What do you get for a teenage nephew? A friend with impossibly expensive taste? A parent who insists, insincerely, they don’t want anything at all? We want to hear about the people stumping you ahead of the holiday gifting season — the more particular they are, the better. Submit a …

I was in a dune buggy perched atop a sandy ridge near the small oasis town of Huacachina, Peru, looking down a nearly 60-foot drop. As the driver gunned the engine, I began to question my decision to sign up for this tour. Down we went. I closed my eyes …

On the surface, the scene on Columbia University’s campus appeared to have returned to normal after a spring semester rocked by pro-Palestinian encampments and police crackdowns. Students ate lunch on green lawns last week and tapped a volleyball back and forth under sunny skies. But, “like a horror film,” said …

Tens of thousands of children across the Southeast remain out of their classrooms one week after Helene, the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland United States since Katrina. They are cut off from academics, friends and stabilizing routines. Hurricane Helene ravaged school buildings, demolished football fields and killed young children …

Comb jellies, the delicate bells that pulse their iridescent bodies through the ocean, are some of the strangest creatures on earth. “They are the aliens of the sea,” said Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, Fla. The aliens belong to the oldest …

“Forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, are everywhere. They’re in our water, our soil and in everyday items like cookware, mascara or waterproof clothing. And there’s mounting evidence that this family of thousands of synthetic chemicals can increase the risk of some types of cancer, developmental and fertility issues, and …

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for the discovery of microRNA, a tiny class of RNA molecules that play a crucial role in determining how organisms mature and function — and how they sometimes malfunction. Working with curious, millimeter-size roundworms …

Running into a moose when driving a car or truck is bad enough, but crashing into the giant animal while riding on two wheels can be worse. Kevin Connors barely survived such an encounter while cruising on his motorbike just after sundown on a highway in Newfoundland, a Tennessee-size island …

Without even entering Grand Central Terminal’s soaring main hall on one Thursday evening in July, Nerdeen Kiswani and her pro-Palestinian protest group, Within Our Lifetime, managed to shut it down. All it took was a flier, posted online, calling on her followers to meet by the iconic clock in the …

Rwanda’s fragile health care system could become overwhelmed by the deadly Marburg virus, doctors fear, because most of those currently infected are medical professionals, and some have already died. Since the first outbreak in the country last month, at least 30 medical workers have been infected, and at least four …