Australia is trying to kill all the bunnies that have invaded it, and all for environmental conservation. This seems counterintuitive, but ever since rabbits were introduced more than 150 years ago, they have been wreaking havoc.
The shape of DNA is one of those high school biology facts that is drilled into all student's heads. Two strands with complementary base pairs will interact to form the long, winding shape of a helix. However, when there isn't the second strand to form a helix with, single-stranded DNA will fold up in unique
Ahh sarcasm. Whether you love it or hate it, sarcastic comments have become quite common on the Internet. This is especially true on sites where people are more likely to express their opinions, such as blog posts, product reviews, social media, message boards, etc. By its very nature, sarcasm can be pretty ambiguous which makes
What if you could design your future baby? They could be free of genetic disorders, predisposition to future disease, or even have a longer life span. In 1997, the movie GATTACA introduced us to this world of “designer babiesâ€, where genetic manipulation allowed for the creation of the “perfect†human. But what if this science fiction is not so far-fetched? In the past three years, we have seen the genetic manipulation of human embryos, termed germline engineering, become a reality.
Flu season is coming in hot, folks! What better way to prepare than by brushing up on your knowledge? First let's recall the important features of influenza viruses. There are four types of influenza viruses: A, B, C, and D. As we saw in the previous influenza blog installment featuring canine influenza, the emergence of
Recently, efforts have been made to increase awareness about mental health through pop culture. Netflix Original shows such as 13 Reasons Why and To the Bone highlight various aspects of mental health such as major depression and eating disorders, and they project these to broad audiences. Unfortunately, of all mental health conditions, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate. However, how eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are distinguished and categorized is still a topic of discussion among psychologists today.
We've all seen the infamous weight loss advertisements – the ones that claim to have finally found the magic diet that will absolutely make you lose weight. You can look at virtually any store's checkout line to find dozens of diet plans endorsed by celebrities. However, most people don't know that dieting can be counter
On Tuesday, October 3rd the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne for their contributions to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). On February 11th, 2016, LIGO announced the first detection of gravitational waves, a monumental moment in science. Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916,
In honor of September 16th, otherwise known as World Ozone Day, let's spend some time talking about ozone in Earth's atmosphere! You may be wondering why ozone is significant enough to have its own designated day of acknowledgement. To answer this question we need to dive into a little bit of history involving early measurements
Jeez, he sure was beautiful. Our new snake, that is, before it escaped into the car in a mysterious, Houdini-like fashion. I left my family in the car with the snake while on my way into the store to purchase a new home for it. By the time I got back, 15 minutes later, everyone
When I was young I learned that the colors I saw in the world were due to materials absorbing certain wavelengths of light and reflecting others. Leaves appear green because the chlorophyll in plant cells absorbs blue and red light and reflects green. While this holds true for most natural materials, it turns out that nature has more than one way of making color. Many of the most striking colors found in nature often occur through the development of structural coloration. For instance, the absurdly bright colors of butterfly wings, beetle scales, day gecko skin, bird feathers and even certain berries all come from structural color.
It is that time of the year we've all been waiting for… pumpkin spice season. That means pumpkin spice pancakes, pumpkin spice snickerdoodles (seriously, you need to try them), and of course pumpkin spice lattes! Now I'm not a regular at Starbucks most of the year, but when pumpkin spice is in the air, you
