Portside

While you feel miserable when you have an influenza infection, you can rest assured that it is because your body is fighting hard. It’s combating the spread of the virus in your lungs and killing infected cells.

In a report published this week in the journal Nature Microbiology, researchers describe a never-before-seen antibiotic agent that vanquished several strains of multidrug-resistant bacteria. In rats, the agent — which the researchers dubbed malacidin — attacked and broke down the cell walls of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and cleared the animals' MRSA skin infections within a day.

Having a longer life expectancy and averting death and averting hypertension, or diabetes, or their complications are good things. But without dealing with the kind of more structurally rooted factors that lead to weathering across class, we're not going to end weathering.

The Hamilton Mixtape: Immigrants (We Get The Job Done), Vaccines (John Oliver), Let America Be America Again, Cancion del Mariachi | Maan Hamadeh, From Russia, With an Apology for Trump (Stephen Colbert)

Why most of the tobacco epidemic remains in our future.

Experts say findings are ‘astounding’ and could help understand the purpose of dreams and predict whether people are dreaming

Aesthetic images can induce staggering changes to the body, including radical reductions in the observer’s stress levels.

A gold-standard clinical trial provides evidence that diet, exercise and an active social life can help prevent cognitive decline

Traditionally state vaccination policy and school vaccine mandates have been as close to a nonpartisan issue as we have in this country. There has usually been broad bipartisan support for such mandates and the idea that children should be vaccinated in order to attend school. It’s a consensus that has served the country well for many decades now. What I fear is that this consensus is breaking down, and—even worse—school vaccine policies are becoming a partisan issue.