Tuesday June 3rd, 2014
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GeneTrends
Human
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(Credit: Daniel Lobo/Flickr)
The brain remains an inscrutable mystery. A new research project gives us a peek at brain gene activity during fetal life. But with all other research involving human behavior, ethical issues arise, especially when discussing selective reproduction.
Agriculture
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Screen Shot 2014-06-03 at 11.42.22 AM
Anti-GMO activists and even some media reports claim that farmers growing GM crops "douse" or "drench" their fields in "dangerous chemicals," glyphosate in particular. Our Iowa farmer contributing writer unmasks the farce of that claim. It would sure improve dialogue if people who write about farming actually knew how it worked.
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The European Commission's chief science adviser said publicly that politics impedes her ability to give unbiased advice to European policy makers. She proposes setting up a new, independent research committee to handle briefings outside the echo chamber of advocacy.
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When asked if they believe in evolution, half of Americans say no. Experts largely regard this as a test of the public's scientific literacy. But these tests might be confounding people's beliefs with what they actually know about the scientific theory.
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How can we predict organisms behavior and physiology from their genomes? The language of DNA was always thought to be universal and immutable. But, a new study focusing on codons shows that biology is far less predictable than we thought.
Over the past year, the editorial boards of a number of major liberal US publications have endorsed the safety of GM crops and rebuked mandatory GMO labeling. Now, the Washington Post weighs in, concluding GM crops could help address global hunger.
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From the origins of their 'special powers' to GMO labeling and mutant registration, the parallels between the debate over GMOs and the treatment of mutants in the X-Men series are striking.
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Jackson county's new ban on most GMO crops has deepened a cultural chasm in the greater Rogue Valley and Oregon in general, exposing fundamental divisions about where agriculture should head.
Construction woes aside, visitors to the World Cup in Brazil face a serious threat of mosquito-borned dengue fever. Over 2.5 billion people – more than 40% of the world's population – are now at risk from dengue. The World Health Organization estimates there may be 50–100 million dengue infections worldwide every year. Many cases could be prevented by an already-developed GM mosquito--if anti-GMO fears were not blocking it.
I’ve written in the past regarding some of the seminal hypotheses of how the microbiome influences our health, behavior, and development. New supportive research backs this clock up just about as far as it can go – to the development of the embryo and placenta. Science Translational Medicine details a cross-referencing study that was performed […]
What happens when you mix human error, deadly disease and lab animals? Hollywood would have us believe imminent disaster. Fear aside, this sort of research is happening now as arguments rage over whether risks outweigh benefits. Now two epidemiologists have published an argument in favor of overhauling how we evaluate this research that has the potential -- however small -- of sparking a pandemic.
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