Some of the world's deadliest bacteria seek out and feed on human blood, a newly-discovered phenomenon researchers are calling "bacterial vampirism." A team led by Washington State University researchers has found the bacteria are attracted to the liquid part of blood, or serum, which contains nutrients the bacteria can use as food. One of ..read more

Finding your way through the winding streets of certain cities can be a real challenge without a map. To orient ourselves, we rely on a variety of information, including digital maps on our phones, as well as recognizable shops and landmarks. Cells in our bodies face a similar problem when building our organs during ..read more

Microplastics pose a great threat to human health. These tiny plastic debris can enter our bodies through the water we drink and increase the risk of illnesses. They are also an environmental hazard; found even in remote areas like polar ice caps and deep ocean trenches, they endanger aquatic and terrestrial lifeforms. To combat ..read more

Many of the individuals released to long-term acute care facilities suffered from conditions that lasted for over a year. Researchers at UC San Francisco studied COVID-19 patients in the United States who survived some of the longest and most harrowing battles with the virus. They discovered that approximately two-thirds of these survivors continued to experience a range of physical ..read more

Scientists discovered a previously unidentified rogue immune cell linked to poor antibody responses in chronic viral infections. Australian researchers have discovered a previously unknown rogue immune cell that can cause poor antibody responses in chronic viral infections. The discovery, recently published in the journal Immunity, opens the door to potential early treatments and perhaps the ..read more

A case of lead poisoning due to Ayurvedic medicine use demonstrates the importance of patient history in diagnosis and the need for public health collaboration to prevent similar risks. An article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) highlights a case of lead toxicity from Ayurvedic medicines in a young woman, and the complexity in diagnosing the ..read more

An enormous meteor spelled doom for most dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But not all. In the aftermath of the extinction event, birds — technically dinosaurs themselves — flourished. Scientists have spent centuries trying to organize and sort some 10,000 species of birds into one clear family tree to understand how the last surviving dinosaurs filled ..read more

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have successfully grown 'mini kidneys' in the lab and grafted them into live mice, revealing new insights into the metabolic defects and a potential therapy for polycystic kidney disease. "Mini kidneys," or kidney organoids, are kidney-like structures grown in the lab using stem cells. In the study ..read more

Recent research illustrates how RNA molecules’ chemical characteristics might have played a crucial role in the development of complex life forms. How did complex life manage to evolve on the early, inhospitable Earth? Initially, ribonucleic acid (RNA) must have existed to carry the first genetic information. For these biomolecules to build-up complexity in their sequences, they ..read more

By harnessing the power of composite polymer particles adorned with gold nanoparticles, a group of researchers have delivered a more accurate means of testing for infectious diseases. Details of their research was published in the journal Langmuir ("Gold Nanoparticle-Decorated Polymer (GNDP) Particles for High-Optical-Density Immunoassay Probes"). The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the need for fast and reliable infectious ..read more