Vox
Herbicides aren’t sole culprit in Monarch butterfly decline
Monarch butterflies are vanishing. Over the last 20 years, fewer and fewer of them have been making the long journey down to ...
After a decade and a half, stem cells remain a controversial topic
A couple of things helped lessen the [stem cell] controversy. By the late 2000s, researchers discovered other ways to create cells ...
Will Maui and Molokai’s GMO ban hold up in court?
Voters in Maui County approved an initiative that will put a moratorium on the planting of all genetically engineered seeds ...
What we know (and don’t) about the causes of autism
What causes autism? As researchers have worked to unravel t[autism's] nature, they've come to grips with some unsatisfying facts. One is ...
Personal genetics consumers risk uncovering uncertain paternity
Personal genomics products continue to have unintended consequences that end either in joyous occasion, but often times also come with ...
Nap and coffee combo clears neurotransmitters so buzz more effective
It might sound crazy: conventional wisdom is that caffeine interferes with sleep. But if you caffeinate immediately before napping and sleep for ...
New horizons and future directions for epigenetics
Ever since the age of Darwin — and especially since the discovery of DNA — scientists have thought of biological inheritance ...
Rise of GM crops in America over past decade
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently posted new data on how genetically modified crops have taken over American farms in the past ...
GMOs not any riskier than modern traditional breeding methods
"Traditional breeding methods" for crops have actually changed a lot over time — they haven't just remained static for 10,000 years. And ...
Neil deGrasse Tyson shows GMOs are not liberals’ equivalent of climate denial
I once asked Twitter to name the liberal equivalent of conservatism's climate change denial: that is to say, an issue ...
Skepticism grows over claims that organic food is healthier
You've no doubt noticed that organic foods are a fair bit more expensive at the grocery store. An organic head ...
Should TV ‘quack docs’ like Dr. Oz be regulated?
Dr. Mehmet Oz is a television personality with his own show, The Dr. Oz Show, focusing on medical issues and personal ...
Welcome to the strange new world of synthetic biology
Over the past decade, the ease of sequencing and creating DNA has improved so much that the possibilities of genetic ...
Putting the ‘sex’ in sex chromosomes overshadows their holisitic importance
Sarah Richardson is a historian and philosopher of science who focuses on the intersections between race and sex and the ...
Why not destroy all small pox samples? Threat of synthetic recreation one reason
When the world eradicated smallpox in 1980, it was the first — and still only — time that people have ...
Why make bird flu more virulent? An explainer
A few years ago, a researcher took the deadly bird flu, turned it into a highly contagious deadly bird flu, ...
