Jonathan Lambert
Jonathan Lambert is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk, where he covers the wonders of the natural world and how policy decisions can affect them.
Lambert has been covering science, health and policy for nearly a decade. He was a staff writer at Science News and Grid. He's also written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Quanta Magazine and other outlets, exploring everything from why psychedelics are challenging how people evaluate drugs to how researchers reconstructed life's oldest common ancestor. Lambert got his start in science journalism answering vital questions from curious kids, including "Do animals fart?" for Brains On, a podcast from American Public Media. He interned for NPR's Science Desk in 2019 where he wrote about the evolutionary benefits of living close to grandma and racial gaps between who causes air pollution and who breathes it.
Lambert earned a Master's degree in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, where he studied the unusual sex lives of Hawaiian crickets. [Copyright 2024 NPR]
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To get slightly ahead of the virus, health officials need to quickly identify people at risk of infection, a practice known as contact tracing. That's a challenge in the Democratic Republic of Congo. -
Farmers in Senegal are welcoming fish into their rice paddies. The hope is they'll fertilize the crop, be a source of food ... and eat the snails that carry parasitic worms. -
The strain of the virus that's responsible for the current outbreak has no specific treatments or preventive measures. Three new clinical trials could provide possible breakthroughs. -
Through an innovative program, parents in Senegal had easy access to a therapeutic food that's a boon for malnourished kids. Now there are shortages. Health specialists say U.S. aid cuts are to blame. -
The DRC has improved testing capacity for Ebola with two facilities operating in or near the epicenter. But this still may not be enough to keep up with a rapidly expanding disease. -
There is an effective vaccine for Ebola — but not for the variety spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trials are going on for several candidates. How long will it take? -
Three vaccine candidates are being fast-tracked to target the Ebola species spreading in Central Africa. Big organizations and companies are behind the effort, but logistics are complicated.
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It's a virus that can strike with unrelenting force. The kind of care need to knock it out is often not fully available in a lower resource country like the Democratic Republic of Congo. -
The Ebola outbreak in Africa was announced last week, then quickly declared an emergency. It's likely that cuts in U.S. aid contributed to a delay in identifying the outbreak. -
The sheer number of cases and deaths are a sign that the outbreak might have been smoldering before the virus was identified.
