Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

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Macro Photos of Water Droplets Reveal the Overlooked Beauty of Nature

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Macro photography is more than just close-up images—the technique offers a new perspective on the world, revealing the tiny and often overlooked details of the photographer’s subject. Canadian photographer Don Komarechka explores nature through his macro camera lens, revealing water droplets as miniature works of art. “All of these images are like little sculptures,” Komarechka tells My Modern Met. “Very temporary, and only become beautiful when seen from the right perspective.” Each image from Komarechka’s droplet series shows little spheres of water dotted across petals and flower stems. Through experimenting with perspective, the photographer’s stunning photos reveal how the flowers are reflected in the droplets’ surface. Although liquid, each globule looks like a floral glass paperweight or snow globe. “I’ve always considered the essence of good photography to be the combination of both art and science; the deep you wave that mesh, the more magical the results will be,” says Kom...
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Scientists may have found a better way to spot early signs of dementia: our eyes

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As our body’s central control center, the brain has to keep going at all costs. It makes sense that it’s surrounded by biological safeguards: a bony skull, a sack of tissue, and blood vessels that filter out most infectious bugs. When neurons start to decline—as some do naturally with age—the brain can even quickly rewire networks before we notice anything is amiss. But these same safeguards are a huge obstacle for scientists trying to study the brain’s decline—specifically dementia. Grey matter is excellent at adapting to the slow buildup of abnormal proteins, the cause of several forms of dementia , and it lacks the same pain receptors as the rest of our body. So by the time a patient starts becoming forgetful, or having trouble concentrating, the cellular damage is already substantial—and usually irreversible. In order to slow or prevent dementia, scientists will have to be able to spot it before cognitive systems collapse. Current diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s, the most com...
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Here’s a better way to convert dog years to human years, scientists say | Science | AAAS

A biological clock governs aging in dogs just as in humans. Here’s a better way to convert dog years to human years, scientists say By Virginia Morell Nov. 15, 2019 , 3:42 PM Our Scotch collie, Buckaroo, is just shy of 14 years old. Following the long-debunked but still popular idea that one dog year equals seven human years, he’s almost a centenarian. (This “formula” may be based on average life spans of 10 and 70 years for dogs and people, respectively.) Now, researchers say they have a new formula (see calculator below)  to convert dog years to human years—one with some actual science behind it. The work is based on a relatively new concept in aging research: that chemical modifications to a person’s DNA over a lifetime create what is known as an epigenetic clock. Scientists have built a case that one such modification, the addition of methyl groups to specific DNA sequences, tracks human biological age—that is, the toll that disease, poor lifestyle, and genetics take on our...
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