Top 6
Three years after WHO declared COVID a global emergency, Americans remain sharply divided over pandemic truths and myths
Trust in public health officials declined over the course of the pandemic, particularly among Republicans. Over the course of the ...
How cousin marriages can wreak genetic havoc on children
The link between cousin marriages and genetic disorders in offspring is a growing problem in several countries ...
5 traits in modern humans that trace back to our distant ancestry
Many of us are returning to work or school after spending time with relatives over the summer period. Sometimes we ...
How the war in Ukraine has derailed the European Union Farm to Fork initiative — and sparked debate about what constitutes sustainable agriculture
In March 2020, the EU, unveiled its Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy, an ambitious policy designed to reduce agriculture’s carbon ...
Viewpoint: Before you blindly endorse a ‘meatless future’ to limit greenhouse gasses and protect the environment, read this
Many activists and reporters claim we should eat little or no meat to prevent climate change. But instead of presenting ...
How might we adapt to fast-changing global temperatures? 2-million year old ‘environmental DNA’ offers clues
The reconstruction of a once-living landscape in northern Greenland from 2 million years ago, deduced from bits of DNA bound ...
Viewpoint: ChatGPT gets a lot wrong or garbled. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
It doesn’t take much to get ChatGPT to make a factual mistake ...
Viewpoint: ‘Health impact of chemicals doubled in last 5 years’? Media misreporting flawed studies misleads the public
“Plastics and pesticides: Health impacts of synthetic chemicals in US products doubled in last 5 years, study finds," a July ...
Beepocalypse Myth Handbook: Assessing claims of pollinator collapse
After a decade of debate, the causes of the mid-2000s spike in bee deaths is coming into focus. Culprits are ...
Reassessing the East Palestine chemical scare: How dangerous is vinyl chloride?
News coverage of the East Palestine train derailment has ranged from hysteria to hysteria. One would think that one of ...
Best way for obese people to lose weight? Lifestyle change advocates debate gloomy prognosis linked to the role of genes
It's been a challenging few months for people with severe overweight issues mulling how best to shed what could be ...
Concerned about pesticide levels in food? Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list ignores organic pesticides while misrepresenting conventional trace chemical dangers
The Environmental Working Group wants to insure allied journalists like Sheila Kaplan that their new "dirty dozen" list is almost ready ...
Analysis: US public health officials scramble to restore trust in science and vaccines after two years of COVID controversies
By the summer of 2021, Phil Maytubby, deputy CEO of the health department here, was concerned to see the numbers ...
Sudan connection: Are Ethiopian Jews descendants of the ancient Israelites?
A broad suite of genetic and historical evidence points to an ancient Jewish heritage for Ethiopian Jews, contradicting established theory ...
How green are biofuels? Does corn-derived ethanol promote sustainability?
Tyler Lark, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, grew up among farms, working on a neighbor’s dairy, vaguely aware ...
Genomic surveillance: How studying malaria parasite genes helps develop more effective treatments
In a classic evolutionary ‘arms race’ between pathogens and their human hosts, both sides develop arsenals of weapons. Our immune ...
Regulatory inconsistency and the precautionary principle: Why the European Court ruling limiting neonicotinoid pesticide use is misguided
Important questions loom, now that European sugar beet and oilseed rape farmers face a potential ban on the use of ...
Viewpoint: The Guardian cites ‘shocking’ statistics from environmental lobby groups claiming increasing dangers from pesticide poisonings. Here’s why they are wrong, yet again
The evidence is quite clear at this point. Properly used, pesticides do not pose a serious risk to human health ...
Can we know for sure COVID’s origins? Why is Omicron so persistent? Knowing how evolution works provides guidance
The latest phrase borrowed from biology in COVID conversations is convergent evolution. It refers to pairs of unrelated species that ...
How cats got their stripes: The mystery of color patterns in mammals
In 1902’s Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling famously explained how the leopard got his spots in what would today be deemed an ...
How biotechnology over-regulation harms farmers, boosts food costs and fuels inflation
Recent months have been hellish for many American farmers and consumers who buy the food they produce. Many farms have ...
With Kenya’s tentative embrace of growing GM products, Uganda faces a resurgent anti-GMO movement. Here’s the havoc it’s causing and the activists behind it
Agro-technologies, including CRISPR gene-editing to tweak crops to tolerate the challenges of climate change, including the control of plant bacterial ...
Using cost-benefit analysis: Crop biotechnology offers sizable yield and sustainability benefits when compared to non-GM farming
What are the costs of not adopting the best food producing technologies? The ability to quantify a choice that is ...
How humans adapt: Research on 1,000 ancient genomes reveals how genetic variants swept through populations
Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data ...
Rethinking artificial sweeteners? Fake sugars may not cause cancer but they’re not great for losing weight either
Let’s start by noting that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned against using artificial sweeteners for weight control. What? ...
Viewpoint: Global crop biotechnology revolution — 2022 saw dramatic advances in agricultural innovation
Conquest, war, famine, and death: Looking back on 2022 as the COVID-19 plague roars into its fourth year, the Four Horsemen ...
Mysterious kidney disease epidemic flares up in Central America with climate change and chemicals suspected as drivers
José Lopez didn't want to die, but the alternative — having a scalpel plunged through his abdominal wall to install ...
