One of the anticipated (and feared) consequences of rapid anthropogenic climate change is the reduction in biodiversity. The essential problem is that the pace of climate change can outrun the rate at which species can adapt to the new environmental conditions. The first step in understanding the dynamics is learning how genetic diversity within a Read More

Science is observational. That doesn’t mean theory isn’t important, it simply means that the most beautiful theory in the world means nothing if it’s not supported by experimental evidence. So students in every branch of science should be comfortable with the experimental foundation of their field. That’s a problem for beginning neuroscience students, because even Read More

A group of students at the University of Michigan was tasked with evaluating the optimum conditions for anaerobic digestion of biomass for production of methane. Their requirements are quite succinct: “For this research, labs need to have the capability of mixing gases in reactor bottles containing microbial communities and running short anaerobic batch experiments in Read More

At first I thought this video was a rather transparent and not very clever attempt to encourage people to help fill blood bank refrigerators: bring in a supermodel to tell people how important blood donation is. Well, there’s a lot more to this story. The supermodel in question is Niki Taylor and the people she Read More

The Egyptian High Institute of Public Health wants to keep an eye on the effluents flowing into Lake Mariout. It’s a lake that receives both agricultural and industrial wastes and also gets inflow from a nominally freshwater canal — a canal that’s salty and polluted by the time it enters the Lake. To get a Read More

One potential mechanism by which invasive plants wreak their swath of destruction is by exuding phytotoxins into the soil — chemicals against which the native plants have no defense. A Colorado State University graduate student investigated that hypothesis in connection with the spotted knapweed invasion of the North American Great Plains. Spotted knapweed secretes the Read More

We all know that a sufficient supply of units of blood in a blood bank refrigerator is necessary for a community to be able to respond to everyday needs and be prepared for extraordinary circumstances. But that intellectual understanding is quite different from the emotional understanding you get by seeing how a small sacrifice of Read More

When you’re sitting around the dinner table with your family, it’s easy to remind them about home safety — things like not mixing bleach and ammonia, or not storing the drain cleaner right next to the balsamic (you’d have one heck of a salad if your 11-year-old mixed them up). But when you’re working in Read More

You already know that stability chamber testing is a critical part of drug evaluation — whether as part of the original drug discovery process or after drug reformulation of orally delivered or parenteral compounds.  It turns out (I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised) that stability chamber testing is also a critical component of transdermal Read More

Benjamin Franklin was a prolific inventor, but he was no fan of patents.  He thought a free exchange of ideas would speed the pace of invention.  There are others who share that belief, including some who started a company called Intellectual Ventures.  Their intention is to revitalize the environment for inventors, creating opportunities to license Read More