HIGGS AND ENGLERT!

Note: this article is being updated in real time as events unfold... Updates are at the bottom. Note in particular the 12.05 update...!

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As with any new technology, the development and commercialization of biotech crops is a story about people.  Its a story about people with ideas and vision; people who did hard and creative work; people who took career or business risks, and people who integrated this new technology into the complex business of farming.  By various artifacts of my educational and career path, I've been in a position to know many of these people as friends and colleagues over the last 36 years.  Their story is important, but it tends to get lost in much of the conversation about biotech crops.

Triathletes participate in a grueling endurance sport - in the Olympic version, it means swimming about 1 mile, bicycling 40 miles and then running 6.2 miles. Those in the Ironman version get even more extreme, a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike race and then running a full marathon, 26.2 miles.

Clearly, in both training and competition, they regularly push their bodies beyond the limits most of us can endure. There is no doubt that triathletes are tougher than most people, the mystery is why.

High taxes or low taxes, anti-global warming or anti-GMO. You can often figure out how an American votes by asking their stance on a few issues.

The government is currently in the middle of a shutdown because neither side remembers what bipartisan means. Yet one things remains the same in both camps; belief superiority, the idea that their views on certain issues are not only correct but also that all other views are inferior.

A recent psychology paper examined whether one end of the American political spectrum believes more strongly than the other in the superiority of its principles and positions. It found both sides have elements of "belief superiority," depending on the issue. 

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is the name given to women who are in a bad mood when they are about to get their periods.  Most women are unaffected by the hormonal changes of the menstrual cycle, but approximately 20% of women say they experience premenstrual syndrome and 5% say they have a severe disorder characterized by functionally impairing or distressing mood and physical symptoms in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle (second half of cycle) - which scholars call premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a more severe form of PMS.  

In the award-winning children’s book ‘Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus’ by Mo Willems, (Hyperion Books for Children, 2003) a persistent pigeon ‘asks, pleads, cajoles, wheedles, connives, negotiates, demands and uses emotional blackmail in attempts to get behind the wheel’.

Since 1996, corn containing a gene that allows it to create a protein that is toxic to certain insects yet is safe for human consumption has been grown in the United States.

Most of this genetically modified "Bt corn" has been used for animal feed or processed into corn meal, starch, or other products. Varieties of sweet corn (corn on the cob) have existed since the late 1990s, though relatively few acres have been planted related to the impact of marketing campaigns against it by activist groups. 

A new study doesn't rehash the well-documented safety issue and instead deals with the environmental aspects. It suggests that Bt sweet corn is better for the environment because it requires fewer pesticide applications than conventional corn.

James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof have been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on how the cell organizes its transport system.

Disturbances in the control system for the transport and delivery of cellular molecules contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders. The three US researchers received the award for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.

In a world of over-diagnosis, virtually anything can be considered a mental disorder if you are willing to pay someone to give you therapy for it. Afraid of attractive women? You have Venustraphobia. Afraid of GMO foods? The name is in the works.  Body piercings. plastic surgery, eating couch cushions, every odd compulsion has someone saying clinically it's real.

Even in the fuzzy world of behavior, being an actual clinical diagnosis requires an evidence basis and most pop diagnosis addictions don't have that; it's just individual weirdness manifesting a compulsion.