Browsing Category
Brain/Body
Why time feels really strange on holidays
We all know time can feel slow and long when we stew in boredom, or rush past us when we’re excited and enjoying ourselves. Sometimes though, it’s not so simple. Sometimes we feel the same patch of time as both short and long at the same…
10 Surprising Facts about Alzheimer’s
This September, scientists at Trinity College Dublin made a new breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research. By studying the blood-brain barrier—the BBB, a term used to describe the properties in the brain’s blood vessels that strictly regulate…
Do Creativity And Psychosis Share Genetic Roots?
Art is brain made. Art can be an escape valve, a revival but sometimes endowed with a strange or psychedelic character. Are artists alienated and crazy? Whereas scientists confirmed the link between creativity and mental illnesses, a new…
Biosensors: A New Frontier in Healthcare?
The waiting is the worst. That time between the doctor taking your blood test and the return of those dreaded results can seem interminable. Once the result has been determined the situation can be faced and dealt with, whether it’s a case…
Shot of Science- What is Sleep? Koalas, Bill Gates
Bill Gates & Spanish Influenza
Bill Gates, in an interview with Vox, has urged humanity to take the threat of massive flu pandemics more seriously. He says that this is the most likely major killer of humans in the future. The…
Tears For Equality
After the #hangoverforequality ended, my scientific curiosity rebooted and I wondered why I cried so much over the weekend? I wasn’t sad, I was delighted! I was ecstatic! In Leo Varadkar's words, I was part of a social revolution.…
Shots of Science – Plate Up for Food Psychology
NASA tackles climate change
NASA scientists have said that by 2040 the hole in the ozone layer, now 12 million square miles wide, will have shrunk by another 4 million square miles. By the end of the 21st century the hole should have…
Shots of Science – knuckle cracking & exercise
The mechanism behind knuckle cracking
After decades of debate (really) scientists may have finally agreed on what happens when you crack your knuckles. Is the sound made by a bubble forming in the joint liquid, or the bubble popping?…
Shots of Science – Asthma, Yellowstone & Rare Earth
New Asthma breakthrough
Asthmatics could soon see a major change in their treatment. To date asthma sufferers have been treated for their symptoms after they appear but a new paper published in Science Translational Medicine identified a…
Shots of Science: genes and open health data
Icelanders DNA sequenced
Researchers have analysed the DNA data of the whole island of Iceland. The Researchers sequenced the whole genomes of 2,636 Icelanders and carried out less detailed genotyping for SNPs (DNA sequence variation…