by Sophia Swartzfigures by Jasmin Joseph-Chazan
If you put all of the living things on Earth in a box–from humans to anteaters to teeny-tiny tardigrades–and then plucked one of these organisms out at random, it is very, very likely that you just found…
Mucus is not just the awful phlegm from your cough, it actually has the ability to tame bacteria infection! Scientists at MIT recently discovered that the glycans on our mucus can actually trigger biochemical responses that protect us from pathogens.…
by Elaine Cheung
“Use poison to cure poison.” This isn’t just a Chinese old wives’ tale, but an emerging approach being used to tackle one of the modern world’s greatest issues: availability of clean water. The largest portion of water consumed in…
by Jenny Zheng
figures by Rebecca Clements
With winter soon coming to an end (hopefully), many of us have been plagued by seemingly endless hacking that’s accompanied by phlegm, a type of mucus produced by the respiratory tract. The body starts feeling…