Future food security in Sub-Saharan Africa requires enhancement of its crop production. Transgenic crops with a poverty focus can enhance harvests and are available for staples such as cooking bananas and plantains. One constraint is optimisation of national biosafety processes to support rapid and safe uptake of such beneficial crops. Africa needs streamlined regulation supporting deployment o...

BACKGROUND Dietary supplements have been extensively studied for their beneficial effects on cognition and AD neuropathology. The current study examines the effect of a medical food cocktail consisting of the dietary supplements curcumin, piperine, epigallocatechin gallate, α-lipoic acid, N-acetylcysteine, B vitamins, vitamin C, and folate on cognitive functioning and the AD hallmark features a...

The objective of our study was to investigate young people's attitudes towards modern genetics and biotechnology. Quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted among high school students in Rio de Janeiro. These included a survey of students in nine public and private schools as well as focus groups for a complementary analysis of their attitudes and perceptions with respect to these subj...

Advocates of biotechnology affirm that the application of genetic engineering to develop transgenic crops will increase world agricultural productivity, enhance food security, and move agriculture away from a dependence on chemical inputs helping to reduce environmental problems. This paper challenges such assertions by first demystifying the Malthusian view that hunger is due to a gap between ...

Genetically modified (GM) food is discussed as an example of the controversial relation between the intrinsic uncertainty of the scientific approach and the demand of citizen-consumers to use products of science innovation that are known to be safe. On the whole, peer-reviewed studies on GM food safety do not note significant health risks, with a few exceptions, like the most renowned "Pusztai ...

Learned associations between environmental stimuli and rewards drive goal-directed learning and motivated behavior. These memories are thought to be encoded by alterations within specific patterns of sparsely distributed neurons called neuronal ensembles that are activated selectively by reward-predictive stimuli. Here, we use the Fos promoter to identify strongly activated neuronal ensembles i...

Using transgenic rice as a bioreactor for mass production of pharmaceutical proteins could potentially reduce the cost of production significantly. However, a major concern over the bioreactor transgenic rice is the risk of its unintended spreading into environment and into food or feed supplies. Here we report a mitigating method to prevent unwanted transgenic rice spreading by a double built-...

somatic embryos of persian walnut were transformed with two strains of agrobacterium tumefaciens i.e. lba4404 and c58, and two plasmids, namely, pbi121 with nptii and gus genes for improving the transformation protocol, and p6u-ubi-fvti plasmid containing the hpt and fld genes. the transformation frequency was 10%. pcr and rt-pcr analysis proved the presence and expression of the genes. the tra...

An important concern with the use of genetically modified (GM) plants expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal toxins is deleterious effect on non–target organisms. The predatory stink bug Podisus nigrispinus (Dallas) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) used in biological control programs and may be exposed to Bt toxins. This study evaluated indirect effects different Cry proteins P. prey Spod...