Giovanna Di Sauro

When I saw this, I just had to post it on my blog. I do not think I have ever seen a better way to describe science, and whether you are doing it wrong.

A few days ago, while navigating in TED territory, I stumbled into this talk given by a Princeton sophomore. The main topic of the talk was to present a different view of cancer than the one we are usually accustomed to. While we are used to thinking that cancer is a terrible disease, it would hardly cross our mind that it could be some kind of a cure, or better an attempt to heal parts of our body that are damaged – an attempt that often gets out of control.

How many of you remember Jurassic Park? If you do, you would probably also remember that resuscitating a species which has undergone extinction long ago would basically be impossible because of, among other things, DNA degradation. But what about species that are more recent, and whose tissue samples have been carefully stored?

This is the second post dedicated to Bisphenol A (BPA). In this post I will talk about the research regarding BPA biological activity, and the medical as well as ecological implications of BPA presence for us and our environment.

Bisphenol A, an estrogen-like compound used to line water bottles, has been found to be able to alter gene expression in a breast cancer cell line, a change similar to that seen in high-grade breast cancer lesions. But bisphenol A has been known to affect more than cell lines, and research into its impact on the reproductive system and toxicity has been conducted since the 1960s.

In today’s study, scientists tried to activate certain neurons using what could basically thought of as a “light switch”, and observed females performing a characteristic male courtship song. Although the BBC suggestively calls this a “mind-control sex swap”, we are really not looking at the sex of the flies – but rather, at gender-specific behaviors.