The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and new mutations in viral genetic sequences have made "variant" part of the cultural lexicon, because they can have significant impacts on the virus’s transmissibility and the damage it causes. 

Researchers have long been concerned that could happen in the HIV-1 virus, which has been mitigated thanks to safer sex practices and modern science but still affects 38 million people worldwide.

This is the third coronavirus pandemic of this century, after SARS and MERS, and due to that many forget that influenza is a chronic killer, 40-60,000 deaths in America alone each year. To mitigate those effects, there is a seasonal flu vaccine. Each year researchers model how they expect the virus to mutate and then they create a vaccine based on that. Some years are more successful than others but if people do get the flu, effects will be reduced.

Our life on earth began in water but how did it 'evolve'?

To get an understanding of the link between the chemistry of carbon and water, scientists can track the various forms, or isotopes, of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms over the history of the universe, like a giant treasure hunt.

Recently, researchers from the CNRS, Paris-Saclay University, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the University of Pau and the Pays de l’Adour (UPPA), with support from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), have followed the trail of the isotopic composition of water back to the start of the solar system, in the inner regions where Earth and the other terrestrial planets were formed.

A group of vegetarian activists argue that the COVID-19 Omicron variant is good reason for people to adopt a plant-based diet.

Women in sexual relationships with men whom they perceive as having more fragile masculine ideas change their own behavior to protect the feelings of the men. They reported more faked orgasms and lower sexual satisfaction the more they reported  their partner’s sense of masculinity as fragile.

Unlike more surveys, these new studies examine the subject from the perspective of women who seek to protect their partners’ sense of masculinity, perhaps at their own expense.

A new analysis of data shows the medical community may need to rethink the optimal strategy for treating blood clots and bleeding in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Patients with COVID-19 in the intensive care unit (ICU) prescribed full-dose blood thinners were significantly more likely to experience heavy bleeding than patients prescribed a smaller yet equally effective dose - nearly 1 in 7 COVID-19 patients in the ICU experienced severe bleeding when given full-dose blood thinners. Almost all patients who experienced significant bleeding were mechanically ventilated and receiving full-dose anticoagulants (blood thinners).