If We Create life, Who Will Control It?

"Perhaps I shouldn't have used a conditional in the title. After all, we are already creating life."

"Recently, Craig Venter, from the J. Craig Venter Institute, announced the creation of a living, self-reproducing bacterial cell with a DNA sequence produced in the laboratory. According to Laurie Garrett's article in Foreign Affairs late last year, the creature 'moved, ate, breathed, and replicated itself.'"

"Garrett quotes from an interview with Venter from 2009: 'There's not a single aspect of human life that doesn't have the potential to be totally transformed by these technologies in the future.'"

"'These technologies' refer to the world of synthetic biology, the ability to construct — at least in principle — living creatures from the assembly of different parts, as in a sort of living Lego world."

Americans Waistlines Are Expanding And That's Not Good Fat

"If your belt needs to be let out a notch, you're not alone. The average American waistline is growing even though obesity rates haven't grown, too. And excess abdominal fat increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke."

"The collective American waistline grew by an more than inch from 1999-2000 to 2011-2012, according to a study published Tuesday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association."

"The study results come at a time when the percentage of Americans who are overweight or obese has stabilized. In short, people haven't been getting fatter, but their waistlines are still increasing."

"'We're a little bit puzzled for explanations,' Dr. Earl Ford, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead author of the study, tells Shots. The two measures are closely related: While body mass index or BMI measures fat overall, waist circumference helps measure fat distribution."

Too Few University Jobs For America's Young Scientists

"Imagine a job where about half of all the work is being done by people who are in training. That's, in fact, what happens in the world of biological and medical research."

"In the United States, more than 40,000 temporary employees known as postdoctoral research fellows are doing science at a bargain price. And most postdocs are being trained for jobs that don't actually exist."

"Academic institutions graduate an overabundance of biomedical Ph.D.s — and this imbalance is only getting worse, as research funding from the National Institutes of Health continues to wither."

"The funding squeeze presents an enormous challenge for young scientists like Vanessa Hubbard-Lucey, who is trying to make a career in biomedical research."

Envisioning Landscapes of Our Distant Future

"A few minutes before my flight to Helsinki touched down, I looked out the window at Finland's flat, snowy, forested landscape. It appeared still and serene."

"It was December 2011, and I was moving to Finland to conduct anthropological fieldwork among experts developing what might, in the early 2020s, become the world's first operational geological repository for high-level nuclear waste."

"As an anthropologist, my goal was to examine how these experts think about the future, how they conceive of the world around them, and how they relate to themselves and to their colleagues."

Northern Lights Put On Show Thanks To Large Solar Flare

"The sky danced with bands of green, yellow and other colors last night, as the aurora borealis, or northern lights, dazzled viewers in the upper Northern Hemisphere. The light show was sparked by a powerful solar flare that erupted from the sun Wednesday."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center says that while Earth will feel the effects of the large coronal mass ejection through Sunday, it won't bring major communications or electrical problems."

"If you weren't far enough in the north — or well-rested enough – to see the show, don't worry: stunning images were posted to Twitter and elsewhere."

A Dozen Puffins Will Get You 800 Mackerel

"Under the endangered species act, buying or selling an endangered animal requires a permit. The permits are hard to get — even for zoos and aquariums."

"But there's a loophole."

"'If I donate or loan an endangered species to you, I need no permit,' says Kris Vehrs of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums."

"So a barter system has sprung up among zoos and aquariums to trade animals without using money. They even do it with species that aren't endangered. But barter can be complicated."

"For example: The New England Aquarium in Boston was recently in the market for some lookdown fish, and they knew of an aquarium in North Carolina that was willing to trade some."

Minor White, Who Lived a Life in Photographs, Saw Images As Mirrors

"When we point smartphones at our kids or smile for a selfie, we're not necessarily thinking of photography as an art form. But in the early days of the medium, when big cameras and flashbulbs were lugged around and propped on tripods, art was often the goal. An exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles focuses on the work of one such photographer, Minor White."

"Curator Paul Martinau finds the name "Minor" appropriate. 'It has a relationship to music and the minor key, which is somewhat of an unusual quirky key, and that fits in with his own personality,' he says."

"An outsider with a quirky sense of humor, White had different ideas, Martinau says. He was brave in what he chose to photograph, at a time when some subjects were dangerous."

When Scientists Give Up

"Ian Glomski thought he was going to make a difference in the fight to protect people from deadly anthrax germs. He had done everything right — attended one top university, landed an assistant professorship at another."

"But Glomski ran head-on into an unpleasant reality: These days, the scramble for money to conduct research has become stultifying."

"So, he's giving up on science."

More Than Half of US Bird Species Threatened By Climate Change

"People in Maryland love their Baltimore orioles — so much so that their Major League Baseball team bears the name of the migrating bird. Yet, by 2080, there may not be any orioles left in Maryland. They migrate each year and, according to a new report, could soon be forced to nest well north of the Mid-Atlantic state."

"And the oriole is not alone. A seven-year study published Tuesday by the National Audubon Society warns that the migratory routes and habitats of more than half of the birds in North America are now or soon will be threatened by climate change."

"The report looked at more than 40 years of climate data and records from bird censuses conducted by the Audubon and the U.S. Geological Survey. Researchers compared changes in bird migration patterns to changes in climate to predict the fate of 588 bird species now found in the U.S. and Canada."

Awe With and Without the Gods

"In a 2006 article for the Los Angeles Times, Sam Harris identified 10 myths about atheism, among them the idea that 'atheists are closed to spiritual experience.'"

"Harris explained: 'There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly.'"

"And in a post last week, my fellow 13.7 commentator Barbara J. King also wrote about atheism and awe. 'Atheists feel awe, too. Everyone does. That wondrous sense needn't be described by invoking the sacred.'"

Better With Butter: Here's Why Americans Are Consuming More

"There's a growing number of Americans who seem to believe that everything is better with butter."

"'I love butter,' Ashleigh Armstrong, 29, says, as she sips coffee at a cafe in Washington's Union Station. Among her favorites: "'Anything from Julia Child's cookbooks.'"

"There's no margarine in Ashleigh's refrigerator. "I'm not going to have the fake stuff," she says, adding that she'd rather indulge a little in rich foods and burn it off at a spinning class."

"And no, she's not worried about cholesterol. That's her grandmother's generation's concern, she says."

Look Forward To The Trip Not Gadgets To Be Truly Happy

"We humans spend a lot of time waiting in lines: People queue up for days in order to get their hands on the latest iPhone, or what feels like eons for a table at that hip new brunch place."

"You may be better off spending time and money on the latter. A growing body of research has shown that experiences tend to make people happier than material possessions."

"And even anticipating an experience like a concert, a ski trip or what better be a really great brunch makes us happier than purchasing the latest gadgets, according to a study published Tuesday in Psychological Science."

"The study, cleverly titled Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases, tracked how about 100 college students and over 2,200 randomly selected adults felt about material goods and experiences."

Old Ships Reveal Adventure, Tragedy, and Hints About Climate

"What can yesterday's weather tell us about how the climate is changing today? That's what an army of volunteers looking at old ships' logs is trying to answer through the Old Weather project."

"One of those volunteers — or citizen scientists, as the project calls them — is Kathy Wendolkowski of Gaithersburg, Md."

"Sitting in her kitchen, she uses her laptop to read from the logbook of the Pioneer, a ship that was out measuring ocean depths near Alaska on July 15, 1925. An image of the Pioneer's log from that day was posted online by the National Archives at the website OldWeather.org. Her task is to transcribe the logs' handwritten notes, from their elegant cursive script to something that can be digested by computers."

Cutting Back on Carbs, Not Fat, May Lead To More Weight Gain

"We've reported a lot this year about how there's a major rethinking of fat happening in the U.S."

"Turns out, eating foods with fat — everything from avocados and nuts to dairy fat — doesn't make us fat."

"But eating too many carbohydrates — particularly the heavily refined starches found in bagels, white pasta and crackers — does our collective waistlines no favors."

"A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine adds to the body of evidence that cutting back on carbs, not fat, can lead to more weight loss."

Volcanoes in Iceland & Papua New Guinea Keep Residents on Edge

"Two volcanoes half a world apart are causing havoc today: Several flights have been diverted around an eruption in Papua New Guinea, and authorities in Iceland briefly put aviation on highest alert (again) owing to a temperamental Mount Bardarbunga, which has been rumbling for the past week."

"Mount Tavurvur on Papua New Guinea's East New Britain island erupted Friday, sending smoke and ash skyward. There have been no reports of injuries, but some residents in nearby Rabaul town were evacuated and others were told to stay indoors after the eruption, which occurred about 3:30 a.m. local time. Qantas, Australia's flag carrier, says it is rerouting two flights from Sydney, one to Tokyo and the other to Shanghai that would otherwise have passed close to the erupting mountain."

Dance of Human Evolution Was Herky Jerky, Fossils Suggest

"A trio of anthropologists has decided it's time to rewrite the story of human evolution."

"That narrative has always been a work in progress, because almost every time scientists dig up a new fossil bone or a stone tool, it adds a new twist to the story. Discoveries lead to new arguments over the details of how we became who we are."

"But anthropologists generally agree on this much: A little more than 2 million years ago in Africa, the human lineage emerged. Smithsonian anthropologist Rick Potts says the conventional wisdom is that much of Africa changed about then from forest to dry savanna. Our ape-like ancestors had to adapt or die, leave the forest and embrace the savanna — and in doing so, they evolved into something more like us."

Easy Method For Making Stem Cells Was Too Good to be True

"A prestigious scientific journal Wednesday took the unusual step of retracting some high-profile research that had generated international excitement about stem cell research."

"The British scientific journal Nature retracted two papers published in January by scientists at the Riken research institute in Japan and at Harvard Medical School that claimed that they could create stem cells simply by dipping skin and blood cells into acid."

"The claim raised the possibility of being able to use the cells to easily make any kind of cell in the body to treat many diseases and generated international media coverage, including some on Shots."

Hillary Clinton: The Inevitable Sure Seems Like It

The jockeying for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is already shaping up to be nothing like the 2008 contest. Indeed, it doesn't even resemble a contest. It's not going too far out on a limb to say that, unlike six years ago, the nomination is Hillary Clinton's for the taking, if she wants it.

This will inevitably lead to the idea of her inevitability — and there are few words in politics more despised than that one.

Presidential aspirants have a love-hate relationship with that word when it's attached to them.

The Man Beneath the Blue Room

"What's behind the man who is below The Blue Room?"

"This week, conservators at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., revealed that underneath Pablo Picasso's noted 1901 painting The Blue Room is another painting of a mustachioed man in a jacket and bow tie, resting his face on his hand."

"Experts have long suspected something more must be below, as there were brushstrokes that didn't match the composition of the nude, bluish woman. Now, advanced infrared technology has revealed the man with the mustache, who also wears three rings on his fingers."

Wrong: Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories

"Here are five stories we tell ourselves — five famous history stories that you have heard all your life — that aren't true. Not only are they not true, but historians have known they aren't true, said they aren't true, insisted they aren't true, and the stories don't change. We like them the way they are."

"Then along comes CGP Grey. He is an essayist with his own YouTube channel and a curious talent for truth telling; he can take a charming lie and, with even more charm, rip it apart. It is very, very hard, as any teacher will tell you, to unlearn something that makes you comfortable and makes you feel smart, but Mr. Grey has the knack. He takes a pretty tale, unwraps it, deconstructs it and turns it into something even prettier — but this time, it's true."

"So here are five historical misconceptions that will misconceive no more ..."