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In a milestone of modern medicine, medical researchers at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have produced the first bioengineered kidney and then successfully transplanted it in a host rat, where it become functional. Each year millions of people die of liver related diseases, and even those who go through the living hell […]
A topic of great interest in neurology and psychology is memory. While a lot of efforts have been made towards identifying what mechanisms and processes govern memory formation and retrieval, very few things are understood with respect to its storage. This is because our memories aren’t static, they always shift position and become either more […]
Researchers at University of California, Davis have shown for the first time how whole cells and fragments orient and move in response to electrical stimuli like an electric field. Surprisingly enough, their results show that whole and fragments move in opposite directions, despite being governed by the same electric field. The findings help better our understanding […]
For the first time, scientists have observed in a patient the evolution of an immune molecule that recognizes different HIV types and adapt accordingly. A neutralizing antibody, or NAb is an antibody which defends a cell from an antigen or infectious body by inhibiting or neutralizing any effect it has biologically. They’re your body’s elite […]
Our close primate relatives, chimpanzees, have been constantly amazing us with their incredible cognitive abilities and personality traits that are so similar to our own. If you believe much of what you undertake today is limited to human cognition only, think again. Chimps do it too – thinking about thinking that is, as the findings […]
In the past few years a relatively new field of science has surfaced into mainstream discussions, especially those concerning biodiversity and nature conservation – synthetic biology. Some are simply ecstatic of its progress and findings, while others are simply terrified by some of its potential consequences. In an attempt to address the issue, albeit from […]
One of the biggest problem in psychiatry today, though the doctors practicing it regularly hand out medication and treatment, is the lack of clear biological markers. Basically, most of the diagnosis is made based on reported and evaluated symptoms that might not hint towards the real mental affliction the said person is suffering from. Brains […]
In a society that attempts to pass from an opulent attitude towards consumption to a much more temperate, health-centered one, biases can easily make their way through and distort reality. It’s quite easy too, considering the amount of confusion that seems to be floating in the air. A good example for this is the “health […]
A new survey conducted by researchers at University of Southern University, Harvard University and Peking University have found that lifestyle choices during adulthood influence how much we will shrink in height as we age. Other studies had analyzed how health and height are linked both in childhood and adulthood, however the present study is the first […]
It’s hard to find two populated areas as far apart as Brazil and Polynesia; however, a recent genetic study showed that indigenous people that lived in southeastern Brazil in the late 1800s shared some genetic sequences with Polynesians. This could suggest that Pacific islanders traded with South America thousands of years ago (or traveled across […]
At the advent of the transistor during the middle of the last century, computers simply boomed as a new era of technology was ushered in. Though it may not have the same humongous impact the traditional transistor had during its introduction, the all biological transistor recently unveiled by scientists at Stanford University will surely change […]
It’s rather difficult to imagine a video game for the blind, seeing they can’t actually see, but what people should loose sight of is that the other four senses are still there, and they’re quite sharper. A group of researchers at the Department of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School have […]
For more than 50 years since its discovery, the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has stirred curiosity around its seven sexes. UC Santa Barbara biologists have now found how the creature picks its gender from the slew, and apparently it’s not a matter of choice since the Tetrahymena gender distribution is as random as a game of roulette. The team […]
We live in a society that’s increasingly isolating individuals, as age-long cultural and community habits die off. Prior to the massive urban developments that came in the XXth century, living alone was something virtually unheard of and was mostly reserved to the social pariahs, the outcasts, hermits that chose to live the solitary life. Today, in […]
Inaccuracy in the genetic makeup can lead to deficiencies that alter how color should be perceived in optimal conditions.
For decades, there’s been significant discussions on how professional fighting affects the brain, but not much scientific progress has been made on the matter. Now, a new (not yet peer reviewed) MRI study has shown that important regions and connections of the brain have decreased in volume in both amateur and professional fighters with the […]
As the writers on Nature depict it, it evokes the dystopian worlds of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick – if you’ve read his works or seen Minority Report, you’ll understand it. Neuroscientists have developed a brain scan that shows how likely are convicted felons to commit crimes again. Brain scanning felons Kent Kiehl, a […]
When it comes to social media, we post all sorts of stuff: what we eat, what we drink, who we hang out with, how we hate the weather, and oh so much more. There’s one area where apparently, we’re much more careful about: our health. A new study from BYU finds that while most of […]
Great tits are widespread species throughout Europe, the Middle East, Central and Northern Asia, and parts of North Africa in any sort of woodland. They tipically don’t migrate, except for very harsh winters. According to a new paper published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Frontiers in Zoology, the female’s appearance can be correlated with […]
There’s few things I can think of that sound scarier that a genetically modified version of herpes simplex virus type 1, but apparently that’s exactly what researchers used to shrink tumors of the deadly skin cancer melanoma in a clinical trial, according to Amgen, which is developing the experimental cancer treatment. The virus is actually […]
I always find it funny when something says “zero fat”, but has tons of sugar in it. Sugar is addictive, it’s teeming in your cereal, it’s in your soda, it’s almost everywhere – and we need to get off of it; not to say we shouldn’t eat any sugar, but we really need to lower […]
Miniaturization is a fad that’s increasingly popular in the field of medicine for obvious reasons, and scientists at EPFL have recently made a remarkable contribution – a tiny monitoring and diagnosis device implantable under the skin just a few cubic millimeters in volume that can instantly analyze key substances in the blood stream and transmit information to a […]
The fearsome monster that inspired Greek and Norse mythology was once driven almost to extinction, facing a genetic bottleneck event that marked their evolution as a species. The finding comes from an analysis of tissue samples from 43 giant squid (Architeuthis spp.) from around the world. The analysis were mostly concluded on specimens which were […]
I really liked New York’s mayor Bloomberg campaign of limiting sugary drink consumption, but that didn’t really work out as good as we were hoping. Another, better idea that has a lot of potential however is conveying the food’s calories into walking. So a regular burger would give you some 250 calories, which you can […]
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 […]
