What happens to fat when you lose weight?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe fundamental principle behind weight loss is simple: Burn more calories than you consume. Restricting calories forces your body to draw on existing fat stores to power your bodily functions, everyday activities, and workouts. “The excess carbohydrate and protein are converted into triglycerides, which is a fat found usually in the blood, and the triglycerides […]
NASA-funded rocket to view sun with X-ray vision
Reading Time: 3 minutesWithout special instrumentation, the Sun looks calm and inert. But beneath that placid façade are countless miniature explosions called nanoflares. These small but intense eruptions are born when magnetic field lines in the Sun’s atmosphere tangle up and stretch until they break like a rubber band. The energy they release accelerates particles to near lightspeed […]
Why do we have different blood types?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn 19000, Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner discovered there are three blood groups A, B, and O. It was a huge find and he won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for it in 1930. A few years later researchers would discover the AB group. There are four main blood types. Blood type A is […]
Researchers 3D print prototype for ‘bionic eye’
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA team of researchers at the University of Minnesota have, for the first time, fully 3D printed an array of light receptors on a hemispherical surface. This discovery marks a significant step toward creating a “bionic eye” that could someday help blind people see or sighted people see better. The research is published recently in […]
How can your tooth save your life?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteBY SCIENCE BRIDGE ACADEMY When we were younger our parents would tell us that when our teeth fell out, the Tooth Fairy would come and exchange it with a gold coin! But did you know that your tooth can actually save your life? Similar to cord blood, [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]you can find stem […]
Researchers turn to deadly venoms in their quest for life-saving therapies
Reading Time: 2 minutesNEY YORK: Venomous reptiles, bugs and marine life have notorious reputations as dangerous, sometimes life-threatening creatures. But in a paper in the current issue of Science, first author Mandë Holford, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York (GC/CUNY) and Hunter College, details how technology […]
Smartphone-powered ultrasound machine
Reading Time: < 1 minuteEngineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation — no bigger than a Band-Aid, is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone. Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to […]
Dengue fever outbreak halted by release of wolbachia mosquitoes
Reading Time: 2 minutesRESEARCH led by the World Mosquito Programme’s Director, Professor Scott O’Neill, for the first time an entire city has been protected from viral disease dengue. The research has shown that the WMP’s Wolbachia method can be deployed cost effectively at citywide scale, preventing local dengue transmission. The paper reviews data from the first citywide deployment […]
Fat-blocking effect of nanofibers
Reading Time: < 1 minuteTINY balls of nano-sized cellulose fibres added to food reduced fat absorption by up to half in laboratory and animal experiments, report scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Harvard University, United States. This discovery could aid in the global battle against obesity, as experiments done in a simulated gastrointestinal tract showed that […]
GM rice that can neutralise HIV
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAN INTERNATIONAL team of researchers from Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom has successfully created a strain of genetically modified (GM) rice that will produce HIV-neutralising proteins. Scientists have been developing possible treatments for people infected with HIV. Their efforts to produce a vaccine against the virus have been unsuccessful, but oral medications […]