CultureLab: Passing the baton of life – from Schrödinger to Venter
CultureLab: Passing the baton of life – from Schrödinger to Venter.
Category: Syndicated
Look Beyond the Scientific Veneer of that GMO Report
Journalist Kevin Kloor discusses the spread of disinformation about GMOs The latest, most egregious example is a report with an Orwellian title, “GMO Myths and Truths” via Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> Look Beyond the Scientific Veneer of a GMO Report. He makes a plea to influential and well-respected scholars like Marion Nestle: Dont be…
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The History of Sake: Takamine and Today (with tweets) · pcronald · Storify
The History of Sake: Takamine and Today (with tweets) · pcronald · Storify.
Study points to role for both organic and conventional agriculture in sustainable food production
A paper in this week’s issue of Nature and a commentary on Revkin’s DotEarth blog reinforces the argument that a hybrid path in agriculture — incorporating both conventional and organic production practices — gives the best chance of feeding some 9 billion people by midcentury in an ecologically-based manner. The thoughtful and comprehensive study compares…
It’s a quorum. Bonnie Bassler awarded 2012 L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Award in Life Sciences
Bacteria can talk. Yes. Talk. These unicellular, primitive creatures have their own language. They secret chemical words to their environment, where their neighbors can listen, comprehend and react to those messages. This bacterial communication is called quorum sensing (QS). Although the first discoveries in the field of bacterial communication where made more than 40 years…
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Help students change the world by voting on The New Earth Archive’s booklist
The New Earth Archive is a resource network of powerful, inspiring books on climate change, sustainability, social justice, and human nature.The students ask you to vote for up to 15 of your favorite books. So pleased, Tomorrow’s Table made the list! http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/808430/neweartharchive-ballot Whoie Earth Discipline, by Stewart Brand is also on the list and so…
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Cells in a Petri dish are not people, and experiments with cells can easily give the wrong answers
Answers to the wrong questions. The moral message of this short story, taken from Paul Offit’s inspiring Autism’s False Prophets, is that fuzzy thinking about biology and human health can easily lead people and activist movements to do well intentioned, but tragically dangerous and stupid things. Lyn Redwood is a nurse practitioner who lives in…
Fooling yourself to better fool others
The biological study of human behaviour can teach us a lot about ourselves, and Robert Trivers has just written a book Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (Allen Lane, Penguin Books 2011) from which we can all learn deep insights about ourselves and our fellow humans. Yes fellow humans, some of…
Herbicide Resistant Johnsongrass: Coming soon to a farm near you!
Written by Matt DiLeo Pioneer and K State are jointly releasing a set of new herbicide resistant sorghum varieties, which will incorporate resistance to ALS and FOP herbicides. Ironically, these non-genetically modified varieties invoke one of the classic bogeymen of anti-GM thinkers – herbicide resistant weeds.