Environmental Engineer Microbes are all around us. They live inside of us, on top of us, in our food, and in nearly all the places on earth we can think of. Most microbes are friendly – like almost all of the ones inside of our intestines – but a few are dangerous to our health. Despite needing a microscope to see them, microbes make up about 18% of all the living material in the world. We are only beginning to understand how important microbes are to life on Earth. Microbes are everywhere, in all different shapes and sizes. There are millions of different species of microbes. Try to imagine all of the microbes on your skin right now. Microbes to the Rescue Why might it be good to know what microbes are hanging around? Chemical spills can be extremely damaging to the environment, and are very difficult and expensive to clean up. Krajmalnik-Brown has studied how to use microbes to clean up spills of many types of chemicals, such as oil and chemical compounds that contain chlorine. The Microbiome: Good and Bad
Athlete's guide to the immune system Something has gone wrong. Lately it seems that you have been sick a lot. You feel listless at home, bored at work, and your workouts have been lousy. Getting motivated for anything takes supreme willpower. If this scenario sounds familiar the you're not alone. An opposing perspective comes from athletes, most of whom believe that they are healthier since starting an exercise program. The goal of this article is to review the current understanding of the athlete's immune system, and hopefully, teach you how to use this knowledge to stay healthy. What is the immune system? The immune system is a complex, dynamic, and beautifully orchestrated mechanism with enormous responsibility. Training the immune system -- the "J" curve It appears that the immune system has a training effect, similar to other areas of physiology (e.g., cardiovascular, muscular). On the other hand, too much exercise can lead to a dramatically increased risk of URIs. Stress is cumulative Recommendations Return
Everything Dies, Right? But Does Everything Have To Die? Here's A Surprise : Krulwich Wonders... A puzzlement. Why, I wonder, are both these things true? There is an animal, a wee little thing, the size of a poppy seed, that lives in lakes and rivers and eats whatever flows through it; it's called a gastrotrich. Hello, Goodbye, I'm Dead It hatches. Sad, no? It's a hydra. So we made one. I have so many questions. My friend Carl Zimmer introduced me to the gastrotrich in his introductory essay to Rachel Sussman's book, The Oldest Living Things in the World.
Good microbes Inside and outside of the body Dr. Biology: This is Ask A Biologist, a program about the living world, and I'm Dr. Biology. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Rosy: Thank you for having me at this show. Dr. Rosy: The overall scheme of my research is to use these microorganisms to provide a service to society. Dr. Rosy: They are absolutely critical. Dr. Rosy: The gut biome are all the organisms that live in our intestines and these organisms live in a symbiosis with us. Dr. Rosy: Well, one of the reasons why this research that I've been doing has, I would say exploded in the last few years, is the fact that now we have a way to tell these microorganisms by their genomes, by genetics. Dr. Rosy: They do. Rosy: So going back to genes and to sequencing, we also know that our body, on a cell-to-cell ratio, we're about half human and half microbe. Dr. Rosy: 100 times I said two orders of magnitude. Dr. Rosy: Ahuh Dr. Rosy: Well, that's a really good question. Dr. Rosy: Something that can make you sick. Dr. Rosy: Exactly. Dr. Rosy: Right.
An interconnection between the nervous and immune system: Neuroendocrine reflex triggers infections -- ScienceDaily A newly-discovered reflex arc mediates a process which leads to a disruption in the hormones secreted by the adrenal glands which, in turn, results in an increased susceptibility to bacterial infections. This research breaks new ground in the development of treatments to reduce the incidence of infections, and its results have been published in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience. Injuries to the brain or spinal cord, such as those caused by stroke or trauma, result in a considerable weakening of the immune system. This often leads to severe infections, such as pneumonia or urinary tract infections, which hamper nervous tissue regeneration as well as rehabilitation in affected patients. "Our study was based on the premise that nerve pathways originating in the spinal cord exert a direct influence on organs involved in the immune system, such as lymph nodes and the spleen," explains Dr.
Understanding Evolution The bacteria that changed the world - May, 2017 The make-up of Earth's atmosphere, once the domain of Earth science textbooks, has become an increasingly "hot" news topic in recent decades, as we struggle to curb global warming by limiting the carbon dioxide that human activity produces. While the changes that humanity has wrought on the planet are dramatic, this isn’t the first time that one species has changed Earth’s atmosphere. Three billion years ago, there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere at all. Life was anaerobic, meaning that it did not need oxygen to live and grow. Read the rest of the story here | See the Evo in the News archive
Evolutionary Medicine Dr. Biology: This is Ask A Biologist, a program about the living world and I'm Doctor Biology. You probably don't know it, but I just got over having a cold, so if my voice sounds a little bit different, that's probably why. If you describe it, it's the typical sneezy, runny nose and coughing type of cold. And while I say typical, well even cold viruses, there are a whole bunch of them - at least 150 different types. Just ask my wife who was getting over a cold when I got back with this particular cold virus while I was away on a trip and so one cold is bad enough, but in her case she got two colds in a row, which brings me to the topic of today's show getting sick and why do we get sick? My guest today is Randy Nessie, a physician and Foundation professor in the ASU School of Life Sciences. Randy: Great to be here. Dr. Randy: You know, before we talk about why we get sick, we should just all be amazed that we don't get sick most of the time. Dr. Randy: Yup. Dr. Dr. Randy: Yeah. Dr. Dr.
White Blood Cells | Boundless Anatomy and Physiology Types of WBCs The different types of white blood cells (leukocytes) include neutrophils, basophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, and macrophages. Learning Objectives Distinguish between the two major types of leukocytes (white blood cells): granulocytes and agranulocytes Key Takeaways Key Points The two main types of leukocytes are granulocytes and mononuclear leukocytes (agranulocytes).Leukocytes arise from hemopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow. Key Terms endocytosed: Engulfed during the process by which the plasma membrane of a cell folds inwards to ingest material.antigen: A substance, usually foreign, that induces an immune response.pathogen: Any organism or substance, especially a microorganism, capable of causing disease. White blood cells (WBCs), or leukocytes, are immune system cells that defend the body against infectious disease and foreign materials. Granulocytes Granulocytes: From left to right, a neutrophil, an eosinophil, and a basophil. Mononuclear Leukocytes
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ARTICLE--You Almost Certainly Have Mites On Your Face Think of all the adults you know. Think of your parents and grandparents. Think of the teachers you had at school, your doctors and dentists, the people who collect your rubbish, and the actors you see on TV. All of these people probably have little mites crawling, eating, sleeping, and having sex on their faces. There are more than 48,000 species of mites. As far as we know, exactly two of those live on human faces. They live in our hair follicles, buried head-down, eating the oils we secrete, hooking up with each other near the surface, and occasionally crawling about the skin at night. As I wrote back in 2012, the mites were discovered in 1841, but only properly described a year later by German dermatologist Gustav Simon. Scientists have since found Demodex in every ethnic group where they’ve have cared to look, from white Europeans to Australian aborigines to Devon Island Eskimos. But it’s always been hard to say exactly how common they are. So Thoemmes did something different.