Biology Bytes
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Biology-Related Exhibits at the Miraikan Museum in Tokyo
Note: The Biology Bytes blog will only be updated on Tuesday this week (the author is traveling in Japan). Regular Tuesday/Thursday updates will resume on June 3. Whenever I travel internationally, I make a point of visiting science museums. It’s fascinating not only to learn scientific concepts from them, but also to see what specific … Continue reading
Making New Neurons Erases Memories
Note: The Biology Bytes blog will only be updated on Tuesdays during this week and next week. Next week will feature a special tidbit on biology-related exhibits at the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, Japan, which the author will be visiting. Regular Tuesday/Thursday updates will resume on June 2. Have … Continue reading
Toxoplasma: A Common Parasite that Affects Height, Personality, and Lots More
Have you ever felt like your reaction time isn’t as good as it should be? Or, if you’re male, have you ever had people comment that you look particularly masculine? These traits might seem unrelated, but they actually can be due to the same thing — infection by a very common parasite called Toxoplasma gondii … Continue reading
Fecal Transplants and C. difficile
The bacteria Clostridium difficile is pretty terrifying — if it infects a person’s gut, it can cause severe diarrhea, bloating, and potentially death. In the U.S. alone, it hospitalizes nearly 250,000 people and kills at least 14,000 people each year. Why not just fight it with antibiotics, like we use to fight other bacterial infections? … Continue reading
Epigenetics Inherited from Mom and Dad
With Mother’s Day coming up, it can be fun to talk about some of our family’s genetic traits, like eye color, hair color, or having mid-digit hair (yup, that’s genetic too!). We all know that we get our genetics — the basic blueprints that make us who we are — from Mom and Dad, but … Continue reading
Citizen Biology
Are you not a scientist by training but you’d like to help scientists do real research? Or maybe you are a scientist and would like to aid others in doing more investigations in your spare time. Whatever your background, there are actually many ways that you can now do real scientific research in your spare … Continue reading
Homeopathy Debunked
While it can be easy to disregard something because it is widely believed not to work, it’s still important to do a systematic, evidence-based investigation to confirm, or disprove, any such suspicions. In this case, I’m talking about homeopathy, which is considered a pseudoscience. Recently, the National Health and Medical Research Council of the Australian … Continue reading