In the 1970s, John B. Calhoun conducted a series of experiments on mice that found even in a utopia with plenty of room, at a certain point the mice just gave up reproducing and died out.
The post The Mice That Gave Up Reproducing and Died Out appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Scientists have for years theorized that the immune system and the brain are more interconnected than previously thought, with findings of recent studies backing this hypothesis. For example, researchers recently discovered there is a physical connection between the immune system and the brain’s blood supply. Now, researchers have recently begun to find out that there may be a more psychological connection.
When a baby comes into the world, the umbilical cord usually gets thrown away. But now scientists have discovered that they can reverse memory and learning problems in mice by using infusions of a protein found in human umbilical cord blood.
The findings of a Yahoo News/Marist poll show that people over the age of 69 generally don’t have positive views of marijuana. While the majority of younger Americans increasingly view marijuana as a legitimate medication and relatively acceptable recreational substance, the older crowd has been slower to adopt these views.
British researcher Madeleine Lancaster is growing human brains in her Cambridge University lab. A few hundred of them, in fact. That’s about 2 million neurons. [1]
No, this isn’t a Halloween gag. This sci-fi experiment is intended to help scientists understand disorders like autism and schizophrenia.
It’s not just Lancaster who is invested in growing human brains outside of the body. It’s a project being undertaken by scientists around the world.
The birth of baby mice made from eggs grown in a lab has sparked an ethical debate over whether the technique should ever be offered for humans by fertility clinics.
The experiment is a step up (or down, depending on how you look at it) from creating human organs from stem cells, which scientists at the University of Edinburgh successfully did for the first time in 2014.
A 25-year-old Malaysian PhD student at the University of Melbourne thinks she has figured out how to kill bacteria that have stopped responding to antibiotics.
Shu Lam’s breakthrough couldn’t have come soon enough. The MCR-1 gene, which makes bacteria resistant to all antibiotics, is marching across the globe. It has been found in 4 people in the United States this year, including a toddler.
In a new study, researchers found that repeated treatments with antibiotics increased the risk of Type 1 diabetes in the rodents. [1]
The finding is harrowing, considering that approximately half of all prescriptions written for antibiotics in the United States are inappropriate and that a recent study found that antibiotics are prescribed to children about twice as often as they should be. [2]
Scientists have created a new opioid compound that’s as effective at killing pain as morphine, but without the side effects. It could mean thousands fewer people becoming addicted to prescription pain medication in the future. But untold effects are questionable, as it is modified by man.
The finding represents a turning point in the way scientists have traditionally tried to handle opiate addiction and overdoses.
John Hopkins University researchers believe they’ve found a nerve cell that may serve as a “switch” that tells the brain it’s time to put down the fork and walk away from that second helping of chocolate cake.
The nerve cell, discovered in mice, could be a useful tool in the fight against obesity… if you don’t mind becoming a genetically modified human.
