Subzero temperatures. Eighty mile per hour wind gusts. Nineteen hours of darkness each day. It’s hard to believe that anything could survive the brutal winters of Anvers Island, but hidden under the snow, a hardy insect weathers it all. The Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, lives farther south than any other insect in the world. At […]
To freeze or not to freeze? How an insect survives winter in Antarctica Read More »
As you may already know, microbes play a very important role in the body. Bacteria live on our skin, along our nasal passage, in the gut, and in the vagina. In recent years, the role of gut microbiota has garnered a lot of attention. However, the bacteria residing along the vaginal canal also play a
The Inside Scoop: Vaginal Microbiome Read More »
As the dreary winter winds arrive, animals previously roaming their environment during warm times are left with few options. Many animals choose to migrate, while others choose to hunker down for colder weather by hibernating. Most people understand hibernation to be a state when animals enter a deep sleep, preparing for this slumber by eating
Hibernation in rodents: How studying the phenomena may help humans Read More »
Sixty-five million years ago — a time popularized by shows and movies like “The Land Before Time” and “Jurassic Park”. With that being said, we often think of dinosaurs through their remains: fossils, fragments of bone, and skeletons encapsulated in rocks and dust, providing a glimpse into the past. However, what if we could view
Mass extinction? They were born ready. Read More »
Winter weather not only brings unexpected snow days, but can also lead to gene promotion and silencing which is integral in plant reproduction. Some plants, such as those in the genus Arabidopsis, “remember” seasonal cues during winter so they can best time their flowering. This allows this plant to time its reproduction for springtime through
Cold weather: Snow day or plant reproduction Read More »
Whether it be jumping into an ice-cold body of water or stepping outside into the cold, unexpected immersion into the cold isn’t uncommon. However, in extreme coldness, the body may undergo an automatic response; this is called a cold shock response. Cold shock responses include a series of involuntary responses, specifically in the heart and
Brr! How butterflies react to sudden coldness Read More »
The human body is an incredibly complex network of cells and efficient pathways. This network constantly adjusts to maintain homeostasis during life changes — with pregnancy as one of the most drastic. So, what happens when a body must sustain a fetus over nine months? How can an embryo with foreign antibodies develop inside the
From foreign to familiar: The functions of the female immune system during pregnancy Read More »
The goal of artificial intelligence (AI) is to teach a computer how to think. So, it’s unsurprising that many of the strides made in AI and specifically machine learning — a subset of AI focused on using large collections of data to teach a computer rules through discovering patterns — have been based on biological
Spatio-temporal Information and Applications of Spiking Neural Networks Read More »
Climate change is one of the biggest health crises humanity faces, according to the World Health Organization. It is all-consuming, impacting almost every aspect of our daily lives. However, we very rarely look beyond greenhouse gas burning to the root cause of how climate change became what we know it as today: philosophy. Similar to