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- A microscope that can see electrons move
A microscope that can see electrons move
Male orgasm is an achievement for women
Coffee Table Science
August 25, 2024
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In this newsletter
Mitochondria are mutating your brain
DNA in your mitochondria and that in your cells is very different. It was believed that rarely mitochondrial DNA transferred a part of itself into the genome, more so in cancerous cells. Now, a new study shows this isn’t a rare phenomenon.
Researchers at the University of Michigan took brain samples from 1,200 deceased humans as part of their study and carried out extensive sequencing analysis to look for the presence of mitochondrial DNA.
Not only did they find that the mitochondria-genome DNA transfer was quite common, they also found that its presence far higher in those who died early. Why does that happen, we do not quite know yet but the study makes us look into the causes for sure.
The research findings were published in PLOS Biology.
A 45-year-old man with ALS ‘speaks again‘
45-year-old Casey Harell, a patient with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, experienced something that other patients have never before. The ability to speak by just thinking about it.
This was made possible by a Brain-Computer Implant (BCI) developed at UC Davis.
No words can describe what Harell experienced, and it's best seen in this video on our Instagram page.
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Male orgasm: An achievement for some women
In a study conducted on 440 women, the researchers at Queen’s University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that even in an imaginary situation of a sexual encounter with a male partner, females felt higher feeling of achievement and a sense of feminity if the male reached an orgasm.
Even in the hypothetical situation, where this imaginary male partner, did not reach an orgasm, women experienced a sense of failure, especially those who felt they needed to conform to traditional expectations of femininity.
The feeling was also more intense in women who attributed their male partner’s ability to reach orgasm as a result of their own actions and sexual skills and therefore the feeling of failure was a result of their own inabilities.
The study was published in the journal Sex Roles.
A microscope that can see electrons move
Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed a new microscope that uses electron pulses to capture images at speeds of one attosecond - one quintillionth of a second. At this rate, researchers can snap pictures of electrons in motion and even at the precise moment when a chemical bond breaks.
Previous electron microscopes had also achieved similar speeds but were unable to grab images due to what photographers would typically call high enough “shutter speed”. But Arizona researchers solved this problem by splitting a laser into an electron pulse and two light pulses.
The first light pulse excites the electrons and gets them moving, while the second pulse primes the electron pulse to strike and take an image, which is captured by a camera sensor.
The research findings were published in the journal Science.
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Until next time,
Ameya
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