May 13-19 is National Women's Health Week.

National Women’s Health Week is a weeklong health observance coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health. It brings together communities, businesses, government, health organizations, and other groups in an effort to promote women’s health.

The theme for 2012 is “It’s Your Time.” National Women’s Health Week empowers women to make their health a top priority. It also encourages women to take the following steps to improve their physical and mental health and lower their risks of certain diseases

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LifeScience Moment: The FDA approved of the first genetically modified food: the "Flavr Savr" tomato.

On May 17, 1994 the U.S. FDA approved of the first genetically modified food: the "Flavr Savr" tomato produced by Calgene in California. The tomato was made more resistant to rotting by the addion of an antisense gene which interfered with the production of the enzyme polygalacturonase that degrades the pectin in the cell walls resulting in the ripening of fruit and distribution of the fruits seeds.

The Flavr Savr tomatoes subsequently could ripen on the vine resulting in a larger, more flavorable tomato. The Flavr Savr was marketed from 1994-1997, but higher production and distribution costs prevented Calgene from becoming profitable, and the technolgy was sold to the Monsanto Company.

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BioEvolution Posters

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It's a Small World
	Swine Flu

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Science Quote

"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."

-	Alfred North Whitehead, English philosopher and mathematician
(1861-1947)