Category: Uncategorized
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Can mushrooms stimulate healthy ageing?
Mushrooms are divisive, as far as foods go. Some people love their earthy flavour that seems to absorb the best parts of the food it’s served with. Others complain about their bland, rubbery texture. Most people don’t even realise that mushrooms aren’t vegetables. As fungi, they’re actually more closely related to animals than to plants…
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New hope for targeting ‘Sleeping Sickness’
Sleeping sickness, caused by single celled species Trypanosoma brucei, is a fatal vector-borne parasitic disease. The parasite is found in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with 60 million people at risk and 30 000 deaths every year. There have been many epidemics throughout the 20th century, with 40 000 reported cases in 1998 and an…
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Art acne: diagnosing Georgia O’Keeffe Paintings
Art may be a window into the human condition, but as it turns out, art can occasionally develop a medical condition. One doesn’t usually think of works of art as getting ill, but as the work of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe demonstrates, art can indeed develop one mild skin condition… acne. And now a multidisciplinary…
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The secret brains of bees: Study finds that bees can add and subtract
The common honeybee (Apis melifera) is a fascinating creature. Bees are not only among the most common pollinators of plants all over the world, they also make honey, which has been harvested by humans for its naturally high sugar content as far back as 8000 years ago, possibly even further. Of insects that form colonies,…
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Fancy a shark for a friend, or must this friendliness end?
On being asked about the dangers of his deep sea adventures, Michael Mueller, the famous shark photographer from Los Angeles, also fondly known as ‘shark paparazzo’ in journalistic circles, said “People don’t need to be scared. I tickle sharks, I do, when they swim by.” Mueller’s words may have said these words in good humour,…
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The amazing adaptability of the placenta
“Don’t drink, avoid sugary snacks and, of course, don’t forget to take your folic acid.” If only it were that simple. The popular narrative tells us that pregnancy is a magical phase in a person’s life, but it is not all roses and unicorns. Pregnancy can undoubtedly be one of the most physically and emotionally…
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TEDxWomen: Showing Up – Review
On Saturday December 1st, TEDxUniversity of Edinburgh hosted their first event of the semester, a series of talks entitled “TEDxWomen: Showing Up,” in a nod to the annual TED Women’s conference, which was held two weeks ago in Palm Springs, California. The talks were divided into three themes: education and music, science, and activism, with…