Maanvi Singh

What makes the perfect meal?

Most of us might envision a specific dish, or a certain ingredient — a fine steak cooked medium-rare, grandma's chicken curry or mom's hearty ratatouille.

Charles Spence thinks about the food, for sure. But he also thinks about everything else: the color and size ...

A growing body of research suggests that teaching really young kids how to recognize and express their feelings can help them into their adult lives.

Young children are especially susceptible to the seasonal flu, and annual flu immunizations are the best way to protect them.

But many children under 9 require two doses of the vaccine to be fully protected, and only about half of those who need two doses get both. That's in addition ...

Even in the coldest months, we relish the refreshing, icy taste of peppermint — in seasonal treats like peppermint bark, peppermint schnapps, even peppermint beer.

We have the chemical menthol to thank for that deliciously cool mouth-feel of peppermint. And scientists now know that menthol actually tricks our brains ...

Most of us don't remember our first two or three years of life — but our earliest experiences may stick with us for years and continue to influence us well into adulthood.

Just how they influence us and how much is a question that researchers are still trying to answer. ...

After you've seized all the deals on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, it's giveback time.

Today is Giving Tuesday, the day that asks people to donate to a good cause. This online campaign was created three years ago by the 92nd Street Y, a cultural ...

Inflated home appraisals appear to be on the rise, according to the Wall Street Journal, in what industry executives see as a comeback of practices that were common leading up to the financial crisis.

An estimated one in seven home appraisals between 2011 and early 2014 inflated home ...

A recent dinner with my friends went something like this:

"Wait, who is going to take a Snapchat of all of us when our drinks arrive?"

"Oh no, I can't! My phone is dying."

"Guys, this is such a stereotypical millennial conversation. I am totally tweeting about this."

So ...

Nobody gets enough sleep these days and everyone needs to work harder. Sometimes coffee just doesn't seem like it's enough. Thus the temptation to apply pharmacology to thinking smarter, faster and longer.

One option is modafinil, a prescription drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat narcolepsy. "I ...

Almost one-third of people have trouble swallowing pills, according to German researchers. They say some people have so much trouble, they avoid taking the recommended dosage.

I have always loathed swallowing pills.

As a kid, I'd bury them under sofa cushions or hide them under carpets. I'd hide the pill under my tongue and spit it out later. My parents tried everything, including hiding tablets in food, but I was way too smart to fall for ...

For this series, we've been thinking a lot about some of the iconic objects that some of us remember using — if only for a short period of time — in our early schooling. Slide rules, the recorder, protractors and Bunsen burners.

But when the abacus came up, we ...

The flavors we savor are never just about taste.

Our taste buds allow us to distinguish the basic characteristics of food, like sweet, salty, bitter and sour. But we use our noses to sense more subtle flavors. Our sense of smell is what allows us to savor fine wines, delicately ...

I write about health and health care, but even I'm not immune to the "young and invincible" mentality. My annual dental checkup is more than six months overdue.

A provision of the Affordable Care Act that took effect in 2010 aimed to make it easier for young adults to access ...

How does a sunset work? We love to look at them, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her 8th graders to really think about them, to wonder and question.

So Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset ...

Our story on the impact of No Child Left Behind got lots of people talking.

As we reported, 2014 is the year when the amibitious goal of the 12-year-old law was to be met: One hundred percent of the nation's students would reach a "proficient level of academic achievement."

...

For many of us, chicken soup can soothe the soul and mac and cheese can erase a bad day. We eat chocolate when we feel gloomy, or when we've been in the presence of a Dementor. And we eat chocolate ice cream to help us get over a bad breakup.

...

"Always remember to use protection" is a fairly straightforward message for sexually active teens. But young women have a lot of options when it comes to the types of protection they can choose to use.

This week, the American Academy of Pediatricians recommended long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs ...

Depression is common in teenagers, with 11 percent being diagnosed by age 18, and many more having depressive symptoms. Social and academic stress can trigger depression, and rates of depression tend to peak in adolescence around the age of 16.

It doesn't help that stressed-out teens often fall into hopelessness, ...

Last year, the great European horse meat scandal alerted consumers around the world to food fraud. Traces of horse meat were found in Ikea meatballs and Burger King beef patties, in cottage pies sold at schools in Lancashire, England, and in frozen lasagna sold all over ...