Epigenetics is everywhere. Nary a day goes by without some news story or press release telling us something it explains.

Why does autism run in families?  Epigenetics.
Why do you have trouble losing weight? Epigenetics.
Why are vaccines dangerous? Epigenetics.
Why is cancer so hard to fight? Epigenetics.
Why a cure for cancer is around the corner? Epigenetics.
Why your parenting choices might affect your great-grandchildren? Epigenetics.

The political attack site PRWatch, one arm of the dark-money funded group self-named as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), is run by a former attorney for the Clinton administration which slashed funding for real science in the 1990s (1) while promoting junk environmental claims about ethanol, so it's no surprise CMD hate pro-science groups who don't cater to the environmental scaremongering CMD gets paid to do.

The Bee Informed Partnership conducts an annual survey of commercial and backyard beekeepers so that they can try and track health and survival rates of honey bee colonies.  Though honey bees are just one bee species out of about 27,000, estimates of their implied economic value are around $10 billion annually. A  The latest results show that honey bee colonies declined 44 percent during the year spanning April 2015 to April 2016.

That sounds alarming, and it is in contrast to studies showing that bee numbers are not in decline, but were instead at a 20-year high last year. (1)

How can the claims be so different? Should we be alarmed or not?

A new claims the epigenetics of lactose intolerance may provide an approach to understanding schizophrenia - perhaps because both lactose intolerance and schizophrenia are inherited and neither condition emerges in the first years of life and in a booming fad like epigenetics, that is all you need. 

More than 65 per cent of adults worldwide are lactose intolerant and cannot process the milk sugar lactose. Lactose intolerance is influenced by one gene, which determines if a person will lose the ability to process lactose over time. More specifically, those with some variants of this gene will gradually produce less lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose, as they age.

(Inside Science) – Physicists are on the hunt for elusive dark matter, the hypothesized but as yet unidentified stuff that makes up a large majority of the matter in the universe.

They had long favored "weakly interacting massive particles," known as WIMPs, as the most likely dark matter candidate, but after an exhaustive search, some scientists are moving on to more exotic particles.

When does free speech become important? In the halls of academia, it often comes down along political and cultural lines. An endorsement of business mogul Donald Trump leaves academics and students running for a safe speech while a professor bullying a journalism student claims she was oppressed.

When academics do choose to litigate speech disputes with colleges and universities, they end up losing nearly three-quarters of the time, and Michael LeRoy, a professor of labor and employment relations at
University of Illinois
says that is a sign of growing tension between academic freedom and campus speech codes, without recognizing that these issues only go to action when they are the most flagrant sort of violation.

San Jose, Calif., May 10, 2016 -- A team of more than 80 mathematicians from 12 countries has begun charting the terrain of rich, new mathematical worlds, and sharing their discoveries on the Web. The mathematical universe is filled with both familiar and exotic items, many of which are being made available for the first time. The "L-functions and Modular Forms Database," abbreviated LMFDB, is an intricate catalog of mathematical objects and the connections between them. Making those relationships visible has been made possible largely by the coordinated efforts of a group of researchers developing new algorithms and performing calculations on an extensive network of computers.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Native American adolescents have higher rates of cigarette smoking than other racial or ethnic groups. New research from the University of Missouri on the smoking habits of Native American adolescents finds that family warmth and support, as well as participation in school activities, can play a role in tobacco prevention.

Acoustic warning signals emitted by tiger moths to deter bats - a behavior previously proven only in the laboratory - actually occur in nature and are used as a defense mechanism, according to new research from Wake Forest University.

Field research of free-flying bats conducted in their natural habitats by biology graduate student Nick Dowdy and colleagues shows that tiger moths produce ultrasonic signals to warn bats they don't taste good. This behavior - called acoustic aposematism - was previously proven in the laboratory by biology professor Bill Conner and Jesse Barber, who earned his doctorate at Wake Forest in 2007.

By the time Michelle Marineau saw her patient, James*, there was little she could do to help him. His big toe had been removed, a complication from years of uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, but the amputation site had stubbornly refused to heal. An infection had eaten away flesh and left tendon and bone exposed, streaks of off-white against the angry, red, weeping wound. Several of his other toes had developed gangrene, turning black and slowly dropping off.