Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The New York Times: Covid-Sniffing Dogs Are Accurate, But Wide Use Faces Hurdles
Dog noses are great Covid-19 detectors, according to numerous laboratory studies, and Covid sniffing dogs have already started working in airports in other countries and at a few events in the United States, like a Miami Heat basketball game. But some experts in public health and in training scent dogs say that more information and planning are needed to be certain they are accurate in real life situations. (Gorman, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Seeking Clues To Mysteries Of Coronavirus By Studying A Person’s Ability To Taste Bitterness 
When the coronavirus began its furious march around the globe, leaving illness, death and suffering in its path, medical researchers urgently set out to understand the disease, known as covid-19. Efforts to explain where it came from, how it affects people in such different ways and what can be done about it have produced more than 475,000 publications supported by about 26,000 organizations in 198 countries, according to the Dimensions covid-19 database. The scientific research that resulted in all those publications often begins with an observation. In the early days of the pandemic, Henry P. Barham, a 38-year-old ear, nose and throat doctor and researcher at Baton Rouge General, was operating three to four days a week, performing tracheotomies, and the removal of skull-based tumors, and some days did 30 nasal endoscopies — procedures that increased risk of exposure to covid-19 through aerosolization, the broadcasting of viral particles. (Bartlett, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Inside Pfizer’s Race To Produce The World’s Biggest Supply Of Covid Vaccine
The first attempt to produce industrial-scale quantities of the experimental vaccine that has played a central role in arresting the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was a total failure. Operators at a Pfizer plant outside Kalamazoo hoped the trial run could provide quick validation of the company’s gamble on a newfangled mRNA technology. It also was an early test of Pfizer’s strategy of refusing government aid to develop and rapidly ramp up commercial scale production of its vaccine. (Rowland, 6/16)

The New York Times: What The C.E.O. Of Pfizer And Other Covid-19 Fighters Learned From Their Parents
Various people working to stop the pandemic reflected on the life skills their parents taught them: determination, teamwork, resilience and more. (Weiner, 6/11)

The Washington Post: The Pandemic Books Are Here. We Read Them.
As the first big wave of coronavirus books arrives, it's shedding new light on the outbreak — and raising questions when those stories conflict. The pandemic literary moment is hard to miss, with reporters, pundits and politicians afflicted by book contracts. (Diamond, 6/15)

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The Atlantic: The IVF Cases That Broke U.S. Birthright Citizenship
Ethan and Aiden Dvash-Banks are twin brothers—born just four minutes apart on the same September day in the same hospital room in Ontario, Canada. But shortly after their birth in 2016, the U.S. State Department decided that the two boys were very different in the eyes of American law: Aiden was a U.S. citizen but Ethan, the brother with whom he’d shared a womb, was not. The reasoning, as it were, came down to how the boys had been conceived, via technology that a half-century-old immigration law could have in no way anticipated. The boys’ fathers, Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, used eggs from an anonymous donor, a gestational surrogate, and their own sperm. Aiden was genetically related to Andrew and Ethan to Elad, but each considered himself a father, in equal measure, to both boys. American officials didn’t see it that way, though: What mattered to them was that Andrew is an American citizen, which allowed him to pass his citizenship to his genetic son. But Elad is Israeli, so his genetic son was denied U.S. citizenship. (Zhang, 6/10)3

ABC News: Woman Carries Baby For Her Twin Sister Who Had Hysterectomy Due To Pregnancy-Related Cancer 
When Sarah Sharp was diagnosed in 2018 with a rare gynecological cancer and told unexpectedly that she may need an emergency hysterectomy, her twin sister, Cathey Stoner, was there for her. "Cathey rushed to the emergency room to be by my side," Sharp, now 33, told "Good Morning America." "And that was the first time she said to me, 'If you need to have a hysterectomy, I'll have your babies.'" (Kindelan, 6/16)

The Washington Post: Makenzie Madsen Died Awaiting A Heart Transplant. Her Sisters Sell Lemonade To Help Kids Like Her. 
Before her last birthday, Makenzie Madsen’s family members pooled their money to get her a $200 snow-cone maker — an apt gift for a girl who had made the icy treats by hand and hawked them to her neighbors for four straight summers. Makenzie never got to use it. Diagnosed with two heart defects at 14 months old, Makenzie received her first heart transplant a few months later. She had been waiting for a kidney and another heart for nearly a year when her organs began to shut down last July, said her mom, Monica Madsen. Makenzie, 14, had to be taken off the waiting list for donations, and she died the night she came home from the hospital. (Iati, 6/14)

NBC News: This Is Your Brain, In Glorious Color
A map of a fragment of a human brain reveals for the first time its astonishing intricacy, while providing new evidence of both the brain's physical structure and one of the ways it's thought to function. The map is the culmination of years of work by scientists to trace the vast network of cells and connections within the sample, which was taken roughly a decade ago from the brain of a patient undergoing surgery to prevent serious epileptic seizures. (Metcalfe, 6/15)

The Atlantic: Just Seeing Another Sick Bird Can Jump-Start A Bird’s Immune System
The agents of immunity are so risk-averse that even the dread of facing off with a pathogen can sometimes prompt them to gird their little loins. Ashley Love, a biologist at the University of Connecticut, has seen this happen in birds. A few years ago, she stationed healthy canaries within eyeshot of sick ones, infected with a bacterium that left the birds sluggish and visibly unwell. The healthy canaries weren’t close enough to catch the infection themselves. But the mere sight of their symptomatic peers revved up their immune systems all the same, Love and her colleagues report today in Biology Letters. Love, who did the research as a graduate student at Oklahoma State University, had an inkling that the experiment would work before she did it. In 2010, the psychologist Mark Schaller, at the University of British Columbia, and his colleagues described a similar reaction in humans looking through photos of people who were sneezing or covered in rashes. The study subjects’ immune cells then reacted aggressively when exposed to bits of bacteria, a hint that the pictures had somehow whipped the body into fighting form, Schaller told me. (Wu, 6/8)

NBC News: McDonald's French Fries, Carrots, Onions: All Of The Foods That Come From Bill Gates Farmland
They own the soil where the potatoes in McDonald’s french fries grow, the carrots from the world’s largest producer and the onions that Americans sauté every night for dinner. But they’re far better known for their work in tech and in trying to save the climate. Bill and Melinda Gates, who recently announced they’re getting divorced and are dividing their assets, are deeply invested in American agriculture. The billionaire couple, in less than a decade, have accumulated more than 269,000 acres of farmland across 18 states, more than the entire acreage of New York City. The farmland was purchased through a constellation of companies that all link back to the couple’s investment group, Cascade Investments, based in Kirkland, Washington. (Glaser, 6/8)