balthazarswings:

alskylab:

A thousand fuck yeahs for science.

Side note: The research team called it the Lazarus project.

praytothebeat:

curiosity—core:

Cholesterol

This fascinating molecule plays a rather important role in your body, maybe more so than you realised. Cholesterol tests are something we’re aware of, but what actually happens when our cholesterol is too high? Or too low, for that matter?

Every one of our cells is bound by a membrane and this membrane plays an important role of maintaining concentration gradients of chemicals among other things. It is important that this membrane be fluid so that proteins and lipids embedded within the membrane can move around to facilitate transport across the membrane and various other functions.

Cholesterol plays an important role in maintaining fluidity of the membrane. Cholesterol embeds itself in the membrane and proceeds to aid in making the membrane a little more firm. Without cholesterol the membrane would be far too fluid and your membranes would turn to mush, but with too much cholesterol your membranes would harden and you would no loner be able to maintain concentration gradients of such nutrients as Ca²⁺ and K⁺. If this could instantaneously happen to you, you would feel an anesthetic-like feeling and then quickly lose consciousness and die.

What we can learn from this is: everything in moderation.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia

(Source: throughascientificlens)

holymoleculesbatman:

The simplest of all polymers forms when many ethylene molecules bond together to form long chains containing 500 or more repeating CH2 groups. This polymer is called polyethylene because it is made by joining together many ethylene molecules.

An electron from the π bond of one ethylene molecule pairs with an electron from the π bond of another ethylene molecule to form a new σ bond between the two molecules. The second electron from each π bond pairs with a π electron to form another ethylene molecule to continue the chain.

Writing the structural formula of a macromolecule such a polyethylene with thousands of atoms would be very time-consuming and tedius. Fortunately, the entire structure of a polyethylene molecule can be represented by simply specifying its repeat unit, as shown in the picture above. 

thesciencellama:

Elements
By KcD Studios - on tumblr

phantom-quantum:

imperturbablesentience:

Emily Whitehead the girl whose cancer was ‘cured’ by HIV virus.

seven-year-old girl has become the first child leukaemia patient to be successfully treated by doctors using a disabled form of the virus that causes Aids to reprogramme the immune system.

When chemotherapy failed to work for Emily Whitehead, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, she underwent a new experimental treatment at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

It involved tricking her immune system into fighting the cancer cells.

Dr Stephan Grupp, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CBS: “We’ve treated the first couple of patients and we’ve been blown away by the results”.

They’ve been very exciting.

“We collect cells of the immune system from a patient, so we use the patient’s own cells. We put in a new gene in those cells that makes the cells go after cancer cells and then we put those cells back in the patient.”

Read more.

CREYS BECAUSE SCIENCE IS WINNING

fuckyeah-chemistry:

Ever noticed how oil in puddles of water appears to make a rainbow? 

This is because the oil spreads out in a thin film of varying thickness over the puddle. As incident light rays strike the surface, they are either transmitted or reflected at the top surface of the film. Rays that are transmitted reach the bottom surface of the film where they can once again be either transmitted or reflected. Light rays reflected from the upper and bottom surfaces interfere; and the degree of constructive or destructive is dependent on the phases of both rays. As a result of the varying thickness of the layer, the angle of reflection varies and the wavelength of light that corresponds to the constructive interference of two rays, is the color that appears. The rainbow pattern is due to the fact that there are multiple angles of reflection. The phenomenon is known as thin-film interference.