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Biden Officials Pressed Trans Medical Group to Change Guidelines for Minors, Court Filings Show

Newly released emails from an influential group issuing transgender medical guidelines indicate that U.S. health officials lobbied to remove age minimums for surgery in minors because of concerns over political fallout.

© Ramsay de Give for The New York Times

Staff for Adm. Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, urged the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to drop proposed age limits from the group’s guidelines.

He Monitors Solar Flares. Here’s What Keeps Him Up at Night.

Mike Bettwy, a government meteorologist who focuses on potential threats from space weather, says that we are more prepared than ever — and that forecasting is only getting better.

© Rachel Woolf for The New York Times

Mike Bettwy, the operations chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “The sun is definitely entering its more active phase,” he said.

Some States Say They Can’t Afford Ozempic and Other Weight Loss Drugs

Public employees in West Virginia who took the drugs lost weight and were healthier, and some are despondent that the state is canceling a program to help pay for them.

© Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Dr. Joanna Bailey said most of her patients in Pineville, W.Va. who need weight loss drugs don’t have insurance to cover the cost and can’t afford the sticker price.

Surgeon General Declares Gun Violence a Public Health Crisis

Dr. Vivek Murthy is calling for a multipronged effort to reduce gun deaths, modeled on campaigns against smoking and traffic fatalities.

© Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s announcement follows years of recommendations by top health officials to view firearm deaths through the lens of health rather than politics.

Unlikely Wild Animals Are Being Smuggled Into U.S. Ports: Corals

With the sea creatures making up a growing share of illegal animal seizures around the world, U.S. officials are working to overcome struggles to safely house them.

© Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

A colony of confiscated coral in a back room of the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, which has taken in about 1,000 illegally trafficked animals since 2010.

How Pet Care Became a Big Business

People have grown more attached to their pets — and more willing to spend money on them — turning animal medicine into a high-tech industry worth billions.

© Audra Melton for The New York Times

Heather Massey of Carlton, Ga., with her dog, Lunabear. She is still paying off a bill for scans and care six years after her previous dog, Ladybird, was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Piping Up at the Gates of Dawn

Astronomers have found the earliest and most distant galaxy yet.

© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA)

The newly discovered galaxy, known as JADES-GS-z14-0, emanates light that is 13.5 billion years old.

Are We Loving Our Pets to Death?

Pet owners are treating their animal charges ever more like humans. But that isn’t good for pets, or for us, many experts argue.

© Graham Dickie/The New York Times

The proliferation of dog strollers is one sign of a trend in which pets’ lives have become constrained and dependent on humans.

Gilead Shot Provides Total Protection From HIV in Trial of Young African Women

An injection given just twice a year could herald a breakthrough in protecting the population that has the highest infection rates.

© Aaron Ufumeli/EPA, via Shutterstock

A self-test for H.I.V. in Harare, Zimbabwe. The every-six-months injection was found to provide better protection than the current oral drug for what’s called pre-exposure prophylaxis, also taken as a daily pill.

‘Tiny Crime Fighters With Wings’: Bees Go to Work on a Virginia ‘Body Farm’

By studying bees and their honey near decomposing human tissue, researchers at George Mason University hope to give crime scene investigators a new tool for finding the hidden dead.

© Matailong Du for The New York Times

Researchers at George Mason University’s new “body farm” in Northern Virginia hope to use bees to draw up a formula for human decomposition that investigators can use to narrow a search for human remains.

Monkeys in Puerto Rico Got Nicer After Hurricane Maria

Macaques, reeling from a hurricane, learned by necessity to get along, a study found. It’s one of the first to suggest that animals can adapt to environmental upheaval with social changes.

© Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press

Rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, P.R., in October 2017, just weeks after Hurricane Maria swept through.

Butterflies Are in Decline. New Research Points to Insecticides.

Agricultural insecticides were a key factor, according to a study focused on the Midwest, though researchers emphasized the importance of climate change and habitat loss.

© Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium, via Associated Press

Monarch butterflies in St. Joseph, Mich. U.S. wildlife officials are weighing whether to place monarchs on the endangered species list.

George Woodwell, 95, Influential Ecologist on Climate Change, Dies

The founder of the renowned Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, he also helped shape U.S. policies on controlling toxic substances like DDT.

© Woodwell Climate Research Center

George Woodwell, center, at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, which he founded in 1985 to study global climate change. It was later renamed the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

How A.I. Is Revolutionizing Drug Development

In high-tech labs, workers are generating data to train A.I. algorithms to design better medicine, faster. But the transformation is just getting underway.

Chips in a container at Terray Therapeutics in Monrovia, Calif. Each of the custom-made chips has millions of minuscule wells for measuring drug screening reactions quickly and accurately.

Researchers Say Social Media Warning Is Too Broad

Some scientists who study youth mental health say the evidence does not support the notion that social media is harmful per se.

© Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Some researches believe the warning label proposed by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, oversimplifies the evidence.

South Africa Runs Out of Insulin Pens as Global Supply Shifts to Weight-Loss Drugs

The shortage highlights a widening gulf in the standard of care for people with diabetes, most of whom live in low-income countries.

© Jean-Francois Monier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A high-speed production line of insulin at a Novo Nordisk factory. The company said it would continue to supply insulin in vials to South Africa, where more than four million people live with diabetes.

On Titan Submersible Anniversary, World Rethinks Deep Sea Exploration

A year after the first deaths of divers who ventured into the ocean’s sunless depths, an industry wrestles with new challenges for piloted submersibles and robotic explorers.

© Walt Disney Pictures/AJ Pics, via Alamy

A 2003 expedition by a piloted submersible to the wreckage of the Titanic on the sea floor, as documented in the James Cameron film “Ghosts of the Abyss.” A pair of robots are scheduled to revisit the site next month.

More Than 1,000 Birds Died One Night in Chicago. Will It Happen Again?

A mass of birds died in Chicago in October after striking one building, adding to the push for more protections in one of the most dangerous cities for avian migration.

© Daryl Coldren/Chicago Field Museum, via Associated Press

Chicago, Houston and Dallas were named some of the most dangerous cities for migrating birds in an April 2019 study. Experts have suggested a number of improvements to protect birds.

Doctors Test the Limits of What Obesity Drugs Can Fix

“Obesity first” doctors say they start with one medication, to treat obesity, and often find other chronic diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, simply vanish.

© M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times

With Wegovy, one of the new obesity drugs, Lesa Walton not only lost more than 50 pounds; her arthritis cleared up and she no longer needed pills to lower her blood pressure, she said.
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