The agency’s top medical official was responding to rumors that Suni Williams had lost an unusual amount of weight during an extended stay in orbit.Suni Williams, a NASA astronaut currently on the International Space Station, is healthy and not suffering from any medical problems, NASA’s top medical officer said on Thursday.The unusual pronouncement was prompted by news articles suggesting that Ms. Williams was experiencing health problems during an unplanned extended stay in orbit. That in turn set off widespread rumors on social media.Ms. Williams, 59, addressed the issue directly on Tuesday during an interview with New England Sports Network.“I think there’s some rumors around outside there that I’m losing weight and stuff,” she said. “No, I’m actually right at the same amount.”Ms. Williams is one of the two astronauts whose stay at the space station was stretched from eight days to eight months because of propulsion problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there in June. While taking pains to insist that Ms. Williams and Butch Wilmore, the other astronaut, were not stranded, NASA decided that Starliner would return to Earth empty and that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore would join the space station crew until February. They are to head home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft instead.A photograph that NASA released in late September showed Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore making pizza on the space station. Ms. Williams’s face appeared sunken and thin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Folic acid is to be added to non-wholemeal wheat flour in the UK to help prevent birth defects.

A sharp partisan divide remains over how involved researchers should be in policy decisions.For the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the public’s trust in scientists has improved, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.About 76 percent of Americans say they have confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interest, a modest but significant improvement from last year but about 10 points lower than the figure before the pandemic.This year’s uptick was driven largely by a slight increase in trust among Republicans, a group that also experienced the steepest drop in confidence during the pandemic, said Alec Tyson, a Pew researcher and the report’s lead author.Still, the roughly 9,500 Americans surveyed were divided over whether scientists should play a role in policy decisions — a particularly timely issue now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to appoint leaders of the country’s science and health agencies.About half of the survey respondents said experts should take “an active role” in policy debates about scientific issues, like childhood vaccines and climate change, while the other half said they should focus instead on “establishing sound scientific facts.”Respondents were largely split along partisan lines: 67 percent of Democrats believed scientists should be involved in policy debates, compared with just 35 percent of Republicans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Clare SmyrellThe high price of baby formula makes parents feel “punished” for not breastfeeding, mums and dads have told the BBC.

Family handoutLucy will never again dance with her three-year-old daughter or hold her 12-month-old baby boy. She died by suicide in September this year after suffering from postnatal depression and psychosis.

Getty ImagesScreening men born with a high risk of developing prostate cancer, once they reach the age of 45, makes financial sense, a cancer charity says.

MARK MARLOW/EPA-EFE/REX/ShutterstockPharmacy owners in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted in favour of cutting opening hours and stopping home deliveries for the first time, in a protest over government funding.

A teenager in British Columbia was hospitalized in critical condition with the disease, and officials were working to find out how the person was exposed to the virus.A teenager was hospitalized and in critical condition after contracting bird flu, in what Canadian officials said on Tuesday was the country’s first known case of the virus being transmitted to a human.Health officials in British Columbia were investigating how the teenager came down with the disease despite having no known links to poultry farms, the most common sites where bird flu has been detected in Canada.The virus, called H5N1, is a low risk to the public, health officials said, because it does not spread easily between people. But prolonged outbreaks, such as a cluster in U.S. dairy cattle can increase the chances of the virus mutating and spreading.There have been 46 cases of people contracting the virus in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all of them farm workers. Most cases have been mild.About 36 people who came into contact with the young person in Canada have tested negative for the virus and were offered a preventative course of antiviral medication, Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s health officer, said at a news conference on Tuesday. Pets also tested negative.Bird flu, or avian influenza, has not broken out in Canadian dairy farms, but at least two dozen poultry farms have detected the virus since October 2024, officials said.Officials are making painstaking efforts to track down the source of the viral exposure in British Columbia.“There is a very real possibility that we may not ever determine the source, but at this point, we have a number of leads that we’re following,” Dr. Henry said. “We will be tracking down everyone because this is such a rare event.”Officials would not disclose the age or gender of the teenager, but said the person was in critical condition and receiving treatment at the B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver after being admitted on Friday.About a week before that, the teenager went to a hospital emergency room complaining of respiratory symptoms, and had pink eye, fever and a cough. The teenager was sent home at the time and did not attend school before being admitted to the hospital, Dr. Henry said.There has only been one other case, in 2014, of bird flu in a Canadian citizen. Experts say they believe that person contracted the virus during a trip to China, where H5N1 was first discovered about two decades ago. That Canadian later died.British Columbia has warned members of the public to avoid handling dead birds or allowing pets near them.Poultry farmers were also warned to take caution.“People who are raising ducks and chickens and other domestic fowl are advised to keep their flocks indoors, as these birds are spreading their avian flu viruses up and down North America,” said Dr. Brian Ward, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who researches infectious diseases.

New research suggests symptoms of the disorder may be less severe in those with a demanding schedule.In high school, Sophie Didier started falling behind. She found it difficult to concentrate on her schoolwork, felt restless in class and often got in trouble for talking too much.“I had a teacher that used to give me suckers so that I would shut up,” she said.At 15, a doctor diagnosed her with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Medication helped, but she discovered that having a demanding schedule was also important. In both high school and college, her grades improved when she was juggling lacrosse and other extracurricular activities with her classes. Being so busy forced her to stick to a routine.“I felt more organized then,” recalled Ms. Didier, now 24 and living in Kansas City, Mo. “Like I had a better handle on things.”Research has shown that A.D.H.D. symptoms can change over time, improving and then worsening again or vice versa. And according to a recently published study, having additional responsibilities and obligations is associated with periods of milder A.D.H.D. This might mean that staying busy had been beneficial, researchers said. It could also just mean that people with milder symptoms had been able to handle more demands, they added.Oftentimes, people with A.D.H.D. “seem to do best when there’s an urgent deadline or when the stakes are high,” said Margaret Sibley, who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and who led the study.The study, published online in October in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, tracked 483 patients in the United States and Canada who each had a combination of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive A.D.H.D. symptoms. The researchers followed the participants for 16 years, starting at an average age of 8. They found that about three-quarters of the patients experienced fluctuations in their symptoms, generally beginning around age 12, which included either a full or partial remission of symptoms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The fashion industry “should be concerned” by a trend back to using more skinny models, the editorial director of British Vogue has said.