23 Wednesday Oct 2013
Tags
biology, Coca-Cola, Diet (nutrition), food, Health, High-fructose corn syrup, Human, Popular science, science, Sugar
Everyone knows that too much sugar is bad for you, but how much is too much? According to a study published earlier this year, the amount of additional dietary sugar considered safe by regulatory agencies was enough to impact the health of mice, reducing the lifespan of females and the fertility of males. Continue reading
16 Wednesday Oct 2013
Posted in Form
Tags
biology, biotechnology, DNA, DNA nanotechnology, drug delivery, Nanotechnology, origami, Popular science, science, Science fiction, shape, tetrahedron
In the previous post, I introduced DNA nanotechnology and talked a bit about some of the 2-D structures that researchers have devised. Scientists have also used these techniques to build a variety of 3-D shapes, some of which can be used as containers for drug delivery. In this post, I’m going to focus on the DNA tetrahedron, a four-sided pyramid made of DNA which is relatively easy to build and manipulate and has proven useful in several recent studies.
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10 Thursday Oct 2013
Posted in Form
Tags
biology, biotechnology, DNA, DNA nanotechnology, Nanotechnology, origami, Popular science, science, Science fiction, shape
The phrase “DNA nanotechnology” has a thoroughly futuristic ring. It sounds like something from a science-fiction novel, but what does it actually mean? Nanotechnology just means manipulating stuff on the scale of atoms and molecules. DNA nanotechnology is an approach that harnesses the self-organizing properties of DNA. The idea is to use DNA to precisely position things or build structures and machines, ideally in a way that’s cheaper or more efficient than other techniques.
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02 Wednesday Oct 2013
Posted in Evolution
Tags
biology, epigenetics, evolution, Human, Popular science, science, virus
Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to write anything for Inspiring Science this week, so instead I decided to link to a few of my recent posts on Accumulating Glitches instead. I wrote two posts, Tracking the Evolution of a Virus and Antibiotics and Applied Evolution, about evolutionary sories which might affect our day-to-day lives; I introducted them saying: Continue reading
25 Wednesday Sep 2013
Tags
Bacteria, biology, Complement system, Health, Immune system, microbes, microbiome, Mouse, Popular science, science
The skin is one of our body’s first lines of defense, but it’s also home to a rich community of microbes — the skin microbiome. These bacteria are important in protecting us from pathogens; changes in the skin microbiome are linked with conditions ranging from dermatitis to psoriasis. In a paper published this month in the journal PNAS, a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania showed that these bacteria don’t just live on our skin, but also play a role in regulating our immune response. Continue reading
23 Monday Sep 2013
Posted in Foraging
Tags
Accumulating Glitches, biology, links, microbiome, music, Popular science, science, science and society, Science communication, Science in Society, Scitable, sexism, Species, street art, video, World War Z
It’s been a while since my last Found while foraging. I guess I’ve been busy for the past few months and these posts have somehow fallen by the wayside. They seem to be popular, though, so I’ll make an effort to keep them up and post link collections more regularly. I’m also happy to get interesting links from readers, so send me anything you think is interesting and worth sharing. And as always, though, feel free to add more links in the comments!
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