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My friend and fellow scientist Jason has been hassling me to write a post about the recent stem cell breakthroughs that have been all over the news for the last week. Two research groups, one led by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University and the other by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, have published [...]

This week in Science Tuesday we’ll focus on research with implications on the beginnings and the ends of human life. First, a study from Yale looking at the morality of infants and second, a paper from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Seattle suggesting that a certain class of anti-depressant can increase the lifespan of [...]

When things get nasty in a particular environment, organisms that call it home have got to come up with ways to cope. Animals are mobile and tend to migrate to an environment where the proverbial grass is greener. However, if you are a sedentary organism – a plant for example – you must find other [...]

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) now causes more deaths per year in the U.S. than AIDS. MRSA’s tendency to resist treatment by common antibiotics has predictably earned it the nickname “Superbug” in the lay press. But beyond the press hype is the foundation of a true epidemic. Staphylococcus species of bacteria are fairly benign and are [...]

There was an article that came out yesterday in BBC News citing a study that claims that breast fed children with a certain allele (variant) of a gene involved in fatty acid metabolism scored seven points higher in IQ tests than formula fed babies. This is one of those studies that I’ve suddenly become interested [...]

“I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
O Alcohol, would you please forgive me?
For while I cannot love myself
I’ll use something else…”
-Barenaked Ladies – “Alcohol”
Alcoholism is a disease with major world health implications. There are over 15 million people in the U.S. suffering from alcoholism resulting in over 100,000 deaths a [...]