Blog

Intestinal microbes impact weight gain, dictate food allergies, and activate neural pathways that regulate stress and depression. They eat what we eat, whether it is a cheeseburger, a kale salad, or in today’s world, an extra large diet soda. A recent…

Nearly 60 years ago a mysterious illness swept through families in fishing villages along Japan’s Minamata Bay. Those affected presented symptoms of a neurological disease: loss of feeling in the limbs, impaired vision, difficulty walking, and trouble…

More than 10 million women in the United States (almost 20% of women between the ages of 15 and 44) take birth control pills as a means of contraception []. In 2013, more than 2.9 million American women were living with breast cancer, almost 300,000…

From T. Rex times seven: New dinosaur species is discovered in Argentina (original article here) Recent news describes the uncovering in Argentina of a new dinosaur species that is seven times the size of a T. Rex and could have weighed as much as a…

In 2001, scientists published a (mostly) complete sequence of the human genome, the DNA that’s spread over our 23 chromosomes and contains the information that dictates the function of our cells and the development of our bodies [1].  Over a decade…

Two groups of researchers have recently reported a new light-powered method in which readily available chemical building blocks are coupled to produce useful complex molecules that cannot be easily found or made. Because these metal-catalyzed reactions…

“Doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (14927191426)” by slgckgc – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Who would have guessed that pouring ice water on one’s head would lead to $94.3 million in donations (and counting) to fund…

Thawing Siberian PermafrostNASA Goddard Space Flight Center / CC BY Large quantities of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane are trapped within and beneath polar permafrost, the layer of frozen ground that has not thawed for millennia.…

From Scientists find traces of sea plankton on ISS surface Plankton, similar to those that have allegedly been found on the surface of the International Space Station. A recent article published by the Russian News Agency ITAR-TASS has made the…

The fundamental nature of memory has eluded philosophers and scientists for over two millennia.  As early as 350 B.C., Aristotle conjectured that the mind was like a blank wax tablet, or tabula rasa, imprinted with one’s experiences but only made…