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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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A recent genome-wide meta-analysis has identified a biological commonality among 120,000 regular coffee drinkers - 6 new genetic variants related to caffeine metabolism, lipid and glucose metabolism, and its psychoactive effects, found among about 2.5 million variants in the genome.
Some people are so obsessed with their food it smacks of zealotry. They might eat only a certain kind of fish cooked on a certain piece of wood. 

They might even believe that they can taste the difference between a strawberry processed at an organic farm and one processed at a conventional one. 

When it becomes truly bizarre, it affects family and friends. Writing at Genetic Literacy Project I discuss people who are on an obsessive quest for health perfection, to an extent that they fetishize their food process.
Canada, which has roughly 1,500 vials of an ebola vaccine called VSV-EBOV, has offered 1,000 vials to the World Health Organization and said the rest would be used for upcoming clinical trials in 5 locations: two in the United States, and one each in Germany, Switzerland and a non-Western-African country that isn't battling ebola.  
It's long been known that cows fed antibiotics to ward off diseases can be placing them back into the environment biologically - and that could be one reason for increased antibiotic resistance.

We can't be too hard on cows and chickens, people are doing the same thing, and in far greater quantities. We use a lot of antibiotics.
Food containers in the House became more environmentally friendly last week - again - as paper containers have started to take the place of their stryofoam counterparts.

We've seen this all before, of course. In my introduction to Science Left Behind I noted that the last time Democrats had the House locked down their big green move was replacing plastic utensils with corn-based alternatives that broke easily and melted in soup. And the containers had to be shipped on emissions-belching trucks to deep Virginia where they could be composted, all for far higher cost.
Credit: Millionaire Chess tournament

When I was a kid, no one outside Texas played Texas Hold 'Em. We played Stud, we played Draw, we played Liar's, but not Hold 'Em.

Like Esther Williams movies and organic food, some things just make their way into pop culture and there is no rational reason why. Texas Hold 'Em is now the most popular card game in the country, every month or so our neighborhood gets together at one of our homes and puts in 20 bucks each and we go at it.