Stories by Michael Tabb

What really happens to our bodies when we age—and could we find a way to slow it down?

From symptoms to vaccines and treatment, here are some fast facts about monkeypox.

From figuring out how often you go to the bathroom to potentially being used to prosecute you, your trusty smartphone might not be so trusty in a post-Roe world.

It governs a lot of your digital life these days, but the story of where it first materialized is likely deeper than you know. 

Our electric grid is old and fraying, but new technology could insulate us from the possibility of widespread blackouts and cyberattacks.

You see it mentioned in countless phone commercials, and your phone might use it. But do you know how it works?

Deep learning, neural networks, imitation games—what does any of this have to do with teaching computers to “learn”?

If you understand how these systems operate, then you understand why they could change everything.

This revolutionary gene-editing system has taken science by storm.

You have 86 billion of them inside you, but do you understand how hard it was for us to learn that?

The mysteries packed inside these invisible space objects stretch our concepts of space and time.

These sometimes deadly packets of genetic information are more numerous in number than the stars in the cosmos.

Vaccines are medicines that train the body to defend itself against future disease, and they have been saving human lives for hundreds of years.

Over the past few months, the phrase “social distancing” has entered our lexicon. Many of us have found ourselves separated from family and friends—or at least from our normal social lives. As humans grapple with pandemic-induced isolation, science is starting to offer insight into what may be happening in our brains when our social contact with others is dramatically reduced.

That insight happens to come from a place with more penguins than people.

Tim Heitland of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany spent 14 months in Antarctica between 2016 and 2018. When he returned, daily life felt overwhelming—everything from the colors and vegetation to all the other people. Part of the shock may have come from returning with a different brain than the one he left with.

While the members of Heitland’s crew conducted research on the earth’s iciest continent, they themselves were also being studied by researchers interested in how extreme work environments trigger neurological changes. The investigation showed that most of the people in Heitland’s team lost volume in parts of their hippocampus, a brain region involved in spatial navigation, learning and emotional processing. The phenomenon is similar to what scientists believe happens to prisoners in solitary confinement, where social isolation and sensory deprivation can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

This research appears particularly relevant now, when vast numbers of people are spending more and more time alone. Some scientists hope the work will lead to interventions that counteract the damage of isolation before it causes long-term problems.