Breaking Through: My Life in Science by Katalin Karik ó review – real-life lessons in chemistry
This vivid account of the Hungarian biochemist who endured decades of derision before pioneering Pfizer ’s Covid vaccine is a tribute to her tenacity and self-beliefIn May 2013, Katalin Karik ó turned up for work at her laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and found her belongings piled in the hallway. “There were my binders, my posters, my boxes of test tubes,” she recalls. Nearby a lab technician was shoving things into a trash bin. “My things!” Karikó realised.Despite having worked at the tiny lab for years, the scientist – then in her 50s – was cast out, without notice, for failing to bring in ...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - February 11, 2024 Category: Science Authors: Robin McKie Tags: Science and nature books Vaccines and immunisation Culture Coronavirus Immunology Infectious diseases Medical research Society Health Microbiology Biochemistry and molecular biology Source Type: news
Power tools at the ready! The life-changing science behind hip and knee replacements
Thousands of people are given new joints each year in the UK. But can robots and smart tech soon make it a smoother procedure?Ian Doncaster is remarkably chipper for a man about to undergo major surgery. “I have a busy life. So it’s nice to have a break,” he jokes. It is 8.30am on a chilly December morning and here at Warwick hospital he is about to receive a new knee – or part of one.At 62, Doncaster has always been active: he played rugby when young, until a knee injury and subsequent operation meant he had to trade that in for a host of other sports. But now the knee is causing problems again. As a self-employed...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - February 11, 2024 Category: Science Authors: Nicola Davis Science correspondent Tags: Health Doctors Human biology NHS Medical research Osteoarthritis Life and style Society Science Source Type: news
Africa: Why Do People and Animals Need to Breathe? a Biologist Explains Why You Need a Constant Source of Oxygen
[The Conversation Africa] Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. (Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine)
Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine - February 10, 2024 Category: African Health Tags: Africa Health and Medicine Source Type: news
3D printer creates brain tissue that acts like the real thing
By squirting cells from a 3D printer, researchers have created tissue that looks—and acts—like a chunk of brain. In recent years, scientists have learned how to load up 3D printers with cells and other scaffolding ingredients to create living tissues, but making realistic brainlike constructs has been a challenge. Now, one team has shown that, by modifying its printing techniques, it can
print and combine multiple subtypes of cells
that better mimic signaling in the human brain.
“It’s remarkable that [the researchers] can replicate” how brain cells work, says Riccardo Levato, a regenerative...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 9, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Clownfish might be counting their potential enemies' stripes
At least, that's what a group of researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University thinks. The team recently published a study in the journal Experimental Biology suggesting that Amphiphrion ocellaris, or clown anemonefish, may be counting. Specifically, the authors think the fish may be looking at the number of vertical white stripes on each other as well as other anemonefish as a way to identify their own species. Not only that — the researchers think that the fish are noticing the minutiae of other anemonefish's looks because of some fishy marine geopolitics. Questions, comments or tho...
Source: NPR Health and Science - February 9, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Regina G. Barber Source Type: news
Rat poison threatens Italy ’s growing wolf population
Over the past few decades, Italy’s growing population of wolves has begun to edge closer to urban areas, attracted in part by tasty prey such as rats and mice. But a recent study suggests city life carries a potentially deadly risk for the predators: eating rodents tainted with poison. Analyses of more than 180 wolf carcasses found in Central and Northern Italy revealed that nearly two-thirds tested positive for rodenticides, suggesting the chemicals pose a bigger threat to wolves than previously understood.
“The results were totally unexpected,” says ecologist Jacopo Cerri of the University of Sassari, an auth...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
At night, pollution keeps pollinating insects from smelling the flowers
Under the cover of darkness, countless moths and other insects furiously dart around woodlands and deserts, seeking nectar from night-blooming plants—and pollinating them in the process. But the scents the insects home in on have grown fainter. Nitrate radicals, a common pollutant, break them down before they can travel far, a research team reports today in
Science
. The team thinks the
olfactory disruption goes as far back as the Industrial Revolution
200 years ago.
The research, involving field studies, wind tunnel experiments, and the latest atmospheric models, has worrisome implications. For...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Weird early trees, CERN ’s next big collider, and protecting U.S. gray wolves
PALEONTOLOGY
Rare fossil reveals weird early tree
The earliest trees, from nearly 400 million years ago, are known mostly from fossils of their trunks; their leaves and canopy shapes have remained a mystery. A newly reported, 350-million-year-old tree found in Canada provides a vivid answer for one such primordial species: As if having a perpetual bad hair day,
a thick crown of spiky leaves stuck out perpendicularly from the trunk
. Scientists named the tree
Sanfordiacaulis densifolia
, after the owner of the New Brunswick quarry where they found five specimens. The fossils, amo...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
How AI ’s Language-Based Capabilities Will Transform B2B Payment Processes
Over a long enough time, change stands alone as the only constant. After all, it was over a century and a half ago that Charles Darwin first wrote that “the species most responsive to change” is the one that survives — and while he was talking about evolutionary biology, the truth captured is…#charlesdarwin #galapagos #ahsanshah #pymnts #shah (Source: Reuters: Health)
Source: Reuters: Health - February 8, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Fungi: Web of Life review – Björk and Merlin Sheldrake guide trippy mushroom doc
Beginner ’s guide to the wrap-your-brain-around-them facts of mycological science boosts the wonder with 3D time-lapse photographyIf you ’ve got “face of fungi” biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s global bestsellerEntangled Life on your bookshelf, unbattered and spine uncracked, this documentary might feel like an easier option. A beginner ’s guide to fungi, just 40 minutes long, it is narrated by Björk and presented by the gently eccentric Sheldrake (imagine Timothée Chalamet playing a Cambridge academic, with a mop of unruly curls). It’s being released in 3D on the giant screen at London’s BFI Imax – all the...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Authors: Cath Clarke Tags: Film Documentary films Fungi Bj örk Conservation 3D Biology Culture Environment Music Science Technology Source Type: news
Why are we still waiting for a male contraceptive pill? | podcast
Despite research into a male contraceptive pill starting around the same time as its female counterpart, no product has ever made it to market. But that could soon change, with a new non-hormonal male pill entering human trials in the UK late last year. Ian Sample speaks to bioethicist Prof Lisa Campo-Engelstein of the University of Texas and Prof Chris Barratt from the University of Dundee about why male contraceptives have been so difficult to develop, and what kind of options are in the pipelineContinue reading... (Source: Guardian Unlimited Science)
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - February 8, 2024 Category: Science Authors: Presented by Ian Sample, produced by Madeleine Finlay and Eli Block sound design by Tony Onuchukwu, the executive producer is Ellie Bury Tags: Science Medical research Contraception and family planning Health Men's health Women's health Society Reproduction Biology Source Type: news
IAEA touts radiotherapy trial in low-income countries
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlighted a study it led suggesting that fewer but higher doses of radiation treatment for head and neck cancer resulted in similar results as standard radiotherapy in patients in low-income countries.
“Reducing overall treatment times for this type of cancer could help countries to shorten waitlists, enabling more patients to receive timely treatment while also reducing the cost and full treatment duration,” the IAEA said in a recent news release.
The trial involved 12 centers in ten low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) – Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, India, Indonesia...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - February 7, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Industry News Source Type: news
After mass coral die-off, Florida scientists rethink plan to save ailing reefs
Four years ago, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled a $100 million coral moonshot. Over 2 decades, nearly half a million hand-reared coral colonies would be planted on seven ailing reefs in southern Florida, in a bid to revive them. Mission: Iconic Reefs represented “one of the largest ever investments in coral restoration,” Pat Montanio, then head of the agency’s habitat conservation program, said at the time.
Today, the project looks as ailing as the coral it was meant to save. A record-breaking underwater heat wave that swept the Caribbean and southern Florida in 2023 kil...
Source: ScienceNOW - February 7, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Cell biologist whose work spans over 30 years receives RMS Scientific Achievement Award
David Stephens, Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology in the School of Biochemistry, has been awarded the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) Scientific Achievement Award for his work on cell biology. (Source: University of Bristol news)
Source: University of Bristol news - February 7, 2024 Category: Universities & Medical Training Tags: Grants and Awards, Research; Faculty of Life Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences, School of Biochemistry; Press Release Source Type: news
Anima Biotech Announces Preclinical Data of Candidate in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
BERNARDSVILLE, N.J., Feb. 07, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anima Biotech, the Tech.Bio leader bringing AI to mRNA biology, announced today positive preclinical data of its lung fibrosis candidate. This drug operates through a novel mRNA biology mechanism of action, opening new avenues for treating…#bernardsville #animabiotech #ipf #lightningplatform #anima #admet #yochislonim #abbvie #elililly #immunologyoncology (Source: Reuters: Health)
Source: Reuters: Health - February 7, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
