Animation explains how viruses attack our cells to make us sick

Animation explains how viruses attack our cells to make us sick

Staying healthy is a lot like medieval warfare. Cells vs viruses. There are cells defending their castles and viruses trying to break through. If a sneaky virus manages to attack a cell, the cell fights it and notifies all the other castles about what to build to defend it. Man, learning about biology is so much easier when you have cute animations like this making it look like Game of Thrones.

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Can You Actually Get Sick From Being Cold?

We’ve all been nagged about staying warm in the winter by a concerned elder: "You don’t want to catch cold!" But that’s absurd; everyone these days knows colds are only caused by viruses, right? Well, it’s complicated.

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SickWeather Maps out Where the Sick People Are (So You Can Avoid Them)

There are a lot of apps that make use of information that people have posted on their public social network profiles. For example, there’s Hell is Other People, which is an app that helps anti-social people avoid other people by utilizing other users’ check-in data.

Then there’s SickWeather, which maps out where all the sick people are so healthy people can stay healthy by avoiding areas where these sick people are.

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SickWeather uses an advanced algorithm to check status updates and posts on Facebook and Twitter for any mention of an illness. The app will take note of the sick user’s location and indicate where they are on a map. It’s like a weather map of where the sick people are located instead of, well, the actual weather. It can even show the movement of outbreaks over time.

Areas where sick people can be found are designated as sick zones. Users can also choose to search the map by illness, ie. the flu, chicken pox, or the common cold. There’s no mention of zombie outbreaks on the list though. You can also set the app to alert you automatically to specific ailments.

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SickWeather is available as both a website and as a free iOS mobile app.

[via Incredible Things]

How Twitter Can Predict When Individuals Will Get Sick [Medicine]

If you’ve been walking around a public place lately, you’ve come in contact with a lot of people. Some of those people may have been sick. And if you’ve been hanging around enough of them as they cough and sneeze, then you might be about to get sick too. More »