Category: Uncategorized
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Medical Cannabis: An evening of discussion at Edinburgh Science Festival
As part of its series of evening discussions, the Edinburgh Science Festival hosted an evening of talks on the properties of medicinal cannabis and barriers to its use in the United Kingdom. Panellists included pharmacologist and co-founder of the International Cannabinoid Research Society Professor Roger Pertwee, neurologist Professor Mike Barnes and medicinal cannabis advocate Karen…
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The Event Horizon Telescope reveals the first ever direct image of a black hole
Over 100 years ago, in 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity. This was a mathematical framework which described the curvature of spacetime; how matter causes this curvature, and how this curvature affects the movement of matter and light. Just like bowling balls on a trampoline, massive objects curve the spacetime around them,…
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This tiny, brazilian frog may have harnessed the power of fluorescence to communicate with other animals
During the rainy season, from mid-October to March, a small, bright yellow frog prowls the floor of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. This is the pumpkin toadlet, and as it wanders, it emits a soft, buzzing mating call. The ritual is heart-felt, but a little wasted. In 2017, scientists discovered that the call vibrates at a…
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Bacteria may be travelling through the air to share DNA
A research group has discovered that bacteria in remote, isolated regions share some stretches of DNA and are suggesting that this is due to bacteria travelling through the air. Human understanding of how bacteria travels across the globe has changed a lot in recent decades. It was originally assumed that bacteria are transported on humans and…
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The necessity of gender-neutral toilets
Entering a toilet is a choice; a choice between entering a women’s or a men’s toilet. It’s so easy, that some people may not even think about it as a choice. To be exact, cis people (people who are completely comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth) don’t have to think twice about…
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Life-saving imaging technology for baby hearts
Congenital heart diseases is a general term for a range of birth defects that affect the function of the heart. Congenital heart diseases affect up to eight in every 1,000 babies born in the UK and have no single, obvious cause. They can be caused by infections, some medicines and can even occasionally run in…
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The woman who can smell Parkinson’s disease
24 years ago, Joy Milne, a now 67 year old from Perth, noticed a strange and ‘different’ smell on her husband, Les Milne. She described it as a, ‘’tick musk smell. Very different’’, and at the time thought he wasn’t washing himself properly, which caused a bit of tension. Les was, however, to be diagnosed…
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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…