MIT researchers have come up with a sweet-sounding antiviral that couples double-stranded RNA detection with caspase activation. In laymans terms, this means that if double stranded RNA, which is produced by replication viruses, and not by normal cells, is present in a cell then the 'death switch' is flipped, and the cell self-destructs and ( Read more... )

There's an article in the Seattle Times about a recent food safelty study showing that 80% of supermarket chickens test positive for pathogenic bacteria, mostly salmonella and camplyobacter, with antibiotic resistant staph making a showing as well. This isn't really news, other studies have had similar findings (a colleague of mine at VT did a ( Read more... )

Chitons (in case y'all don't already know) are molluscs with awesome jointed shells vaguely resembling a trilobite. Some of the most awesome eyeballs on the planet are grown by molluscs, namely squid and octopi, which have eyes wired the right way around, as opposed to our own, backwards-wired eyes (I mean really, if you were designing a light ( Read more... )

This made me think of primaldog

Egyptian catacombs hold millions of mummified puppiesThere's not a ton of information in the article. The catacombs were apparently sacred to Anubis (no big suprise), and many of the mummies were hours to days old. Some speculation, but I don't think they really know what their significance is (the thought of breeding ( Read more... )

There have been plans afoot for some time now to move the Plum Island animal disease lab to Kansas, a move which some folk have questioned, given the fact that this is the center of livestock farming country, a hub for animal travel, and lacks the helpful isolation of a large body of water around the facility. Not to mention being in tornado alley ( Read more... )

The deep sea is really still a frontier, and largely unexplored, so the best new critters are found there. Things that would amaze even the writers of midaeval bestiaries. Like this beastie:
deep sea squidworm


( Read more... )

Oh, I *want* one ( Read more... )

the image that comes to my mind is not "sausage made from the meat of an invasive species." Perhaps it's just that my mind is in the gutter, and I'm actually still 12 in my head ( Read more... )

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The morphology of the abnormal cells looks so much like the weirdness I see in neoplastic cells. It's just awesome to see it in motion like that.

More explanation here

This was one class I was not dozing through ( Read more... )