With a blue plaid button-up shirt tucked in his jeans and a pair of ballpoint pens protruding from his front pocket, Chris Drew doesn't look much like a farmer until he puts on a pair of dirt-caked, orange leather gloves and begins trouncing through rows of 3-foot-tall artichoke plants. "Do you like big ones or small ones?" Drew, a production manager for Sea Mist Farms, shouts through a light mist. "Doesn't matter," I call back to him, wriggling my black patent-leather heels from a suction cup of thick mud. "But the bigger the stem, the better. That's the best part." Forging a path ... Read More
Itchy? You’ve Got Some Nerve
August 17, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Think that itch of yours is a pain in your neck? Think again. According to a team of six researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and Peking University in Beijing, the two sensations — itching and pain that is — are completely independent of each other. For years, scientists considered itch and pain to be two related sensations, with itch being lesser of the two evils. However, this study — published online in the journal Science — found that the feeling of "itch" is controlled by its own specific neuron in the nervous system. "As humans, when we feel itch, we know ... Read More
That’s a Nice Crop Of Teeth You Got There
August 10, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Tooth knocked out? New research suggests someday you could replace it by simply growing a new one. According to study recently published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of Japanese scientists have successfully grown a fully functional tooth in an adult mouse using specially engineered stem cells taken from a mouse embryo. In order to grow the new tooth, the research team, led by Etsuko Ikeda and Ritsuko Morita of the Tokyo University of Science, sought to recreate the processes that occur while an animal is undergoing normal embryonic ... Read More
Can This Fishery Be Saved? Yes!
July 30, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
There is reason to have hope in the long-term sustainability of the world's fisheries, which a few years ago were predicted to collapse in the next four decades. According to a brand-new analysis of the most comprehensive fisheries database to date suggests a balance between fishing and conservation is possible even in extremely overfished regions — when the right combination of management techniques are employed. And to the joy of sushi eaters, there is evidence these strategies already are helping fish populations rebound in some parts of the world. The analysis is described in ... Read More
New Rat Species Nose Their Way Into Menageries
July 27, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Rodents — especially those found thriving amongst sewers and subway tracks — are regarded by many as the cockroaches of the mammal world. But here at Miller-McCune.com, we hold mice, rats and the rest of their furry relatives in high esteem for the insights they provide on issues ranging from disease identification and treatment to psychology and behavior. Which is why it is exciting to report that there are apparently more rodent species on the planet than we thought. Although nearly 1.8 million species of organisms have been identified on planet Earth, scientists believe there are ... Read More