A completely man-made chemical enzyme has successfully neutralized a toxin found naturally in fruits and vegetables.   Dr. Jeannette Bjerre at the University of Copenhagen showed how a novel 'chemzyme' was able to decompose glycoside esculin, a toxin found in horse-chestnuts.

Chemzymes are designed molecules emulating the targeting and efficiency of naturally occurring enzymes.   Most people know enzymes as an ingredient in detergents but in our bodies enzymes are in charge of decomposing everything we eat, so that our bodies can absorb the nutrients. They also decompose ingested toxins, ensuring that our bodies survive the encounter.

The soon-to-be-published and complete Danish translation of all the Icelandic sagas, a literary cornerstone of the Western canon, will fundamentally change our perception of the Viking heroes that populate the stories.

Saucy poems, supernatural creatures, explicit violence and emotional outbursts are an integral part of the Icelandic sagas, says assistant professor Annette Lassen from the Department of Scandinavian Research at the University of Copenhagen, but Danish translator N.M. Petersen, whose translations have been the  standard for the past 170 years, left passages out and even ignored entire stories because they did not conform to contemporary Romantic norms. 

Given an aggressive public relations campaign designed to obscure facts about the organic food industry, we are clarifying what an 'organic' label means and does not mean.

To be certified 'organic' a producer needs to prepare documentation (fill out forms) testifying they obey the guidelines below and pay a fee.  There is no 'on the spot' checking of farms to insure compliance.

Organic regulations restrict and in some cases ban additives like preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colorings and flavorings, and monosodium glutamate (MSG).  

Our universe is thought to be around 14 billion years old and astronomers recently determined that big galaxies formed much earlier in the universe's history than previously thought, within the first 1 billion years, and for more than two decades the prevailing wisdom among astronomers has been that galaxies evolved hierarchically - gravity drew small bits of matter together first and then those small bits gradually came together to form larger structures.

A new model seeks to turn that idea on its head.  And the researchers say the very large umbrella of 'dark matter' may be the explanation.

Eusociality is the social structure where individuals cooperate to raise offspring.   How does it happen?   Some proponents have found the answer in kin selection theory, a 'gene's-eye' view of evolution made explicit by William Hamilton (1) in a pair of seminal papers and which sees organic evolution as a result of competition among genes for representation in the gene-pool -  organisms are simply vehicles that genes constructed to aid in propagation.

If the freezing point of fish blood is -0.9 ° Celsius, how are Antarctic fish able to keep moving at a temperature like -1.8 ° C?

You're not the only one to ask, researchers have wondered for 50 years, and it known that fish in the Arctic have a special sort of antifreeze, similar to what we put in cars, but just how these special frost protection proteins work has been unclear.