DNA nanotechnology (Part I)

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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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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Talkin’ ’bout Evolution

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by sedeer in Evolution

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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 →

Skin bacteria regulate the immune response

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by sedeer in Bacteria, Disease, Mammals

≈ 8 Comments

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 →

Found while foraging (September 23, 2013)

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by sedeer in Foraging

≈ 4 Comments

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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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Music, Memory, and Voices

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by sedeer in Humans

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

biology, evolution, Human, Melody, music, Musical instrument, Popular science, science, Singing, Vocal music

Humans are remarkably talented musicians. We can recognize a tune despite changes like being slowed down or sped up or even if all of the notes are shifted to a higher or lower pitch. Though these may seem like trivial feats, most other animals can’t manage them. Experiments have shown that six-month old human babies can already distinguish musical pitch and recognize shifted melodies. These exceptional abilities suggest that humans might have some innate capacity to perceive and understand music, something like our hypothetical language faculty. Given that we’ve been able to sing for much longer than we’ve had musical instruments, it seems reasonable that any music capacity we evolved would be more attuned to vocal than instrumental music. Continue reading →

The laws of biology

26 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by sedeer in Discussions

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

biology, Law, philosophy, philosophy of science, physics, science

Science is our way of trying to understand the universe, to make sense of the patterns of objects and behaviours around us and explain the regularity of the world we experience. We use several different words to characterize the ideas and explanations we come up with. A hypothesis is an informed conjecture, a speculation about world which needs to be tested, while a theory is a well-supported, coherent framework which explains some aspect of the universe. Scientific “laws” seem to fall somewhere in between; while they’re very well-supported, they tend to assert things about the world rather than offer an explanation. For example, Newton’s law of gravity enables us to predict the gravitational attraction between two objects but doesn’t explain why objects are attracted to each other. Continue reading →