While the World Health Organization (WHO) is painting a dire image of the new influenza outbreak, there are voices that say the situation is not nearly as bad as official announcements would have it. Regardless of where the truth lies, the main question on everybody's lips now is whether they should be getting the new vaccine or not. There are scientists who urge you to do so, and there are those who argue that you should avoid the shot at all costs. Here are some of the viewpoints in this debate. “Influenza vaccines are one of the most effective ways to protect people from contracting illness during influenza epidemics and pan... [read more >>] The human body is, indeed, one of the most mysterious and best put together constructs in the world, but its amazing complexity and functions must not lead people to believe that it is the work of a higher power. For example, Intelligent Design (ID) proponents have said for a long time that one of their main arguments against evolution is the fact that the basic components inside cells are so complex, that they could not have appeared by accident. In this line of reasoning, the mitochondria occupied the first position. Now, new studies show that its seemingly irreducible complexity is actually reducible. The human cell is an amazing machi... [read more >>] According to researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University, in the US, gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are strikingly similar to cloud computer networks, such as Yahoo! and Google, in their ability to function even if one or more of their nodes are down. This characteristic is essential to cloud computing, as the failure of a single processor could otherwise have potentially devastating repercussions on the entire network. Similarly, the failure of some master genes inside the nuclei does not mean that the cells themselves die, as other genes take over some of the load, and share “responsibilities.”The new find was of pa... [read more >>] Genetics may, indeed, play a much larger role in our development than we first thought, experts say, after a new study has set forth the theory that suggests the predominant feelings our parents experience during their lifetime are transmitted to the next generation. The line of reasoning behind this argument is fairly simple, the researchers say – when parents are predominantly happy or sad, their brains create specific sets of substances, which can then be passed to the germ cells. Once these genes combine, during conception, they may cause the future organism, the child, to be hardwired for a certain mood. Further research into thi... [read more >>] Fancy making a dinosaur from a chicken! IT may sound far-fetched, but it's actually not, as evidenced by the fact that leading paleontologists around the globe are currently teaming up to create a creature literally unlike anything the world has ever seen. They are going to come up with a chicken-dinosaur hybrid by “simply” modifying a few of the genetic traits of a chicken embryo to fit the description of its ancestors.The team hopes to obtain a “half-chicken, half-dinosaur” hybrid in the lab, which it could then study so as to learn more about the extinct creatures. Discovery News has learned from Montana Stat... [read more >>] A British 27-year old woman gave birth to a perfectly-health baby girl, her doctors announced on Friday. The new mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, decided to have the screening because many of her husband's female relatives had developed breast cancer at some point in their lives, and she deemed the risk of her passing down the dangerous BRCA 1 gene to her daughter simply too great to take.The infant was not genetically-engineered, but the embryo from which she formed was screened for the gene before development progressed, so now doctors can say for certain that if the child is to develop cancer sometime in her life, it wouldn&#... [read more >>] Vitamin B3 seems to hold many surprises in store for researchers, as evidenced by the latest discovery related to it, when scientists learned that a compound of the vitamin, named nicotinamide, showed an incredible potential in stopping the development of severe Alzheimer's symptoms, such as acute memory loss and neuron tangles. The latter is one of the two lesions that the disease causes in the brain. The tests scientists at the University of California Irvine conducted on mice revealed that the animals showed few to none signs of deteriorating brain functions, though they had been genetically engineered to develop the disease ve... [read more >>] Ophthalmologists recommend patients to use cleaning solutions for their contact lenses whenever they are not wearing them. But regardless of how often the lenses are cleaned, the risk of them being infected with pathogenic protozoa, like amoebas, remains the same. These unicellular organisms are extremely resilient and can cause severe eye infections that could lead to blindness. By analyzing the incidence of amoebic keratitis, which is an eye disease caused by acanthamoeba, a species of protozoa, scientists found that more than 85 percent of all cases were registered in people who usually wore contact lenses. They identified tap water... [read more >>] Explosives are usually the last thing sane doctors would associate with healing people. But scientists who watch too many movies came up with the idea of creating microscopic explosives, to be used for a more potent dispersal of drugs near a targeted organ or group of cells. They say that this method will greatly reduce the spread time of many blood-carried drugs. A mini-explosion would be painless to the patient, but it would push the drug inside in all directions at great speed. The grenade is actually made up of a polymer coating surrounding a gel based on a specific kind of sugar, called dextran. Once the microscopic explosive... [read more >>] The dangerous disease that affects some 5 million American citizens to date could finally be slowed down or even cured, thanks to progresses made in understanding its causes, announced researchers working with the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND). Some proteins have been known to oppose Alzheimer in its early stages, but the roles of fatty acids and lipids have been largely unstudied. The senior author of the study, Lennart Mucke, M.D., director at GIND, said that the current therapy alternatives for this brain degeneration condition were too limited and only alleviated symptoms to a certain degree. With the analysis ... [read more >>] | 
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