Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Old Drug, New Uses?
A hormone called erythropoietin, long used to treat anemia, also seems to protect against nerve damage and holds promise as a new therapy for stroke and spinal cord injury.
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While reading your article regarding the primitive antibodies found in lancelets, it occurred to me that complex immune systems might be merely a highly specialized, evolved form of digestion. Presumably, evolutionary adaptation would tend to favor a critter that found a way to consume even those nasty, yucky, infectious microbes. Mel ZernowColusa, Calif.
- Health & Medicine
First Line of Defense: Hints of primitive antibodies
After looking in primitive marine invertebrates that are considered to be close relatives to vertebrates, immunologists find families of genes that might provide clues as to how early immune systems evolved.
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Eye-Grabbing Insights: Visual structure grips infants’ attention
Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects.
- Animals
Lizard’s Choice: Mating test pits physique versus domain
When she decides to move in, is it him or is it his real estate?
- Health & Medicine
Coconspirator? Genital herpes linked to cervical cancer
Having a genital herpes infection doubles the risk of cervical cancer among women who have human papillomavirus.
- Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
- Math
Math Trails in Ottawa
Housed in a spectacular building redolent of crystals and light, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa was recently the setting for a highly unusual school event–a mathematics field trip! National Gallery of Canada For several years, math teacher Ron Lancaster of Hamilton, Ontario, has been creating “math trails” for both students and teachers as […]
- Tech
Nanotech Switch: Strategy controls minuscule motor
Researchers have modified a rotating protein fragment so that it starts and stops spinning with the addition and removal of zinc.
- Earth
Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon
Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.
- Physics
Laser links segue to chemical bonds
Light can knit matter together until other bonds take over, providing a potentially useful approach to building nanometer-scale structures and materials.
- Physics
Electron cycling in quantum confines
A lone electron zips around in the tightest circle allowed by quantum mechanics in an extraordinarily small, frigid cyclotron, potentially allowing scientists to nail down some fundamental constants of physics more precisely than ever before.
