From Colin Sage’s Environment and Food to Michael Carolan’s The Real Cost of Cheap Food, here are a handful of new food books from the fall season that are worth checking out.
Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000…
An adenovirus isolated from chimpanzee feces is proving more effective than human adenoviruses as a vaccine vector for hepatitis C. Collecting stool samples from zoos and animal facilities, Alfredo Nicosia of Okairos in Rome, Italy and his team isolated and characterized almost 30 different chimp adenovirus serotypes from some 1,000 stool samples. They made safe…
Some scientists advocate pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to counter global warming by reflecting solar energy away. But according to Carnegie Institution scientists, the price we’d have to pay is the loss of the Earth’s blue skies. Blocking 2% of the sun’s light, they say, would make the sky three to five times brighter, and…
Researchers have designed a bioengineered jellyfish that can swim, an early step in scientists’ quest for a way to make fresh tissue for patients with damaged hearts. The lab-made jellyfish is created with a mix of silicone and rat-heart cells. Although it isn’t a living organism, the robot’s muscular structure closely resembles that of a…
Initial readings of cosmic ray radiation on Mars suggest it’s about the same as on the International Space Station. Now we just need a spaceship.
Chimpanzees and orangutans really do have personalities “like people”, researchers say. For years experts have debated whether great apes truly display human-like personalities – or if such behavior is simply the anthropomorphic projections of human observers. The research team used a statistical technique to “remove” any biases apparent in human observers of the apes’ behaviour,…