Should You Plate Up Genetically-Modified Salmon?

It goes without saying that salmon is one of the most popular types of seafood. In fact, according to the National Fisheries Institute, it’s the third most-consumed variety with 2.02 pounds eaten by the average person each year. But does anyone actually want to eat the pink-fleshed fish when it’s been bioengineered to grow at twice the normal rate?
Biotech firm AquaBounty doesn’t find that growth rate unappetizing and even boasts about it on its own website. Their salmon, deemed by the Massachusetts-based company as the “future of salmon,”  is actually a hybrid that’s also part trout and part tilapia. The “salmon” are raised in sterile, all-female populations so if one escapes, it can’t breed with other fish. But the scariest part? This Frankenfish is actually pending approval by the FDA. And if it’s approved, this seafood could end up on your plate. Worse yet, it might not even be labeled so you’ll have no idea you’re eating it.
While AquaBounty says their fish helps reduce labor and production costs and is safe for the environment, we’re assuming you also feel a little uneasy about this, too. (Watch the short video above to learn more about why you shouldn’t eat GMO — genetically modified organism — salmon and why it’s harmful to the planet.) According to environmental organization Friends of the Earth, nearly two million people, including scientists, politicians and consumers have pressed the FDA to oppose GMO salmon.
MORE: Why You Should Add ‘Trash Fish’ to Your Diet
But no matter what the FDA decides, more and more of America’s grocery stores are taking a stance against GMO seafood and removing it from their shelves, which means you might not even be able to buy it. The latest supermarkets to take a stand — Safeway and Kroger — are the country’s biggest grocery store chains to make a commitment to not to sell genetically engineered seafood. (In total, they have more than 9,000 stores nationwide.) About 60 other major food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and even big-box stores like Target, have also joined the cause. Of course, you’ll notice other big grocery chains such as Costco, Walmart and Albertsons conspicuously missing from this list, so there’s still work to be done. But if the country’s two largest grocery stores can say no to GMO, hopefully the others won’t be too far behind.

These Engineering Students Turned a Simple Assignment Into Two Years of Hard Work, Innovation and Kindness

In their first year as engineering students at Rice University,  Nimish Mittal, Matthew Najoomi and Sergio Gonzales were assigned to build a device that solved a local person’s problem. They soon learned about Dee Faught, a 17-year-old suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease. And after meeting him at Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Houston, they began designing a mobile robotic arm he could use to do simple things that were impossible for his own hands, such as turning on a light or picking up an object. The project turned out to be a major challenge. “We hit a ton of roadblocks,” Gonzales told Joe Palca of NPR, but when the class ended, the team knew they couldn’t give up. Two years later, after working on the project in their free time, the students gave the robotic arm to Faught, who immediately began using it to perform simple tasks. After this success, the engineers plan to continue using their skills to help others. “This has definitely refined the engineering I want to do,” Gonzalez told Palca. “Because it’s an engineering focused on helping people.”
MORE: How This Navy SEAL Uses His War Wounds to Help Other Soldiers

What Started as Homework Turned Into a Life-Saving Medical Device

A young, eager mind is a powerful thing. A room full of them together, even more so. In Rice University professor Maria Oden’s undergraduate course, they’re striving to solve global health problems. Students in the Rice 360 program, founded by Oden and fellow bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum, first learn about problems in rural hospitals  and then design simple solutions that can help. One of the class’s biggest successes is a student design for an affordable “bubble CPAP” (continuous positive airway pressure), a device that pushes air into the lungs of premature infants to help them breathe. The prototype was made from a plastic shoe box and two aquarium pumps. “One of the wonderful things about working with 18-year-olds is that they’re so creative,” Oden told Joe Palca of NPR. “They don’t have fixed ideas about what might not work.” After fine-tuning, the invention was tested at small hospitals in Malawi and is now ready to deploy throughout that country. Students even got to meet a baby  whose life was saved by their device. “It sent chills all the way down my entire spine, because I realized that while we’re teaching students, and we want them to leave here believing they can make a difference, this was the picture of a true difference being made,” Richards-Kortum told NPR.