Ever had the urge to take a nice crunchy bite of Drosophila or lick icing off a brain? You will after a visit to linkurl:Not So Humble Pie,;http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/ a blog run by scientist-turned-baker, Ms. Humble. A blogger who refers to herself as "a typical nerdy biological anthropologist turned stay at home mom," Ms. Humble -- who chooses to remain anonymous -- began the blog in October 2009. Since then, the popular blog has regularly featured science-themed baked goods, from zebr

#1 Long fingers, long toes Darwin suggested that bipedal locomotion allowed our hands to evolve the necessary dexterity for tool handling, but a new study proposes that human hands and feet coevolved: Selection on the toes led to parallel changes in the hands.Photo by Pierre79, linkurl:Wikimedia Commons;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toes.jpg C. Rolian et al., "The coevolution of human hands and feet," linkurl:Evolution,;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/20624181?dopt=Abstract

Green-thumbed biotechs say they can use plants to make drugs faster, cheaper, and better than top pharmaceutical companies.

Gerd Maul, an accomplished artist and scientist at the linkurl:Wistar Institute;http://www.wistar.org/default.cfm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, passed away last Monday (23rd August) of a heart attack at the age of 70. Gerd Maul Widely recognized for his discovery of new nuclear structures called "nuclear dots" in the early 1990s, Maul turned to vaccinology later in his career, pursuing a novel cytomegalovirus vaccine. The multi-faceted researcher was also an linkurl:admired sculptor and arti

By Megan Scudellari Skipping Retirement Scientists nearing forced retirement age in Europe and Japan find more welcoming laboratories abroad. Learn the secrets to their success. Jan-Åke Gustafsson never got an official retirement notice from the University. But that’s because the 63-year-old chairman of the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition at the Karolinska Institutet didn’t wait around for it. When a

Designer Suzanne Lee grows high-fashion garments, BioCouture, from lowly bacterial cellulose

As a young student in 1989, fashionista Suzanne Lee hated science. After years of suffering through labs and tests in high school, the 19 year old Brit fled for art school, soon snuggling into a world of silk, seams, and buckles. But in 2003, while researching a book on future technologies of fashion, Lee bumped into a scientist at an art gallery in London. The chance meeting led to a discussion on the fashion industry's lack of sustainability, and how science, once Lee's arch-nemesis, might be

Genetically identical cells may be far more different than previously believed. Published this week in linkurl:Science,;http://www.sciencemag.org/ researchers find striking variation in levels of gene expression among individual, genetically identical E. coli, seemingly the result of simple chance. "The paper is quite rich," said linkurl:Sanjay Tyagi,;http://www.phri.org/research/res_pityagi.asp a molecular biologist at New Jersey Medical School who was not involved in the research. "People thi

#1 Neurons complete hippocampus loop There's a new, important function for a once-obscure cell population in the brain: CA2 pyramidal neurons, a subset of cells in the hippocampus, form a link between electrical inputs and outputs in the hippocampus. V. Chevaleye et al., "Strong CA2 pyramidal neuron synapses define a powerful disynaptic cortico-hippocampal loop," linkurl:Neuron,;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/20510860?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn 66:560-72, 2010. linkurl

For the first time, scientists have devised a way to watch and analyze, in real time, the transcription of a single gene in a living human cell. Published online today (July 18) in Nature Methods, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel describe their system to visualize and track the kinetics of transcription, including the speed and fluctuations of transcription of a single gene. Yaron Shav-Tal and colleagues at Bar-Ilan used their technique, which involves tagging the mRNA product from

Cells originally believed to be no more than support for neurons have been getting a second-look lately, and a recent study suggests they may be critical to a fundamental bodily function: breathing. The finding, published online today (July 15) by linkurl:Science,;http://www.sciencemag.org/ further expands scientists' vague understanding how astrocytes -- glial cells in the brain named for their star-shape -- function in the brain, and offers a new way to investigate disorders associated with r

The body's tendency to silence the expression of one parental allele in favor of the other -- a practice known as genomic imprinting -- is much more widespread than scientists have believed, according to a new genome-wide study in mice, published online this week in linkurl:Science.;http://www.sciencemag.org/ The study found that the number of genes in mouse brains with a bias toward either the maternal or paternal allele is thirteen times higher than previously thought. Kessa LigerroWikimedia