On a muggy June night in Greenwich Village, more than 800 neuroscientists, philosophers and curious members of the public packed into an auditorium. They came for the first results of an ambitious investigation into a profound question: What is consciousness?

To kick things off, two friends — David Chalmers, a philosopher, and Christof Koch, a neuroscientist — took the stage to recall an old bet. In June 1998, they had gone to a conference in Bremen, Germany, and ended up talking late one night at a local bar about the nature of consciousness.

Continue reading “2 Leading Theories of Consciousness Square Off” →

The New York Times, June 26, 2023 (with Benjamin Mueller and Noah Weiland)

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Efforts to develop the next generation of Covid vaccines are running up against bureaucratic hassles and regulatory uncertainty, scientists say, obstacles that could make it harder to curb the spread of the coronavirus and arm the United States against future pandemics.

The Biden administration, after months of delay, has now addressed at least a shortfall in funding, hurrying to issue the first major grants from a $5 billion program to expedite a new class of more potent and durable inoculations.

Continue reading “U.S. Vaccine Program Now Flush With Cash, but Short on Key Details” →

In its first week, a fertilized human egg develops into a hollow ball of 200 cells and then implants itself on the wall of the uterus. Over the next three weeks, it divides into the distinct tissues of a human body.

And those crucial few weeks remain, for the most part, a black box.

“We know the basics, but the very fine details we just don’t know,” said Jacob Hanna, a developmental biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Continue reading “Scientists Debut Lab Models of Human Embryos” →