CRISPR’s unprecedented ability to edit genetic code will make possible a new generation of medical treatments. Credit Illustration by Todd St. John At thirty-four, Feng Zhang is the youngest member of the core faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. He is also among the most…

Carl Richards Almost 10 years ago, I knew a guy on a financial rocket ship. He had a great house, a successful business and a solid income. But then things changed. With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear he bought a little too much house and spent a little too much money. At the beginning, he…

Disruption is a theory of change founded on panic, anxiety, and shaky evidence. Credit Illustration by Brian Stauffer In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and…

POCANTICO HILLS, N.Y. — IT’S spring again. Hip deep in asparagus — and, soon enough, tomatoes and zucchini — farm-to-table advocates finally have something from the farm to put on the table. The crowds clamoring for just-dug produce at the farmers’ market and the local food co-op suggest that this…

Kareem Serageldin: “I’m ready to pay my debt to society.” Painting by Alan Coulson, based on a photograph by Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images This article is a collaboration between The Times and ProPublica , the independent nonprofit investigative organization. On the evening of Jan. 27, Kareem…

There once was a remote village deep in the rainforest that had no contact with the outside world. And in this small village there were only three village elders who had the ability to speak. So they were in charge. And they’d have arguments. One would say, “I support a woman’s right to choose.”…

Doctor and Patient Dr. Pauline Chen on medical care. The patient, lean and in his 60s, was in the hospital for the second time in a month with blood sugar levels that were out of control and he was not happy. Despite the nurses’ earnest attempts to cheer him up, he scowled and insisted that all he…

Article It is a widely accepted myth that medicine requires complex, highly specialized information-technology (IT) systems. This myth continues to justify soaring IT costs, burdensome physician workloads, and stagnation in innovation — while doctors become increasingly bound to documentation and…

The blight was first detected in June 2002, when the trees in Canton, Michigan, got sick. The culprit, the emerald ash borer, had arrived from overseas, and it rapidly spread -- a literal bug -- across state and national lines to Ohio, Minnesota, Ontario. It popped up in more distant, seemingly…

Dr. Kari Nadeau, who is conducting a trial to desensitize children with multiple food allergies, with some of her patients. Art Streiber for The New York Times For nine years, the greatest challenge Kim Yates Grosso faced each day was keeping her daughter Tessa safe. Tessa was so severely allergic…

Countries across the continent are building welfare states—with a chance to learn from the West’s mistakes ASIA’S economies have long wowed the world with their dynamism. Thanks to years of spectacular growth, more people have been pulled from abject poverty in modern Asia than at any other time in…

Medicine has long resisted the productivity revolutions that transformed other industries. But the new chains aim to change this. Credit Illustration by Harry Campbell It was Saturday night, and I was at the local Cheesecake Factory with my two teen-age daughters and three of their friends. You may…

Atrocities like the attack on the Sikh congregation in Wisconsin introduce terrifying dissonance into America's post-9/11 mindset. Members of the Sikh congregation mourn their dead. / Reuters The Sunday attack on a Sikh temple hasn't attracted nearly as much attention as other shooting sprees, like…

The state with the country’s worst health care record just happens to have a governor who has been the loudest voice against national efforts to improve it. A quarter of the residents of Texas, 6.3 million people, are uninsured, by far the highest percentage in the country. (That number includes…

No matter what happens to President Obama’s health care reforms after the November elections, the disjointed, costly American health care system must find ways to slow the rate of spending while delivering quality care. There is widespread pessimism that anything much can be achieved quickly, but…

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. Last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding of the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law moves the United States closer to the goal of health coverage for all. All other developed countries have it. But so do some…

Canberra, Australia IT’S past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There…

M y younger brother Dan gradually put on weight over a decade, reaching 230 pounds two years ago, at the age of 50. Given his 5-foot-6 frame, that put him 45 pounds above the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s threshold of obesity. Accompanying this dubious milestone were a diagnosis of type 2…

Olaf Hajek THERE’S a term biologists and economists use these days — ecosystem services — which refers to the many ways nature supports the human endeavor. Forests filter the water we drink, for example, and birds and bees pollinate crops, both of which have substantial economic as well as…

OVER 7,000 strong and growing, community farmers’ markets are being heralded as a panacea for what ails our sick nation. The smell of fresh, earthy goodness is the reason environmentalists approve of them, locavores can’t live without them, and the first lady has hitched her vegetable cart crusade…

The health-care case wasn't about broccoli or the Commerce Clause. It was about ratifying a change in our nation's social policy. In civics class we learn that federal courts decide whether laws passed by Congress and the state legislatures are constitutional. Therefore the federal courts are the…

It almost seems as if we’re trying to raise a nation of “adultescents.” Credit Illustration by Christoph Abbrederis In 2004, Carolina Izquierdo, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, spent several months with the Matsigenka, a tribe of about twelve thousand people who live…

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Obama ’s health care overhaul law, saying its requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty was authorized by Congress’s power to levy taxes. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the…

DURING a recent discussion in Seattle with a group of educators, one of them surprised me when she pointed out that even though their state did not win President Obama’s education “Race to the Top,” that program was critical in spurring education reform in Washington State. As I listened to her…

Last Wednesday, with relatively little fanfare, Google introduced a new technology called Google Knowledge Graph. Type in “François Hollande,” and you are offered a capsule history (with links) to his children, partner, birthday, education, and so forth. In the short-term, Knowledge Graph will not…

Could health care costs be reined in by improving access to preventive care? It’s an idea that appeals to policy makers and many public health experts, but the evidence for it is surprisingly hard to pin down. Of course, preventing diseases is better than waiting for them to occur and then treating…

Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 4 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are my own. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s entirely. CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—April 11 —The Last Mover Advantage I. Escaping Competition The usual narrative is that capitalism and perfect competition…

FIGHTING OBESITY Carson Chow at a supermarket. Dr. Chow, a mathematician, has found that a food glut is behind America’s weight problem. Michael Temchine for The New York Times Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National…

Students at the Institute of Design at Stanford, or d.school, work this spring on an irrigation project for farmers in Burma. The work is part of the university’s focus on interdisciplinary education. Credit Photograph by Aaron Huey Stanford University is so startlingly paradisial, so fragrant and…

Amman, Jordan And so it came to pass that in 2012 — a year after the Arab awakening erupted — the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3. It gave Egypt’s military $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets, and it gave Lebanese…

If you think that “The Hunger Games” is about the cruelties adults inflict upon children, then you should try reading Dostoevsky. In one of the most memorable chapters of “The Brothers Karamazov,” Ivan Karamazov confronts his younger brother, Alyosha, with a list of horrifying crimes against…

CHICAGO Gwlie Lloyd, a nurse and care manager, and Dr. Steven Wolf at an Advocate Health clinic. Advocate is one of the nation’s first accountable care organizations. Steve Kagan for The New York Times CHICAGO — Even as she struggled to manage her Type 2 diabetes , Fannie Cline’s condition spiraled…

So it’s flattering to be missed, @JeffRoberts . Thank you for that. You’re right, I am not at the center of the SOPA fight (though obviously a strong supporter). Here’s a couple sentences why. First, and again, this is a critical battle to wage and win. SOPA is just the latest, but in many ways, the…

Technology is in the process of bringing change to every piece of the health industry — wellness, fitness, healthcare, medicine — you name it. And as it always seems with introduction of new technologies, it’s awe-inspiring how quickly they can transform entire industries yet, at the same time, make…

DUBAI — As provocative as Wonder Woman, but in an entirely different way, Batina the Hidden is a character in the hit comic book series “The 99” who is not only a Muslim girl from Yemen, but one whose outfit of choice when fighting evil is a burqa . “Most articles about Islam these days involve…

The hunt for Muammar el-Qaddafi goes on, but his tyrannical 42-year rule over Libya is finished. The Libyan people bore the brunt of the fighting and dying that brought him down. But NATO air power played an important role. Airstrikes in March stopped Colonel Qaddafi’s forces from storming Benghazi…

Michele Bachmann’s world view has been shaped by institutions and people unfamiliar to most Americans. Credit Illustration by BARRY BLITT The transformation of Michele Bachmann from Tea Party insurgent and cable-news Pasionaria to serious Republican contender in the 2012 Presidential race was nearly…