If there is one thing wealthy elites across the developed world share in common, it is increasingly denying vaccines and genetically modified foods.

The code for every gene includes a message at the end of it that signals the translation machinery to stop but diseases like cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy can result from mutations that insert this stop signal into the middle of an essential gene, causing the resulting protein to be truncated.

Some antibiotics cause the cell's translation machinery to ignore the stop codons and are therefore being explored as a potential therapy for these diseases. New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that this approach could come with the price of triggering autoimmune disease.

The deepest areas of the Baltic Sea have always had a low oxygen content. The inflow of fresh water is actually limited by low thresholds at the entrance to the Baltic Sea.

At the same time, there is a relatively fresh layer above the denser and saltier water in the deep layer of the sea.

This results in an effective stratification of the water column, which prevents the mixing of water masses necessary to transfer oxygen to the water at the bottom.

It finally happened. One of the purple striped socks my daughter Lana had given me as a birthday present in Winnipeg a few years ago vanished at some stage while I was doing laundry in Los Angeles, after we gave a lecture at UCLA.

The Dig for Richard III, authorized by the Leicester City Council and commissioned and paid for by Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, unearthed a body and it was declared that of Richard III. 

Caribou Coffee, founded in 1992, says nationwide surveys show that the number one complaint of coffee-drinkers is the way it stains. Be it coffee rings to drips on white dress shirts to stains on teeth, a cup of coffee can start your day off right or ruin it right away. 

So they responded with a proprietary new coffee blend that has removed the color while, they say, retaining all the flavor. They say this entirely colorless, stain-free beverage is the result of an innovation in bean cultivation techniques and processing.

Bottom Line: Stiffening of the arteries appears to be associated with the progressive buildup of β-amyloid (Αβ) plaque in the brains of elderly patients without dementia, suggesting a relationship between the severity of vascular disease and the plaque that is a hallmark of Alzheimer disease.

Author: Timothy M. Hughes, Ph.D., M.P.H., of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., and colleagues.

Background: Evidence suggested arterial stiffness is related to brain aging, cerebrovascular disease, impaired cognitive function and dementia in the elderly.

Fast food giants are happy to promote healthy menus - they are in the revenue generation business, they will sell what people want to buy.

Yet food activists and government officials seem to lack basic insight into what kids want, whereas marketing will make whatever campaigns companies want - even if they know they won't work. But they are trying to make healthier food sound appealing, thus coming up with names like Fresh Apple Fries.

Even kids ages 3 to 7 have little interest in attempts at depicting healthier kids' meals, according to a new study by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center in JAMA Pediatrics.  Or they are just confused at efforts to make apples equivalent to the food kids want when they go out.

There are recurring calls to make scientists more social. Scientists have already accepted government control of academic research and now fellow academics and some in the bureaucracy want to task them with communications and outreach also. A few even want to make their science outreach rather than their science output a factor in promotion and tenure.

Increasing heat is estimated to extend dry conditions to far more farmland and cities by the end of the century, according to a new paper.

Much of the concern about future drought under a global warming scenario has focused on rainfall projections but higher evaporation rates may also play an important role as warmer temperatures wring more moisture from the soil, even in some places where rainfall is forecasted to increase, say the authors, who use the latest computer simulations to model the effects of both changing rainfall and evaporation rates on future drought in the journal Climate Dynamics.