Michaeleen Doucleff

This week we got a rude reminder that Ebola is clearly not over in West Africa.

Another American aid worker contracted the disease in Sierra Leone, health officials reported Thursday. The infected worker was flown back to the U.S. in a private jet and is being treated at the ...

It's March. It's freezing. And there's half a foot of snow on the ground. When is this winter going to end?

Many scientists think that climate change might be one cause of this year's "snowpocalypse" in Boston and bitter cold snaps in New York and Washington.

But physicists at

For centuries, arsenic was the go-to poison for murder.

If you wanted to knock off an heir to the throne or speed up the arrival of your inheritance, all you had to do was add a dollop of rat poison to your rival's food. They wouldn't see or taste it. ...

The Ebola epidemic has taken a heartbreaking toll on children.

More than 1,000 children have died from the disease. Even more have lost parents, grandparents and siblings.

"To date, 16,600 children have been registered as having lost one or both parents or primary caregivers," UNICEF's Timothy James Irwin ...

Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, health officials have been saying for months. Now there's a new tool to help do the trick.

The World Health Organization approved the first quick test for Ebola Friday. The test gives results in about 15 minutes, instead of hours. So ...

Sharpen your Swiss Army knives and grab an extra roll of duct tape, because Mac may be coming back. The creators are looking to the fans to design the new show. And there's one big twist.

Ebola is especially deadly for children and babies. About 80 percent of those infected have died. But one man knew instinctively that love and affection could make a difference.

In 1962, children's book author Roald Dahl lost his oldest daughter, Olivia, to measles. She was 7 years old.

Twenty-six years later, Dahl wrote a letter to parents about what happened:

"As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and ...

The tide may have turned on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Last week, only 99 cases were reported. That's the lowest weekly count since June.

Cases have plummeted in the two countries hit hardest by Ebola, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In December, ...

World maps distort. It's inherent in their design.

Take a spherical object (the Earth) and try to represent it on a flat plane (paper). Some parts of the sphere are going to get distorted. (On most maps, Canada and Russia get puffed up, while countries along the equator get shrunk.)

...

Delhi belly. That's what my brother-in-law calls the rumble in his stomach he invariably gets on business trips to India.

Like many travelers, he pops a few Cipro when Dehli belly hits. That may stop the microbes causing the GI distress, but it also opens the door to another unwanted ...

In many ways, music and emotion almost seem interchangeable.

Try listening to the Star Wars' Cantina Band song without smiling, or to the Psycho soundtrack without feeling a little tense.

But what if you had never heard Western music before. Would these songs still make you feel the same ...

Back in July, NPR launched a new blog. It had a funny name, but a clear objective: To tell memorable stories about people who don't get much attention, who may face big problems, from health to poverty, but who still thrive.

So which of the stories on Goats and ...

A handful of ecologists knew for years that West Africa was at risk for an Ebola outbreak. Now they're figuring out where else in the world the virus could be hiding. Many signs point to Asia.

While some Americans worried that Ebola would spread around the U.S., a new mosquito-borne virus flew right in. It sickened more than 2,000 Americans and nearly a million people across the Caribbean.

Dengue — aka "breakbone fever" — has been a tough nut to crack when it comes to making a vaccine.

The problem is that the mosquito-borne virus comes in four flavors, or strains. Vaccines that work on one strain haven't worked well on the others.

Now scientists at Imperial College ...

Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, says the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Thomas Frieden is visiting West Africa this week to figure out how to reduce the time it takes to find new Ebola cases and isolate them.

Otherwise, Ebola ...

Viruses are masters at mutating.

So the big concern with deadly viruses, like Ebola and hepatitis C, is that they will evolve into more dangerous forms over time.

It looks like just the opposite is happening with HIV — although it's happening slowly.

"HIV can generate any mutation in the ...

Here's an Ebola puzzle for you: If the virus isn't airborne, why do doctors and nurses need to wear full protective suits, with face masks, while treating patients?

After we dug through studies and talked to scientists, the answer slowly emerged.

Ebola does spread through the air. But not through ...

Dogs pay close attention to the emotion in our voices, but what about the meaning of words? A clever experiment with 250 canines shows that dogs understand more of our speech than previously thought.