Shoddy Chinese Goods Get Free Pass: Chinese manufacturers made more than half of the goods that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled last year, but few of them paid any price for producing defective wares. McClatchy Newspaper reporters Frank Greve and Grace Chung do a fine job laying out the typical slipshod work of [...]

Here’s some cutting-edge research that could be frightening to those already worried about the safety of nanotechnology and that should give government regulators something to think about.
ohn Ferry and his colleagues in biochemistry, coastal environmental health and biomolecular research at the University of South Carolina have been studying what happens when nanomaterial – gold nanorods, [...]

It was bad enough when Nestle told the world that its cookie dough contained bacteria that could sicken or kill. Now we learn that the American division of the Swiss company had a pattern of not cooperating with Food and Drug Administration inspectors at the plants that blended the tasty mix of chips and [...]

A variety of federal government investigators and policy makers are trying to determine why U.S. honey production is so low that we have to import almost half of the golden nectar that we consume.
Maybe because it’s “Pollinator Protection Week,” or maybe not, the Environmental Protection Agency is doing its part and just announced that it [...]

It is so easy to become complacent when influenza A H1N1 isn’t leading the news broadcasts or splashed across the front pages of the country’s remaining newspapers.  But it’s still out there, sickening and killing as it simmering away around the globe.
I offer you a peak at the latest map from the World Health Organization [...]

The first generation of GM seeds was concocted to keep crops free of weeds and bugs. Now, Japanese scientists have come up with a new generation of genetically modified food that they say will benefit the health of those who consume it.
Fumio Takaiwa and colleagues write in this week’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry [...]

I appreciate the many of you who wrote to comment about yesterday’s posting on the passing of Kodachrome film. To those several who immediately rose to the defense of Paul Simon, I never said he wasn’t the solo writer of the words to Kodachrome.
I only meant to comment that the song, the anthem of the [...]

It wasn’t mama who took the Kodachrome away, but Eastman Kodak that finally pulled the plug this week on the 74-year-old film.
It’s a nostalgic time for lovers of bright colors, finicky photographers and the singers Simon and Garfunkel.
For many fledgling photojournalists, finally running Kodachrome through their cameras was a rite of passage, a sign that [...]

I know it sounds weird, but scientists say they’ve tamed one of the world’s most deadly food poisons and turned it into a suicidal strain of microbes that can deliver life-saving drugs into the body.
What prompted Colin Pouton and his colleagues in Melbourne, Australia, to consider using a poison to deliver medicines?
The scientists looked at [...]

I have completed the “everything you need to know about nanotechnology” workshop that the Knight Science Journalism gang was kind enough to host at MIT. I finally graduated from something.
Three observations from the week in Boston:
1.    I can’t believe how little I know.
2.    I am amazed at the potential for good and a bit uneasy [...]