Author: Reporter

Seven tough weeks passed with her husband in the hospital before Nancy Gag Braun found long-term care for him. From 2019 up until that point in 2022, Braun had cared for Steven at their Mankato home. A traumatic brain injury in February 2019, followed by his progressive dementia, eventually led to the need for professional help and the hospital stay. By then, there were episodes when he did not recognize that the woman trying to care for him was his wife. He started showing fear and aggression toward this person he thought was a stranger in his home. “I...

Neanderthals live on within us. These ancient human cousins, and others called Denisovans, once lived alongside our early Homo sapiens ancestors. They mingled and had children. So some of who they were never went away, it is in our genes. And science is starting to reveal just how much that shapes us. Using the new and rapidly improving ability to piece together fragments of ancient DNA, scientists are finding that traits inherited from our ancient cousins are still with us now, affecting our fertility, our immune systems, even how our bodies handled the COVID-19 virus. “We’re now carrying the...

Tourists at the Acropolis this holiday season can witness the resolution of one of the world’s most heated debates on cultural heritage. All they need is a smartphone. Visitors can now pinch and zoom their way around the ancient Greek site, with a digital overlay showing how it once looked. That includes a collection of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon more than 200 years ago that are now on display at the British Museum in London. Greece has demanded they be returned. For now, an app supported by Greece’s Culture Ministry allows visitors to point their phones at...

Flerentin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste missed so much school he had to repeat his freshman year at Medford High outside Boston. At school, “you do the same thing every day,” said Jean-Baptiste, who was absent 30 days his first year. “That gets very frustrating.” Then his principal did something nearly unheard of: She let students play organized sports during lunch — if they attended all their classes. In other words, she offered high schoolers recess. “It gave me something to look forward to,” said Jean-Baptiste, 16. The following year, he cut his absences in half. Schoolwide, the share of chronically absent...