Two years ago, virtually no one had heard of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In a January 2014 New Yorker interview, President Obama dismissed the group as “Junior Varsity.”

Since then, ISIS has emerged as one of the most wealthy, powerful and dangerous terrorist organizations that ever existed.

ISIS now possesses more than US...

Young Americans don’t care much for political parties. According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of millennials (ages 18-33) identify as independents. That’s almost as many as identify as Democrats (28 percent) and Republicans (18 percent) put together.

Political scientists are often skeptical about the independent option in...

Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day.

This...

The SAT, the test that many schools require to check for college readiness, has recently gone through a makeover. Perhaps the most significant change is to the writing portion of the SAT, which presents students with new and more complex reading and and writing challenges.

College Board, the...

“Stop the spread of superbugs,” “15 superbugs and other scary diseases” and “Superbug bacteria found in tested hotel rooms” are headlines we often read or hear about. But what do we mean when we say “bugs”?

The term is used to describe viruses, bacteria and parasites. While they can all make us sick,...

When Anonymous declared “total war” on Donald Trump in early March, the hacktivist group set a countdown clock, calling on “everyone to target Trump websites” on April 1. But that may not have been its real objective.

Regardl...

“But hasn’t TB been eradicated?,” my seatmate on a recent flight to South Africa asked me. This question crops up pretty frequently when I tell people what I do for a living. I research the development of diagnostic tests for diseases using breath, sputum, blood and urine, and at the moment I am working on a diagnostic breath...

Many regions of the United States are struggling with water shortages. Large areas of the West are contending with moderate to severe drought, while California is now in the fifth year of one of the most extreme droughts in its history. Even non-arid regions, such as the Southeast, are...

Economic inequality is now firmly on the public agenda as candidates and voters alike look for someone to blame for stagnant wages, entrenched poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor.

Bernie Sanders blames Wall Street. Donald Trump points his finger at companies...

The Justice Department has managed to unlock an iPhone 5c used by the gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December. The high-profile case has pitted federal law enforcement agencies against...