The Dynasties of Science
The auto industry had the Fords, oil had the Rockefellers, and politics had the Kennedys. Science, too, has its legacy lineages. ...read more
Author: Vishay Singh
Athlete, Interrupted
A marathoner completes a race through the Borneo rainforest, then pays the price with a deadly ailment. The Borneo wetlands teem with darting birds, slithering snakes and dangling orangutans. Blood-sucking leeches and slim, coiled microbes also abound. Some folks find out about these guys the hard way. Mary, 46, was a longtime marathon runner from Southern California. She was in my office at UCLA Medical Center for a checkup because she was training for a competition in Borneo, a rugged rai ...read more
Extinction for Easter Island’s Last Endemics
The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more
Pancreatic Cancer May Have Met Its Match
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, but researchers’ latest immunotherapy tactics may give them the upper hand. Most people don’t even know they have a pancreas, let alone what it does. One of my patients, Richard, was no exception. He came to see me after experiencing several months of weight loss and fatigue. A CT scan revealed a concerning spot on his pancreas as well as other spots on his liver, and a biopsy confirmed our worst fears: He had pancreatic cancer ...read more
Octopuses Edit Their Genetic Code Like No Other Animal
New research into the cephalopod genome is undermining our assumptions about evolution, and the role that DNA mutations play in updating a species' physiology. Researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Tel Aviv University have been studying how cephalopods — squids, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses — edit their genome, and found that instead of relying on DNA mutations to adapt, they have the ability to make changes to their RNA, the genetic "messe ...read more
Dogs Don’t Process Language With Their Left Brains, After All
A case of left-right confusion misled researchers about how dogs process language. Last August, Hungarian neuroscientists Atilla Andics and colleagues reported that the left hemisphere of the dog brain is selectively activated in response to the lexical properties (i.e. the meaning) of spoken words. This result was very interesting, not least because lexical processing is also lateralized to the left hemisphere in most humans. The paper appeared in the prestigious journal Science. However, ...read more
Sizzling Exoplanet Has an Atmosphere, Opening Avenues for Finding Alien Life
On the list of exoplanets that could hold life, GJ 1132b wouldn’t come near making the cut. It’s a super-Earth whose upper atmosphere reaches 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius), meaning it only gets hotter as you move down. It’s barely a hair away from its star, completing a year in 1.6 Earth days. Life is incredibly unlikely to survive there. Yet it may be one of the most important planets to come along in the search for life. So why’s that? Well, it’s ...read more
Imaging a black hole’s shadow
As I write this, a conglomeration of radio telescopes scattered across Earth are acting as one giant instrument to try to image the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It’s no easy feat. A black hole, by definition, is so dense and the gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape its confines. So how can an object that can’t emit light and that doesn’t reflect light be observed? By looking for its shadow, and that’s exactly what the so-call ...read more
From the Stars to the Seas: Pairing Citizen Science with NASA Technology for Whale Shark Conservation
This post is part of our Divers' series. We encourage readers to continue the conversation by adding their own comments, question or concerns on our Facebook page. You’ll find links to other posts at the end of this story. When Jason Holmberg saw his first whale shark 15 years ago while scuba diving off the coast of Africa, he had no idea it would lead him to co-found a nonprofit that pairs citizen science with NASA technology to collect data on whale sharks around the world. ...read more
Flashback Friday: What to eat to avoid garlic breath.
Garlic! So delicious, yet so stinky. If only there were foods you could eat after garlic to quench the stench. Well, according to this study, there are. These scientists first developed an automated method for detecting garlic odors, and then used this to “smell” the breath of participants after eating garlic followed by a variety of foods. The result? Turns out that eating parsley, spinach, mint, raw and microwaved apple, soft drink, green tea, and lemon juice all helped. Hmm&hellip ...read more