Science Tuesday - Fossils, Immigration, and Soy

FOR THE AGES Single-celled foraminifera helped to create the materials used in some of the world's great monuments, and are also very valuable in telling Earth's history because they produce shells that make good fossils.

‘Nature’s Masons’ Do Double Duty as Storytellers
By SEAN B. CARROLL, The New York Times, June 25, 2012

GUBBIO, Italy — North of Rome, in Umbria, a series of picturesque, ancient towns perch on the tops or sides of the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. Their placement here was a defensive imperative for successive Umbrian, Etruscan, Roman and Christian occupants over the millenniums. But these hillside locations were also of great advantage for constructing massive buildings, fortified walls and aqueducts, because of to unlimited local supplies of limestone.

Tourists flock to places like Gubbio, on the slope of Mount Ingino, to admire its impressive medieval churches and palazzos. But no one gives any thought to the tiny creatures that helped to create the materials necessary for making such spectacular, long-lived monuments.

Limestone is composed largely of crystallized calcium carbonate. Some of it comes from the skeletal remains of well-known creatures like corals, but much of the rest comes from less appreciated but truly remarkable organisms called foraminifera, or forams for short.

( Read more... )

Immigrants Are Crucial to Innovation, Study Says
By ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times, June 25, 2012

Arguing against immigration policies that force foreign-born innovators to leave the United States, a new study to be released on Tuesday shows that immigrants played a role in more than three out of four patents at the nation’s top research universities.

Conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a nonprofit group co-founded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, the study notes that nearly all the patents were in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM fields that are a crucial driver of job growth.

The report points out that while many of the world’s top foreign-born innovators are trained at United States universities, after graduation they face “daunting or insurmountable immigration hurdles that force them to leave and bring their talents elsewhere.”

( Read more... )

Really? Eating Soy Increases the Risk of Breast Cancer
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times, JUNE 25, 2012

THE FACTS

Soy milk, tofu and other soy products contain phytoestrogens, chemicals that can mimic the behavior of the hormone estrogen. Because estrogen fuels many breast cancers, soy has long been a source of concern: Can it heighten the risk of breast cancer or raise the odds of recurrence?

In the lab, phytoestrogens can stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells. But in human studies, scientists have not found that diets high in soy increase breast cancer risk. In fact, most have found the reverse.

( Read more... )