Our relationship with yeast is like a college friendship that grew beyond keggers and into distinguished adulthood. We’ve partied with our eukaryotic wingmen dating back to at least 7000 B.C., using them in foods and head-spinning libations. In 1680, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, godfather of microscopy, gazed upon yeast for the first time; that’s when we started moving past the party years.
We still throw down with yeast, but we’ve grown up and have jobs now. These days, the fungus i ...read more
Can we improve medical devices by designing them to translate the language of the body? Materials scientist Canan Dagdeviren, who just launched a new research group at MIT, thinks so. Ever since she was a child growing up in Turkey, she’s turned tragedy and loss into research that speaks to hope.
Her inventions suggest that scientists can harvest electricity from the movements of our organs, pick up the first hints of disease from subtle changes in physiological patterns, or track changes ...read more
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1. Yoga today is a mainstream fitness activity; 1 in 5 American adults participates in what most people believe is an ancient practice. Surprise: The yoga you’re going to the mat for isn’t that old.
2. What we generally think of as yoga began in late 19th century India, when leaders of an anti-colonialism movement sought to rally their countrymen to their cause.
3. Some of these men saw yoga, then more of a philosophy, as a non-sectarian, indigenous symbol of India that transcended d ...read more
Even before we’re born, human beings are sensitive to face-like shapes, according to a paper just published in Current Biology.
British researchers Vincent M. Reid and colleagues of the University of Lancaster used lasers to project a pattern of three red dots onto the abdomen of pregnant women. The lasers were bright enough to be visible from inside the womb. The dots were arranged to be either “face-like”, i.e. with two “eyes” above one “mouth”, or in ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
