Those funny-looking, little green Martians have captivated human imagination since their first appearance in print in 1877. And maybe the intelligent version of Mars-based life doesn’t exist, but we’ve recently come closer to finding their long-lost cousins, microbes.
Collaborating researchers from the University of Cambridge in the U.K., the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris, and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) recently engineered an electrophoretic drug delivery method to treat neurological disorders via a neural probe implant in rodents.
For millennia, scientists and philosophers have pondered what separates man from animal. Whether it was utilizing the mirror recognition test, examining ancient weapons and tools, or even looking into our own choices and decisions, we have always wondered what makes us so different.
Spinal cord injuries are among the most alarming and unpredictable of injuries, carrying the possibility of paralysis. Compounding this fact, since severed nerve fibers in the central nervous system, which comprises the brain and spinal cord, do not regenerate, the paralysis has the potential to be permanent.
On August 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb released a statement that the agency is going to accelerate the development of non-addictive pain medications.
Sleeping is often considered one of the most primitive and mundane aspects of biological existence. Some scientists claim that it is a survival instinct that has evolved for millions of years. However, despite its ancestral roots, sleep is not very well understood. In fact, countless mysteries take place when we sleep: How does the mind create dreams? Do dreams come in colors or black-and-white? Most importantly, how does the brain sustain and maintain high levels of activity during certain periods of the sleep cycle?
While it may be the norm for one to put great effort into making good first impressions in social situations, recent studies are leading scientists to believe that one may have less control over first impressions than they may believe.
As the only known planet with life, it makes sense to assume that life began on Earth. Numerous experiments have recreated the environment of the early Earth and determined that biological molecules could have first formed on our planet.
In human diseases and injuries, inflammation is a critical defense and repair mechanism. In response to a physical injury or infection, immune cells are recruited to the site of inflammation to defend against the foreign injury or pathogen. However, immune cells also have destructive properties. Persisting inflammation can create an opposite effect, causing more harm than benefit.
For the past half-decade, statistics for the number of sexually transmitted disease (STD) diagnoses have shown an upward trend. All together, the numbers for novel cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis total to nearly 2.3 million for 2017 in the United States alone.
Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which is estimated to infect 90 percent of people in the U.S. by age 20 and 90 percent of the people in developing countries by the age of two. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s population carries EBV, since once it infects, it remains in a person for the rest of their lives.
In this day and age, antioxidants seem to have flooded popular media with their promises of youth and good health. According to a new study published in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal, the use of oral antioxidants may produce considerable health benefits.
According to National Geographic, “You have a one in 63 chance of dying from the flu and a one in 3,700,000 chance of being killed by a shark during your lifetime.” And yet, do we fear the flu? No. But we’re convinced that we may very well be fatally attacked by a shark whenever stepping foot in the ocean.
Preliminary clinical trials show that an experimental personalized vaccine is safe and could extend the lives of advanced-stage ovarian cancer patients.
Brazilian researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences (IB/USP) have found a potential therapeutic effect of the Zika virus (ZIKV) in tumors of the human central nervous system (CNS).
Hopkins hosted its annual John C. and Florence W. Holtz Lecture on Thursday, April 26. Hosted by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, this year’s lecture was delivered by Nobel laureate Jack W. Szostak.
Space@Hopkins held its second annual symposium on Friday, April 27. The Space@Hopkins program widely focuses on bringing the aspects of space-related research at Hopkins to one central location.
Researchers at Loma Linda University have recently announced good news for people with a sweet tooth. After many experimental trials, they discovered that the consumption of certain types of dark chocolate noticeably improves people’s cognitive abilities.
While the exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life has been going on for decades, NASA recently took a huge step forward with the launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Exoplanets are planets outside the solar system that orbit a star.
While there is currently no cure for schizophrenia, research has continued to develop new ways of understanding this disease. In fact, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston have recently used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and embryonic stem cells to develop 3-D cerebral organoids, which are artificially grown models of the brain.
