Tuesday February 24th, 2015
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Human
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Epigenetics in action: the bright spots depict methyl groups attached to DNA, which turn genes off. Credit: Christoph Bock, Max Planck Institute for Informatics.
The Epigenome Roadmap Consortium's big data dump last week provides a flood of information for figuring out epigenetics, the systems that turn genes off and on and underlie disease as well as normal traits. Realistically, though, it's going to be a long trip.
Food & Agriculture
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RSC_2012_BioDynamics-18
Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that rejects many aspects of modern agriculture including genetic engineering, originally developed by Rudolf Steiner that employs what proponents describe as "a holistic understanding of agricultural processes". Is it an anti-science cult or the future of farming?
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The latest research shows how eating disorders, and anorexia in particular, produce a cascade of physical and mental effects, including direct alternation of the person's genes.
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Based on the belief that female sexual dysfunction is more often upstairs than down, the drug flibanserin is being promoted for what's called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), estimated to afflict roughly 1 in every 10 women.
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Given the complexity of pregnancy, taking all evidence-based precautions against preterm birth is a wise course of action. But it may not be enough. The predisposition may lay in the fetus.
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This daily ordeal, among other irrational behaviors I suffered, was physically and emotionally exhausting, yet it wouldn't subside until I realized that life didn't need to be this way. In retrospect, I can't believe I endured this constant state of fear. This account is one firsthand example of bona fide Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
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It's called the "naturalist fallacy". Naturalist beliefs that seeds or foods developed in part by scientists, often working in laboratories, are "bad" while all things found in nature are good--spurs millions of people to fear what they eat and screen what they buy at the supermarket.
Former UK environment secretary goes on the attack against what he says are modern Luddites: Greenpeace and the ministers of the European Union
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The British YouTube rationalist and renowned ex-BBC Radio 4 and CBC science reporter with a degree in geology debunks pseudoscience, creationism, climate change denialism�and now anti-GMO safety claims.
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As Monsanto's patent on GM soybeans expires this spring, where does this leave the conversation over corporate control in the food system?
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Lab created beef offers the possibility of ending the breeding of livestock for slaughter--and the ability to produce in vitro meat on future space colonies. Other than the questionable taste, what's not to like?
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GMO Free USA has mounted a boycott against food companies for harmless trace levels of chemicals found in some of their products. The fulminations do a good a job at scaring consumers but not so good at educating them about science literacy and human health.

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