New York Times
Would genetically modified salmon be considered kosher?
Many of us in this era of ecologically motivated dietary restrictions find ourselves editing our menu choices, but I wondered ...
Women’s colleges considering policy changes that redefine ‘gender’
At an elite college for women, the question arises: What does it mean to be a woman? The president of ...
Targeting children based on genetics would do more harm than good
In “The Downside of Resilience” (Sunday Review, Nov. 30), Jay Belsky points to evidence that certain children are genetically predisposed ...
Climate change, tourism threaten species conservation in Galápagos Islands
Unesco calls the Galápagos Islands a “living museum and showcase of evolution,” but they are much more than that. The ...
Massive genetics research facility tackles Ebola
An old two-story brick building in a shabby part of town, formerly a distribution center for Budweiser beer, is now ...
Prostate screenings may lead to cancer-causing therapy
In 1970 I discovered the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, which is now the most widely used tool in prostate screenings ...
Applying neuroscience to poverty may do more harm than good
The idea that poverty can change the brain has gotten significant attention recently, and not just from those lay readers ...
Sometimes, viruses make us healthy
When we talk about viruses, usually we focus on the suffering caused by Ebola, influenza and the like. But our ...
Evolution explains infanticide among mammals
In the early 1970s, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, then a graduate student at Harvard, traveled to India to study Hanuman langurs, ...
Food Babe: Calling food “natural” can fool consumers
A litany of class-action lawsuits have been waged against products marketed as "natural" that contain G.M.O.'s — including Goldfish crackers, ...
What brain science has and has not revealed, so far
Research on the brain is surging. The United States and the European Union have launched new programs to better understand ...
Dangers of over-diagnosing a disease
Historically, the science of epidemiology was directed toward identifying and controlling epidemics of infectious disease. In a study just published ...
Mothers’ breast milk transfers important signals to baby
Milk is not just food. The more closely scientists examine it, the more complexity they find. Along with nutrients like ...
Fossil unveils new mammalian lineage
Four years ago, while searching for fish fossils on Madagascar, paleontologists came upon what proved to be a well-preserved cranium ...
Can the genetic techniques that turned corn into a staple transform the homely cassava?
Bill Gates spends a lot of his time probing the minds and work of researchers and analysts trying to solve ...
General Mills’ Cascadian Farm launches ‘bee-friendly’ campaign, GMO critics unimpressed
Alarm has grown in recent years over the widespread loss of bee colonies, not just because of the canary-in-the-coal-mine implications ...
Evolutionary incubators turn invasive species into ecological nightmares
Invasive species are both a fact of life and a scientific puzzle. Humans transport animals and plants thousands of miles from ...
‘Alzheimer’s in a Dish’—human brain cells in gel—opens new avenues for research
For the first time, and to the astonishment of many of their colleagues, researchers created what they call Alzheimer’s in ...
Dark history of eugenics spotlightlighted in New York University exhibit
An old stucco house stands atop a grassy hill overlooking the Long Island Sound. Less than a mile down the ...
US subsidizes $125 million of organic farming research and conservation
The United States Department of Agriculture plans to announce that it will spend $52 million to support local and regional ...
How a biology professor teaches God and evolution
Every year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you ...
New weed fighting herbicide-tolerant GMO trait approved
The Agriculture Department has approved the commercial planting of corn and soybeans genetically engineered to survive being sprayed by the ...
Cutting edge DNA test needed in rape case involving identical twin
The rape suspect, court papers said, was identified by a longtime friend who said they committed the crime together. The ...
New BRCA findings in Jews not strong enough for universal genetic screening
Once again we are rushing to send a public health message to women to get screened based on limited evidence ...
World not ready for Ebola to develop into an airborne mutation: 1.2 million could die
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done ...
Do strangers who look alike act alike?
When twins have similar personalities, is it mainly because they share so much genetic material or because their physical resemblance ...
How much can we actually tell from a genome scan?
On August 6, researchers announced in The New England Journal of Medicine that they had found that mutations in a ...
Are we puppets of our own gut bacteria?
Your body is home to about 100 trillion bacteria and other microbes, collectively known as your microbiome. Naturalists first became aware ...
