As food science continues to advance, so do calls to label and ban foods that have been modified using modern techniques.

In GMOs, the genes of some plants used for food are tweaked to make them more healthful (Golden Rice) or pest-resistant (lots of others). By the end of 2012, farmers were growing GM crops on more than 420 million acres of land across 28 countries without any environmental or health issues but a well-funded campaign against these modifications has made some consumers leery of it. It was only a matter of time before someone created a comprehensive test for people concerned about GMOs and a group writing in Analytical Chemistry say they have done just that. 

A derided 1990s hypothesis of consciousness may have gotten new life, according to a review in Physics of Life Reviews, which claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons.

A new paper claims that traditional Chinese herbal medicines might slow the progression of diabetes - by slowing the more vague condition referred to as "prediabetes."

Prediabetes is considered to mean elevated blood sugar levels without the rise in glucose levels of type 2 diabetes. Obviously such people are at greater risk for developing type 2 diabetes and then also heart disease and stroke. According to such a classification, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that about 79 million American adults age 20 years or older could be considered prediabetic. 

This is a key finding from an international multi-model analysis by the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum (EMF28) and comes at a crucial time, as the European Commission is set to announce next week its plans whether to scale up its efforts on emissions reduction in the next decade. However, beyond 2040, according to the scientists the costs risk to rise substantially. Technological innovation would be needed to counter this.

You might not think of microbes when you consider biodiversity, but it turns out that even a moderate loss of less than 5% of soil microbes may compromise some key ecosystem functions and could lead to lower degradation of toxins in the environment.

Research published today (15 January) in the SfAM journal, Environmental Microbiology, reports that without a rich diversity of soil bacteria, specialised functions such as the removal of pesticide residues are not as effective.

Lincoln, Neb., Jan. 16, 2014 -- Using a camera-equipped robot to explore beneath the Ross Ice Shelf off Antarctica, scientists and engineers with the Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program made an astonishing discovery.

Thousands upon thousands of small sea anemones were burrowed into the underside of the ice shelf, their tentacles protruding into frigid water like flowers on a ceiling.

"The pictures blew my mind," said Marymegan Daly of Ohio State University, who studied the specimens retrieved by ANDRILL team members in Antarctica.
The new species, discovered in late December 2010, was publicly identified for the first time in a recent article in the journal PLoS ONE.