NIH makes taxpayer-funded studies public
Why it matters: It's the latest move by the Trump administration to challenge scientific publishing and the way peer-reviewed studies are disseminated. Many journals are password-protected and not widely available to nonsubscribers.
The administration terminated millions of funding for Springer Nature, a scientific publishing behemoth that's long received subscription payments from NIH and other federal agencies, Axios scooped.
Driving the news: NIH director Jay Bhattacharya posted on X that NIH moved up the launch of its open-access policy from December to July 1.
"The American people should have immediate free access to the science that we so generously fund through the NIH. Starting today, we do," he wrote.
What they're saying: "Science journals are ripping the American people off with exorbitant access fees and extra charges to publish research openly," an HHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
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Scientific American
34 minutes ago
- Scientific American
How Massive Medicaid Cuts Will Harm People's Health
Money can't necessarily buy an individual good health—but for a society, it can. On July 3 the House of Representatives will vote on the Trump administration's new budget bill, which incorporates massive cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program that serves more than 70 million low-income people. The bill, which passed the Senate on July 1, would cut $930 billion from Medicaid, Medicare and Affordable Care Act funding combined over 10 years, with more than 11 million people losing coverage by 2034. Experts have calculated that, taken together, the cuts will lead to more than 51,000 additional deaths per year by decreasing people's access to health care. Experts say the evidence shows that gutting Medicaid will have dramatic effects on health far beyond people enrolled today—some of whom may not even realize they use Medicaid because the program goes by different names in different states. Even those with private insurance will be affected. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'When you slash $1 trillion from the health care system, you can't expect it not to have far-reaching harms,' says Megan Cole Brahim, a health policy researcher at Boston University. 'It will really affect everyone, including people who aren't enrolled in Medicaid.' The bill includes two main Medicaid-related provisions. One increases the requirements people must meet to qualify for and remain on Medicaid: This would drive down the total number of people who receive benefits, Cole Brahim says, leaving more people without coverage. The second provision reduces the amount of money the federal government sends to the states to fund Medicaid coverage. This will cause great variability in how different states handle the cuts, she notes, because each state will have authority to make its own choices about whether to try to scrounge up the funding from other sources to close the gap and maintain Medicaid access. Medicaid's Overall Health Impacts Cuts to Medicaid at the scale proposed in the House and Senate bills are unprecedented, Cole Brahim says, but scientists still have plenty of data to work from to predict the effects of such a massive cut. Researchers have tracked differences in health outcomes in states where Medicaid was expanded, particularly after the passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. That legislation gave states the option of extending Medicaid coverage to more people, up to those with an income of 138 percent of the federal poverty level, with federal support. So far, 40 states and Washington, D.C., have opted for expansion—and researchers have monitored health outcomes over time in those states compared with states that did not. 'Medicaid expansion was really a natural experiment,' says Brian Lee, a transplant hepatologist at the University of Southern California, who was co-author of a 2022 study in the Lancet that evaluated death rates in conjunction with Medicaid expansion across the U.S. When Medicaid coverage was offered to more people, overall death rates fell by nearly 12 per 100,000 adults per year on average. Where states were home to more women or more Black people, the decline in death rate was larger. And Lee notes that the 2022 findings are just the bird's-eye view of the way Medicaid access shapes people's health. For example, studies have found that more people get diagnosed with chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Medicaid expansion states. Earlier diagnosis permits earlier treatment, which, logically, would reduce mortality rates over the course of decades. 'Medicaid expansion, in relative terms, is pretty new,' Lee says; the earliest states began implementing the program in 2014. 'A lot of people think that, actually, the best benefits are to come' —or at least, they thought that they were to come. Medicaid for Specific Needs The new policy changes won't just affect the people who lose access to Medicaid in the short term. 'This isn't a small program for a fraction of our population,' Cole Brahim says. 'It covers about one in five people, and the majority of people in the United States will have had Medicaid at some point in their life.' One key area in which Medicaid is crucial is older adult health services and other long-term support, including both home-based care and residential facilities, says Jasmine Travers Altizer, a researcher at New York University who studies aging. Two out of three people in the U.S. will require some form of long-term health services at some point in their life, she says. Even after people reach the age of 65, Medicare—a companion federally run insurance program for older adults —only covers nursing home and daily home health care services for 100 days, she notes. Many people don't have independent long-term care coverage, which can cost thousands of dollars a year in premiums, leaving them with no real alternative to Medicaid. And when people can't access proper medical care, they often need to rely on relatives for support, including full-time care—which comes with its own economic consequences for families and society at large. Our youngest populations also depend on Medicaid, Cole Brahim says. More than two in five births are paid for by the service —a proportion that rises to more than half for Black and Hispanic births. And although proponents of the Trump administration's Medicaid cuts say that these changes wouldn't affect pregnant people and kids, Cole Brahim notes that they would absolutely prevent some people from having coverage before pregnancy. 'Making sure people are connected to care before they become pregnant is really critical for maximizing health outcomes, both for the mom and the baby,' she says. Medicaid Cuts Lead to Provider Shortages All three experts emphasize a universal risk to Medicaid cuts: the reduction of health care facilities and personnel. Federal Medicaid funds are used to directly cover care of individuals on Medicaid, but this money indirectly keeps practitioners' and hospitals' doors open. The steep cuts to federal funding will ultimately mean doctors and hospitals have more trouble making ends meet. As facilities begin to close, people in affected communities—regardless of their insurance provider—will face longer wait times for appointments and longer travel times to facilities that are still in operation. People in more rural communities, which are already underserved, may lose care access entirely, even while remaining insured. Cole Brahim is particularly worried that obstetric and pediatric care will see more closures, noting that these departments are often less profitable because insurance providers already reimburse these services at lower rates, she says. Travers Altizer is also concerned about the cuts' effects on nursing homes, which are in crisis as well. In one recent survey of nursing home providers, 27 percent said they would have to close their facilities if Medicaid cuts occurred. Even more—58 percent—said they would need to reduce current staffing; 44 percent they would slow new hires. For Travers Altizer, those possibilities mark a return to the early days of COVID, when staffing shortages left some nursing home residents unable to get out of bed or otherwise meet basic needs. She also notes that people whose lose Medicaid coverage because of cuts will still need to seek care; they'll just do it in different ways—ways that are ultimately more expensive overall. Rather than primary care visits, people will lean on emergency rooms. Without skilled medical support, people will rely on friends and family. Without federal money, people will continue turning to online fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe at ever increasing rates. 'There's this big idea that we need to cut Medicaid [because] we need to save money, and Medicaid is this big federal government program,' Travers Altizer says. 'But taking away this support won't save money; it's going to shift costs.'
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Time Magazine
Bald Eagles Are Thriving. Could Trump Change That?
It was only a few decades ago that the bald eagle, which has long been an American icon, was on the brink of extinction. Its comeback is largely credited to the Endangered Species Act, a 1973 law that established protections for threatened species—including the bald eagle. 'The bald eagle has been a poster child for the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act,' says Bill Bowerman, professor of wildlife ecology and toxicology at the University of Maryland. It was only on Christmas Eve last year that the Biden Administration officially designated the bird as America's national bird. But now, as the Trump Administration proposes a rule change that would alter the definition of 'harm' under the act, the Endangered Species Act's power to preserve habitats and protected species around the country could be at risk. The goal of the Endangered Species Act is to provide a framework for saving threatened animals and their environments. The act ended up recovering the bald eagle, considered near extinction in the 1960s, with only 417 known nesting pairs recorded in the lower 48 states in 1963. Now, the bird is no longer under threat; they were delisted from the Endangered Species Act in 2007. Today, there are over 71,400 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the wild. These birds of prey seem to be thriving. Many might not know, but bald eagles are migratory birds. While some choose to live in the same region year-round, others travel far distances during the year. And their range is expanding with our changing climate; during their migration season, the birds are now moving further north than in previous years, and are laying their eggs earlier. Scientists say they are keeping an eye on these changes, though. While they are not yet impacting the bird's reproduction or food sources, they are seeing new challenges emerge. 'This year, at the end of March in Michigan, there was a three day freezing rain event, and it put up to one inch thick ice on trees,' says Bowerman. 'So it brought down some nest sites.' During their migrations they also rely heavily on National Parks—many of which have been facing cuts under the Trump Administration. 'When they migrate, it appears that they use state, national, county, federal parks, or protected lands as stepping stones,' says Scott Rush, associate professor the department of wildlife, fisheries, and aquaculture at Mississippi State University. 'If we lose some of these areas, we don't have the support mechanisms for these birds over these large places.' It's not just the likely elimination of protections to National Parks, however, that could impact the birds. Opening up more forests to industry is also a potential threat to their habitats. In April, the Trump Administration proposed a rule change that would continue to prohibit actions that harm or kill endangered species, but rescind protections for their habitats. Habitat destruction is the greatest threat to endangered species—and could put others at risk. The move is part of the administration's plan to increase drilling and logging in the United States. Regardless of whether these changes come into effect, our daily habits could also be impacting bald eagles. These days, one of the leading killers for bald eagles is electrocution from power lines. 'As temperature changes, whether it be hotter or colder, there's a greater need for more electricity, and a lot of bald eagles nest on utility towers, and some of the issues with utility towers is that the birds can get electrocuted or they can cause outages,' says Rush. Bowerman says that it serves as a reminder that we should be doing more, not less, when it comes to protecting the species that live alongside us. 'We need to have greater appreciation for species and learn about them before we discount them and just write them off.'
Scientific American
an hour ago
- Scientific American
New Interstellar Object Stuns Scientists as It Zooms through Solar System
Late in the evening on July 1, a telescope in Chile that is part of the global, NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) picked up on a new moving dot in the sky, an object moving past the orbit of Jupiter. When Larry Denneau, software engineer at ATLAS, alerted the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to the observation, 'it looked like a completely routine discovery.' That would soon change. To his surprise, the object—provisionally named A11pI3Z—turned out to be the third interstellar visitor known to science. Now, mere days after its discovery, frenzied follow-up work by astronomers around the world to further scrutinize A11pI3Z and look for additional apparitions in archival observations has given the object a new, more official name: Comet 3I/Atlas, for the telescope that first discovered it. What seems to have been the clinching evidence for its interstellar nature emerged from the efforts of a group of amateur astronomers, called the Deep Random Survey, who were first to track the object down in images other ATLAS telescopes had captured in late June. 'We had quite a bit of confusion from the get-go,' says Sam Deen, a member of the group. 'Our systems are usually tuned to expect that a new discovery is an object firmly stuck inside the solar system,' but Atlas was playing outside of those rules. The earlier observations—which soon also included 'pre-discovery' sightings from the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California as well as other telescopes—allowed a more precise calculation of the object's trajectory. Whatever it was, the object was zooming down toward the inner solar system at almost 70 kilometers per second. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. That's 'far faster than any solar system object should be able to move,' Deen notes, because such speeds ensure objects will slip through the sun's gravitational grasp. Anything moving so quickly simply can't hang around long; rather than following a typical parabolic orbit, 3I/Atlas's blistering speed is carving out a hyperbolic orbit, a path that takes the object swooping through the inner solar system before soaring back out into the interstellar void. It most likely came from the outskirts of some other planetary system, ejected from its tenuous twirling around some alien sun by gravitational interactions with a giant planet or another passing star. Exactly where it came from and when it began its galactic journey, however, no one can say. There is no threat to Earth, as during its brief sojourn in the solar system 3I/Atlas is projected to come no nearer than about 240 million kilometers to our planet. The object will make its closest approach to the sun on October 30, reaching a distance of about 210 million kilometers, just within the orbit of Mars. As it approaches in coming months, astronomers will intensify their studies, hoping to learn more about this mysterious visitor. What's already relatively clear, however, is 3I/Atlas's cometary nature; more than 100 observations have now trickled in from telescopes around the globe, including some that show hints the object is enveloped in a cloud of gas and dust and trailing a tail of debris as ices on its surface warm in the sun's radiance. Astronomers normally use a distant object's brightness as a proxy for its size, with brighter objects tending to be bigger as well. But a comet's ejected material is usually bright, too, interfering with such crude estimates. Consequently, 'right now we really don't know how big it is; it could be anywhere from 5 to 50 kilometers in diameter,' Denneau says. Closer looks with more powerful observatories, including the keen-eyed infrared James Webb Space Telescope, should soon help clarify its dimensions and also its composition. 'I am interested in whether the comet looks like objects from our own solar system,' Denneau says. 'The answer is interesting either way. If it has the same composition as a normal comet, it means that other solar systems may be built similarly to ours. If it's completely different, then we might wonder why that is.' The first interstellar object observed, 1I/' Oumuamua, appeared on the scene in 2017 and perplexed researchers with its oddly elongated shape and a bizarrely accelerating trajectory. Those strange features led some researchers to propose an idea— now convincingly debunked —that 'Oumuamua was a derelict alien spacecraft adrift in the Milky Way. Then in 2019 came the second observed interstellar object, 2I/Borisov, which bore all the hallmarks of a run-of-the-mill comet and thus inspired few if any outlandish claims of alien involvement. '[ATLAS] will be a tiebreaker of sorts,' says Mario Juric, an astronomer at the University of Washington and discovery software lead at the recently completed Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. '[Will it] give us a sense 'Oumuamua was the odd one out, or is the universe a lot more interesting than we imagined?' Rubin— a unique telescope with a panoramic view that will survey the entire overhead sky every few days—is seen as especially critical for solving the lingering mysteries of these first emissaries from interstellar space. As the observatory's survey progresses in months and years to come, it should uncover many more visitors from the great beyond, allowing astronomers to begin studying them as a population rather than scattered, isolated one-offs. Ultimately, if Rubin or another facility manages to spot an interstellar object fortuitously poised to pass relatively close to Earth, astronomers might even be able to gain an extremely close-up view via a spacecraft rendezvous. The European Space Agency (ESA) already has such a mission in the works, in fact—Comet Interceptor, a sentinel spacecraft set to launch as early as 2029 to await some inbound destination. 'There is a small chance that Comet Interceptor might be able to visit an interstellar object if one is found on the right trajectory, and the new Vera C. Rubin observatory should give us an increased rate of discovery of these objects,' says Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh who is part of the ESA mission. All of which has astronomers on the edges of their seats, eager to dive deeper into a new frontier in our cosmic understanding. 'This is probably the most excited I've been about any astronomical discovery in years,' Deen says.
