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25th May 2002
What is a Virus and How do Viruses Cause Disease - Stacey Efstathiou
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Dr. Stacey Efstathiou, from Cambridge University, joins The Naked Scientists to talk about what is a virus, how viruses were discovered, how big are viruses, how viruses cause disease, how viral illnesses can be treated, and how viruses evade the immune system.
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News
Scientists have finally proved that there is no such thing are Werewolves. At least, they've shown that the full moon doesn't affect how animals behave. A couple of researchers analysed 2600 dog bites in Greece and showed that the "time of biting" was not linked ...
Top 5 vegetables : Percentage of people who rate the following as their preferred vegetable :Carrots - 17%, Potatoes - 15%, Broccoli - 13%, Peas - 7%, Sprouts - 7%
People are fascinated by science fiction and especially the concept of time travel; the success of Back to The Future is testimony to that. But is time travel still only in the domain of science fiction, or are we now closer to making it happen ? Apparently so since the un...
You may recall the purple carrots we mentioned last month from Victorian times that are set to make a comeback. Well now there are purple potatoes waiting to join them. So why purple? Professor Carlo Leifert, an agriculture researcher at Newcastle University has found that...
28 male volunteers have recently tried out a new male contraceptive system developed by Dr. Richard Anderson, at Edinburgh University. He implanted one or two rods, containing a man-made hormone called Etonogestrel (a form of progesterone), into one of their arms. This hor...
Today 6 times as many children have the itchy skin condition eczema compared with 50 years ago, and doctors at Sheffield University are blaming soap. Dermatologist Dr. Michael Cork has found that rocketing sales of soaps, shower gels, bubble bath and shampoo and especially...
How about an virtual oven ready chicken? An Israeli geneticist called Angdor Cahaner from The Rehovot Agronomy Institute, has blended a species of bare skinned chicken with no feathers, with a traditional chicken in the hope of creating a bird which doesn't need plucking. ...
Last week a healthy baby girl was born using IVF treatment. That's nothing new - but what's special about this particular kid is that she was developed from an embryo that had been frozen for 9 years, breaking the existing world record for growing a baby from a frozen embr...
American scientists have developed a genetically modified mosquito to help tackle the growing problem of malaria, which affects over 250 million people around the world. Malaria is caused by a parasite that is carried in the bloodstream and spread by female mosquitos. When...
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Questions
Why do onions make us cry when we cut them and is there any way to prevent this ?
Onions are a member of the Allium family of vegetables that also includes leeks, shallots, chives, garlic and sharp scallion. The tears come from volatile oils containing substances called amino acid sulphoxides, which give the members of this family of vegetables their characteristic smells. So why do we cry ? Well, when you cut the onion you also release substances called allinases which break down the amino acid sulphoxides to something called sulphenic acid which then turns into something called syn-propanethial-S-oxide which irritates nerve fibres on the surface of the eye, triggering tear production. Because it takes time for this substance to form, this explains why we don't start to cry until at least 30 seconds into cutting up an onion. So how do you solve the problem ? There are 3 ways. 1) Heat the onions before you cut them. This destroys the allinase which causes the reaction to happen in the first place, so the onion cannot make you cry. 2) cut the onions outside in a well-ventilated area 3) cut them under water.
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