The Shackled Man Theory says that holding someone back for half of a race and then setting them free later means the shackled racer can never really catch up. 

If so, environmentalists have already poisoned the well to such a large extent in Europe that genetically modified food may never catch on, but at least consumers are not faced with a centralized blanket ban based on nothing but hysteria.

Now they can have centralized blanket bans that at least a politician of their own can be held accountable for.  The EU wants to let individual countries decide whether or not to allow GMOs. That is good news, because now no individual country can weasel out of the issue by saying they have no choice, the EU has made the decision.

Selecting graduate students in the fields of science and engineering based on an assessment of "character", whatever that means, is better than relying almost entirely on their scores on a standardized test like the GRE.

The goal in that would be to boost participation by women. Underrepresented even more in academia are Republicans and handicapped people, but the authors aren't worried about all minorities, just the correct ones. 

After analyzing core samples from the seabed off the coast of Spain and Portugal, near the Strait of Gibraltar, scientists say they have proof of shifts of climate change over the past six million years.  

The team also discovered new evidence of a deep-earth tectonic pulse in the region, as well as thick layers of sand within mountains of mud in a vast sheet, spreading out nearly 100km into the Atlantic from the Gibraltar gateway.

The quantity of sand is far more than was expected and has been caused by the strength, speed and long duration of bottom currents flowing through the Strait of Gibraltar from the Mediterranean.

In humans, no therapy for  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease,  has ever been discovered that could extend lifespan more than a few additional months.

ALS was first identified as a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease in the late 1800s but only gained international recognition in 1939 when it was diagnosed in American baseball legend Lou Gehrig. It's known to be caused by motor neurons in the spinal cord deteriorating and dying, and has been traced to mutations in copper, zinc superoxide dismutase, or SOD1. Ordinarily, superoxide dismutase is an antioxidant whose proper function is essential to life.

In the most comprehensive genetic study of the Mexican population to date, researchers from  Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), UC San Francisco and Stanford University, have identified tremendous genetic diversity.

So much diversity there basically are no Mexicans.  But it explains some confounding aspects of Latino health, like why there is such a variety of health factors among Latinos of Mexican descent, including differing rates of breast cancer and asthma, as well as therapeutic response.  

Vani Hari, an earnest unqualified pundit who sells a lot of stuff on her website, implies you will look like her if you don't eat foods she cannot pronounce. And now she has gone after pizza.

No big deal. Whereas people who eat at Subway are easily duped and thus it was simple to get Subway to not use a completely harmless additive, the pizza market is another issue entirely.

White sharks
(Carcharodon carcharias)
are among the largest, most widespread apex predators in the ocean so there have been concerns about their vulnerability. The most comprehensive study undertaken on seasonal distribution patterns and historic trends in abundance of white sharks in the western North Atlantic Ocean used records compiled over more than 200 years finds that white sharks are a conservation win.

Scientists from NOAA Fisheries and colleagues added recent grey literature - unpublished, non-peer reviewed data - to previously published data to create a broader picture of 649 confirmed white shark records obtained between 1800 and 2010, the largest white shark dataset ever compiled for the region.  

MINNEAPOLIS – People with diets higher in protein, especially from fish, may be less likely to have a stroke than those with diets lower in protein, according to a meta-analysis published in the June 11, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"The amount of protein that led to the reduced risk was moderate—equal to 20 grams per day," said study author Xinfeng Liu, MD, PhD, of Nanjing University School of Medicine in Nanjing, China. "Additional, larger studies are needed before definitive recommendations can be made, but the evidence is compelling."

Oxford University researchers funded by Parkinson's UK have developed a simple and quick MRI technique that offers promise for early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

The team demonstrated that their new MRI approach can detect people who have early-stage Parkinson's disease with 85% accuracy, according to research published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

'At the moment we have no way to predict who is at risk of Parkinson's disease in the vast majority of cases,' says Dr Clare Mackay of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, one of the joint lead researchers. 'We are excited that this MRI technique might prove to be a good marker for the earliest signs of Parkinson's. The results are very promising.'

One of the hazards of summer is picking up an itchy poison ivy rash but researchers say they have found a natural and effective way to kill it - a fungus named
olletotrichum fioriniae
that grows on the fleshy tissue surrounding the plant's seed. 

For being so annoying, poison ivy has had surprisingly little research done on it. John Jelesko, an associate professor of plant pathology at Virgina Tech, began studying the plant after experiencing a nasty poison ivy rash himself while doing some yard work. He found that most of the work was focused on urushiol, the rash-causing chemical found in the plant's oils. Urushiol is extremely potent. Only one nanogram is needed to cause a rash, and the oil can remain active on dead plants up to five years.