It’s all about your cat. Work your butt off and give your cat everything he or she needs and more! Be all you can be so you can take care of that furry friends of yours with this cat lover’s, coffee mug! Get it here!

This.

Mothers can pass traits to offspring through bacteria’s DNA

It’s a firmly established fact straight from Biology 101: Traits such as eye color and height are passed from one generation to the next through the parents’ DNA.

But now, a new study in mice by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the DNA of bacteria that live in the body can pass a trait to offspring in a way similar to the parents’ own DNA. According to the authors, the discovery means scientists need to consider a significant new factor - the DNA of microbes passed from mother to child - in their efforts to understand how genes influence illness and health.

The study appears online Feb. 16 in Nature.

"We have kept bacteria on one side of a line separating the factors that shape our development — the environmental side of that line, not the genetic side," said co-senior author Herbert W. Virgin IV, MD, PhD. "But our results show bacteria stepping over the line. This suggests we may need to substantially expand our thinking about their contributions, and perhaps the contributions of other microorganisms, to genetics and heredity."

Moon C, Baldridge MT, Wallace MA, Burnham C-AD, Virgin HW, Stappenbeck TS. Vertically transmissible fecal IgA levels distinguish extra-chromosomal phenotypic variation. Nature, Feb. 16, 2015.

WHAT I DREAM OF DAILY

cat party shirts & posters

meow I made a little cat thing.

Reblog if you're a proud member of the science side of Tumblr.

Perfect adventure mug! 

Yasssss

Formula Poses Higher Arsenic Risk than Breast Milk to Newborns

In the first U.S. study of urinary arsenic in babies, Dartmouth College researchers found that formula-fed infants had higher arsenic levels than breast-fed infants, and that breast milk itself contained very low arsenic concentrations. The findings appear today online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The researchers measured arsenic in home tap water, urine from 72 six-week-old infants and breast milk from nine women in New Hampshire. Urinary arsenic was 7.5 times lower for breast-fed than formula-fed infants. The highest tap water arsenic concentrations far exceeded the arsenic concentrations in powdered formulas, but for the majority of the study’s participants, both the powder and water contributed to exposure.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2015/02/formula-poses-higher-arsenic-risk-breast-milk-newborns

Celebrate the U.S. Congress’ incessant bungling of everything with this mug!

Get some coffee to help you get through Monday.

Books & Coffee Make Me Happy

All The Coffee In The Whole World

I Need Coffee Because Monday

I Just Wanna Have Abs…

In case you get lost, here’s a map of the neighborhood.

I’m the type of person who finds the fact that I am very very small, very very inspiring.

The perfect mug for Frozen fans!

SHOWING MY DATA ANALYSIS TO MY ADVISOR

credit: lauren

Contemplating putting a “tl;dr” section in my thesis proposal document along with a select number of “fucks” just to see who’s really paying attention on my committee.

We’ve all considered it.

I wrote how one of the professors is a "research ninja" and NO ONE has said anything.

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." Lao Tzu

Neil deGrasse Tyson/Waddles, Gravity Falls (via padfoot-ate-my-homework)