A few months ago, a good friend of mine fell victim to a pervasive phone scam where he lost nearly $4,000 in a single afternoon. Despite being a smart guy he fell hook, line, and sinker for this scam. To his credit, this was not your typical internet scam but actually quite an elaborate one
In 1963, at the dawn of the molecular biology age, Dr. Joshua Lederberg predicted that this nascent biotechnology would eventually allow direct control of human DNA, including the ability to change specific genes. [1] He recognized the potential of molecular biology to bring about gene therapy to cure human disease and to be misused for
Plastic is probably the most important material in our lives today. We see it all around us and use it all the time. So much so that we throw away enough plastic waste each year to circle the planet four times. Why do we consume so much plastic? Sure, it makes our lives more comfortable,
For most of history, humans have thought of ourselves as distinguished from the rest of the animal life on this planet. We have the incredible ability to take in the world around us, understand it, and then proceed to manipulate the world to our own advantage. Some have argued what encapsulates our ability to do
If you read the first installment of our ScienceCafé invasive species series, you may have already guessed the name of this topic: Pueraria lobata, or… kudzu! Before kudzu arrived in the states and poison ivy was the only three-leaved vine, times were simpler. No one worried about kudzu invading their yard and killing their plants
The woolly mammoth is inarguably the mascot of the Ice Age. With countless depictions in popular culture, one would be hard pressed to find someone unfamiliar with the hairy giant herbivore. Alas, the mammoth has been extinct for thousands of years, surviving in low numbers on some islands North of Alaska until as recently as
How old is the universe? The deeper you look into space, the further you are looking back in time. This is because the further light is away from us, the longer it takes for it to reach us. Looking back in time to about 378,000 years after the birth of the universe, and thus viewing
The new rising scare: Hepatitis C. Yes, scarier than Ebola especially in the United States. The CDC is more worried about hepatitis C than it is about many of the other infectious diseases in the United States, including HIV/AIDS (CDC.org). Now, for a little background on Hep C. Hepatitis by definition means inflammation of the
Is it right to allocate a portion of our food crops for producing fuel? What the problem really boils down to is energy. In the past decade or so, worldwide biodiesel and bioethanol production have increased fivefold. Worryingly the vast majority of that biofuel originated from ethanol was obtained from corn in the US. This
If you drive longer than five miles in the South, you'll undoubtedly see an abandoned lot covered in kudzu. Up until the 1950s, farmers transplanted the fast-growing vine from Asia to the U.S. to stop soil erosion along roads. Individual kudzu vines can grow more than 100 feet per growing season, easily spreading over the
There's a killer lurking in the woods of North America, hiding in a place you would never suspect: the testes of a tiny fruit fly called Drosophila neotestacea. The testes are where sperm are produced, and each developing sperm cell contains exactly half the number of chromosomes as the father. This killer is chromosome, and
“Ebola does in ten days what it take AIDS ten years to do†–Barry and David Zimmerman (Killer Germs) There have been many different stories and fears circling the world since the outbreak of Ebola reached national headlines. Not everything you hear on Fox News and Channel 2 is accurate. While there is cause for
