nbsp; a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=editorial-chief-justices-should-not-allow-dna-collection-during-an-arrest-booking[More]/a
pBy Kristen Hays/ppNEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A long-awaited trial over the biggest U.S. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bp-contractors-start-trial-for-worst[More]/a
pBy Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle/ppOSLO (Reuters) - Interpol launched a global crackdown on Tuesday on illegal fish catches worth up to $23 billion a year that will also seek to prevent seafood fraud comparable to Europes scandal of horsemeat sold as beef./ppThe 190-nation police agency, based in France, said it would promote more sharing of intelligence to end illegal fishing that is often carried out by trawlers far from their home ports, especially off developing nations./ppWorld fish stocks are being rapidly depleted, and valuable species are nearing extinction, Interpol said in a statement on the new project known as Scale that will step up police cooperation from the South Pacific to the Arctic Ocean./ppThe last decade has seen an escalation of trans-national and organized criminal networks engaged in fisheries crime, it said./ppIllegal fishing is not just about catching the people out in the waters, the head of Interpols Environmental Crime Programme, David Higgins, told Reuters, saying it covered everything from illegal financing to mislabeling./ppHe said consumers should be more demanding, partly because Europes meat scandal has exposed how easily horsemeat can be passed off as more expensive beef./ppCan the supermarket vouch for where the fish has come from? he said by telephone. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=interpol-targets-illegal-fishing-seafood[More]/a
pBy Carey Gillam and Julie Ingwersen/pp(Reuters) - High levels of a dangerous toxin found in bagged dog food on a grocery store shelf in Iowa have highlighted the prevalence of a problematic mold in last years U.S. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dog-food-recall-underscores-toxic-corn[More]/a
[caption id=attachment_889 align=alignleft width=224 caption=Christof Koch] [/caption]Christof Koch, a columnist for Scientific American MIND, a professor at the California Institute of Technology and the chief scientific officer for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, has the best characterization that Ive ever seen of futurist Ray Kurzweils speculations about the imminent merger of mind with machine and the domination of cyborgs. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=neuroquotes-of-the-month-maybe-the-year[More]/a
Before I get to Margaret Mead, a bit of breaking news about the Napoleon Chagnon controversy, the subject of my previous post . Chagnon and his supporters have described his election last year to the National Academy of Sciences as vindication, as The New York Times Magazine put it . Now Marshall Sahlins, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, has resigned from the NAS to protest Chagnons election, as well as NAS involvement in military research. Explaining his resignation, Sahlins told Inside Higher Education , By the evidence of his own writings as well as the testimony of others, including Amazonian peoples and professional scholars of the region, Chagnon has done serious harm to the indigenous communities among whom he did research. Sahlins leveled similar charges against Chagnon in 2000 in a review of Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney. Sahlins seems to be an old-style lefty peacenik, which isnt easy in our militaristic, ultra-Darwinian age. (See also anthropologist Alex Golub s comments on the Sahlin resignation.) a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-sociobiologist-napoleon-chagon-really-a-disciple-of-margaret-mead[More]/a
Scientists and indigenous rangers have teamed up in Australia to find out more about the shy snubfin dolphin, a recently discovered species that may need protection. (Top Image: BlueCloudSpatial via Flickr.com)
pDeep in a laboratory freezer, 100,000 vials of blood have been frozen for the better part of five decades./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=womens-exposure-to-chemicals-may-explain-unexpected-breast-cancer[More]/a
A grassroots conservation effort in Laos is aimed at saving the now rare Siamese crocodile from extinction. The animal was once found throughout Southeast Asia and Indonesia but is now only found in remote parts of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
Farmers in western Kenya are being encouraged to grow ocimum, a natural insect repellant which can be turned into jelly and candles to keep deadly malaria-carrying mosquitos at bay.
pFor my March feature on a disease that is threatening the U.S. citrus industry (ldquo; The End of Orange Juice rdquo;), I spent time with researchers and growers who are working to stop this bacterial illness, which leaves fruit green and bitter and kills trees. Known as huanglongbing (HLB)nbsp; -- Chinese for yellow dragon disease -- it is caused by bacteria that hide in the salivary glands of invasive insects known as Asian citrus psyllids. The pests arrived in the U.S. in the late 1990s and have spread the disease by injecting germs into plants as they feed on sap from their leaves. There is no cure for the disease.nbsp;/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=citrus-can-scientists-wasps-save-orange-juice[More]/a
These days, I get a lot of grief about grief. I am part of the work group that changed some of the ways that grief and clinical depression are described and differentiated in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , typically referred to as DSM-5 . That has led to a lot of conversations with colleagues who are upset about bereavement.The other day, a friend and fellow psychiatrist--whose son had died by suicide almost a year ago--took me aside to tell me how incensed he was about the elimination from earlier DSM s of language specifying a bereavement exclusion. The exclusion essentially detailed a two-month period of normal grief that people would experience after the loss of a loved one. During this period, it was all but forbidden to diagnose a patient with major depression--even if the individual had all the symptoms (which are, in important and sometimes life-threatening ways, different from grief.) a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=getting-past-the-grief-over-grief[More]/a
pBERLIN (Reuters) - German authorities are investigating possible large-scale fraud by organic egg producers amid increased concern over food industry practices following Europes horse meat scandal./ppThe northern state of Lower Saxony, a major agricultural hub, has launched probes of some 150 farms suspected of wrongly selling eggs produced by hens kept in overcrowded conditions under the organic label./ppTwo other states are investigating a further 50 farms./ppIf the accusations (against the farms) are found to be true, then we are talking of fraud on a grand scale: fraud against consumers but also fraud against the many organic farmers in Germany who work honestly, German Farm Minister Ilse Aigner said in a statement on Monday./ppShe urged regional governments to ensure the full implementation of tough German and EU laws on organic food production, adding that consumers must be able to have full confidence in the labeling of products./ppOrganically produced eggs cost some 10 cents more than those produced under standard industrial conditions./ppChristian Meyer, farm minister in the newly appointed Lower Saxony government, vowed to take a tough line on any farms found to have broken the law./ppOrganic food is a huge industry in environmentally-conscious Germany, where many consumers are willing to pay extra for eggs, meat, vegetables and other products they believe have been produced organically./ppThe suspicions of organic egg fraud coincide with the discovery that horse meat was labeled as beef in processed food sold around Europe. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=germany-investigates-possible-organic[More]/a
Back in 2005, the discovery of a weird reddish, long-tailed mammal, photographed by a camera-trap at Kayan Mentarang in central Borneo, was announced by the Swiss World Wildlife Fund. I covered the case and how it unfolded back at Tet Zoo ver 1 during January 2007. Thats such a long time ago that now is probably a good time to recycle the whole story. So, here it is again, with updates as and where appropriate. The big deal about the Kayan Mentarang animal is that it was hailed as a possible new species. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=mystery-mammal-of-kayan-mentarang[More]/a
I dont know about you guys, but in times of stress, I eat my feelings. And I mean, why wouldnt I? My feelings are delicious! The taste like popcorn and peanut butter Mamp;Ms and fudge and pepperoni pizza.But then, when the stressful times are over, well, Ive got to go back to eating salads and kale and cabbage and maybe not eating a whole bag of chocolate EVERY night of the week. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=of-course-im-stressed-im-in-cookie-withdrawal[More]/a
