Biologist and bioengineer Donald E. Ingber doesn’t have time to sleep. As the founding director of The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, finding time outside of work hasn’t gotten easier with age. At 67, his morning still starts at 5 a.m., running through a pile of emails that seems to grow larger by the day.By lunch, he’s already revised the budget for a crucial government grant and met with postdoctoral fellows regarding work on various research ...read more
When the first astronauts returned from space in the 1960s, their health assessments revealed something unexpected. Besides significant loss of muscle and bone mass, they were anemic — meaning their blood contained a lower-than-normal amount of red blood cells. This phenomenon, known as “space anemia,” seems to be an unavoidable part of space travel. It happens to everyone who ventures beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But decades later, scientists still don’t fully understand the process.Wha ...read more
For young male bottlenose dolphins, play is often practice. When that play concerns courtship, practice makes perfect. Juvenile males who spend more time play-acting courtship rituals father more offspring years later as adults, according to a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Study author Livia Gerber, a researcher at University of New South Wales, Sydney, had previously published work showing that adult male alliances form when the dolphins are young. The new study says ...read more
At the start of the pandemic, many people living with diabetes were wondering what COVID-19 meant for them. Diabetes was already known to put people at higher risks from other infectious diseases, including flu. Would it be the same with COVID-19? At the time, all scientists could do was make educated guesses.In 2024, things look very different. A great deal more research is available, as well as effective vaccines, and life has in many ways returned to something like normal.COVID-19 hasn’t di ...read more
Earth is constantly bombarded by fragments of rock and ice, also known as meteoroids, from outer space. Most of the meteoroids are as tiny as grains of sand and small pebbles, and they completely burn up high in the atmosphere. You can see meteoroids larger than about a golf ball when they light up as meteors or shooting stars on a dark, clear night.While very small meteoroids are common, larger ones – bigger than a dishwasher – are not.Meteoroids are difficult objects for aerospace and geop ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine