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Good bacteria helps to defend your brain
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The microbes that live in your body outnumber your cells 10 to one. Recent studies suggest these tiny organisms help us digest food and maintain our immune system. Now, researchers have discovered yet another way microbes keep us healthy: They are needed for closing the blood-brain barrier, a molecular fence that shuts out pathogens and molecules that could harm the brain.
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6135 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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2556 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A human confused as an alien
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This bizarre looking thing is "Ata the humanoid", a mummified corpse found in the Atacama Desert ten years ago. It's strange appearance led to many calling it an "alien", claiming it as proof that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. Well, it's finally been submitted to a battery of tests and the results show it to be fully human. DNA analysis has even managed to pinpoint the location and nationality of its mother. The results do suggest that it was once alive and human, not a hoax, and so asks more questions than they answer. The bone analysis suggests that this is not a fetus, but a child between the ages of 6-8. The specimen has just ten ribs (as opposed to 12), is just six inches long and has severe facial deformities. These symptoms do ...
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4517 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
The amazing intelligence of crows
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Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.
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1967 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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2873 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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1 |
5954 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Gliding spiders
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These tropical arachnids known as selenopid spiders (pictured above) possess the rare ability to steer themselves in the air and jump between trees - an unexpected talent for spiders, which have no history of flight. Researchers theorize that this behavior may have evolved because tree trunks are a far better place for a tree-dwelling spider than the forest floor, an unfamiliar territory crawling with creatures looking for a meal. ...
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11143 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Stress-activated gray hair explained
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An unexpected link in mice has been found between gray hair, the transcription factor MITF, and the innate immune in a recent study published in PLOS Biology. First, a discussion on the innate immune system: The innate immune system is the immune system you're born with. This includes your skin and other barriers which prevent disease entering the body, in addition to specialized cells that activate inflammation in response to foreign invaders. Technically, every cell in your body except for red blood cells, are capable of generating an immune response, and this includes the production of a signaling protein known as interferon. Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) is best known for its role in regulating the many functions ...
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2400 |
bio_man |
5 years ago |
The flipping ship
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The FLIP ( FLoating Instrument Platform) ship is an open ocean research vessel designed to partially flood and pitch backward 90 degrees, resulting in only the front 55 feet (17 metres out of 108 metres) of the vessel pointing up out of the water, with bulkheads becoming decks. When flipped, most of the buoyancy for the platform is provided by water at depths below the influence of surface waves, hence FLIP is a stable platform mostly immune to wave action. At the end of a mission, compressed air is pumped into the ballast tanks in the flooded section and the vessel returns to its horizontal position so it can be towed to a new location. ...
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3752 |
bio_man |
11 years ago |
Why are house cats obedient to their owners?
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Author Dr. John Bradshaw suggests that because domestic cats are still essentially wild animals, that they think of their owners as bigger cats that they're quite fond of (often performing grooming rituals on them), who have really delicious food (tastier than that mouse they killed and left on your porch).
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5223 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Some birds are afraid of butterflies
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It turns out that butterflies with eyelike spots evolved to scare off predators. A recent study concluded that about 68% of the birds that were shown an image with eye-mimicking spots, flew away or showed signs of being startled such as chirping a warning call as they flew in for food (within a controlled setting). That’s on par with the 57% showing the same reactions to the owl with open eyes, the research team notes. The full study can be analyzed in the link below: Source: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1806/20150202 ...
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31751 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
How do you weigh an extinct animal?
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Researchers have a new way to estimate the weight of creatures that no longer exist using just its bones and a digital model. With no flesh to fill in the gaps, researchers "shrink wrap" the skeleton to come up with an estimated volume-to-mass conversion based on 14 modern-day mammals. Scientists hope that this weight-estimating technique can eventually be used on other extinct creatures... like dinosaurs!
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11044 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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15372 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
How one perceives beauty is merely superficial
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Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but what’s influencing our eye? Scientists reveal that it’s not genetics but life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. This finding furthers the on-going debate of nature versus nurture. Here's how the study went down: Researchers asked 547 pairs of identical twins and 214 pairs of same-gender fraternal twins to view 200 faces and rate them on a scale of one to seven, with one being the least attractive and seven the most attractive. A group of 660 non-twins then completed the same survey. If genes were more involved in facial preference, identical twins would have had similar ratings; if the influence of a familial environment carried more weight, fraternal twins w ...
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15631 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Hair loss no more - a promising treatment for baldness
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Isn't it strange, two FDA-approved drugs - topical ruxolitinib or tofacitinib - can reawaken dormant hair follicles! According to the study, within 3 weeks, mice that received topical ruxolitinib or tofacitinib had regrown nearly all their hair (right photo; drug was applied only to the right side of the mouse). Little to no hair growth occurred in control mice during the same timeframe (left photo). According to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state restores hair growth. These drugs, known as JAK inhibitors have been approved to treat blood diseases (ruxolitinib) and the other for rheumatoid arthritis (tofacitinib). Both are being tested ...
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20468 |
duddy |
8 years ago |