of Jacqueline Kennedy looking at the blueprints for her White…
The coronavirus may infect anyone, young or old, but older men are up to twice as likely to become severely sick and to die as women of the same age. Why? The first study to look at immune response by sex has turned up a clue: Men produce a weaker immune response to the virus…
When Kamala Harris stepped onto the stage in a high school gym in Delaware earlier this month, after Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced that he had chosen her as his running mate, she sought to define herself as many things — a senator, a Black woman, an Indian woman, a prosecutor. But her most important…
Almost nothing about Kayla Picciuto and Andrew Elia’s relationship has been traditional or expected. The two spent more time casually peering at each other at a local coffee shop than they did actually dating, and they started an event entertainment business, Party Proper Productions, together at the same time they became girlfriend and boyfriend. Then…
There was always a little static while trying to bring my lo-fi home cooking into a restaurant setting, producing it at restaurant speed and volume, pace and temperature, and getting it back on the plate in such a way that would still remind you of good home cooking. In spite of its stainless-steel countertops and…