Technology

A new study has challenged the widely held view that communities of rats pushed plague to Europe in 14th century by suggesting that rodent with a much cuddlier reputation, the gerbil, may have played host to the fleas carrying the disease for hundreds of years.

A team of scientists from Norway and Switzerland say that they think the plague bacteria could have sprung from populations of the great gerbil and other rodent species in Central Asia, the CNN reported.

Scientists have successfully grown leg muscle from engineered cells in a dish.

Researchers from Italy, Israel and the United Kingdom teamed up to generate mature, functional skeletal muscles in mice using a new approach for tissue engineering to produce a graft. The subsequent graft was implanted close to a normal, contracting skeletal muscle where the new muscle was nurtured and grown. In time, the method could allow for patient-specific treatments for a large number of muscle disorders.

NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) along with the European Space Agency (ESA) have captured an unusual comet that skimmed past the Sun Feb 18-21.

“There is a half decent chance that ground observers might be able to detect it in the coming weeks,” said Karl Battams, solar scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC.

“But it is also possible that events during its trip around the Sun will cause it to die fairly fast,” he added.

Scientists have found that it weren’t the dinosaurs who ruled Earth 13 million years ago in Peru, it were the crocodiles.

There were at least 7 different species of the reptile that hunted in the lakes, swamps and rivers of the massive wetland region that pre-dated the Amazon basin, the Mirror reported.

Scientists uncovered the crocodile fossils from a rock layer known as the Pebas Formation in north-eastern Peru in a series of excavations conducted since 2002, of which 3 of the species are entirely new to science.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has clicked a selfie showing the vehicle at the “Mojave” site on the Red Planet where its drill collected the mission’s second taste of Mount Sharp.

The latest self-portrait shows a sweeping view of the “Pahrump Hills” outcrop on Mars where NASA’s Curiosity rover has been working for five months.

The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover’s robotic arm.

We all find it difficult to meet our weight loss resolutions, and now a new study has made it official that it is indeed tough to shed those extra kilos.

New studies by McMaster University researchers reviewed hundreds of recent studies published in the past decade about the prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity among children, among adults and about keeping lost weight off.

Regarding prevention of overweight/obesity among children and youth, a review of 90 studies found:

Debunking common fears, US researchers have found no evidence of increase in cancer prevalence or mortality due to hormone therapy in transgender adults.

The findings may help reduce the barriers for transgender individuals to receive medical care.

The researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) conducted a medical literature search and reviewed articles for evidence of medical problems arising from hormone treatment in transgender individuals.

A team of scientists has discovered potential treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis, a form of the disease that cannot be cured with conventional therapies.

While standard anti-TB drugs can cure most people of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, improper use of antibiotics has led to new strains of the bacterium resistant to the two most powerful medications, isoniazid and rifampicin.

A young Indian scientist based in Germany has been awarded a grant of 1.5 million euros to investigate the role of gut microbiota in autoimmune diseases of the central nervous system such as Multiple Sclerosis.

The Starting Grants of the European Research Council (ERC) seek to give talented scientists at an early stage in their careers the freedom to pursue their most creative ideas.

Gurumoorthy Krishnamoorthy, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, was one of this year’s successful Starting Grant applicants.

A new study has revealed that taste cells regenerate, or turn over, about every 10 days, so that is why its possible to regain the lost sense of taste with in days.

According to University of Virginia neuroscientist, David Hill, olfactory receptor neurons are constantly dying and being replaced, which can give researchers new understanding of how these neurons are able to regenerate and what they learn from the taste system could be applied broadly to our understanding of neurology.

Researchers have recently found a 1000 year-old mummified monk inside a Buddha statue at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands .

Sitting in the lotus position, the mummy fits within the statue perfectly, Discovery News reported.

Glowing through the statue’s golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liu Quan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School.

Researchers found out that Quan’s internal organs had been removed and replaced with scripts covered in Chinese writing.

NASA has announced to start its next mission in the New Frontiers line – a cost-capped class of $1 billion robotic solar-system explorers – in 2016.

New Frontiers missions are managed by a single principle investigator who is responsible for keeping the mission’s development cost under $1 billion.

The cost cap does not include the price of a launch vehicle which is covered under the NASA Launch Services Programme, Spacenews reported.

According to NASA’s planetary science chief Jim Green, NASA is also looking ahead to the New Frontiers competition that would begin by 2020.

A sauna may give more than a steam bath, as a new study claims that sauna may be associated with reduced risk of cardiac, all-cause mortality.

Although some studies have found sauna bathing to be associated with better cardiovascular and circulatory function, the association between regular sauna bathing and risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and fatal cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is not known.

A new study has revealed that love or cuddle hormone called Oxytocin may play a crucial role in blocking the effects of alcohol.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Regensburg infused oxytocin into the brains of rats which were then given alcohol it prevented the drunken lack of coordination caused by the alcohol.

The researchers demonstrated that oxytocin prevents alcohol from accessing specific sites in the brain that cause alcohol’s intoxicating effects, sites known as delta-subunit GABA-A receptors.