Jan 29
This is a game changer, folks. Whereas mining stem cells has been either an ethical quandary or a months-long affair, scientist can now turn any old blood cells into stem cells in just 30 minutes—by dipping them in acid.
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Jan 28
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Bubonic plague, but the chances of you knowing next to anything about the Justinian plague are significantly slimmer. That’s because no one really knew anything about the Justinian plague—until recently, that is. Now, two ancient, plague-ridden teeth are finally teaching us a little more about one of the worst pandemics in history—including the fact that another outbreak could be just around the corner.
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Jan 28
In this week’s round-up of landscape reads, we’ve got sacred grounds, coffee grounds, and camping grounds.
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Jan 27
We’ve all seen it: That colorful human body, staring blankly ahead in the doctor’s office, its stomach skin missing and guts exposed. But have you ever really stepped back and wondered what it took to perfect that anatomical diagram?
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Jan 26
In the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers recount the fascinating case of an electrician who, after sustaining a 14,000-volt
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Jan 24
Somewhere 11,000 years ago, something weird happened to a dog. It got cancer—and the really damn freaky part is that the cancer could survive even outside of its canine host. That unknown dog is long dead now, but its tumor cells have improbably lived on, continuing to sprout on the genitalia of dogs all over the world.
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Jan 21
Having a fever can be pretty terrible—but imagine having it before there was any cure, when nobody really knew what it was. This picture, from the 18 century, depicts just that.
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Jan 20
Devices such as as pacemakers and cochlear implants have become so common as seamless extensions of human beings that it’s easy to imagine a world without clear distinctions between man and machine. And now, one of the major roadblocks to that bionic future may have just been knocked aside. Grandpa—say goodbye to batteries.
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Jan 16
A team of surgeons in Oxford have used a pioneering new form of gene therapy to stop six of their patients going blind--and it’s hoped the technique could be used to treat blindness more generally.
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Jan 14
Ever since the first human genome was decoded at a cost of $3 billion, scientists have been pushing for a moonshot goal: a system that can process thousands of genomes at a cost of $1,000 each. Today, Illumina unveiled a set of machines that do just that. For geneticists and medical researchers, this is a watershed moment.
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