Month

In the 1990s, scientist Ivan Casas traveled to the Peruvian Andes in search of human microbes. Casas was head of research for a Swedish probiotics company called BioGaia. He believed that mammals, including people, passed beneficial microbes to their young via breast milk. But he’d been unable to isolate one species he thought should be there (Lactobacillus reuteri) in breast milk from women in the US or urban areas

(Original title: What size shirt do ‘Hispanics’ wear?) In 2008, an entrepreneur named Seph Skerritt was frustrated with the way he shopped for clothes. Then a student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he chafed at the time wasted while trying on garments in stores. Often, he thought, you settled on an ill-fitting item just to get the drudgery over with. While on an internship in Asia, Skerritt had enco