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Palliative care provides a constellation of services to people with serious or chronic illness, not just end-of-life care. As two states pioneer was to expand access, a growing body of research shows it reduces physical discomfort and stress, improves quality of life, and saves money.

Unlike high-frequency sounds, low-frequency waves can penetrate walls and carry farther distances. The research on low-frequencies is also thinner, but some experts say they can be a health hazard, causing headaches, anxiety, and sleep troubles — even when the noise isn’t audible. Others have doubts.

Beloved Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel García Márquez wanted his last book — which he wrote as dementia set in — to be destroyed. But “Until August” was posthumously published last month, providing a glimpse into how cognitive decline impacts creativity.

Ambitious plans to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions across the economy focus on engineering solutions such as carbon capture. But to achieve true sustainability, society must look beyond decarbonization and toward more holistic approaches, says environmental anthropologist Peter Sutoris.

Scientists are testing environmental DNA as a tool to help search for, locate, and repatriate lost soldiers’ remains. The research is still in the fledgling stages, but if the findings prove promising, experts say, it could be a game changer in the field of forensic science.

A landmark ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ordered the government of Peru to provide free medical care and compensation to 80 people impacted by a smelting and refining plant. The decision may have far-reaching implications for communities affected by extreme pollution and climate change.

Few tools measure biodiversity on a grand scale, and there’s still much scientists don’t know despite the intrinsic role that insects, particularly pollinators, play in the ecosystem. Most of those insects have neither a name nor a formal description. Environmental DNA may help fill in the gaps.

David M. Higgins, a pediatrician and author of a recent essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, argues that the popular belief that parental hesitancy about routine childhood vaccines has become commonplace but ignores data from polls, data, and the CDC that shows broad support for child vaccination.

AI-driven chatbots for bereaved people simulate interactions with lost loved ones based on their emails, texts, voice recordings, and more. The companies that make these so-called “griefbots” claim that the technology can help people deal with loss. But some researchers say that evidence is still lacking.

In 1998, a publication detailed how a child’s behavior could change alarmingly after a strep infection. It stirred controversy, and many doctors still hesitate to diagnose or treat the condition, called PANDAS. But some experts say that may be changing.

There exists no single, unified list of all species. Taxonomists in different fields don’t always define specimens the same way; a single organism might have multiple scientific names, or, conversely, a single name can refer to different organisms. Some scientists want that to change.

The chemotherapy drug fluorouracil, known as 5-FU, kills an estimated 1 in 1,000 patients, but a gene test can often uncover those who may be at risk of death or severe side effects. With only 3 percent of U.S. oncologists routinely ordering such tests, advocates are pushing for change.

In “On the Move,” Abrahm Lustgarten explores the profound demographic impact that global warming will have on Americans as millions become displaced and in search of more habitable places to settle, which models show will shift to the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and into Canada.

Some people who get Covid-19 experience symptoms long after the initial illness, developing what’s known as long Covid. But a lack of consensus over the diagnostic criteria for the condition has impeded research progress and could lead to stigma for patients, says DePaul University psychologist Leonard A. Jason.

As supporters lobby for regulatory acceptance, a group of large consulting companies and eDNA specialists see the tool as a promising way to monitor corporate sustainability. Experts say eDNA has limitations and drawbacks.

A new report highlights the risk that 120,000 abandoned oil and gas wells pose to underground carbon dioxide storage in Louisiana, home to more proposals to pump the greenhouse gas underground than any other state.

Surging interest in xenotransplantation, the implanting of non-human animal parts into human bodies, has cast a spotlight on the use of brain-dead subjects in medical research. Such studies fall into a regulatory gap marked by few ethical guidelines and little, if any, oversight.

Despite what we see in science fiction movies, intelligent machines cannot perform surgeries alone. But highly trained human surgeons are using an emerging generation of cutting-edge robots as another tool to help them do their jobs with higher precision and smaller incisions.

Scientific collections housed in museums, archives, and libraries are part of a country’s cultural heritage. During its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army targeted cultural properties for destruction. Scientist and curator Pavel Gol’din says rescuing such collections is necessary for a society to survive.

A complex mission to retrieve samples from the red planet is in the works. But while it’s been a long-time priority for the planetary science community, the project’s ballooning budget — which has led to funding cuts for other NASA projects — has some experts wondering: Will the mission be worth it?

A group of scientists are analyzing satellite images to teach computers to recognize when farmers butter the land with livestock poop in winter, a largely restricted but suspectedly pervasive practice in America’s Dairyland. Some advocates want the state to use their data as it regulates livestock manure.

In the rapidly growing field of eDNA, technological innovation has been key to surveying biodiversity. And while some scientists continue to use traditional methods, others are also banking on tools such as robots to help collect samples, as well as advanced lab analyses.

Psychologists and cognitive scientists are probing the mysteries of play and dreaming among animals, which may be intimately connected. Since dogs, horses, birds, and many other creatures dream, evolutionary biologists assume that it must have adaptive advantages. But what are they?

The World Health Organization recommends that all preterm infants receive at least 8 hours of skin-to-skin contact with a caregiver — known as kangaroo mother care, or KMC — beginning immediately after birth. Psychotherapist Ruth Bettelheim says that policies in the U.S. must change to make KMC standard.