Climate scientist Michael Mann has been at the center of the public debate over climate change for most of his career. He was part of a group of researchers that, in the 1990s, documented strong evidence for an abnormal warming trend in the last century that correlated with the increase in fossil fuel use during the Industrial Revolution. Mann has been the subject of political and personal attacks, which he believes are motivated by a “destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change.” But as he explains in this opinion piece, he has come to embrace the publicity as a vehicle for educating the world about the dangers of the current climate trajectory.
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Researchers studying gastric bypass surgery have identified a role for the gut microbiome in weight loss. Transplanting the microbes from a mouse that had undergone the surgery into a healthy-weight mouse resulted in lower body fat and a small amount of weight loss, despite the fact that their food intake remained steady. The researchers suggested that the findings could one day translate into an effective weight-loss probiotic drug.
FLICKR, MIKEBLOGSNew research in mice suggests that double-stranded breaks in DNA may be a normal part of learning and memory formation. But there’s an interesting twist: a protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease exacerbates the damage by inhibiting DNA repair. When the researchers treated mice with anti-epileptic drug to reduce brain activity, however, the damage was fixed more quickly.
FLICKR, BITMASKA massive genetic association study has uncovered dozens of previously unknown polymorphisms that affect the risk of breast, prostate, and ovarian cancer—doubling the number of known variants linked to these diseases. Still, there are likely hundreds more variants to be discovered.
