The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) dropped the ball when it came to protecting football players’ brains, argues the widow of a deceased player in a lawsuit about the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Although celebrities can feel like larger-than-life idols, they’re only human. And sadly, we’re all mortal.
A question on Hacker News came to Quartz’ attention last week. A user asked, assuming that the inside of a room is about 30°C (86°F) and the outside is less than 20°C (68°F), “Do I place the fan so that it blows air inwards or outwards?” The lively discussion that followed inspired us to try to find an actual answer.
The more we learn about Mars, the more it seems that the red planet once could have harbored life.
Some 550 million years ago, the continents of Earth were largely empty. Plants hadn’t yet covered the land, and what animals there were (mostly insect-like trilobites and ancestors of worms), swam in the vast ocean.
One of the tragic features of cancer is that to treat the disease, doctors sometimes have to make the body sicker through chemotherapy. These drugs kill fast-growing cells in the body, like cancer. Unfortunately, a lot of the body’s healthy cells—like those along the digestive tract, hair follicles, and bone marrow—grow quickly, too, and become collateral damage. Simply put, the side effects are horrible: In addition to nausea, vomiting, hair and weight loss, chemo drugs can damage the heart and nervous system, and in rare cases, even cause different types of cancer.
For all the ways Antarctica is unique, scientists have finally realized one way in which it’s the same as every other continent on the planet: It experiences routine earthquakes.
When people say that the eyes are the window to the soul, they’re probably talking about irises. These uniquely colored rings sorround our pupils and regulate the amount of light that enters our eye.
The only thing scarier than a mind-controlling fungus is a mind-controlling fungus that has adapted its behavior to its environment.
After Roseanne Barr tweeted racist comments about former Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett, ABC cancelled her show, and her agent dropped her. Although she’s since deleted the tweet, the mistake cost her and countless others their livelihoods.
You probably have a jar of multivitamins somewhere in your house. And it’s probably useless.
When most of us look at images of Antarctica’s ice, we see a cold, uniform landscape that evokes thoughts of penguins, seals, and an immediate need for hot chocolate. Climate scientists see potential portals into our planet’s past.
Twenty-seven years after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a mild oral painkiller for over-the-counter use, the agency is reversing its stance.
Mount Kilauea started erupting almost three weeks ago, and has forced over 1,700 people to evacuate. The volcano’s main crater, Puʻu ʻŌʻō, has been spewing smoke and potentially noxious gases downwind during that time, and some 16 fissures—like burst pipes of lava running underneath the ground—are now oozing lava. This lava has destroyed dozens of homes, and in one case is dangerously encroaching on a local power plant.
Who says the best researchers have to be human?
There’s an easy way to test if someone who grew up in the US has maintained their playful childhood spirit: While walking down the street, surprise your friend by yelling “The floor is lava!” If within three seconds they jump onto the nearest fence or car, congrats: you’ve got a friend still into making life a game whenever possible.
Thanks to modern healthcare and improved living standards, life expectancy is predicted to surpass 80 years in most parts of the world by 2050. That’s the positive.
Severe poaching and a dwindling habitat have left Africa’s northern white rhinoceroses on their last legs: The subspecies only has two living females left, and the last male died in March.
Henrietta Lacks’s life ended abruptly and painfully. In 1951, at the age of 31, Lacks died in Baltimore, Maryland from an aggressive form of cervical cancer. But her legacy, in the form of a cell line derived from her cancer cells have lived on literally ever since.
To celebrate Mother’s Day, Quartz staff collected story ideas from our mothers and sought to answer them. This mother asks: Is it possible my amalgam fillings are causing my migraines? Read more stories from the series here.
A month ago, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 22 people contracted salmonella infections from consuming US-raised eggs. Last week, the health organization updated that list to include 13 more cases, spread across eight eastern seaboard states and Colorado. Virginia and New York, with eight cases each, have been the worst-hit states.
On Tuesday, the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared it was in the early stages of another Ebola outbreak, which health officials believe may have already killed as many as 17 people. The same day (May 8), Tim Ziemer, the head of global-health security on the White House security council, abruptly left his post.
If you’re living in the US, it’s a good time to get on the kale train.
Sexually transmitted infections are as old as sex itself.
