From crucial vaccines to new insights about diseases, nearly all biomedical research starts with the study of human cell samples in a lab. All of these samples are originally taken from human patients. But when they make their way to the lab, most of these samples — including the HeLa cell line, one of the world’s most prominent cell samples — are viewed independently from the person they were sampled from. Who Was Henrietta Lacks?These samples don’t exist in a vacuum. Notably, the H ...read more
The concept of sunken treasure has captivated the imagination of pirates, divers, and the general public for likely as long as ships have sunk to the bottom of the sea. Part of the draw is that there are purportedly still a plethora of famous lost shipwrecks out there, such as the undiscovered Portuguese Flor do Mar, a treasure ship that was sunk in 1511 off the coast of Indonesia bearing dozens of chests of gold, precious gems and perfumes that might be worth billions today.But other lost treas ...read more
Snakes seem like relatively simple creatures—basically a glorified sock with holes on either end. Yet, these creatures have managed to adapt to nearly every continent on the planet over the past 100 million years.But how exactly did snakes evolve, and what made these slithery creatures so successful across the planet today? It was likely a combination of three factors that all arose at roughly the same time. “It all happens in one singular evolutionary burst around 100 to 110 million years a ...read more
Three o’clock in the morning — for some people, it’s the most anxiety-producing time. It’s when they wake up after just a few hours of shut-eye and then fail to fall back asleep.For other people, it’s the dreaded hour when they realize they have yet to fall asleep. The clock is ticking toward their wake-up time, and they haven’t even hit a dream cycle.Missing sleep can lead to more than just a sluggish day. Sleep medicine scientists have established that poor sleep is related to poor ...read more
To ensure that a satellite orbiting an asteroid was indeed two moons stuck together, the astronomers observing it needed to take a second look. That double take confirmed that they were seeing this phenomenon for the first time, according to a report in Nature.Last November, NASA’s Lucy — a spacecraft launched to explore asteroids as far away as Jupiter — sailed past its first target, Dinkinesh (which drew the nickname Dinky). Astronomers following the spacecraft’s data transmission noti ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine