New Horizons Newsroom 2022

College students grieved losses other than death during the COVID-19 pandemic College campuses across the U.S. became ghost towns in 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students had to stay at home for months. Online learning enabled stude...

The robots are coming! Time for us to understand how they work — and don’t Ross Sowell is being followed. When he walks back and forth, his shadower walks back and forth. When he stops, it stops. When he turns, it turns. Suddenly, he jumps sideways. His s...

Bigger-than-expected Greenland ice caves could speed ice sheet movement into ocean Matt Covington hung from the edge of a Greenland ice cave, peering into its depths. He couldn’t see the bottom, hundreds of meters below—but he could hear it: running water and...

Contributions from ‘outsiders’ can benefit science, physicist-musician says Cosmologist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander asked for three volunteers from his audience of science writers and gave each a pitch at which to sing. With a wave of the hand he s...

Flu and COVID-19 will both surge this winter, but maybe not at the same time Flu is expected to make a comeback this winter after two years of being suppressed by COVID-19 control measures. But it’s unclear how the two respiratory diseases might interact ...

Police crackdown could worsen overdose crisis but harm-reduction strategies can help, expert says Each year, tens of thousands of Americans die from drug overdoses, most of which are linked to opioids, such as the synthetic drug fentanyl, according to the National Center for He...

Data visualization reveals hidden wonders from telescopes Majestic images of the cosmos captivated the world in 2022 following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST). But if you could fly through space, you wouldn’t be abl...

Journalists should report selectively and critically on polls, expert advises Pre-election surveys fooled Americans in 2016. Presidential polls consistently put Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump. Clinton did win the popular vote, but Trump won the Electo...

Sickle cell disease: Gene therapy advances, but access and interest gaps persist Financial challenges continue to limit access to treatment for patients with sickle cell disease even as high-tech treatments are advancing rapidly, a researcher at St. Jude Childr...

We are not yet done with COVID-19’s origin, journalists say About 70% of the world’s population has been vaccinated with at least a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. But nearly three years after the start of the pandemic, a fundamental conc...

2-D materials usher in a renaissance of high-tech innovations The future of medicine, computing, and energy optimization lies in two-dimensional materials, engineer Deji Akinwande told an audience of science writers gathered for a conference ...

The Mid-South’s roadmap to a clean energy future Many cities in the Mid-South region of the United States have pledged to switch completely to renewable power on an ambitious timeline, but there’s a lot standing in their way. �...

First came gene therapy. Now: transcription therapy Twenty years ago, when Aseem Ansari became engrossed in transcription therapy—using synthetic molecules to counteract the result of a malfunctioning gene circuit—he was met wit...

Optimizing immune response may improve cancer treatments Many patients undergoing cancer treatments have a problem that keeps their immune systems up at night: finding the cancer cell that got away. It’s a diabolical needle in the hays...

Russian aggression leaves Arctic science at risk Olga Shpak used to study whales in the Arctic Ocean. Now, she volunteers on the front lines of a war to defend her hometown of Kharkiv from Russian attacks. “My life has changed ...

Finding high stakes and big stories in the lives of lowly critters Consider the sea cucumber. That was author David Quammen’s (@DavidQuammen) request to the audience at a recent ScienceWriters conference in Memphis, Tenn. There was an irony to t...