Manu Prakash holding string with paper circle suspended on it (Kurt Hickman/Stanford News Service)

How a toy became a medical miracle

Inspired by a whirligig, a Stanford researcher developed a 20-cent paper centrifuge that could revolutionize health care diagnosis around the world.
Girl holding two cups of water, one clean, one dirty (P&G)

Science and business are opening the spigot to clean water [video]

This World Water Day, nearly 750 million people lack access to clean drinking water. Scientists and businesses are doing something about it.
School of small fish (Shutterstock)

These fish hold clues to human eyesight … and other...

April 7 is World Health Day. Find out how spinach leaves and zebrafish may soon help people around the world live longer, healthier lives.
Second lady Karen Pence, dressed in green (© Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Vice president’s wife puts spotlight on art therapy

Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Pence, champions both children and art therapy as she travels with her husband around the world.
Boy under mosquito net (© AP Images)

Let’s end malaria for good

World Malaria Day is April 25. Learn the methods one community in Kenya is using to create huge reductions in the number of malaria cases.

Spray mosquitoes. Use nets. Stop disease.

About 130 years ago, science learned how mosquitoes carry disease. Flash forward to today, and see the greatest progress ever to prevent and cure malaria.
Long mounds of trash in Beirut (© AP Images)

Lebanon takes out the trash

The streets of Beirut are finally getting cleared of the heaps of trash that have mounted ever since Lebanon’s largest landfill closed nearly a year ago.
Janet and Philomena Sylva (© AP Images)

International effort helps Gambian girl get her grin back

Janet Sylva can smile again, thanks to surgeons in New York who removed a cantaloupe-sized tumor from the Gambian girl's mouth and rebuilt her jaw.
Close-up view of cancer cell (Shutterstock)

Could we cure cancer once and for all?

The U.S. will try to cut in half the time it typically takes to make advances in cancer research. Learn more about the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act.