Why taste receptors can be found not just on the tongue, but also in the nasal cavity, the stomach and the intestines.
This week’s news includes the finding that UN peacekeepers unleashed the cholera epidemic in quake-ravaged Haiti, a report that finds living close to nuclear power plants does not cause leukemia in children, a French court decision that clears scientists in a growth hormone scandal, fungus-resistant GM corn, another hit to the XMRV-chronic fatigue link, and…
As part of the Philadelphia Science Festival, which is going on in the city of Brotherly Love from April 15-28, Judge John Jones–who delivered a resounding victory to proponents of evolution education in the 2005 Dover, PA trial–will be holding court at the Community College of Philadelphia on Saturday (April 23). If you’re in the…
You might remember an interview with Desmond Julian here at NS. We talked to Desmond because it fitted well with the launch of the British Heart Foundation’s Mending Broken Hearts campaign complete with talking fish. Last month we also published the results of our Best Places to Work (Postdocs) survey, in which University College London…
Far be it from us here at The Scientist to recommend that you sit in front of the idiot box when you undoubtedly have so much work to do, but…if you simply must boob out, at least make the experience educational. This coming Tuesday night on the Science Channel, check out the premier of “Monster…
This week’s news includes a report that two American university campuses in Tokyo remain closed today after last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, a study that suggests a role for gut bacteria in the health of starving children, two new peer-reviewed journals, a ruling from the European Court of Justice that procedures involving human embryonic…
This week’s news includes evidence that the autism-vaccine linking research was fraudulent, survey results showing that consumers will pay good money for diagnostic genetic tests, a new study in the field of synthetic biology, an analysis of the genetic abnormalities in stem cell lines, the winners of the UK’s New Years Honours, and a genetic…
In a New Yorker article published last month and recently evaluated by F1000, Jonah Lehrer describes an effect that has plagued a variety of scientific disciplines: The more times researchers try to replicate a given result, the less robust the effect. The phenomenon draws into question not only the dwindling findings themselves, but the scientific…
Scientists were right: Sand berms fail Sand berms have proven to be an ineffective strategy for protecting the coast from last April’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a new report from the presidential commission investigating the spill. Scientists (such as Len Bahr, who penned an article for The Scientist) had warned the berms were…
Mass spec Laureate dies Chemist John Fenn, who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for vastly improving the ability of mass spectrometry to identify large proteins, passed away on Friday at the age of 93. As a Yale professor, Fenn developed a technique called electrospray ionization, in which a strong electric field is used…
