The genetically modified golden rice that was going to save the world in 2000, has yet to leave Louisiana, where it is being tested. Despite not having reached the countries it was expected to help, the rice with added vitamin A has been making waves among consumers and scientists alike. Farmers and research centers in the developing world want to see it, environmental groups are up in arms, and the debate rages as to whether this product will in fact help solve the problem of malnutrition in the developing world. Five years on, the creator of the controversial rice, Dr…

Cameron Muir thinks a lot about hot, sweaty sex. It’s his job, after all. Muir is a psychologist at Brock University, and his current fascination is human sweat — particularly when it’s coitus-induced. His interest in sweat was aroused by steroid hormones, the tiny molecules like testosterone and estrogen that control so much of human sexuality from the inside of our bodies. Testosterone, in particular, can profoundly change a person’s appetite for sex. Women who have had their ovaries removed often complain they’ve lost their libidos, probably because of changes in hormone concentrations. “They’ll go to the doctor and say…

New discoveries that show evolution in action are causing some scientists to say that the first scientific supermodel has arrived. Biology is normally carried out within isolated specializations. Ecologists study one organism, molecular biologists another, while evolutionary biologists look over hundreds without probing too deeply into any particular one. But one tiny little fish, the threespine stickleback, proves that a combination of genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology and population studies, can bring insight into the fundamental question of how evolution occurs in nature. “The sticklebacks are a shining example of what can happen when you put all of these fields…

(photographs by Mark Furze) A paw print, a hair, and a photograph are all clues that Canada’s grizzly bears are on the move. Recently, Canadian scientists genetically confirmed the sighting of a grizzly bear more than 1000 kilometers north of the species’ known range, proving that Canadians still have a lot to learn about our northern-most animals. Grizzlies seem to be encroaching on the territory of polar bears, a species already threatened by global warming. The two species previously met only on the sea ice near mainland Canada, where they both hunt seals. Though polar bears are generally larger, grizzlies…

Science is chasing truth, with an emphasis on the chase. Nevertheless, regardless of this pursuit, a common assumption is that when a scientific study is published, its results are true — and only on the rarest occasions, do false findings appear in print. But a new analysis of the probability that published research findings are true suggests that we all may be deceiving ourselves – most research papers are instead false. “We have to acknowledge that there is a problem,” says John Ioannidis, from the University of Ioannina in Greece, who recently undertook the analysis. Using a mathematical model that…