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Scientists say they've solved a 700-year-old mystery: Where and when Black...
Where did the Black Death come from? And when did it first appear?As the deadliest pandemic in recorded history – it killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe and the Mediterranean between 1346...
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A nasty disease is even nastier for patients with HIV. Now there's...
Nobody wants to get bitten by a sandfly and catch a terrible disease with a daunting name – visceral leishmaniasis.It can cause fever, weight loss, enlargement of the spleen and liver, and anemia. If...
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Beads, felt and bark are turned into masterpieces at Smithsonian Folklife...
Since this blog began in 2014, we have covered the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It's a two-week event in Washington, D.C., that brings artists and artisans from around the world to share their...
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What these teen girls do — and don't — have time for might surprise and...
Alice Paredes loves to dance but she doesn't have time for it anymore. Even though the 17-year-old from Lima, Peru, was a 4-time national champion in marinera, a traditional folk dance, she's got other...
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Typhoid mutated to beat antibiotics. Science is learning how to beat those...
Do you remember the story of Typhoid Mary– the cook who spread typhoid to as many as 100 people in the early 1900s even though she herself showed no symptoms? She was confined to isolation for 26 years...
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How many animal species have caught COVID? First global tracker has (partial)...
Mink get it. Hamsters get it. Cats and dogs get it.They're a few of the many animal species to have contracted COVID-19.But how many species have been affected? And how many cases have there been in...
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A vision of 7 suns led a self-taught Ivoirian artist to draw the everyday and...
In 1948, the late Ivoirian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré had a vision that would change his life. On his way to work as a civil servant in the colonial navy in Dakar, then the capital of French West...
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Coronavirus FAQ: I'm confused by the new testing advice! Do it once, twice...
We regularly answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the...
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Coronavirus FAQ: Does a faint line on a self-test mean I'm barely contagious?
We regularly answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the...
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7 fun facts about sweat
Phew, this summer was hot — and some places are still roasting! With people around the world experiencing dangerously high, record-breaking temperatures, we've all been sweating it.You might find...
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Superstar Angélique Kidjo sings at the 1000th Tiny Desk — and speaks from her...
NPR is celebrating its 1,000th Tiny Desk Concert. And who better to mark the occasion than the 5-time Grammy award-winning Beninese artist and international sensation Angélique Kidjo?Kidjo's music is...
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What are your chances of catching monkeypox?
What are your chances of catching monkeypox?It's a question that many people are asking.A global outbreak of this infectious disease began in May of this year and has spread to 50 countries – along...
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A box of 200 mosquitoes did the vaccinating in this malaria trial. That's not...
One Seattle morning, Carolina Reid sat in a room with nine other volunteers, each waiting to take part in a clinical trial for a new, experimental malaria vaccine.Reid's turn came. She put her arm over...
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HIV crashed her life. She found her way back to joy — and spoke at the U.N....
When Bupe Sinkala was diagnosed with HIV, she didn't know what to do. She was planning her wedding – and decided not to tell her fiancé at first. It was, she reflects, "a dark moment. I was scared of...
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Coronavirus (booster) FAQ: Can it cause a positive test? When should you get...
We regularly answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the...
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This MacArthur 'genius' grantee says she isn't a drug price rebel but she...
The day Priti Krishtel found out she won the MacArthur "genius grant" didn't start out as a particularly happy day."I had a friend going through surgery that day. So I was standing at my kitchen...
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WHO releases list of threatening fungi. The most dangerous might surprise you
The idea of deadly fungi might conjure up images of poisonous red mushroom caps with distinctive white spots – or sneaky false morels that can turn a fun day of foraging into an evening of...
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Uganda ends school year early as it tries to contain growing Ebola outbreak
The Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports has ordered schools across the country to end the school year early in order to prevent the further spread of Ebola among schoolchildren.Uganda declared an...
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The first satellites launched by Uganda and Zimbabwe aim to improve life on...
When Uganda's very first satellite was launched into space last week on Nov. 7, Bonny Omara, the lead engineer on the satellite development team, was filled with emotion."I was watching it on TV,...
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With one dose, new drug may cure sleeping sickness. Could it also wipe it out?
In 2004, when physician Dr. Wilfried Mutombo began treating patients diagnosed with sleeping sickness, the available treatments were themselves horrific and sometimes deadly."The widely available...
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Popular global TikToks of 2022: Bad Bunny leads the fluffle!
Editor's note: "Fluffle" is a term used in Canada to describe a group of rabbits. It is an adorable word, is it not? So we figured: Let's give it wider exposure in our headline! The TikTok superduper...
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Don't think of Africa as a hungry child, says a champion of Africa's food...
You might not know it, but you're probably consuming food that comes from Africa on a daily basis.Yet between sips of Ethiopian single-origin light roast coffee, our thoughts of African agriculture...
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What's a spillover? A spillback? Here are definitions for the vocab of a...
Don't feel as if you're out of the loop if you're not up on the terminology of spillover viruses.In fact, one of the doctors we interviewed for this series on spillovers asked, "What is your definition...
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A deadly disease so neglected it's not even on the list of neglected tropical...
It started out as malaria – or at least that's what her grandparents thought. But there was another devious infection lurking beneath the surface of her skin and inside her mouth.Mulikat Okanlawon was...
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Why do some people get UTIs over and over? A new report holds clues
Willa Rubin is a 26-year-old high school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, and like millions of other women, she suffers from recurrent urinary tract infections."It's really painful. It's one of these...
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New hope for an antidote to death cap mushrooms and other poison fungi
They don't call it the "death cap" mushroom without good reason. It's one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the world. Eating only half a cap can shut down your liver – and if you don't get medical...
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Very short films on club feet, youth depression, sexual health among WHO...
Jonathan and his twin brother were born in Sierra Leone with clubfeet. His twin died as a baby, and his parents were told Jonathan may never walk like other children. His father turned to prayer and...
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The doctor who warned the world of the mpox outbreak of 2022 is still worried
A little over a year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still a public health emergency, a little-known virus came seemingly out of nowhere to add to the world's worries – a virus known at the time as...
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You know those folks who had COVID but no symptoms? A new study offers an...
Do you know someone who tested positive for COVID but never felt a darn thing? Or who says they never caught the virus – even when their partner was sick in bed.Scientists estimate that over 20% of...
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A new clue to the reason some people come down with long COVID
Stéphanie Longet is an immunologist and a COVID researcher at the University of Saint-Etienne in France, and just like 10-20% of adults who were infected with the virus, she continues to have symptoms...
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A male mosquito's hairy ears tune into mates. New research suggests we can...
Bzzzz... Do you hear that? That's the sound of a mosquito nearby, its wings fluttering rapidly, generating the sound waves that reach your ears and send signals to your brain. When you hear that...
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This expert on water scarcity would never call herself a 'genius.' But...
Newly minted MacArthur Fellow Amber Wutich says anthropology has historically had an "Indiana Jones problem.""We have a history and even a contemporary problem of people coming into communities in a...
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Q&A: This scientist developed a soap that could help fight skin cancer. He's...
Heman Bekele is not your typical high school student. Rather than spending his free time playing video games or staring at his phone, this 14 year-old from Fairfax, Virginia was calling professors and...
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A 'tropical disease' carried by sand flies is confirmed in a new country: the...
Back in 2014, dermatologist Bridget McIlwee saw a 3-year-old patient in central Texas with unusual bumps on his ear."They looked a little bit like almost kind of a benign mole that you would see in a...
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Antibiotics that fight deadly infections in babies are losing their power
The drugs aren't working as well as they used to.That's the sobering takeaway from new research published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia last week: The most commonly prescribed...
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