More than 800,000 people around the world kill themselves each year, and millions more try but fail. This puts suicides among the top preventable causes of death in the world. And from Albania to Zimbabwe, in every country, men commit suicides in greater numbers than women do.
Find out why on Quartz, published May 13, 2015.
Image by Jason Kuffer under CC-BY-SA.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the Ebola outbreak in Libera is over, which means there haven’t been any new cases for the past 42 days. But the country remains on high alert, as new Ebola cases are still being reported in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Stamping out an epidemic of a deadly infectious disease is a great achievement for any country. Liberia’s triumph is more remarkable still given the country’s poor access to healthcare.
Read more on Quartz, published May 9, 2015.
Image by European Commission under CC-BY-ND.
For enthusiasts of space travel, the bad news keeps coming. A new study, just published in Science Advances, finds that the smartest humans who will be chosen to go to Mars may not remain smart by the time they reach their destination (if at all they do).
We have known for a long time that leaving our cushy planet is fraught with problems. Space may be largely empty, but it’s filled up with invisible charged particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. Earth’s magnetic field deflects these particles, but space travelers will inevitably be exposed to such radiation. And the new study predicts that it will cause rapid and permanent damage to the brain.
Read more on Quartz, published May 1, 2015.
Image credit: NASA
Akshat Rathi 