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Biden Administration Opposes Surgery for Transgender Minors

✇NYT: Science
Roni Caryn Rabin， Teddy Rosenbluth and Noah Weiland
The statement followed a report in The Times that a federal health official had urged the removal of age minimums from treatment guidelines for transgender minors.

© Howard Lipin/U-T San Diego/ZUMA Wire, via Alamy Live News

So-called top surgery performed on a 14-year-old in California in 2015. The most common surgical procedures by far for transgender minors are breast reductions or mastectomies.

Embattled Alzheimer’s Researcher Is Charged With Fraud

✇NYT: Science
Apoorva Mandavilli
Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor at City College, published studies supporting simufilam, now in advanced clinical trials.

© Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Hoau-Yan Wang’s work underpinned research into a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease and simufilam, a drug in advanced clinical trials made by Cassava Sciences in Austin, Texas.

Study Finds Small Streams, Recently Stripped of Protections, Are a Big Deal

✇NYT: Science
Brad Plumer
Half of the water flowing through regional river basins starts in so-called ephemeral streams. Last year, the Supreme Court curtailed federal protections for these waterways.

© Niki Chan Wylie for The New York Times

A riparian area in Wells, Nev., in the northeastern part of the state. In the West, ephemeral streams flow only for four to 46 days per year, on average, but contribute up to 79 percent of the downstream river flow, new research has found.

Two Killer Asteroids Are Flying by Earth, and You May Be Able to See One

✇NYT: Science
Robin George Andrews
The smaller of the pair was spotted only this month and could be visible with binoculars as it passes by our planet within the distance to the moon.

© European Space Agency

A visualization of the orbit of (415029) 2011 UL21, a near-Earth object that completes 11 revolutions around the sun in almost the exact same amount of time in which Earth completes 34 revolutions (i.e., 34 years), creating this pattern when plotting the asteroid’s location relative to Earth.

Did the First Australians Keep Dingoes as Pets?

✇NYT: Science
Franz Lidz
Burial remains from 800-2,000 years ago hint that the First Australians may have kept the continent’s famous canine species as pets.

© Biodiversity Heritage Library

An illustration of several dingoes, from the 1863 book “The Mammals of Australia.” A recent paper suggested that the wild dogs may have been trusted companions of the First Australians.

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

✇NYT: Science
Azeen Ghorayshi
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.

✇NYT: Science
Katrina Miller
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

✇NYT: Science
Oliver Whang
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

✇NYT: Science
Ellen Barry
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

✇NYT: Science
Jason Bittel
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

✇NYT: Science
Katie Thomas
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

✇NYT: Science
Dennis Overbye
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?

✇NYT: Science
Linda Baker
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

✇NYT: Science
Stephanie Nolen
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’

✇NYT: Science
Christine Hauser
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

✇NYT: Science
Rachel Nuwer
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.

✇NYT: Science
Catrin Einhorn
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

✇NYT: Science
Keith Schneider
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.
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