There are many private testing services that will decode your DNA, catalog the foreign chemicals in your blood, or identify the bacteria living in and on your body. So it might come as a surprise that if you sign up for an actual biomedical research study, you might not be privy to what the scientists learn about you.

Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket aren’t just hotspots for summer visitors. They’re hotspots for Lyme disease. That, plus the fact they are islands, make them attractive places to try novel ways to stop the spread of Lyme disease. Kevin Esvelt of MIT’s Media Lab has a particularly innovative – and potentially controversial – idea about how to do just that. Esvelt’s idea is to genetically modify mice to make them permanently and heritably immune to Lyme disease. They call the project Mice Against

It’s not easy to admit that you’ve been wrong. But everyone makes mistakes and scientists are no different. But when a researcher makes a poor choice in the lab or misinterprets his or her results, and that becomes part of the permanent scientific record, that can have far-reaching implications.

For many of us, pain is a daily part of life. Maybe it’s stubbing a toe, maybe it’s chronic back pain. Either way, a lot of money and effort go into finding ways to reduce pain. But what if you couldn’t feel any pain? It wouldn’t be as great as you might think.

In January of this year, president Trump’s physician announced the results of his annual physical, including a cognitive evaluation. President Trump is thought to be the first sitting president to undergo such a cognitive evaluation, and it grabbed a fair bit of media attention. Many news outlets not only shared the result, but many shared the test, itself, or information about it.

We’ve been manufacturing at home for millennia, from stone tools to clothes and textiles – sewn, knit, woven. Today, most of us purchase more than we make. But one technology expert says that tariffs on imports from China could change that, by making even small, everyday plastic items cheaper to make than to buy.

A few weeks ago, we spoke with a young ocean researcher who was struck by the lack of diversity among her colleagues and decided to dig deeper . Emily Cooperdock and a colleague got their hands on four decades worth of data and found that years of talk and diversity initiatives have done little to actually increase the representation of women and minorities in earth and ocean sciences.

It used to be that fat was fat, and fat was bad. Then, we learned about different kinds of fats – some worse for us than others – and then some other fats – the omega-3 fatty acids – that are actually good for us.

In September of last year, an observatory at the South Pole detected a tiny streak of blue light deep within the ice below. That observatory is known as Ice Cube. Yes, like the rapper. It’s a coincidence that Dawn Williams of the Ice Cube Collaboration says sometimes confuses people on the internet.

We are officially more than a month into hurricane season and we have a rare bit of good news: this year’s hurricane season may not be as active as originally thought, and it's already forecasted to be less active than last year.