Research & Policy

Meet Dylan, the dog who started a million-dollar movement for canine cancer research. Since 2009 Orvis and our customers have raised more than $1 Million dollars to help fund canine cancer research through our Orvis Cover Dog Contest.

A deadly explosion at a wastewater plant in Florida led two Xylem employees on a six-year journey to improve the safety of wastewater workers. Their new book combines science with reports on some of the biggest accidents in recent history.

Ebola, Zika, SARS and the return of avian flu to the headlines recently are reminders that the threat of a new epidemic is never far away. With increased air travel and populations on the move, it doesn’t take long for a virus to spread between countries and jump across continents, with potentially catastrophic results.

Aflac, the leading provider of voluntary insurance sales at the worksite in the U.S., announced it exceeded its 2016 goal for social interactions regarding the company’s #Duckprints campaign for childhood cancer.

More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas and healthcare services in growing cities are struggling. Experts from around the world are in Cape Town this week to discuss this growing health challenge at the Novartis Foundation Urban Health in Africa Dialogue event.

One rainy day last fall, Anneliese Tanner scrolled through photos of sweet potatoes on her phone.The managers at some of the 114 school cafeterias under her watch in the Austin Independent School District were posting photos of the vegetables as their cooks made baked sweet potatoes for the first time.

If the thought of school cafeteria food conjures memories of cooked-’til-they’re-slimy green beans, grease-soaked pizza and gravy-covered mystery meat, here’s some news to savor. Kids in Austin today are enjoying an entirely different school-lunch experience.

In so many ways, the gadgets seen in Star Trek remind us that the show is science fiction—a fantasy world inspired by the one we live in. And at times, the show can act as a glimpse into the future. The medical tricorder—that all-in-one portable device that can accurately diagnose anything—sits somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Medical tech has gotten smaller and more accurate, but we've yet to design a handheld diagnostic panacea. That could change soon.

The contest to create the world’s first medical tricorder is down to two teams. Currently, both teams are undergoing the consumer testing phase of the competition and we should have a winner by the first half of 2017. Which puts the invention of the medical tricorder about 200 years ahead of schedule.