Antibodies and white blood cells usually take the stage when the talks are about bacterial invasions inside the body. However, they are not the only players that help in combating bacteria. John MacMicking, an immunologist, says that “all cells are endowed with some ability to combat infection.” This cell in particular has an interesting ability: it produces soap-like substance that helps dissolve bacteria.

In humans, these run-of-the-mill cellular defenses have often been overlooked, MacMicking says, even though they are part of “an ancient and primordial defense system” and could inform the development of treatments for new infections. 

Often, nonimmune cells rely on a warning from their professional counterparts to combat infections. Upon detecting outsiders, specialized immune cells release an alarm signal called interferon gamma. That signal rouses other cells, including epithelial cells that line the throat and intestines and are often targeted by pathogens, to action.

More about this over at Science News.

(Image Credit: NIAID/ Wikimedia Commons)

Shark films like Jaws have changed our perceptions about the open waters and sharks. Today, we see sharks as dangerous creatures that we should be fearful of, thanks to the over 100 shark films that portrayed them as such. This irrational fear that comes from these films have affected shark conservation efforts negatively.

In a world-first study, conservation psychology researchers, UniSA's Dr Briana Le Busque and Associate Professor Carla Litchfield have evaluated how sharks are portrayed in movies, finding that 96 per cent of shark films are overtly portraying sharks as a threat to humans.

Dr Le Busque says sensationalised depictions of sharks in popular media can unfairly influence how people perceive sharks and harm conservation efforts.

[...]

"Sharks are at much greater risk of harm from humans, than humans from sharks, with global shark populations in rapid decline, and many species at risk of extinction.

"Exacerbating a fear of sharks that's disproportionate to their actual threat, damages conservation efforts, often influencing people to support potentially harmful mitigation strategies.

Le Busque states that the research is one “important step” in debunking shark myths.

(Image Credit: PIRO4D/ Pixabay)

A person’s body begins sending “death signals” after the person suffers from a heart attack. These said signals cause heart cells to die, a phenomenon that makes heart disease the leading cause of death in the world. For decades, scientists have been attempting to prevent these death signals from being communicated. Scientists have found an answer, and they have found it in the unlikeliest of places — venom from a funnel-web spider, one of the deadliest species in the world.

So far the experimental medicine has only been lab-tested.

[...]

The team has successfully used a protein from spider venom on beating human heart cells that were exposed to heart-attack stresses.

"The Hi1a protein from spider venom blocks acid-sensing ion channels in the heart, so the death message is blocked, cell death is reduced, and we see improved heart cell survival,"...

What a breakthrough!

(Image Credit: Tirin/ Wikimedia Commons)

Twitter user Tricky-D had a stepson who brought a girl inside his room the night before. The stepdad hadn’t seen the girl yet, but he knew that it was a girl because of the noises that came out from his stepson’s room. The problem is: how will his stepson smuggle his overnight guest out of his room and out of the house, now that the whole family is awake? Tricky-D watched the whole thing unfold in front of his eyes, while giving occasional updates to his followers on Twitter.

When some of his followers suggested that he might intervene and help Stepson with his escape, Tricky-D had this to say:

“I see all ya comments about help the kid out… He’s a 18yo grown ass man. We live and die by our choices”

Was the stepson able to smuggle his girl out of the house without anyone knowing (except his stepdad, of course)? Find out what happened over at Awkward.

(Image Credit: Tricky-D/ Awkward)

It is generally believed that the removal of wisdom teeth has negative effects on a person’s taste function. However, these said negative effects fade eventually as time passes. Now, in this recent study, it turns out that the same process could also improve a person’s taste function slightly in the long term. Richard L. Doty, PhD, the senior author of this study, has this to say:

“This new study shows us that taste function can actually slightly improve between the time patients have surgery and up to 20 years later. It’s a surprising but fascinating finding that deserves further investigation to better understand why it’s enhanced and what it may mean clinically.”

Why does this happen? The authors point to two possibilities.

First, extraction damage to the nerves that innervate the taste buds on the front of the mouth can release inhibition on nerves that supply the taste buds at the rear of the mouth, increasing whole-mouth sensitivity. Second, hypersensitivity after peripheral nerve injury from a surgery like an extraction has been well documented in other contexts.

There is evidence, for example, from animal studies that repetitive light touch, which might occur during chewing, gradually accentuates neural responses from irritated tissue that can lead to progressive long-term tactile hypersensitivity. Whether this occurs for taste, however, is not known.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Voice actor Jay Britton was heartbroken when he heard about the unofficial update to The Witcher 3. The game modder who released the said update, nikich340, apparently trained an AI algorithm to speak new lines of dialogue for the main character of the game (Geralt) and in the voice of his original voice actor, Doug Cockle.

“Yes, AI might be able to replace things but should it?” asked Britton on his tweet. “Replacing actors with AI is not only a legal minefield but an utterly souless choice.”

Some game studios are already embracing voice AI technology. At Obsidian, for instance, algorithmic dialogue doesn’t make the final cut. Instead, the studio uses it to listen to dialogue out loud before taking up an actor’s time, according to Input, not unlike how storyboarding helps set up visual shots.

But the decision to build out an entirely new game mod and use AI to churn out new lines in a real actor’s voice is a notable step further, and it will be interesting to see whether the practice makes its way into mainstream use.

Personally, I believe that there should always be some kind of human touch in this type of work. But what are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: lincerta/ Pixabay)

Some of us start to grow gray hair in our 30s, while there are others who begin some years earlier than that. Why is that the case? Aside from natural aging and genetics, there is also another factor that seems to play a role in the graying of hair: psychological stress. According to research, stress may accelerate the hair’s aging process.

But can the graying process of the hair be reversed? This recent study shows that it can, and similar to stress, relaxation plays a role in this reversal.

This analysis revealed that the times when graying or reversal occurred corresponded to periods of significant stress or relaxation. In one individual, a 35-year-old man with auburn hair, five strands of hair underwent graying reversal during the same time span, which coincided with a two-week vacation. Another subject, a 30-year-old woman with black hair, had one strand that contained a white segment that corresponded to two months during which she underwent marital separation and relocation—her highest-stress period in the year.

More about this fascinating study over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Renee Olmsted Photography/ Pixabay)

Located only about 130 light years away is the white dwarf star named ZTF J1901+1458. The star may be only slightly larger than the size of our Moon, but its mass is heavier than the Sun (about 1.35 times), making it the most massive white dwarf star ever discovered. And that’s not all. The said star also seems to be a very special case.

Its dense and mass place it right on the verge of the Chandrasekhar limit - the maximum mass a white dwarf can be before it becomes so unstable that it blows up in a spectacular supernova.

"We caught this very interesting object that wasn't quite massive enough to explode," said theoretical astrophysicist Ilaria Caiazzo of Caltech. "We are truly probing how massive a white dwarf can be."

Up to the Chandrasekhar limit, around 1.4 solar masses, something called electron degeneracy pressure keeps the white dwarf from collapsing further under its own gravity. At a certain pressure level, electrons are stripped from their atomic nuclei - and, because identical electrons can't occupy the same space, these electrons supply the outward pressure that keeps the star from collapsing.

More about this intriguing star over at ScienceAlert.

(Image Credit: Giuseppe Parisi)

The 1940s was a rough time for China. It is said that during that decade, over 30 million cases of malaria were reported every year in the country. A lot of people probably died during this time.

The 1950s saw a determined China, however. During these years, health authorities provided preventive antimalarial medicines for the people in order to prevent the spread of malaria, while those who caught the disease were given treatment. This was the start of China’s quest to eliminate malaria in their country.

By the end of 1990, the number of malaria cases in China had plummeted to 117 000, and deaths were reduced by 95%. With support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, beginning in 2003, China stepped up training, staffing, laboratory equipment, medicines and mosquito control, an effort that led to a further reduction in cases; within 10 years, the number of cases had fallen to about 5000 annually.

In 2020, after reporting 4 consecutive years of zero indigenous cases, China applied for an official WHO certification of malaria elimination. Members of the independent Malaria Elimination Certification Panel travelled to China in May 2021 to verify the country’s malaria-free status as well as its programme to prevent re-establishment of the disease.

The World Health Organization has recently awarded China the malaria-free certification. After 70 years of blood, sweat, and tears, China has finally rid itself of malaria.

Find out more about this exciting news over at the World Health Organization.

(Image Credit: NIAID/ Wikimedia Commons)

Ingredients are what makes a burger delicious. But this does not mean that you just stack these ingredients in between the bottom and top buns of the burger. They have to go in a specific order which enables you to taste every ingredient in the burger. That’s right. There is a proper way to stack your burger. And the proper way apparently is the Krabby Patty’s stack order. I’m not kidding. That’s what the video says.

(Image Credit: The Food Theorists/ YouTube)

Weeds may be good for the soil in that they prevents erosion due to wind and rain. But when you have a farm filled with plants, weeds may become a big problem, as they suck up the nutrients that should be for your crops. For this reason, farmers have to remove them.

Carbon Robotics are very well aware of this weed problem in farms, and so the company has developed the Autonomous Weeder, a machine designed to “kill weeds without harming the soil or water, scans the ground with its 12-camera array, identifies weeds via onboard AI, then kills them with high-powered carbon dioxide lasers.”

The tractor-size Autonomous Weeder can kill approximately 100,000 weeds an hour and between 15 and 20 acres a day, compared to about a single acre by a human laborer, and without the damaging effects of herbicides or the inexact nature of killing them with fire. Plus the robot can work autonomously both day and night, with no need for food or bathroom breaks.

Unfortunately, this machine costs “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to the company’s CEO Paul Mikesel. But there are lease options available.

Still cool, though.

(Image Credit: Carbon Robotics/ Technabob)

Behavioral biologist John Gould was looking for tadpoles late one night at the ephemeral pools in the Watagan Mountains, when he suddenly spotted a tiny black object. Gould thought that it was just a bug swimming across the water’s surface, but when he took a closer look at the scene, he realized that the bug wasn’t on the water’s surface, but under it, and he quickly filmed it.

Later, Gould mentioned the encounter to his colleague Jose Valdez, a wildlife ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. Valdez thought the observations were interesting, but he’d seen insects walk upright under water before.

“I didn’t fully grasp what he was describing until he showed me the video,” says Valdez. “Then I was floored.”

Searching the scientific literature, the researchers found that some snails could slide along the underside of the water’s surface on a layer of mucus, but little documentation of beetles walking this way existed — just passing mentions in decades-old papers.

How is the beetle able to perform this feat? The scientists think that it is because of the beetle’s buoyancy.

More about this over at Science News.

(Image Credit: Darkone/ Wikimedia Commons)

Several concentric star polygons can be found spinning on a gradient background. As these polygons spin, rays of light can be seen appearing from the center of the image, but in reality these rays of light are not produced by the image; they are produced by our brains. This visual illusion is called “Scintillating Starburst”, and shows how our brains process visual information.

"The research illustrates how the brain 'connects the dots' to create a subjective reality in what we see, highlighting the constructive nature of perception," explains Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor in New York University's Department of Psychology and Center for Data Science and senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal i-Perception.

"Studying illusions can be helpful in understanding visual processing because they allow us to distinguish the mere sensation of physical object properties from the perceptual experience," adds first author Michael Karlovich, founder and CEO of Recursia Studios, a multidisciplinary art and fashion production company.

The authors acknowledge that the visual effects of this illusion are superficially similar to a number of previously described effects of other, grid-based illusions. However, their Scintillating Starburst, unlike known visual illusions, evokes a number of newly discovered effects, among them that fleeting illusory lines diagonally connect the intersection points of the star polygons.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Michael Karlovich, Recursia LLC)

Antibiotics are a great weapon against bacteria. However, with antibiotics also comes the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When you get hit with a bacteria that even the most potent antibiotic, vancomycin, cannot handle, what will you do? Fortunately, we still have another line of defense: bacteriophages.

These are specialized viruses that can infect and kill bacteria without adverse effects on humans. The therapy is called 'Last Chance Viral Therapy' and can be used against chronic diseases such [as] urinary tract inflammation.

However, there is a big problem when it comes to bacteriophages; their active numbers decrease in the solution for injection, making them ineffective against bacteria.

It seems that scientists have finally found a clue to solve this problem.

More details about this over at PHYS.org.

(Image Credit: Adenosine/ Wikimedia Commons)

These are not like the ordinary dolls that you will find in a toy store. No. These are much much more superior. 

Thanks to their ball and socket joints, these dolls, made by artist Anastasia, enjoy greater mobility. And thanks to the artist sculpting them with great care, you could mistake them for real people at first glance.

Even the hands of these dolls have been sculpted in such a way that they can be posed in a variety of different positions that seems completely natural for the figure. Many of Anastasia's clients have imaginative photoshoots with their purchases, dressing them up with custom clothing and styling their hair into different coiffures.

The exquisite creations are available to purchase via Eslyn's Dolls Etsy shop. You can view her full portfolio by following the artist on Instagram.

Breathtaking.

(Image Credit: My Modern Met)