Anyone who has studied biology knows that mitochondria are the power plants of the cell. They form an almost independent system within it, with their own DNA and their own way of making proteins. That led scientists to say that mitochondria were once energy-producing bacteria that were swallowed by cells and put to work, which […]
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In 2014 we spoke to Dr Mohammad Maher Kutlan, a specialist in preventive medicine and epidemiology, about the new coronavirus disease spreading from the Arabian Peninsula. What is the disease? It is an acute respiratory illness, also called Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), caused by a virus from the coronavirus family. Coronaviruses usually cause a […]
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Today we are talking about sugar, the star that now goes with most of our meals in its many forms. It comes as the familiar fine white crystals, or hidden in pastries, juices and sweets, and it has even found its way into many medicines, toothpastes and cigarettes. Before looking at its harms, let us […]
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February 2014: a new study from Nagoya University in Japan has used blue-coloured compounds to starve hospital bacteria of iron. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most common type of bacteria in hospitals. These bacteria live naturally on and in the human body without causing disease, but when a person's immunity drops because of another illness, they […]
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Ninth-grade students at a school in Denmark carried out an experiment that caught the attention of scientists around the world, and its results may make you think twice about filling your home with wireless devices. Five schoolgirls ran the experiment after noticing that sleeping with their mobile phones next to their heads made them less […]
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Researchers have found that footballers who head the ball often have brain abnormalities similar to those of people with concussion (mild traumatic brain injury). The study was published online in the journal Radiology. The researchers studied players of the world's most popular sport using advanced MRI. Heading is one of football's best-known moves, done by […]
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A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that heavy use of social media may be a sign of strong self-love, or narcissism. The researchers say that college students in their early twenties who score high on narcissism post frequently on Twitter, while narcissistic middle-aged adults, in their thirties, post more on Facebook. The […]
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A new study at Duke University says that people who play video games are not just training themselves to press controller buttons fast: they learn to react faster to what they see. The researchers add that gamers see the world differently, with the ability to pick up more information from their surroundings. One difficulty the […]
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Scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria that produces electricity while growing on carbon dioxide (CO2) as its only source of carbon and hydrogen gas (H2) as its source of electrons. The researchers in Massachusetts worked with the soil bacterium Geobacter metallireducens, first isolated in 1987 from the sediment of the Potomac River in the […]
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Reuters: scientists in the United States say they have found a new treatment for chronic diseases, using the eggs of a parasite that infects pigs to treat people with diseases such as Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory bowel disease) and rheumatism. Patients take the first medicine of its kind designed to treat autoimmune diseases. Each […]
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In medicine, brain death means that the brainstem has stopped working along with the rest of the nervous system. A brain-dead patient may still not appear to have died, because machines keep blood flowing through the body. Doctors and religious scholars do not always agree on what this means. We spoke to Dr Mamoun al-Abbar, […]
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A new study suggests that sleeping in front of a television or computer screen can cause depression, because of the light during sleep. Scientists split hamsters into two groups. One was exposed to natural cycles of light and darkness, the other to dim light at night, like city lights or the glow of a TV […]
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