Category: 4. Health

Complex economic forces shape the U.S. healthcare landscape, with private equity (PE) firms promising efficiency and growth in the medical sector while simultaneously sparking debate. On June 9, 2025, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 951 (SB 951) into law, representing the most recent and stringent legislative effort to restrict private equity investment in healthcare.

What does the rise of private equity mean for healthcare?…

The researchers published their findings in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

“Globally, the incidence and mortality rates of pancreatic cancer continue to rise, with a five-year survival rate of less than…

By drawing on genetic data from over five million people, an international team of researchers has created a genetic test called a polygenic risk score (PGS) that predicts adulthood obesity already…

A new cultural lexicon is emerging, and at the center of it is a term that captures the private exhaustion and public irony many straight women feel toward modern relationships with men: heterofatalism. Initially coined by academic Asa Seresin and recently spotlighted in the New York Times Magazine and Sexual Health Alliance, heterofatalism refers to the resigned belief that heterosexual relationships are emotionally…

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at a federal program to bring advanced semiconductor R&D to Florida, a quantum computing milestone for biotech, a new way to get forever chemicals out of the water supply and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here.

The tech sector drives the U.S. economy, which in turn is undergirded by the semiconductor chips that power servers, computers, phones and more. Even though these chips are…

Pronatalism – the belief that low birth rates are a problem that must be reversed – is having a moment in the U.S.

As birth rates decline in the U.S. and throughout the world, voices from Silicon Valley to the White House are raising concerns about what they say could be the calamitous effects of steep population decline on the economy. The Trump administration has said it is seeking ideas on how to encourage Americans to have more children as the U.S. experiences its lowest total…

I saw it firsthand after my cat Murphy died earlier this year. She’d been diagnosed with cancer just weeks before.

She was a small gray tabby with delicate paws who, even during chemotherapy, climbed her favorite dresser perch – Mount Murphy – with steady determination.

The day after she died, a colleague said with a shrug: “It’s just part of life.”

That phrase stayed with me – not because it was wrong, but because of how quickly it dismissed something real.

Murphy…

Chemist Emily Mevers and her team recently discovered a new set of complex structures in millipede secretions that can modulate specific neuroreceptors in ant brains.

The newly discovered structures fall into a class of naturally occurring compounds called…

Health insurer…