John Hewitt

(Medical Xpress)—In the absence of any real progress in defining neuronal codes for the brain, the simple idea of the grandmother cell continues to percolate through the scientific and popular literature. Many researchers ...

(Phys.org) —One of the biggest threats facing amphibian species is the disease chytridiomycosis, which is caused by a fungus known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). An understanding of the evolutionary history of microbial ...

(Phys.org) —There has been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of building what has come to be known as a time crystal. In February 2012, Frank Wilczek originally proposed the idea that under certain conditions, ...

In the first chapter of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin detailed his examinations of the skeletons of a variety of different breeds of domestic pigeons. To agreement today, he concluded that they all descended, by selective ...

(Medical Xpress)—A fresh round of trials to evaluate gene therapy for the heart is set to begin in a couple of weeks. The British Heart Foundation will be sponsoring the study, which seeks to replace defective calcium pump ...

(Medical Xpress)—The blood-brain barrier (BBB) prevents most large or hydrophilic (polar) molecules from getting into the brain. For many neurological diseases, like Parkinson's, the presence of the BBB severely limits treatment ...

(Medical Xpress)—Membrane fusion is a highly regulated event, both inside cells, and between them. From the moment a sperm first fuses with an egg, subsequent developmental events depend upon its proper control. Inside cells, ...

(Phys.org) —Nano-sized crystals of magnetic material can be found in a wide variety of organisms. Among the most studied are magnetotactic bacteria, which can orient and navigate using biosynthesized magnetosomes. These organelles ...

(Medical Xpress)—The ability to short-circuit debilitating tremors in disease states with implantable stimulators is nothing short of remarkable. The same can be said for cochlear prosthetics which restore hearing, and more ...

(Phys.org) —An ambitious new paper published in Physical Review Letters seeks to describe intelligence as a fundamentally thermodynamic process. The authors made an appeal to entropy to inspire a new formalism that has shown ...

(Medical Xpress)—When minor wounds heal, the fine nerve endings that sense touch, or control sweating, are usually able to regrow. Like many processes in the body, the ability to regenerate new tissues changes throughout ...

(Medical Xpress)—When the brains of those who have succumbed to age-related neurodegeneration are analyzed post-mortem, they typically show significant atrophy on all scales. Not only is the cortex thinner and sparser, but ...

(Phys.org) —Back in 2004, German scientists discovered traces of supernova ejecta that had been deposited in the deep-sea ferromanganese crust of the pacific ocean. They dated the supernova event to 2.8 million years ago ...

(Medical Xpress)—One way to increase our understanding of bilateral brains, like our own, is to inspect their paired sensory systems. In our visual system, the optic nerves normally combine at a place called the optic chiasm. ...