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According to a research published by researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis, interbreeding was pretty common with our ancestors. They based their case on an approximately 100,000-year-old skull from Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, which has a rare congenital disorder caused by interbreeding. Enlarged parietal foramen […]
A virus that most of us carry, yet which is remarkably obscure both to the immune system and the general public in terms of awareness, is responsible for a number of health hazards in the human body. In time, it tires the immune system which is forced to seek and fight it for a life […]
In a great leap forward towards reviving extinct animal species, scientists at University of New South Wales, Australia have grown embryos that contain the genetic markup of a rather peculiar, yet unfortunately extinct frog species native to Australia. The frog died off in the 1980s due to parasites, loss of habitat, invasive weeds and fungus, and […]
When a lion hunts a gazelle, he is actually hunting the weakest of the herd, the one which is the slowest. Repeating the hunt, in time only strengthens the herd. The drunken version of this is that the same things happen with alcohol and neurons: sure, alcohol destroys some neurons, but it’s only the weaker […]
The study, led by the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), has managed to eliminate mouse lung tumours by inhibiting Myc, a protein which acts as a regulator gene that codes for a transcription factor. That’s just a fancy way of saying that if Myc mutates, cancer will probably occur. Furthermore, their results showed that […]
You might be used to seeing birds peck grains as soon as you throw the food in front of them, so it’s no wonder why might find this surprising. University of Vienna established a cognitive experiment centered around a most intelligent type of bird – Cackatoos – and found that they’re capable of self-control, restraining […]
You’d be tempted to think that clogged arteries are a problem of the modern world, with all the lack of exercise and unhealthy eating; but as ancient mummies revealed, even when we were hunter-gatherers, people still had arterial issues. “There’s a belief that if we go back in time, everything’s going to be OK,” says […]
Chances are some of you have experienced a heartburn at some point in your lives – that sudden burning sensation in the chest that goes beyond a common nuisance. It keeps people from sleeping during the night and functioning properly during the day, affecting one in eighteen of Americans or roughly 15 million people. Curiously enough, […]
A single molecular switch can make the transition between the active, malleable brain of an adolescent and the mature, stable brain of an adult; yep, a single gene can turn us back to the childlike curiosity we exhibit as adolescents. Researchers have known for quite a while that adolescent brains are typically more malleable (or […]
Life finds a way – the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria gives a really good argument to support that statement. In the hot springs of Yellowstone Park, it uses photosynthesis to produce its necessary nutrients. But in dark, murky, toxic mineshafts in drainage that are about as acidic as battery acid, not only does it survives, […]
Honeybees are extraordinary animals, and for years scientists have looked at them for inspiration to develop new technologies from artificial hive mind computers to explosive detectors. Bees have been truly gifted by nature, and we’re only starting to unravel the many abilities these fantastic insects possess. Recently, researchers at Newcastle University have found that bees enjoy […]
3D printing is the stuff of the future – today. It’s one of the most stunning pieces of relatively accessible technology; most notably in medicine, the precision offered by 3-D printing can make tiny surface details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow the bone to attach more easily. In […]
You may understand that all people are different, but it takes a lot of genetics to understand just how different humans really are. Albert Perry for example has something spectacular in his genome: his Y chromosome is so distinct, so easily identifiable that it basically revealed new information about our species. Working their way around […]
Every once in a while, some people who have had a limb, organ or some other body part amputated or removed still experience it, feel its pain and experience the sensation that it’s still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. This sensation is typically referred to as phantom limb. Now, […]
Babies need to wait until they’re at least two months old for vaccines to work, which leaves a lot of newborn babies in the world at risk of infections like rotavirus or pneumococcus. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have developed small-molecule compounds that target a particular receptor to generate an immune response. The vaccine is […]
For more than two centuries physicians have been using general anesthetics to perform surgeries, however even now in the 21st century scientists know very little about what happens to the brain when the patient moves to and fro a state of consciousness. This becomes even more important when you consider the very rare but frightening […]
The veined wing of the clanger cicada kills bacteria is able to destroy bacteria by its structure alone – one of the first structures ever found that can do this. The clanger cicada is an insects that looks like something between a fly and a locust; its wings are covered with a vast hexagonal array […]
We’ve showed you some incredible brain-computer interface scientific advances in the past few weeks alone, be it the merged rat brain organic computer or flexible electronic “tattoo” that might enable functioning telepathy, and the field is only growing. We couldn’t be more happy, you can imagine, since the potential medical uses alone for this kind […]
A team of researchers at Princeton University have devised an experimental set-up that closely mimics the flow of bacteria through working medical devices. Their findings show that bacteria clog medical devices extremely fast – much faster than previously thought – and warrant new strategies and designs in order to counter machine failure. The researchers used […]
A new study that may bring a smile to the face of teenagers concluded that not all zit bacterias are bad – on the contrary, some can make your skin glow. Everyone’s skin is crawling with this type of bacteria – everyone’s! The thing is, only about 1 in 5 people develop acne, and why […]
In what may very well become a historic day, Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University described the first documented case of a child cured of HIV. Dr. Persaud, an amfAR grantee, detailed the case of a two-year-old child in Mississippi diagnosed with HIV at birth; the child was immediately put on antiretroviral therapy for […]
A group of French researchers have published a paper in which they reveal how King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, had its heart mummified after he succumbed from gangrene in 1199. Apparently the great monarch’s heart was preserved in mercury, mint and frankincense, among other sweet-smelling plants. As it was customary at the time, Richard’s […]
Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine came across a particular strain of bacteriophage – a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria – that had stolen the functional immune system of the cholera bacteria. The virus used the bacteria’s immune system against it to replicate and eventually kill the bacteria. The findings hint to the prospect of developing new […]
While brighter expectations of the future might help most of us battle the harsh realities of life, a recent study conducted by German researchers has found that pessimists, who tend to have lower expectations about the future, live on average longer and are less inclined to develop disease or disabilities than optimists. Data collected between 1993 to 2003 by the […]
When you hear most discussions about healthcare, they almost always revolve around cost-cutting and saving money, as if the purpose of the health industry is to make money – newsflash, it isn’t. It’s about having healthy, long lived people, and that’s an investment that will more than pay for itself in the long run. But […]
One of the miracles of modern day medicine science, stem cells, are regarded by scientists as the basic building blocks for devising treatments, cures or transplants for some of today’s yet incurable diseases like Alzheimer or diabetes. The biggest hurdle researchers face is differentiating stem cells so that they may grow into a specific type […]
Using nothing more than sunlight, researchers and students from the MIT are trying to change how medical equipment is sterilized in remote clinics which don’t have many alternatives; they’ve started a pilot project in Nicaragua, one that’s working out pretty fine for them. Nicaragua is a mostly rural country of six million is served by […]
A Mediterranean diet high in olive oil, nuts, fish and fresh fruits and vegetables helps prevent strokes and other heart issues. Now before you put on your “Captain obvious” t-shirts, you should know that while (many other) previous studies have suggested that people who eat a Mediterranean-like diet have healthier hearts, they haven’t ruled out […]
Despite having brains that are still “under construction”, babies are able, even three months before full term, to distinguish between different syllables. It was recently shown that full born babies, even just a few days after they are born, display remarkable linguistic sophistication: they can distinguish between two different languages [1], they can recognizes their […]
Most of the time, when you’re sick, you want to deliver drugs and imaging agents to diseased cells or tumours where they’re needed most – that’s a problem researchers have solved quite a while ago, we can get particles pretty much wherever we want to. The thing is, most of the time, these agents are […]
Humans were granted with an evolutionary edge that differentiated us from other primates and may have helped us become the dominant species on planet Earth. A recent study which scanned the brains of humans and rhesus monkeys found that humans have at least two functional brain networks absent in rhesus monkeys. Previous genetic research concluded […]
The dangers of prescription drugs A while ago I wrote a post on the dangers of prescription drugs; the next day, I woke up to see many concerned emails regarding responsible medication, self medication, and other related topics. I tried my best to reply to each and every one of them, but I figured since […]
A new study conducted by US researchers has found that a protein called Jagged-1 stimulates stem cells to differentiate into bone-producing cells, possibly saving or improving the qualify of life for millions of people. The fact that their research was peer reviewed and accepted for publishing in the Stem Cells journal definitely backs the validity […]
In the culmination of 15 years worth of painstaking research work related to retina implants, scientists from Germany and Hungary have for the first time demonstrated that a light sensitive electronic chip, implanted under the retina, can restore useful vision in patients blind from hereditary retinal degeneration. As part of the research, nine persons previously completely […]
There seems to be a general belief, especially among parents, that if you send children to music lessons the experience will make them smarter. However, a group of researchers at University of Toronto, intrigued by this highly thrown about, yet never proven, link between the two conducted a study to see if this belief genuinely holds. Their findings suggest, […]
Can you imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie? Sorry about that folks – that was a bit twisted right? Just earlier you’ve used your lips, tongue, jaw and larynx in a highly complex manner in order to render these sounds out loud. Still, very little is known of how the brain […]
Researchers at Northwestern University claim they have uncovered the mechanisms that lead to difficulty in reading. Apparently, there is a direct correlation between one’s ability to encode speech sound in the brain and ease of reading. The scientists also devised an experiment and saw that children with reading impairment significantly improved after being fitted with […]
3D printing is like a piece of future in the present – the number and extent of applications are just staggering. Recently, researchers from Cornell University have reated an artificial ear using 3-D printing and injectable molds that works pretty much just like the real thing. In a study published in PLOS One, Cornell bioengineers […]
In 2010, prescription drug overdoses killed 23,000 Americans, while cannabis continued its over 10.000 year history of not killing anyone by overdose. Actually, there is no physical way to overdose on smoked or ingested cannabis, making it basically one of the safest, most natural, non-toxic painkillers, sleeping aids, and stress relievers on the planet. However, […]
There are millions of species on Earth, and naturally understanding the mechanics of evolution is of great importance for understanding further on what sparks life. What sparks consciousness, well that’s a whole different ball-game. Currently, scientists are concentrating on how diversification occurs in order to better their knowledge of how so many species surfaced along […]
A new study led by an international team of biolgoists has shown just some brain chemicals allow seals to sleep with only half of the brain. “Seals do something biologically amazing — they sleep with half their brain at a time. The left side of their brain can sleep while the right side stays awake. […]
Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University have identified a biological marker in the immune system that (starting from about age 22), predicts the probability of getting a common cold. They found that telomeres play a big part in this likelihood. Telomeres are regions of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protect […]
Based on a massive set of data collected from Houston by Rice University researchers, there is a direct correlation between out-of-hospital heart attacks and levels of air pollution and ozone. Rice statisticians Katherine Ensor and Loren Raun announced their findings today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Boston – […]
Kansas State University researcher Richard Rosenkranz, assistant professor of human nutrition concluded that there is a direct connection between how much you sit and how likely you are to suffer chronic diseases; he conducted the study on middle-aged Australian males and published it in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. He worked […]
A new study by scientists at University of British Columbia and Université Paris Descartes found that babies growing up in bilingual environments are more than well equipped to tackle the challenge of distinguishing between the two from a very early age – as young as seven months old according to the findings. Scientists, linguistics and […]
Now, I’m not advocating alcohol consumption, but truth be told most of us take alcohol for granted, and I’m not referring to abusing either. Millions of years ago, our ancestors and primate relatives had a very poor ability of metabolizing ethanol — the alcohol in beer, wine and spirits — and were it not for their […]
For most Parkinson’s patients, tremors associated with this devastating disease make living a normal life extremely difficult, if not impossible. Cooking, eating, even tying one’s shoelaces, basically anything that implies limb manipulation is very difficult to achieve by one’s self. A novel type of therapy developed by physicians at Oxford University, however, brings a glimmer […]
This week, the Obama administration has announced plans to pursue a 10-year, $3 billion research effort aimed at mapping the human brain in “its entirety”. The project, called the Brain Activity Map, is designed to help scientists better understand how the ~100 billion neurons interact in our brains. Initially, the announcement was met with applause, […]
Recently, the highly controversial “golden rice” – a genetically modified rice that also contains vitamin A – has been approved in the Philippines after much heated debates and a slew of barrages imposed by anti-GMO organizations. It is believed worldwide 250,000-500,000 children go blind each year, with half of these eventually dying within a year, […]
In what can only be considered a remarkable medical breakthrough, researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have completely cured type 1 diabetes in dogs after they were injected during a single gene therapy session. The injected gene therapy vectors ensure a healthy expression of glucose, thus the regular insulin shots and associated side effects with the […]
