How Keeping Brain Cells Alive May Help You Fully Recover from Stroke

New work shows that there are tiny little packages that can deliver powerful healing to brain cells.

Do you know anyone who has suffered from stroke?

A stroke can be devastating because of the dramatic physical and emotional effects that can result from you or your loved ones experiencing one.

Stroke is usually associated with elderly men. But women get strokes, too.

Scientists at the University of Georgia have just published an article showing that delivering little fluid filled packages called exosomes into the brains of pigs can lead to their complete recovery from a stroke….More

We’re Just Big Slime Buckets – Part 3

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Why, when, where and how our slime is created and what happens when things go wrong.

In this article, Part 3, I look at our upper respiratory system to illustrate how and where mucus is made and by which cells, what its constituents are and how it works to protects us from infections and keeps our bodies operating like well oiled machines.

You’ll also learn about mucin genes and see how turning them on and off ensures that we maintain the amount of mucus we need for everyday usage. You’ll also see what happens when an infection is detected…More

Everything You Need to Know About Your Genes

These days everyone wants to know all about their genes and what they might learn about themselves if they knew their DNA (genomic) sequence.

Do I have any bad genes that could make me sick? Do I carry any bad genes that I might pass on to my child that will make them sick? How come my hair is black and my Mom’s is brown? Why am I so much taller than my Mom and Dad? Who am I related to? What is my ancestry? And the list goes on and on….

In this article I give you just enough information about your genes so that you‘re comfortable when someone starts talking about genes, genetics and genomes…More

How to Eradicate a Disease

We eradicated smallpox in 1980. What’s next?

In 1980 small pox was declared officially eradicated worldwide. In 2015, strain 2 of the polio virus was eliminated. In October, 2019, strain 3 of the polio virus was also declared eradicated by the World Health Organization. That leaves only strain 1 of the polio virus left to deal with to completely eradicate polio in our modern world.

What do we need to do to eradicate many other infectious diseases? It turns out that there are 5 conditions that need to be satisfied in order to eradicate a disease…More

We’re Just Big Slime Buckets- Part 2

Say your kid (or your partner or best friend or someone at work) has been running around with a stuffed up drippy nose all week and now your own nose is getting stuffed up and drippy. And you think, shoot, I’m coming down with a cold! I hate being sick.

And that’s a good thing. Why you should appreciate your sliminess.

But maybe you’re not. Getting sick, I mean.

Maybe all that slime is actually doing something good for you…More

We’re Just Big Slime Buckets – Part 1

That’s what I was most of my life. How I changed that and why you should appreciate your sliminess.

I have been fighting a life-long battle with mucus. Not a major war like people with cystic fibrosis or other true disease conditions, but definitely what seems to me to have been a never-ending series of skirmishes.

My first major battle happened when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Our family had gone on holiday to Upstate New York (at the time we lived on Long Island, NY) and went on a tour of Howe Caverns. As we descended I found it harder and harder to breathe, started wheezing and by the end of the tour, my Dad was carrying me because I wasn’t able to walk it was so hard to breathe.

That was my first asthma attack…More

Here’s 10 Reasons Why You Should Love Lichens

“Has a squamulose primary thallus with fruticose podetia that grow up from it”

WHAT THE……????

With descriptions like that, it’s no wonder that so many people don’t bother to learn about lichens.

There are lots of common lichens that are easily distinguished and can be identified by their pictures in popular field guides to plants…More

The American Burying Beetle: A Success Story?

Were they ever really endangered?

Almost 2 years ago, Scientific American published an article by Hannah Nordhaus entitled “Beetle Resurrection” that made the American Burying Beetle (Necrophorus americanus) a poster child for how the oil industry and other political and economic interests regarded an endangered species that most Americans didn’t know about and previously never cared about in the first place.

As is often the case, there was a rash of articles, posts and blogs in all the top media outlets talking about the American Burying Beetle and then it was business as usual and the issue seemed to disappear.

Or was it and did it?…More

8-Point Checklist for How to Reduce Your Bio-Footprint

How do you reduce your bio-footprint?

You don’t need to take big gigantic steps. You don’t need to be a tree-hugging left winger, gluten-free, vegan person who only wears homespun cotton or wool garments and sandals constructed using hemp fibre etc etc.

If you want to reduce your bio-footprint, all you need to do is apply a tiny bit of mindfulness…More