Abstracts: Medicaid, Nuclear Tests, and More
• President Trump and House Republicans are aiming to alter Medicaid so that able-bodied beneficiaries are required to hold down jobs. (Washington Post)
• A team of physicists and archivists collected and digitized film of 210 atmospheric nuclear tests that the U.S. conducted between 1945 and 1962. Because these tests have been outlawed since 1963, the resurfaced footage serves as a powerful reminder of the devastation wrought by nuclear weaponry. (NPR)
• British scientists got the green light to create babies with DNA from three different people. This procedure is intended to prevent mothers from passing along potentially deadly diseases to their children. (TIME)
• Overheated seawater killed hundreds of miles of coral along the Great Barrier Reef last year. Scientists say there’s no doubt that human-induced climate change is to blame. (New York Times)
• The hunter-gatherer San people of South Africa have been the subject of scientific scrutiny for over a century. This month, they published a code of ethics that researchers must abide by, if they want to study San culture, genetics, or heritage. (Science)
• A new study shows that tropical bed bugs — found in Africa, Asia, Australia, and recently Florida — easily scale the smooth walls of pitfall traps used to catch common bed bugs in the U.S. (Science News)
• A cholesterol medication has been shown to lower heart disease patients’ risk of cardiovascular problems by 15 percent. But brace yourself for the sticker shock, because this drug costs $14,000 per year, and who knows if insurers will cover it. (STAT)
• Forget cockroaches — if anything is surviving the apocalypse, it’s water bears. These tough little buggers can survive exceedingly cold temperatures, getting boiled, getting blasted by radiation, and being dehydrated for decades. Now, scientists might have finally identified the protein that allows these creatures to accomplish their incredible feats of endurance. (WIRED)
• And finally, scientists found a frog that’s always rave-ready. The South American polka-dot tree frog is the first of its kind known to glow under black lights. (Popular Science)