This one actually grabbed my attention not for the discovery itself, but for all the stuff I simply don't know about tattoos.

The fact that even something so mundane as a tattoo is not fully understood makes me feel good about myself, but I also had no idea of the risks and causes behind those risks regarding the colours used.

It turns out that to make the colours in a tattoo, the inks contain a bunch of organic pigments, but also various contaminants and preservatives like nickel, chromium, manganese, cobolt etc.

To make the white pigment, Titanium Oxide (TiO2) is used, which helps create a variety of shades. Thiat particular pigment is responsible for delayed healing of tattoos as well as a range of side effects like extra swelling and itching.

Anyway I learnt this indirectly from a recent discovery that the pigments behave not only microscopically, but in nano form too, which leads to a difference in behaviour throughout the lymphatic system.

If that kinda thing interests you, Read More Here

Tuesday: Bad Parenting = Diseased Kids

When looking at something called DNA methylation - a mechanism in cells to control gene expression - scientists found that childhood experiences can literally alter ones DNA, making the child more prone to disease.

Though the biological mechanism behind it all is still unclear, there is now evidence that:

nutritional, microbial, and psychosocial exposures in infancy and childhood predict adult levels of DNA methylation...in genes that regulate inflammation...and may partially explain how early environments have enduring effects on inflammation and inflammation-related diseases.

The scientists looked into the variables of 'household socioeconomic status in childhood, extended absence of a parent in childhood, exposure to animal feces in infancy, birth in the dry season, or duration of exclusive breastfeeding' and their predictions of DNA methylation were remarkably successful across 9 genes.

I found this interesting because, in tandem with news in recent years that our lifestyles actively affect our children's DNA, we should really think carefully before considering having kids at all!

Read More Here

Wednesday: The Alien Universe Inside Us

My recent fascination with microbial life led me to the knowledge that 99% of microbes inside our own body are a complete mystery to science. Only 1% can be found in the DNA database, and the rest - largely proteobacteria (E.coli,Salmonella) - are totally novel to us. That's pretty impressive given that microbes outnumber human cells in a body 1.3 to 1 (yeah don't believe the 10-1 myth).

This was another of those happy accident studies. The original aim was to try and better predict organ transplant success, which required blood samples and DNA testing. That's where they found the mass of alien DNA. Usually, we look for microbial life in feces, on the skin, in the mouth, but checking out the blood was a niche direction to take, with a treasure trove of rewards.

A swath of new viruses were also discovered. Normally we celebrate new discoveries like a bear or a mountain cat of some sort, but to realise that there are literally trillions walking around with us that is totally unknown? That's pretty cool.

Read More Here

Thursday: Wolves > Dogs

By that subtitle I mean, wolves are better, smarter. It appears that during their evolutionary route of domestication, dogs have dropped some of their animal instincts and skillsets, including the ability to grasp the concept of cause and effect.

A study had wolves and dogs living the same lifestyles in the same environments, and when tested on their ability to make causal inferences, like finding hidden food without human communicative cues, wolves would win every time.

So in the same way humans are more physically pathetic than literally any other creature of its size, has the dog given up its smarts for a cushier life?

Well the study has some variable factors to consider, such as the fact that these were socialized wolves, but it's the strongest evidence to date that dogs are dumb.

I want a wolf.

Read More Here

Friday: Alternative Evolution

_{I'm just using this unrelated image to emphasise that the following is way more complex than I make it out to be}

The University of Chicago is, for whatever reason, a name I hear quite often in science news circles. This time they discovered a whole host of alternative directions evolution could have taken while still actually happening.

This is pretty cool because as usual, we humans tend to be desperate to think ourselves special and unique, and any evidence to support that we embrace with open arms, like say, how if things were just a little bit different, life would never have formed but God made it so in this one particular way!

Well I love crushing these dreams, so this is once again a demonstration as to how we simply aren't that special.

Starting with an ancient protein that evolved into something critical for us to, like, be alive, the scientists essentially reverse engineered it and found no less than 800 alternative ways it could have evolved in a way that the aforementioned critical function could still have evolved just as well, or even better than the current function we presumably struggle with today.

This study also highlights that evolution doesn't have a mind of its own. It's a system of chance, and should one of those 800 directions fail, another one would have stepped in. Any one of them could have come out of the environment at the time. It just so happens it was number 546 or whatever.

Read More Here

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