Soapbox

Health & Medicine

Dengue is classified as an urban disease. Mosquitoes don’t care

Infectious diseases are often labeled “urban” or “rural.” Applying political labels to public health misses who is at risk, experts argue.

Quantum Physics

A maverick physicist is building a case for scrapping quantum gravity

To merge quantum physics and general relativity, physicists aim to quantize gravity. But what if gravity isn’t quantum at all?

Astronomy

Astronomers call for renaming the Magellanic Clouds

Explorer Ferdinand Magellan is not a fitting namesake for the pair of satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, a group of scientists argues.

Health & Medicine

Iron deficiency goes unnoticed in too many U.S. female adolescents

Low iron causes problems from dizziness to severe anemia. It’s time to reevaluate screening guidelines to catch the problem earlier, an expert argues.

Science & Society

Deliberate ignorance is useful in certain circumstances, researchers say

The former East German secret police, the Stasi, spied on people for years. But when given access to the Stasi files, most people didn’t want to read them, researchers found.

Climate

There’s good and bad news with California’s electric vehicle program

The electric vehicle program is reducing carbon dioxide emissions but also shifting the pollution burden to the state’s most disadvantaged communities.

Neuroscience

‘Mommy brain’ doesn’t capture how the brain transforms during pregnancy

During the transition to motherhood, there's more going on than “momnesia,” neuroscientists argue. The brain changes to prep for the job of caregiving

Science & Society

Many plans for green infrastructure risk leaving vulnerable people out

Green infrastructure is one way to help combat climate hazards like flooding. But without equitable planning, only some communities will benefit.

Life

A new metric of extinction risk considers how cultures care for species

Conservation efforts should consider relationships between cultural groups and the species important to them, researchers argue.

Psychology

Latin America defies cultural theories based on East-West comparisons

Theories for how people think in individualist versus collectivist nations stem from East-West comparisons. Latin America challenges those theories.

Math

How the way we’re taught to round numbers in school falls short

A rounding technique taught in school doesn’t work well for machine learning or quantum computing, but an alternative approach does, researchers say.

Science & Society

Nudge theory’s popularity may block insights into improving society

Small interventions that influence people’s behavior can be tested. But the real world requires big, hard-to-measure changes too, scientists say.