Scientists are using computer programs to understand our early beginnings. Click on the link to see how they are doing it, and how they might discover the genetic chemistry of life in the cosmos!
Latest Articles
A software program builds alternative DNA molecules
Scientists are using computer programs to understand our early beginnings. Click on the link to see how they are doing…
Medicine
Telling people they’re getting a placebo does not stop it from working
Does giving a placebo require lying to a patient? This study concludes...no! Placebos still work even when the patient knows, at least for emotional distress.
Horseshoe crabs are critical to the biotech industry
Did you know that the modern US biomedical industry is built around the baby blue blood of horseshoe crabs? Come find out what scientists are doing to help…
Diet and exercise can shape how your mind ages
Dementia is a condition that many of us are all too familiar with within friends and family. Dementia itself is a blanket term that describes several conditions…
Can a Chinese medicinal herb Psoralea fructus build healthy bones?
Osteoblasts are cells that are responsible for bone formation. A lack of osteoblasts will cause osteoporosis – a disease that occurs when the body has too…
How and why humans exist are questions that have challenged different cultures ever since the dawn of civilization. Many scientists have taken upon their shoulders the duty of answering these fundamental questions, coming up with several especially creative ideas over the past few decades. One prominent idea is that…
A study of burned and unburned cigarettes found that water chemistry and microbes living in Mediterranean beach sediments changed after 4 days of exposure to a cigarette filter.
Scientists used to think cysteine was required to manufacture itself. Turns out, it isn't. In fact, cysteine slows down the manufacture of itself. Go figure!
Many organisms live by breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide, and those that don’t often live by taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. However, did you know that these aren’t the only ways life can survive? Researchers recently discovered Sulfurimonas marinigri, a species of bacteria that…
Have you ever driven past an old factory building and wondered what ever happened to the harsh chemicals that were used there? If you guessed that a lot of the chemicals ended up in the environment, you would be right. Many of these pollutants are what we refer to as “halogenated hydrocarbons”. These are molecules…
Cement is one of those common building materials that you can find just about anywhere. When the cement starts to get cracked, fixing it is generally an easy task that involves widening the crack slightly before filling it with more cement. Now, imagine having to fix cracking cement that is buried 1 kilometer (3281…
Sulfuric acid production by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria may be a solution to a long standing mining problem.
Parkinson’s disease currently affects over 10 million people worldwide, and in the United States approximately 60,000 people are diagnosed with the disease each year. It is a disease in which the brain cells, or neurons, that produce dopamine progressively die off over time. For this reason, it is known as a…
What exactly causes aging at a molecular level? The answer to this question is important for understanding and potentially improving health and life itself. In order to begin to answer this question, researchers at the Institute of Biomedical Chemistry in Moscow turned to fish as their subjects. Fish display a wide…