Wormy Slimy Stuff Archives

Biotechnology, barcoding and dag (דג) DNA: is it kosher?

Three rabbis walk into a bar… -coding lab. I had received the worried call from Rabbi Chaim Loike of the Orthodox Union only a few days before. Increasingly of late, congregants had been reporting worms in their fish – mostly canned sardines and fish eggs – notwithstanding that all had been certified as Kosher Pareve […]

Getting a leg up on the naming of things.

Poisons & Toxins, Wormy Slimy Stuff / Mark Siddall

Official descriptions of species and other taxonomic groups include what’s called an etymology section. That is, an explanation of the name chosen by the author. Originally these names were mostly supposed to be descriptive, like Phyllidia polkadotsa. Sometimes the names refer to a place, like Helobdella nununununojensis (from a Quechua placename Ñuñuñuñuñoj). They can also

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