A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
Bog mummies are 2000-year-old mummies from the Iron Age that were preserved with amazing detail by the peat bogs of Europe.
Physical anthropologists draw conclusions from the eerily preserved hair, leathery skin and other features in the mummies that emerge from the bogs. In the Iron Age, from approximately 500BC to 500AD, people were often cremated, leading experts to believe that mummies preserved by the bogs were usually those who met their demise through particularly violent means or were used as sacrifices.
Bears don't rub trees because their backs are itchy. Dr Owen Nevin of the University of Cumbria states that adult male grizzly bears use so-called “rub trees” as a way to communicate with each other while looking for breeding females, and that this behavior could help reduce battles between the bears.
Many theories have been advanced as to why bears rub trees: some thought females might rub trees as they came into oestrous, and others that bears might be giving their backs a good scratch to get rid of parasites or pick up sap to act as insect repellent.
By 1763, the world of Cherokee Indians in the Southeastern U.S. was in tatters. The French and Indian War had wracked the sprawling Cherokee settlements that stretched from the headwaters of the Savannah River in South Carolina and Georgia to the Overhills towns in eastern Tennessee.
Though 75 years would pass before the Trail of Tears would banish the remnants of the nation west to Oklahoma, the tribe watched hopelessly as much of its history rapidly faded.
Researchers have long wondered why the Cherokee settled where they did, building clusters of small towns in fertile river valleys in mostly mountainous areas.
Scientists have also studied why the society collapsed with such relative speed as the eighteenth century unfolded.
252 million years ago a mass extinction of cataclysmic proportions occurred and the world was changed forever. Prior to that, ocean life was diverse and clam-like organisms called brachiopods dominated. After the extinction little else existed and a different kind of clam-like organism, called a bivalve, took over.
Why did it happen?
The Aurigid meteor shower peaked on September 1, originating from C/1911 N1 Kiess, or comet Kiess, a long-period comet that takes about 2000 years to orbit the Sun. It was discovered in 1935 by Carl Kiess.
As Earth passes through the dust comet Kiess left behind 2000 years ago, meteoroids, or shooting stars, rain upon Earth. They burn up in the atmosphere at very high velocities, about 67 km/s, creating the meteor shower.
The Aurigids get their name from the constellation Auriga, because if you look up in the sky, this is where the shooting stars seem to come from. The dust trail of comet Kiess will not be crossed again in this manner for 70 years.
The constellation of Auriga rising above the horizon.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that a single gene might control whether or not individuals tend to pile on fat, a discovery that may point to new ways to fight obesity and diabetes.
“From worms to mammals, this gene controls fat formation,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff, associate professor of developmental biology and internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of a study appearing in the Sept. 5 issue of Cell Metabolism.
Amihai Mazar, Eleazar L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, revealed that the first apiary (beehive colony) dating from the Biblical period has been found in excavations he directed this summer at Tel Rehov in Israel’s Beth Shean Valley. This is the earliest apiary to be revealed to date in an archaeological excavation anywhere in the ancient Near East, said Prof. Mazar. It dates from the 10th to early 9th centuries B.C.E.
Tel Rehov is believed to have been one of the most important cities of Israel during the Israelite monarchy. The beehives there were found in the center of a built-up area there that has been excavated since 1997 by Dr. Nava Panitz-Cohen of the Hebrew University. Three rows of beehives were found in the apiary, containing more than 30 hives.
Eminem should be reading up on his Elvis history if he wants to stay around. Famous musicians are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, reveals research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The findings are based on more than 1050 North American and European musicians and singers who shot to fame between 1956 and 1999.
Scientists at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh have discovered a unique population of adult stem cells derived from human muscle that could be used to treat muscle injuries and diseases such as heart attack and muscular dystrophy.
In a study using human muscle tissue, scientists in Children's Stem Cell Research Center - led by Johnny Huard, PhD, and Bruno Péault, PhD - isolated and characterized stem cells taken from blood vessels (known as myoendothelial cells) that are easily isolated using cell-sorting techniques, proliferate rapidly and can be differentiated in the laboratory into muscle, bone and cartilage cells.
Education is one of the rare industries with a powerful union, no incentive based pay and where generally the worst performers get more money yet is still regarded as not very good.
Improving education most would start with incentives for teachers, claims new findings by economics professors at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Vanderbilt University. They say that states and school districts in the United States begin developing programs that examine the effects of linking teacher pay to student achievement.
The study was a collaborative effort between Michael J. Podgursky, professor of economics at Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science, and Matthew G. Springer, research assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College.
A team of scientists from around the globe has determined that a drastic change in the climate of tropical Africa may have significantly driven early human evolution.
Among the findings: A transition from a long period of time (about 135,000 to 75,000 years ago) that included several extreme droughts to a stable, wetter climate may have stimulated the expansion and migration of early human populations.
The researchers studied lake cores from Lake Malawi, at the southern end of East Africa’s Rift Valley, and found that the megadroughts were some of tropical Africa’s driest periods in the last million years or more.
It's unclear if vitamin C supplements reduce cancer risk. They may actually increase it.
Fat in the stomach may cause vitamin C to promote, rather than prevent, the formation of certain cancer causing chemicals, reveals research published ahead of print in the journal Gut.
The researchers analysed the impact of both fat (lipid) and vitamin C (ascorbic acid) on nitrite chemistry in the upper (proximal) stomach, which is especially vulnerable to pre-cancerous changes and tumor growth.
Nitrites, which are present in human saliva, and in certain preserved foodstuffs, may be converted to cancer causing compounds called nitrosamines.
