Do you remember your first birthday? How about what you ate for breakfast weeks ago? For most people, such events slip through the sieve of memory, never to be retrieved. Now, the first study of its kind in mice suggests that the brain may clear away that old information in the process of forming new memories. Studies in mice have…
Vermont became the first state in the US on Thursday to adopt a law requiring labels for foods containing genetically modified ingredients. The state’s governor, Peter Shumlin, announced on his Twitter feed that he would hold a signing ceremony on Thursday afternoon to sign the new measure into law. The labelling law does not go into effect until July 2016,…
Dogs and puppies are gifted at interpreting human communicative hints, and previous studies showed that they use human visual cues like pointing or gazing in order to find hidden food. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now studied for the first time whether dogs can locate hidden food by relying on auditory information…
In November 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the company 23andMe to stop offering its direct-to-consumer DNA testing service, which provided individuals with $99 assessments of their genetic risk for almost 200 disorders. Experts now examines whether this move by FDA is a violation of the First Amendment, or a necessary step to protect consumers. 23andMe seemingly…
Janet Buckner, a graduate student in UCLA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship for her research on primate phylogenetics in the Brazilian Amazon, for May through November 2015. Janet’s Ph.D. is co-advised by Michael Alfaro (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Institute for Society and Genetics), David Jacobs (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology), and Jessica Lynch Alfaro (Institute for Society and Genetics,…
The human body produces chemical cues that communicate gender to members of the opposite sex, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. Whiffs of the active steroid ingredients (androstadienone in males and estratetraenol in females) influence our perceptions of movement as being either more masculine or more feminine. The effect, which occurs completely without awareness, depends…