As I wrote in the story, the geography of the current outbreak means it's at a critical inflection point. We don't have enough sterile flies.

Well, yesterday, the USDA announced a new sterile fly facility in Mexico. Will it be enough? www.usda.gov/about-usda/n...

...unfortunately, the barrier failed, and screwworms are now creeping their way back to the U.S. My story in @theatlantic.com about the current outbreak:

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The bad news is that outbreak is bad; the good news is a lot of stuff is finally happening at least www.usda.gov/about-usda/n...

There is a lot we still don't know—might never know—about the inner lives of unresponsive patients.

Ian's mom says his story is not a sad story though, and you may be genuinely surprised by some of the weird and funny twists of fate. Read it here:
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Other brain-injury patients have appeared to answer yes/no questions correctly in an fMRI machine, despite having no ability to communicate otherwise.

Like many people, probably, I came in knowing little beyond the Terri Schiavo controversy, and I found the boundary between consciousness/unconsciousness to be less absolute than I thought.

Vegetative patients, for example, have temporarily "awakened" and started speaking on Ambien.

I spent the past several months with the family of one patient in the study, Ian, who was injured in a car crash in 1986. His mother has never stopped believing he could understand her.

Today in @theatlantic.com, Ian's story:

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

i have to admit, i think bone-in, skin-on thighs are great the day of, but they take on a weird leftover flavor the next day that i find very, very off-putting

something i was surprised to learn while reporting this story is that the boneless, skinless chicken thigh—staple of weeknight dinner recipes—was not actually widely available until the 2000s

i actually reached out to her multiple times for the story and would have really loved to include her perspective. my article ended up focused on highly mutated variants from persistent infections, which afaik is not how we think D614G evolved, but i 100% agree her work was unfairly dismissed.

hidden in plain sight in the name!