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In January, the FDA released new draft guidance for makers of medical devices that measure blood oxygen levels. This data can help determine whether a patient needs treatment, but the devices are not as reliable when used on people with dark skin tones. The new guidance calls for more inclusive clinical trials.

An executive order signed last week intends to limit insurance coverage for trans youth and threatens to withhold funding from hospitals. Transgender people and their advocates are concerned it will discourage prescriptions and medical procedures they consider, in some cases, to be lifesaving.

India extracts more groundwater than any other country worldwide, and more than the U.S. and China combined. Decades of intense monocropping of wheat and rice, encouraged by the country’s Green Revolution, are driving this demand. The impact is coming to the fore in depleted aquifers and rising rates of cancer.

Stefan Kertesz, a physician and longtime critic of overaggressive cutbacks in opioid prescribing for those with chronic pain, says doctors need flexibility in how they treat their patients. “People deserve individualized care,” he told Undark. “I pray for the day when we stop looking for quick fixes.”

Farming kelp has been endorsed as a strategy for removing and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. But the practice has many pitfalls and could shift the delicate nutrient balance of the ocean. One environmental chemist discusses why kelp farming is just a temporary solution for addressing climate change.

Human diets have long included relatively small quantities of microbes — think of the live bacteria in yogurt. But now researchers at universities and dozens of startups across the globe are investigating whether some microbes could serve as a caloric substitute for eggs, milk, flour, and other ingredients.

President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders and other actions on health care soon after reentering office. Other than signaling he intends to reverse many of Joe Biden’s moves, the orders will have little immediate impact.

PFAS are known as forever chemicals because of their environmental persistence, but as a mother, I also see their multigenerational persistence. Once a person is exposed to the toxicants, they bioaccumulate, and future generations will also be affected.

The danger from large-scale asteroid impacts is not the stuff of science fiction. As new space technologies evolve to detect, deflect, or obliterate asteroids entirely, polls show that funding for planetary defense has long had strong bipartisan support both inside and outside of Congress.

For centuries, colonists have set their sights on Greenland because of its strategic location and unique mineral resources. But according to one geoscientist, this antiquated view misses the Arctic island’s real value: its ice. Preserving that ice by cooling the climate is imperative to our collective future.

NASA has plans to launch the first space station in deep space. Some experts say it’s an important steppingstone to long-term human space habitation, and NASA’s eventual goal of reaching the red planet. But others say it’s an expensive and risky step that engineers could skip.

After the devastation of the Los Angeles fires, officials are ready to rebuild. But as the risk of devastating wildfires increases with climate change, the calls to rebuild Los Angeles raise a series of tricky questions: How and where to rebuild — and whether to rebuild at all.

Only about 20 percent of Americans have followed current CDC guidance and gotten the latest Covid vaccine. The rest, experts say, may be experiencing vaccine fatigue or feeling distrustful about potential side effects. But are they missing out on important protection?

An energy company’s novel project spawned in the late 1980s helped set the stage for planting trees as a means to sequester carbon emissions. In the process, it resulted in a lot of lessons that are still relevant today in terms of the potential benefits, risks, and failures of forest carbon offsets.

Mirror molecules — synthesized chemical inverse images of natural counterparts — have potential as drugs for hard-to-treat diseases. But extending such work to create entire mirror organisms could pose serious biosafety risks. One researcher who studies mirror-image peptides considers where to draw the line.

The Netherlands allows medically assisted euthanasia for extreme mental suffering, and, in recent years, Dutch doctors have seen a steep rise in requests. Some clinicians are concerned and want more guardrails in place. But others argue euthanasia is sometimes the most humane option and should be easier to obtain.

Despite continued opposition, the World Bank has approved the first of five big dam projects expected to get its support in the coming months. Climate change has upped the need for renewable energy, but the environmental and social costs of building such massive projects remain.

As community violence intervention efforts have gained unprecedented funding, policymakers are asking a deceptively difficult question: Do these programs work? One sociologist says the problem lies in the definition of success and the research methods being used to determine it.

What if everyone could participate in the formal enterprise of research, publishing in journals and attending scientific conferences? C. Brandon Ogbunu argues that making both the consumption and production of research more accessible would help remedy the public’s decreasing trust in scientists.

Biostatistician Jeffrey Morris believes that to productively discuss vaccines and public health with a politically polarized public, scientists must maintain respect, transparency, a willingness to acknowledge uncertainty — and an awareness of how politics and partisanship can shape a person’s beliefs.

In 2021, the CDC recommended the state launch syringe exchange programs to help curb the spread of HIV. But state and local policymakers placed restrictions on such programs due to concerns about illegal drug use. Researchers and health workers say this has been a large contributor to the spread of disease, despite attention and other resources directed toward the outbreak.

Scientists have long posited that the disease is driven by build-up of a certain protein in the brain. Although this idea has recently been mired in controversies, data suggest the hypothesis is not wrong, so much as incomplete.

In 2023, wind energy had the second-highest employment numbers of any electricity generation sector — 131,327 jobs, over twice as many as coal. But the work is inherently risky, with varying oversight across the country. Workers aim to make changes through unions and stronger OSHA standards.

From ants to apes, animals perceive and process mortality in a number of surprising ways, Spanish philosopher Susana Monsó argues in “Playing Possum.” Drawing on a variety of scientific disciplines, she explores both the nuances of animal behavior and the potential biases at play in understanding them.