In Podpeskar v. Dannon Company, Inc.,(*), the plaintiff sought to advance a class-action suit against the company because of the word "natural" - and the plaintiff contended that because some of the milk came from cows fed GMO feed it could not be natural. GMO is an acronym for genetically modified organism, essentially a way to optimize a trait using transgenic science, a popular tool that came after previous genetic engineering techniques like mutagenesis, from which many foods certified "organic" were created.
Culture
WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 18, 2018 -- Phospholipids are water insoluble "building blocks" that define the membrane barrier surrounding cells and provide the structural scaffold and environment where membrane proteins reside. During the 62nd Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, held Feb. 17-21, in San Francisco, California, William Dowhan from the University of Texas-Houston McGovern Medical School will present his group's work exploring how the membrane protein phospholipid environment determines its structure and function.
Focusing science education on students through genetic and genealogical studies may be the way to increase minorities in the pipeline and engage students who would otherwise deem science too hard or too uninteresting, according to a Penn State anthropologist.
AUSTIN, Texas - The debate in sleep science has gone on for a generation. People and other animals sicken and die if they are deprived of sleep, but why is sleep so essential?
Psychiatrists Chiara Cirelli and Giulio Tononi of the Wisconsin Center for Sleep and Consciousness proposed the "synaptic homeostasis hypothesis" (SHY) in 2003. This hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we pay for brains that are plastic and able to keep learning new things.
A few years ago, they went all in on a four-year research effort that could show direct evidence for their theory.
Animal traffickers are taking advantage of remote ivory trade routes to smuggle pangolins - one of the world's most endangered animals - out of Central Africa, a new study has found.
The solitary mammals - sought after for their meat and scales - are being transported across remote forest borders in a largely successful attempt to avoid increased law enforcement, according to groundbreaking research led by the University of Stirling.
In popular culture, asteroids play the role of apocalyptic threat, get blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs - and offer an extraterrestrial source for mineral mining.
But for researcher Nicholas Hud, asteroids play an entirely different role: that of time capsules showing what molecules originally existed in our solar system. Having that information gives scientists the starting point they need to reconstruct the complex pathway that got life started on Earth.
Austin, Tex., Feb. 16, 2018 - Are we alone in the universe? Few questions have captured the public imagination more than this. Yet to date we know of just one sample of life, that which exists here on Earth.
Although there is plenty of habitable real estate out there, "habitable" is not the same as "inhabited," says Arizona State University Regents Professor and noted cosmologist Paul Davies. Because nobody knows how non-life transitioned to life on Earth, it is impossible to estimate the odds of it springing forth elsewhere in the universe.
Aurora, Colo. (Feb. 16, 2018) - Researchers at Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) have completed the first-ever EXIT (Ex Utero Intrapartum Treatment) to ventricular pacing procedure. The patient, a 36-week fetus, who suffered from complete atrioventricular block (CAVB) and cardiac dysfunction, was at high risk of dying before delivery.
COLUMBUS, OHIO - A clinically relevant "liquid biopsy" test can be used to profile cancer genomes from blood and predict survival outcomes for patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), according to new research published by a multi-institutional team of researchers with The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Boston, MA (February 16, 2018) - Increasing evidence has linked autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with dysfunction of the brain's cerebellum, but the details have been unclear. In a new study, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital used stem cell technology to create cerebellar cells known as Purkinje cells from patients with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), a genetic syndrome that often includes ASD-like features. In the lab, the cells showed several characteristics that may help explain how ASD develops at the molecular level.
AUSTIN, Texas - Our own unique experiences shape how we view the world and respond to the events in our lives. But experience is highly subjective. What's distressing or joyful to one person may be very different to another.
These differences can matter, especially as a growing body of research shows that what happens in our inner landscapes - our thoughts about and interpretations of our experiences - can have physical consequences in our brains and bodies.
If Pie Five Pizza Co. is correct, 2018's miracle vegetable may be cauliflower. They are even making pizza crust from it, touting claims about both taste and health benefits.
When pharmacy professionals — rather than doctors or nurses — take medication histories of patients in emergency departments, mistakes in drug orders can be reduced by more than 80 percent, according to a study led by Cedars-Sinai.
Drug overdose deaths, once rare, are now the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., surpassing peak annual deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, guns and HIV infection.
As a former public health official, clinician and researcher, I’ve been engaged in efforts to control the opioid addiction epidemic for the past 15 years.
URBANA, Ill. - Gut microbes have been in the news a lot lately. Recent studies show they can influence human health, behavior, and certain neurological disorders, such as autism. But just how do they communicate with the brain? Results from a new University of Illinois study suggest a pathway of communication between certain gut bacteria and brain metabolites, by way of a compound in the blood known as cortisol. And unexpectedly, the finding provides a potential mechanism to explain the characteristics of autism.