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DNA Damage and Skin Cancer: It’s Not All About the Sun

-- A search for “DNA repair” in Amazon’s “beauty” category results in 71 hits that range in price from $15-$700, all claiming to prevent DNA damage or even to repair your DNA. Both scientists and the beauty industry know that as we grow older, our cells…

Custom-Made Body Parts: Advances in Tissue Engineering

-- Every organ in our bodies performs a specialized role. So what happens when one of these organs fails or is damaged? Some animals can re-grow or replace lost tissue – newts can regenerate entire lost limbs – but unfortunately human organ regeneration…

Born of My Flesh: Using Skin Cells to Generate Eggs

-- One out of every ten women in the United States between the ages of 15 and 44 faces reproductive challenges, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [1]. These challenges have a number of causes, including ovulation disorders and…

The Immunology of Pregnancy

-- Are you the oldest sibling? Take note – there may be a reason why your mother prefers your younger siblings to you... at least in one sense. Chances are, your mother’s later pregnancies were easier than her first one. This is supported by new research…

Silk-Stabilized Vaccines and Antibiotics: Ending the “Cold Chain”

-- Most of us have probably received vaccines and antibiotics at some point in our lives, and while they may have seemed to work like magic at the time, medical professionals’ precise understanding of the drugs’ mechanisms of action enables their use as…

The 99 Percent… of the Human Genome

-- Of the trillions of cells that compose our body, from neurons that relay signals throughout the brain to immune cells that help defend our bodies from constant external assault, almost every one contains the same 3 billion DNA base pairs that make up…

An Anti-Cancer Drug with Male Contraceptive Properties

-- A 2011 study in the United States reported that 49% of pregnancies were unintended in 2006 []. Across the globe, this type of trend has contributed directly to maternal mortality, as well as the ethical, social, and financial costs associated with…

Slow and Steady Wins the Development Race

-- Try the training regimen of an Olympic athlete for a few days and two things will likely happen: you will be physically unable to complete the tasks and it will hurt, a lot. That’s because, as you overexert your muscles, they will tell your brain that…

The Higgs Boson Hoopla Explained

-- All scientists are driven to explain how and why things are the way they are. The differences among the various scientific disciplines lie in the scale and location at which we choose to investigate these basic questions. Two of the most fundamental…