John Hewitt

(Medical Xpress)—Researchers in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, have recently made some significant advances in developing artificial blood substitutes. Their formulation is based not on synthetic hemoglobins, but rather on hemerythrin ...

(Medical Xpress)—The Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus is a busy place, especially during development. Although it receives inputs from many regions of the brain, the first class seats are reserved for axons ...

(Medical Xpress)—The native peoples of Easter Island are known locally as the Rapa Nui. In the 1970s, a potent antifungal was discovered in a bacterium that lives in the soil there. Researchers named the molecule, rapamycin, ...

(Phys.org) —The most powerful MRI machine in the world is nearing completion. The new instrument will be able to generate 11.75 Tesla, a field strong enough to lift 60 metric tons. Squeezing out those last few Tesla (the ...

(Medical Xpress)—Nothing raises the hackles on the neck of a neurobiologist like talk of dendritic spines on neurons. These little outcroppings of membrane and contractile tissue adorn the long apical tendrils of excitatory ...

(Medical Xpress)—The olfactory system is a particular favorite among the many who study neural coding. One reason for this is that presentation of a single odorant to an otherwise featureless smellscape, at least in theory, ...

(Phys.org) —If you asked a biologist what any given cell is going to do next, they might ask you first to tell them its electrical potential, oxygenation, pH, osmolarity or glucose concentration. Depending on how finely-scaled ...

(Phys.org) —The primary cilium plays the role of conductor, and antenna, to many kinds of cells. In photoreceptors, the cilium has been morphed into an expansive pigment-infused photon sieve, while in olfactory cells it is ...

(Phys.org) —As any chef knows, preparing good food is just physics, or was that chemistry? Either way, the state of the art in cooking increasingly looks to science for inspiration. Engineers at MIT have partnered up with ...

(Medical Xpress)—In 1998, Ian Tibbets lost vision in his right eye, some time after he severely injured the cornea with a piece of scrap metal. Later on he also lost vision in his left eye. Tibbets was eventually referred ...

(Medical Xpress)—The recent Nobel Prize Award in Medicine highlights the importance of vesicle-based transport for different kinds of cells. One of the recipients, Thomas Sudhof, has contributed extensively to our current ...

(Phys.org) —At the cellular level, the mitotic spindle apparatus is arguably the most complicated piece of machinery in existence. Its basic function is to isolate and separate the chromosomes during cell division. A group ...

(Phys.org) —For the last several decades huge investments have been made by the military to increase battlefield connectivity. Communicating geodata, IR-visuals, or smartweapon metrics not just to the basestation, but to ...

(Medical Xpress)—Industrial robots can do incredible things, but their control systems are still incredibly complex. They rely largely on rotary electric power that is feedback-controlled, usually through precision optical ...

(Medical Xpress)—When Descartes turned his critical eye to the nervous system, he reasoned that the nerves must transduce hydraulic power to control the musculature. In the circulatory system, blood is pushed comparatively ...