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Stories of computer hackers stealing our personal information – or careless companies accidentally losing it – are among the downsides to living in the information age. Earlier this spring, 4.2 million Hannaford’s shoppers were told their bank accounts may be at risk if they’d recently swiped their cards at the checkout line.

Your credit card number is one thing, but who would willingly put their medical information at risk? Google, Microsoft, and WebMD are hoping you will. All three are launching online services that allow people to upload, store, and manage all their medical records online.

The companies say it’s a great way to give patients more power over their healthcare. But privacy and security concerns are not far behind. Martha Bebinger is a reporter at pubic radio station WBUR in Boston, and she’s been following the story.

(Photo by Taran Rampersad)

Scientists have been stumped for years by whether homosexuality is genetic or learned - the nature versus nurture question. And, if it is genetic, how does it get passed down through same-sex couples?

No particulars have yet been proven, but a recent study in Italy may have come closer to explaining it. Researchers identified two genes passed through the maternal line, that when are passed to boys, manifest in homosexuality, and when passed on to girls, increases fertility.

That’s just one intriguing story from the desk of science reporter Clara Moskowitz. She files for LiveScience and Space.com news services and she joins Word of Mouth with a round-up of news from the fast-paced science sector.

Clara also takes us to Israel, where scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated - a 2,000 year-old Methuselah tree. And she reports on a study that identified some of the raw materials for DNA and RNA, the building blocks of life, in a meteorite that crashed into the Earth in 1969.

LINKS:
Homosexuality and Heredity
Life's Raw Materials Came from Space
Tree Grows from Ancient Seed

(Photo by gravitywave)