What We Know About Omicron's BA.2 Variant So Far

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April 04, 2022

Epidemiology What We Know About Omicron's BA.2 Variant So Far Does the new strain sweeping the globe mean COVID will become ever more contagious? By Charles Schmidt

Astronomy New Revelations Raise Pressure on NASA to Rename the James Webb Space Telescope E-mailed exchanges show the space agency's internal struggle to address pleas to change the controversial name of its latest, greatest observatory By Adam Mann

Pollution The U.S. Must Take Responsibility for Nuclear Fallout in the Marshall Islands Congress needs to fund independent research on radioactive contamination and how to clean it up By Hart Rapaport,Ivana Nikolić Hughes

Climate Change Little Snow Is Left in California, Setting Up a Dangerous Wildfire Season As of April 1, statewide snowpack stood at just 38 percent of the average for that date By Anne C. Mulkern,E&E News

Astrophysics Are Telescopes the Only Way to Find Dark Matter? If the invisible matter does not appear in experiments or particle colliders, we may have to find it in space By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Creativity Spark Creativity with Thomas Edison's Napping Technique Waking yourself from the twilight state just before sleep may help you to solve a challenging problem, a study shows By Bret Stetka

Conservation 60 Years after Silent Spring Warned Us, Birds--and Humanity--Are Still in Trouble Data show alarming declines in wildlife but also point to ways to save it By Naomi Oreskes

Policy Science News Briefs from around the World: April 2022 In case you missed it By Joanna Thompson

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 31, Issue 2s

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Vaccines Remain Effective against BA.2, but Protection from Infection Wanes over Time Such protection declines within months of the mRNA COVID vaccines' third dose. Yet the vaccines continue to ward off severe disease By Saima May Sidik,Nature magazine | March 2022

QUOTE OF THE DAY "We still don't know the full capacity of this virus to evolve and make radically new types of variants." Jeffrey Shaman, infectious disease modeler at Columbia University's School of Public Health

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