Herb Brody

2 weeks ago | nature.com | Herb Brody

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even animals without central nervous systems do it. And of course babies do it — albeit less than their frazzled parents would like. But, despite its universality, sleep remains a mysterious process. Indeed, although sleep seems to be crucial for physical and mental well-being, scientists are still trying to work out its biological rationale.

Sep 25, 2024 | nature.com | Herb Brody

People spend much of their lives trying to soothe physical pain. The global over-the-counter analgesics market was estimated to be worth just over US$28 billion in 2022 and it is expected to grow to almost $41 billion by 2032. At the same time, the massive overconsumption of pain-management opioid drugs, which can be addictive, continues to shatter lives. Nature Outlook: Pain Improving the treatment of pain requires a more nuanced understanding of what it means to feel it.

Jul 11, 2024 | nature.com | Herb Brody

Scientists wear a variety of hats. They are researchers, expanding the boundaries of human knowledge; administrators, mastering the bureaucracies of academia, industry and government to ensure that resources are efficiently and effectively applied; and teachers, conveying to new generations not only knowledge but also the nuances of the craft itself. That provides a sufficient array of tasks and challenges for most scientists.

May 29, 2024 | nature.com | Herb Brody

Cancer kills almost ten million people annually. According to one study, this disease, in all its many forms, will cost the world a whopping 25 trillion international dollars — an artificial currency used to compare economies — over the next 30 years (S. Chen et al. JAMA Oncol. 9, 465–472; 2023). More than 50 years after the US declaration of a war on cancer, many hoped that the disease would be closer to defeat than these statistics suggest.

Dec 13, 2023 | nature.com | Herb Brody

There is an old joke, made famous by the writer David Foster Wallace, in which one fish says to another, “How’s the water?” The second fish replies: “What the hell is water?”That’s more or less the question Nature faced when putting together this collection of articles on the ubiquitous substance on which all life on Earth (not just that of fish) depends.