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Articles by Bennett McIntosh
Coastal Banks Shed Risky Mortgages—Putting the Financial System at Risk
Warming oceans—and the storms and rising sea levels they bring—will have their most severe impact on the southeastern shoreline of the United States, from the Texas Gulf Coast up to the Carolina Outer Banks. Mortgage lenders in the area have taken note.
Harvard’s VirScan exposes viral vulnerabilities
Only immunity can bring an end to the current pandemic—whether through vaccination or the potentially deadly ordeal of infection. Unfortunately, it’s not a given that either a bout of COVID-19, or any of the experimental vaccines now in development, will confer long-lasting immunity. The human immune system’s response, even to a pathogen it recognizes, can range from toothless to deadly overreaction—and this coronavirus may be able to manipulate that response.
Don’t let COVID-Induced Racism Protect American Animal Cruelty
With many (though not all) of the first COVID-19 cases in humans linked to the since-shuttered Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, the intertwined practices of eating “wild” animals and selling live animals for food are under renewed scrutiny, especially in China.
Ghost Stories for the Apocalypse
On the balmy waves above a coral reef we once called Harvard Yard, a twenty-seventh-century Thoreau seeks Waldenesque contemplation. On a doomed planet, a father and daughter race to decipher an extraterrestrial society’s dying words. In Tang dynasty China, an apprentice thief must decide how to use her arcane talent for stealing lives.
Astronomers name interstellar “ripple” the “Radcliffe Wave”
A 9,000-light-year-long ribbon of matter undulates through our sun’s interstellar neighborhood, made of hundreds of different clouds of dust and gas—the largest such structure of interacting nebulae yet described. Its discovery, announced today by a team of Harvard astronomers in the journal Nature, re-draws the map of our corner of the Milky Way and raises new questions about how stars and nebulae form and move through our galaxy, and those beyond.
‘Seeing’ Atoms by Combining a Million Blurry Shadows
If a biologist wants to look at something small, she could squint, or pick up a microscope to shape the light entering her eyes. Even the best microscopes are limited by the wavelength of the waves passing through them: for visible light, this limit sits at a few hundred-thousandths of a centimeter. For smaller objects still—including the viruses, enzymes, and nucleic acids that drive so much of biology—the biologist will need something else, with a smaller wavelength.
Speciation Is More Complicated Than Darwin Could Have Imagined
The diverse patterns of fiery reds, bright yellows, and iridescent blues on the wings of Heliconius butterflies warn predators away from the foul-tasting, poisonous insects. But the same colors that drive away predators bring biologists flocking to study them. Victorian-era naturalists tracing how different species within this genus mimic each other provided sorely needed support for Darwin’s just-published theory of natural selection.
Science historian Sarah Richardson profiled by Bennett McIntosh
Historian and philosopher Sarah Richardson interrogates the science of sex and gender. The “Sins of the Mother,” trumpets a headline in the journal Science, warning of a “maternal assault” against children. Another headline calls mothers “smoking guns,” the source of incalculable harm. What wrongs have these mothers committed?
There’s (Still) No Gay Gene
There is no one gene for being gay, and though genes seem to play a role in determining sexual orientation and same-sex behavior, it’s small, complex, and anything but deterministic. That’s the conclusion of a paper by an international team of researchers, co-led by Benjamin Neale of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, published today in the journal Science.
Isaac Kohane studies exceptional responders
As a medical student in the 1980s, Isaac “Zak” Kohane heard stories—from patients, mentors, and colleagues—of nearly miraculous recoveries from cancer. A patient given weeks to live instead survives for years. An experimental drug works exceptionally well—in only one patient. Or, most controversially, a patient rejects chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and somehow lives. As a trainee, Kohane found many such stories quite literally unbelievable.
Cities Too Smart for Their Own Good?
Wouldn’t everyone want a hometown that’s a “smart city”? The answer seems obvious: who, after all, wants to live in a stupid city? And indeed, the technologies touted by smart-city advocates can seem utopian: self-driving cars, pothole-reporting apps, and sensors to detect the public’s every need—all connected by free public WiFi! But for Ben Green, this utopian view is precisely the problem.
Shrinking a Medical Lab to Fit on a Fingertip
Identifying a patient's viral infection or diagnosing a blood disorder usually requires a lab and skilled technicians. But researchers at Princeton University have developed a new technology that goes a long way toward replacing the lab with a single microchip. In an important step toward performing medical diagnoses using handheld devices, the researchers have adapted silicon chip technology similar to that found in personal computers and mobile phones to function as a biosensor.
Shrinking a medical lab to fit on a fingertip
Princeton researchers have adapted silicon chip technology similar to that found in personal computers and mobile phones to function as a biosensor. The technology uses tiny metal layers embedded in a microchip to eliminate all complex and bulky optical instrumentation employed in diagnostic labs. Credit: Lingyu Hong Identifying a patient's viral infection or diagnosing a blood disorder usually requires a lab and skilled technicians.
New technology marks a key step toward shrinking a medical lab to fit on fingertip
Identifying a patient’s viral infection or diagnosing a blood disorder usually requires a lab and skilled technicians. But researchers at Princeton University have developed a new technology that goes a long way toward replacing the lab with a single microchip. In an important step toward performing medical diagnoses using handheld devices, the researchers have adapted silicon chip technology similar to that found in personal computers and mobile phones to function as a biosensor.
Replacement of Iberian Men 4,000 Years Ago Raises Fresh Questions
What secrets do the ear bones of long-dead skeletons hold? Not ancient stories or sounds, but DNA. Genetic material from these human remains provides the basis for a new history of Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), published today in Science by an international team of researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona.
Improved gene editing moves ethical questions to the fore
The gene-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 has been described as a word processor for DNA, but Kevin Eggan says it has all the finesse of a thermonuclear explosion. The professor of stem cell and regenerative biology has spent his career re-writing genomes, and he appreciates the accuracy with which the CRISPR “guide” sequence can home in on its target.
A Crossroads in Biomedicine?
Scientific knowledge is supposed to be built piecewise—study by study, experiment by experiment—so that each new piece of knowledge rests on a firm foundation of preceding work. Discovering that influential pieces of research cannot, in fact, be replicated by other researchers in other labs is akin to discovering a foundation riddled with holes, but that’s exactly what has happened in the last few decades, in fields from chemistry to psychology.
Genetics and the Human Revolution
Before ancient humans put pen to paper, stylus to tablet, or even brush to cave wall, their comings and goings were noted in another record, within their very cells. The human genome consists of chunks of DNA passed forward from countless ancestors, so by comparing modern humans’ genetic material with that gleaned from ancient remains, it’s possible to reach into prehistory and learn about where people came from, and who they were.
The (Amazon) Prime Directive
There’s an entire invisible industry of resellers and contractors and gig workers devoted to moving products up just one or two slots on the Amazon search results. There are even services for quickly producing new seller accounts in the event that Amazon catches your account’s shady activities and bans it.
Research exploring common biology of cancer, infection and psychiatric disease
Learning to read these maps, Krogan believes, is key to the future of precision treatments for diseases from tuberculosis to Tourette disorder. "At the cellular level, I see no distinction between being infected with HIV and having cancer.
Approval of Medical Device Changes Often Based on Low-Quality Research
Clinical trials that test changes in the design or use of high-risk medical devices are often poorly designed, and can rely on inadequate or potentially biased data, according to a new study by researchers at the UC San Francisco and Yale School of Medicine. In the study, published August 15, 2017, in JAMA, the authors reviewed clinical trials supporting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of changes to high-risk devices over the last decade.
Innovations in Building Intelligent Cities
Cities. They sprawl and tangle, juxtaposing ancient public squares and glistening skyscrapers. They provide homes for half of humanity, and economic and cultural centers for the rest. It has taken us thousands of years to build today's urban centers, and yet, they're expected to double in land-area in just the next few decades.
Bright future: Unlocking the potential of light
One hundred years ago, Italian chemist Giacomo Ciamician predicted a future society that would run on sunlight. In a paper presented in 1912 to an international meeting of chemists in New York City, he foresaw a future of vibrant desert communities under "a forest of glass tubes and greenhouses of all sizes" where light-driven chemical reactions would produce not just energy but also wondrous medicines and materials.
Grad Life: Dreams of MIT-On Becoming a SciWriter
“You’re studying science writing? Is that, like, writing journal articles?” I’ve gotten used to the question and its variants, though I still wince as I answer “not quite.” MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Journalism, or SciWrite, is less about scientific journals than science journalism—the all-important, oft-neglected task of communicating the facts and stories of science to the general public. I can’t begrudge the question, though.
'Superaging': How Some 80-Year-Olds’ Memories Are as Sharp as 20-Year-Olds’ — NOVA Next | PBS
It’s as inevitable as grey hair and wrinkles—when we get old, our memories decline, even if Alzheimer’s or dementia doesn’t accelerate that process. But there are a select few whose memories seem to remain as hale as those decades younger. Scientists call them superagers. And now, there is some clarity as to how these superagers hold on to their robust memory. In superagers, the brain networks used for memory, learning, and resilience are nearly untouched by age.
The brain performs feats of math to make sense of the world
Even if we find it difficult to calculate complicated probabilities on the spot, our brains constantly carry out these sorts of computations without our awareness — and they're remarkably good at it. Princeton University researchers show in a new study how our brains combine complicated observations from our surroundings into a simple assessment of the situation that aids our behavior and decisions.
With droughts and downpours, climate change feeds Chesapeake Bay algal blooms
Nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff into the Chesapeake Bay presents an ongoing environmental and economic concern for the bay's massive watershed. Pollution from fertilizer application feeds algal blooms that poison humans and marine life, and devastate fisheries.
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