Health Blog

The BBC reports on a new flexible surgical robot cakked the i-Snake. The article says experts believe the i-Snake could revolutionize keyhole surgery. (Continue reading…)

Wired reports that scientists have discovered a brain hormone called orexin A that people could snort to reverse the effects of sleep deprivation. It has worked in monkeys. Sleep-deprived monkeys became alert with no ill effects - as if they had received plenty of sleep - after receiving a nasal spray containing the hormone. (Continue reading…)

The British Ministry of Defense plans to release all of its UFO files thanks to the efforts (hat tip UFO Digest) of some UFO researchers. (Continue reading…)

We’ve all heard that global warming will generate devastating floods and droughts. We are familiar with the warnings about rising sea levels. We know that countless scientists and scientific organizations believe global warming is real and that climate change is something humans are going to have to deal with on an increasing basis over the coming decades. What’s less understood by both global warming believers and global warming deniers is what carbon emissions are doing to our oceans.


(Continue reading…)

The complete genome of a moss has been sequenced, providing scientists an important evolutionary link between single-celled algae and flowering plants.
Just as the sequencing of animal genomes has helped scientists understand human genomic history, the sequencing of plant genomes will shed light on the evolution of the plant kingdom, according to Ralph S. Quatrano, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and the corresponding author of the paper.


(Continue reading…)