Every four months, pathologist Aaron LeBeau scoops into a net one of the five nurse sharks he keeps in his University of Wisconsin lab. Then he carefully administers a shot to the animal, much like a pediatrician giving a kid a vaccine. The shot will immunize the shark against a human cancer, perhaps, or an infectious disease, such as Covid-19. A couple of weeks later, after the animal’s immune system has had time to react, LeBeau collects a small vial of shark blood. Halfway across the countr ...read more
The first living beings on this planet were bacteria. And they haven't gone anywhere. Experts from microbiome labs and all life evolved in the presence of bacteria, and bacteria are still a part of all living things. Or as microbial ecologist María Gloria Domínguez-Bello puts it, "Bacteria are the center of all life." That means that you and I are walking communities of bacteria. We tend to think of bacteria as harmful, and some certainly are, but most are either neutral or beneficial, and man ...read more
For those struggling with alcohol use disorder, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is often touted as the go-to option for support. With more than 123,000 groups across 180 countries worldwide, the AA model — free and open to the public — has guided people through addiction since it began in 1935. And in recent decades, a growing body of research has shown that it can be incredibly effective. “I think it is the power of peers,” says John Kelly, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical ...read more
Our universe began with a puzzle. For 100 million years after the big bang, it expanded. Then something strange happened — this expansion suddenly accelerated and has continued to accelerate ever since. Today cosmologists think some kind of pressure must have forced this acceleration, all powered by huge amounts of energy from an unknown source. Cosmologists call it dark energy. But why this accelerating expansion occurred, and why it happened at that time, is one of the great unsolved myster ...read more
In general terms, scientists have a clear idea about what snakes eat, according to Bryan Maritz, senior lecturer at the Department of Biodiversity & Conservation Biology at the University of the Western Cape. For example, one rule of thumb is that there are no vegetarian snakes, since no species of snake eat any plant material at all, and every snake on the planet is a predator of other animals. What other animals they’re eating, though, ranges enormously depending on species, geography, t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine