New Horizons Newsroom 2019

P-values and statistical significance: New ideas for interpreting scientific results When statistician Nicole Lazar published an editorial in The American Statistician earlier this year advocating changes in the way scientists handle the troublesome issue of stat...

Drug resistance: Can targeting evolution be the solution? Science has given doctors more and more powerful drugs to deploy against infectious diseases and cancers in recent decades, and yet many new therapies have failed to live up to the...

Fighting climate change with science (and poetry) Seven years ago, Rob Jackson and his graduate student drove around the city of Boston—back and forth, back and forth, up and down every block like a lawnmower. With a laser ins...

Rising seas: Ice sheets pose uncertain, startling risks for the planet Beneath the ocean waters off Antartica, massive buried shelves of ice function like buttresses, supporting the continent’s massive ice sheets. If those buttresses fail, Richard A...

A controversial tactic against climate change David Keith has a tool for fighting climate change, and a big challenge: convincing the rest of the world to use it. Speaking to science writers gathered in State College, Pa. on O...

Peering into Penn State’s fermentation facility The wide world of biotechnology encompasses an array of fields and applications, but what is industrial biotechnology? During a tour offered Oct. 28 by Penn State University as par...

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence: A “neglected” quest no longer? “I’m an observer,” said astronomer Jason Wright. “I’ve always enjoyed the little corners that are being neglected.” In recent years Wright has been exploring one such ...

Science or science fiction? The still-open questions about the #CRISPRtwins story Kiran Musunuru was shocked. In a few days, on Nov. 27, 2018, scientists from all over the world would meet in Hong Kong to set standards for the use of the CRISPR gene-editing t...

Patients’ waste is this scientist’s treasure A newsmaker from an unexpected encounter has offered scientific news from an unexpected source—poop. As I looked for stories at a science writers’ conference in State College, ...

An upside-down jellyfish could help save coral reefs Upside-down jellyfish growing in a lab in Pennsylvania could help protect endangered coral reefs in the world’s oceans. The creatures serve as a stand-in for corals off the south...

The monkey in the mirror Bigger, slower-developing brains may distinguish humans from their non-human primate relatives, says George Washington University anthropologist Chet Sherwood, but these obvious b...

Killer fungus could cause the next amphibian apocalypse A deadly fungus decimated populations of frogs and other amphibians around the globe in the late 20th century. Today a new, even more lethal one is on the march. Biologists are tak...