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Jan 14, 2025 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
For decades, the effects of lunar cycles on human behaviors and biological processes, including sleep habits, mental illness, and menstrual cycles, have been hotly debated.1,2 For many marine creatures, however, the biological significance of lunar rhythms is more firmly established: Certain corals, crabs, and pufferfish use the phases of the moon to coordinate the mass spawning events that are necessary to produce the next generation.3 The underlying biology that allows these animals to sync...
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
xpresschronicle.com | Hannah Thomasy
January first finds many people making New Year’s resolutions to eat healthier, exercise more, save money, or stop doomscrolling. All these actions can improve well-being in the long-term, but if sticking to your resolutions throughout January leaves your brain feeling like soup, you’re not alone. Humans have long understood that it’s hard to exert self-control for a prolonged period.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
xpresschronicle.com | Hannah Thomasy
Although humans can produce as much as 1.5 liters of saliva every day, most people don’t give spit a second thought. But spit—and more specifically the proteins it contains—has an important yet incompletely understood relationship with pathogens and with the energy-rich biological molecules in food.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
For decades, placebo effects have plagued clinical trials, with as many as one third of patients responding to supposedly inactive treatments for conditions like depression and pain.1,2 Instead of discarding these responses, some researchers were intrigued: What neurobiological mechanisms could explain how a “fake” treatment produced real effects?
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
xpresschronicle.com | Hannah Thomasy
As winter approaches, humans in the higher latitudes might beat the cold by snuggling up under a pile of blankets or booking a timeshare in sunny Florida. Similarly, some animals cope with seasonal changes by slowing their metabolisms to a crawl to drop into hibernation or undertaking long migrations to more hospitable climes.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
Tucked away in a dusty corner of St. Mary’s Hospital in London lies a tiny, one-room museum dedicated to one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine: a mold that changed the world. Curators have recreated Alexander Fleming’s laboratory as it would have looked on the day of his discovery, from the cigarettes that he smoked incessantly while working in the lab to a replica of the famous Petri dish of Penicillium.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
xpresschronicle.com | Hannah Thomasy
The blood-brain barrier is a crucial protective membrane that evolved to shield the brain from pathogens and toxic substances that may be present in the blood. It also excludes the vast majority of potential therapeutics, severely limiting treatment options for brain tumors, neurodegenerative diseases, and genetic disorders of the central nervous system.1But some pathogens have evolved mechanisms to sneak past these defenses.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
The blood-brain barrier is a crucial protective membrane that evolved to shield the brain from pathogens and toxic substances that may be present in the blood. It also excludes the vast majority of potential therapeutics, severely limiting treatment options for brain tumors, neurodegenerative diseases, and genetic disorders of the central nervous system.1But some pathogens have evolved mechanisms to sneak past these defenses.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
Not long after arriving at Sam Houston State University in 2007, entomologist and micromoth expert Sibyl Bucheli received a mysterious phone call that would change the course of her life. “Are you going to the crime scene?” asked the voice on the other end of the line, without introduction or preamble. “No,” Bucheli replied, and hung up the phone. Later, though, the woman on the phone, a researcher in the forensics department, brought part of the crime scene to Bucheli’s office.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
the-scientist.com | Hannah Thomasy
Although researchers began performing blood transfusions in the 1600s, ABO blood groups were, unfortunately for patients, not discovered until 1901.1 Despite the decades of study that followed, scientists are still working out why blood types exist in the first place. “There’s lots of evidence that ABO genotype can influence a whole variety of infectious diseases,” said Alex Rowe, a malaria researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
