Organic Food Has No More Nutritional Value Than Food Grown With Pesticides, Study Shows: “New research in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals. The study looked at the following crops – carrots, kale, mature peas, apples and potatoes – staple ingredients that can be found in most families’ shopping list.
Trigger For Brain Plasticity Identified: Signal Comes, Surprisingly, From Outside The Brain: “Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn — recapturing the ’sponge-like’ quality of childhood. Called Otx2, it causes a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period — a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections
Putting MicroRNAs On The Stem Cell Map: “Short snippets of RNA called microRNAs help to keep embryonic stem cells in their stem cell state. Researchers now have discovered the gene circuitry that controls microRNAs in embryonic stem cells. Mapping the control circuitry of stem cells reveals how they maintain themselves or decide to differentiate, providing key clues for regenerative medicine and reprogramming of adult cells to a stem cell state. These maps also aid our understanding of human development and diseases such as cancer.
Novel Method Quickens Discovery Of Gene Function: “Think researchers know all there is to know about Escherichia coli, commonly known as E. coli? Think again. ‘E. coli has more than four thousand genes, and the functions of one-fourth of these remain unknown,’ says a biology professor whose laboratory specializes in carrying out research using the bacterium.
New Biochemical Pathway That Triggers Critical Repairs In DNA Replication Process Discovered: “Scientists have unraveled a new biochemical pathway that triggers a critical repair response to correct errors in the DNA replication process that could otherwise lead to harmful or fatal mutations in cells. Though the work focused on yeast cells, the team expects to find an analogous system in human cells that could be exploited as a target for potential therapies for cancers, which are often caused by such repair mechanisms going off course.
Physicist’s Quantum-’Uncollapse’ Hypothesis Verified: “In 2006, two physics and astronomy professors spelled out how to exploit a quantum quirk to accomplish a feat long thought impossible, and now a research team has tested the theory, proving it correct.
Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said that in a way, measurements created reality as we understand it. Katz, however, says being able to reverse the collapse “tells us that we really can’t assume that measurements create reality because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again.”
That’s a funny one.
