Rogue wheat is growing in wheat fields in 127 countries around the world! Should consumers be concerned? Ok, I’m indulging in a poor imitation of the emotive language common in sensational writings about food issues. What I said in the paragraph above is all true, it’s just misleading because of a lack of context. After the “crisis” of glyphosate tolerant wheat being found in an Oregon field, I thought it would be useful to put that event into perspective.  So… […]

The universal language is in our minds  As a deaf person in a hearing world, “I am bound to negotiate in the realm of non-verbal communication,” says UC Berkeley linguistics lecturer Patrick Boudreault. “I’m adept at communication with anyone, every day of my life — people who know sign or don’t know sign.” Born deaf to deaf parents, Boudreault’s first languages were Quebec Sign Language, then French, which he learned to read and write as a child. He added English and American […]

The Brain Scoop: Episode 29 Chicago Adventure, Part III: Little Skeletons via thebrainscoop: Our third installment in the Chicago Field Museum adventures! In this episode, Andria blows my mind with some pretty impressive lettering skills, and we talk about a mammal with some of the most highly specialized teeth of any animal on the planet: the crabeater seal (it doesn’t actually eat crabs).  Watch Part I and Part II!  Tumblr: http://thebrainscoop.tumblr.com Twitter: […]

This landed in the inbox today:The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) at the Smithsonian Institution and CSIRO in Canberra, Australia, are the co-organizers of a full-day symposium/workshop on "Connecting Biodiversity Collections in the Pacific: Digitization through DNA Barcoding and Informatics".  The event will take place during the 12th Pacific Science Association Inter-Congress, Suva, Fiji 8-12 July 2013. To make the event as accessible as possible, it […]

My problem case is a 9-year-old F/S Boxer (weighing 30 kg) that was diagnosed as hypothyroid by another veterinarian about a year ago. She has been on 1.2 mg of levothyroxine (L-T4) every 12 hours. Clinically, the dog is doing very well, but she has mild polyuria and polydipsia. I have never had a dog on this high of a L-T4 dose, so I'm worried about thyroid hormone overdose and cardiac complications.I did a complete thyroid profile at Michigan State University's Endocrine Laboratory (see […]