Is Biomedical Research Not As Good As Previous Generations?
Dr. Steve McKnight is President of the American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology and chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He has probably also made a few enemies among young researchers in the society he manages.
No Flatlanders Allowed: Haggis And Whisky Flavored Potato Chips
Mackie's at Taypack Ltd. has been around since 2009 but the joint venture between the Taylors, Perthshire potato farmers, and Mackie's of Scotland, has finally figured out a way to differentiate themselves from Frito-Lay: they are making potato chips flavored like whisky and haggis.Everyone knows what Scotch is. Haggis is sheep stomach stuffed with meat and barley. Scotland's National Poet, Robert Burns, sang its praises in his works.
Credit: tjmwatson, Flickr
Blind Spot: Our Coming Eye Disease Epidemic
Almost 2 million Americans have an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and about 100,000 are blind from the disease. In AMD, cells in the retina, that layer of tissue in the back of the eye, begin to break down. What was once sharp central vision becomes blurry.Feeding Africa Could Increase Global Warming – Unless We Embrace Science
It's no secret how Africa can feed itself - grow more food.
That sort of naïve statement is fine for environmentalists who were born as part of the Agricultural 1%, but it falls apart in the real world that exists outside fundraising campaigns. A large chunk of Africa doesn't grow food all that well, which historically has meant relying on the patronage of rich countries and cycles of famine - but that also has made it a political football.
It’s Almost 2015 – So Where Is My Hoverboard?
As most culturally astute people of a certain age know, 2015 is "The Future" of "Back To The Future II." "Back To The Future" was, of course, a seminal comedy in 1985 - a time when terrorists were from the Mid-East and you could do a time-travel experiment on your dog without getting protests outside the theater.
5 Cool Things About Artificial Hearts
Artificial hearts were invented at a time when progress in science couldn't come fast enough. In 1969, when they first went into human use, DDT hadn't been banned, vaccines were considered the medical highlight of the century, and the Green Revolution promoted genetic modification as the way to feed the world's poor in the future.Game Of Thrones Weather: Winter Is Coming Vs. You Know Nothing, Jon Snow
The seasons are about to change and that means a new round of projections, prognostications, sooth-saying and doomsday forecasts.If you think you know which of those are done by the civilized world and which of those are done by pagan Wildlings, you know nothing about modern climate science and culture.
In George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", a wall separates two very different people - think England and Scotland. South of The Wall, the people of Winterfell are always preparing for the worst. North of The Wall, they are just living their lives and rolling with the punches. And there is a lot more (consensual) sex. These two groups live in the same world but approach it in very different ways.
When Bardarbunga Burps, Is Lava Far Behind?
ESA Satellites are showing clouds of sulfur dioxide exiting from Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano.
It may be mostly hidden underneath the Vatnajokull glacier in the center of the country but Bardarbunga isn't shy about saying hello, it has had up to 400 eruptions in the last 10,000 years, one of which produced more lava than any other volcano on Earth during that time.
23 of those were geologically recent.
Bardarbunga eruptions seem to happen even more often than colony collapse disorders in bees, so Iceland knows it's best not to get too complacent when something sitting on two volcanic rift zones starts to put on a show: It seems to erupt twice per century on average and the last one was in...1910.
Tick tock, tick tock...