Science

The Daily Beast reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is worried about testosterone levels in American teens. The health secretary expressed concern about declining testosterone levels among teenagers as he spoke to Fox News on Tuesday night about a newly announced initiative to phase out eight artificial food dyes. “Seventy-four percent of our kids cannot qualify for military service,” he said. …

ABC News reports: The measles outbreak in western Texas has now reached 624 cases, with 27 new infections confirmed over the last five days. Nearly all of the cases are among unvaccinated individuals or among those whose vaccination status is unknown, according to new data published by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) on Tuesday. The increase in …

Reuters reports: The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees …

Science.org reports: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent decades—and billions of dollars—trying to attract more women and members of underrepresented groups into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Not anymore. Today NSF announced such efforts “are no longer aligned with its priorities” and that it is terminating any existing grant designed to improve the demographics of the scientific workforce. …

ABC News reports: White House Director of Science and Technology Michael Kratsios on Monday suggested the United States has technology that can “manipulate time and space.” The comment came during remarks on “the golden age of American innovation” at the Endless Frontiers Retreat in Austin, Texas. Kratsios said during the event that American technological developments have stalled compared to the …

The Guardian reports: Nearly 300 academics have applied to a French university’s offer to take in US-based researchers rattled by the American government’s crackdown on academia, as a former French president called for the creation of a “scientific refugee” status for academics in peril. Earlier this year, France’s Aix-Marseille University was among the first in Europe to respond to the …

The New York Times reports: The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos. Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication …

NBC News reports: Dr. David Sugerman, a senior scientist leading the CDC’s measles response, said Tuesday at a meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee that more than 90% of the cases are “related to the Southwest outbreak, driven by transmission in close-knit, undervaccinated communities.” “We do believe that there’s quite a large amount of cases that are not reported …

STAT News reports: With bare-bones procurement departments to rely on and administrative staff axed, lab leaders at the National Institutes of Health are scrambling to buy food for the animals kept in their facilities. Some scientists have been hoarding and rationing the reagents that they have stockpiled. Because of imposed restrictions, for months they haven’t been able to purchase supplies …

Ars Technica reports: European tourists who toted home bottles of water from a holy well in Ethiopia were likely hoping for blessings and spiritual cleansing—but instead carried an infectious curse and got an intestinal power cleanse. Three people in Germany and four in the UK fell ill with cholera after directly drinking or splashing their faces with the holy water. …

ABC News reports: Six women, including pop star Katy Perry, are scheduled to be launched into space for about 11 minutes on Monday on a Blue Origin rocket, a lift-off that would mark the first all-female spaceflight since 1963, according to the company. The window for the latest New Shepard rocket launch is expected to open on Monday morning at …

Politico reports: The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea …

The Associated Press reports: NASA’s science budget could be cut nearly in half under an early version of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to Congress, a move that would terminate billions of dollars’ worth of ongoing and future missions. The budget plan, sent to NASA by the Office of Management and Budget, would give NASA’s Science Mission Directorate $3.9 billion, …

USA Today reports: Four-legged creatures known as dire wolves who were prominent in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series no longer belong solely to the realm of fantasy. Colossal Biosciences, the genetic engineering company working to bring back a few different extinct animals, announced this week the successful resurrection of the Ice Age-era species. The recent birth of three dire wolf …

The Associated Press reports: Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation’s top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted. In an interview with The Associated Press, former Food and Drug Administration vaccine …

The New York Times reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, attended the funeral on Sunday of an 8-year-old girl who died of measles amid an outbreak that has burned through the region and called into question his ability to handle a public-health crisis. The child’s death, in a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, early Thursday morning, is the …

NBC News reports: Another child with measles in Texas has died, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed late Saturday night, though the exact cause of death is under investigation. This would be the second pediatric death amid a fast-growing outbreak that’s infected nearly 500 people in Texas alone since January. An adult in New Mexico is also suspected …

NBC News reports: Six young children at a Lubbock, Texas, day care center have tested positive for measles — a dreaded scenario with the potential to accelerate an already out-of-control outbreak that has spread to at least two other states. More than a dozen other states and Washington, D.C. are dealing with cases of measles unrelated to Texas. On Friday, …

Reuters reports: The Trump administration’s mass firings at the FDA have removed employees critical to reviewing new medicines, setting back years of effort to bring promising treatments to patients more quickly, former and current FDA sources told Reuters. The FDA is slated to lose 3,500 employees under HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s massive restructuring of U.S. health agencies that is …

NPR reports: Teams that fulfilled requests for government documents lost their jobs on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s 10,000-person staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Their work, mandated by Congress since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA, gives the public a view of the inner workings of federal health agencies. …