UNDARK

One summer day in 2020, forestry professor Suzanne Simard ventured into an arid forest in British Columbia to check on an experimental forest she’d planted as part of a research project. In a caravan of pickups and beaters, Simard and her team headed deep into the woods on a logging road, radioing ahead every half mile or so to alert loggers to their presence. Before long, a logging truck appeared.

Alopecia, or hair loss, has many underlying causes and affects millions of people in the U.S. and around the world. Dermatologists have the right medical training to treat the myriad types of hair loss, but the field, and the medical community at large, have failed to address the specific needs of Black and African people. For Black people, hair loss is more than just a medical condition — it’s a deeply personal and cultural issue.

Randy Hatton ran the hotline. His students fielded dozens of drug-related questions from pharmacists, physicians, and even the occasional vet. When the phones rang, Hatton and his team never knew what to expect. One time, surgeons dropped part of a patient’s skull on the floor and wanted to know what solution would sterilize the bone chunk before they put it back in. Another time, veterinarians called to ask how big of a dose of human antibiotics to inject into an African elephant.

Ben Hine was 4 years old when his parents split. In his recollection, he remembers that his dad left for work one day and his uncle arrived in a van to pick up Ben and his mother, along with the family’s belongings. His mother left a note in the empty house saying that their son would no longer be a part of his father’s life. It was a month before he saw his dad again, he told Undark.

When a doctoral student at the Australian National University was preparing a review on systems for harvesting water from the air and purifying water through desalination, she ran into something strange. The student, who chemist Brett Pollard was co-supervising, had been looking into a bunch of academic papers that cited concentrations of lithium, potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium that indicated the purity and safety of drinking water.

Last June, at a conference and retreat center not far from downtown Berkeley, California, around 100 people gathered to mull a new, techno-centric future of human reproduction. There was the physics professor moonlighting as a biotech company executive. There was the secret author of a widely read newsletter with a reputation for controversial takes on race and intelligence. There was the fertility specialist with a practice in nearby San Ramon.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted online its first large tranche of advanced genetic data from measles viruses spreading last year. Scientists with knowledge of the operation expect the agency to post heaps more in weeks to come, revealing whether the U.S. has lost its hard-won measles elimination status. The CDC withheld the data for months as a team hit hard by mass layoffs and resignations sorted through the information.

Gambling has long been treated as a vice: risky, addictive, and deliberately set apart from everyday life. Casinos are zoned away from schools. Sportsbooks display warnings. The danger is acknowledged, even when laws and restrictions on gambling fall short. But what happens when gambling is repackaged under the guise of asset trading and made accessible on a daily basis? Prediction market platforms such as Kalshi, Polymarket, and Manifold are betting that Americans will not notice the difference.

Bradley P. Clawson spent more than three decades handling highly radioactive materials at Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear energy testing and production hub outside Idaho Falls. His work ranged from shipping and receiving nuclear naval fuels to helping bring hundreds of canisters of leftover fuel to Idaho for storage after the catastrophic Three Mile Island meltdown. He often handled nuclear fuel in “hot cells,” immensely contaminated areas reinforced with thick concrete.

One of the privileges of living long enough is watching a child you once knew become an adult. For teachers, that moment often arrives through former students. For me, it came when I realized that the middle schoolers featured in the 2017 web docuseries “Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings” are now old enough to drink alcohol, vote, and move through the world as grownups.