baby
dr. dolittle | July 6, 2017 Photo by Mike Blyth via Flickr Commons
Surfactant is a lipoprotein substance that is secreted by special cells located in the alveoli of our lungs. The alveoli are the grape-like structures where gas exchange happens. Without surfactant, these alveoli would collapse and prevent gas exchange.
Drawing of alveoli by Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator (Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator) CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
Babies born prematurely often suffer from respiratory distress syndrome because their lungs do not make enough surfactant. Now researchers at the Karolinska Institute…
dr. dolittle | April 27, 2017A team of researchers at Children's Hospital at Philadelphia are working to develop an artificial womb that they hope will help human babies born prematurely to develop normally. They are testing this amazing technology in premature lambs. Here is a video from Tech Insider that was posted to YouTube:
dr. dolittle | September 4, 2014With the help of advice from a manicurist, Dr. Kate Mansfeld (University of Central Florida) has come up with a way to track hatchling sea turtles for the first time. After hatching, the turtles head straight for the ocean where they grow for about 10 years or so before returning to the same beach where they hatched. Until now, researchers have wondered how these juvenile turtles spent their time.
Source:Scientific American
dr. dolittle | May 23, 2014While we are on the topic of cute animal stories, here is a family portrait with a newborn baby macaque at the Trentham Monkey Forest in Staffordshire, United Kingdom.
gregladen | April 8, 2014From NBC:
... Mohammad Musa Khan appeared in court in the city of Lahore last week, charged with attempted murder along with his father and grandfather after a mob protesting against gas cuts and price increases stoned police and gas company workers trying to collect overdue bills.
"Police are vindictive. Now they are trying to settle the issue on personal grounds, that's why I sent my grandson to Faisalabad for protection," the baby's grandfather, Muhammad Yasin, told Reuters, referring to a central Pakistani city.
The baby is on bail and due to appear at the next hearing on April 12 but…
dr. dolittle | August 26, 2013
Image of panda bear cub at its first exam from the National Zoo.
Exciting news from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park! Mei, a giant panda bear at the zoo has given birth to a cub weighing in at 137 grams (~4.83 ounces)-too cute!! DNA tests will determine the sex as well as the paternity of the panda cub, which is either Tian Tian from the National Zoo or Gao Gao from the San Diego Zoo.
You can follow the Twitter feed from the Smithsonian here: #cubwatch in additon to checking out the live panda cam at the zoo.
dr. dolittle | July 12, 2013 Image from www.KidsHealth.org
Babies born prematurely are predisposed to necrotizing enterocolitis, in which portions of the intestinal lining dies. Infant formulas are thought to contribute to the development of this disorder in premature babies. This is a serious condition that can lead to death in about 25% of premies.
Dr. Sangild (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues have discovered that premature piglets that were fed either human donor breast milk or bovine (cow) colostrum had better outcomes compared to those fed infant formula. Food passage time through the intestines was…
sastyk | July 20, 2012Hi Folks - The more I look at my life, the more I think I'm not doing things as well as I could be - too many balls in the air. Many of the things I care about are paying a price. The addition of the chronic sleep deprivation that goes with a new baby is pushing me to strip down my life to the bare minimum.
What's frustrating me most is that writing and online work are taking up time I should be spending on sustainability measures - while I'm writing about the joys of pickling, I'm not actually making pickles with the kids. For a long time this was manageable, but right now, with a two…
dgmacarthur | September 14, 2010For those who haven't already heard via Twitter or other means, there's a good reason I've been so quiet the past few weeks. My first collaborative genetic experiment with my wife - for which I presented some promising preliminary data back in February - finally generated results on August 28th:
Figure 1: Tobias MacArthur
We're still getting the hang of interpreting the results, but overall the outcome seems overwhelmingly positive. Further replication will be required to confirm our initial findings, of course.
I also have another major announcement due later today - stay tuned.
laelaps | July 5, 2010A collared brown lemur (Eulemur collaris) baby, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
zooillogix | August 20, 2009...and American couple John and Steve, who are trying to have a baby themselves, created a truly inspiring tribute video and shared it with Zooillogix.
Visit John and Steve Are Having a Baby for more info.
edyong | June 14, 2009
Discriminating against people who do not speak your language is a big problem. A new study suggests that the preferences that lead to these problems are hard-wired at a very young age. Even five-month-old infants, who can't speak themselves, have preferences for native speakers and native accents.
The human talent for language is one of our crowning evolutionary achievements, allowing us to easily and accurately communicate with our fellows. But as the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel relates, linguistic differences can serve to drive us apart and act as massive barriers between…
edyong | May 5, 2009Popularity is a fickle thing. Styles, products, social movements and people can be bathing in the spotlight one day and languishing in obscurity the next. And according to a new study, things that catch on most quickly are also abandoned most easily - the faster the rise to prominence, the steeper the fall from grace.
Many researchers have looked into the reasons behind the success of cultural tastes, but Jonah Berger and Gael Le Mens were more interested in the factors that drive them to extinction. To examine that, they looked at the changing popularities of first names in France and the…
bioephemera | March 25, 2009
Photo by Tracy Woodward, WaPo
Yesterday, zookeepers at the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center discovered two newborn clouded leopard cubs in the enclosure of their mother, Jao Chu. This is a big deal because it is notoriously difficult to breed clouded leopards in captivity: males can attack and kill females with whom they aren't properly bonded, and captive mothers often inadvertently or deliberately kill their cubs. Because of that risk, these two cubs were taken from Jao Chu to be raised by human researchers.
Jao Chu and her mate Hannibal were imported from Thailand last…
edyong | February 3, 2009Our health isn't just affected by the things we do after we're born - the conditions we face inside our mother's womb can have a lasting impact on our wellbeing, much later in life. This message comes from a growing number of studies that compare a mother's behaviour during pregnancy to the subsequent health of her child.
But all of these studies have a problem. Mothers also pass on half of their genes to their children, and it's very difficult to say which aspects of the child's health are affected by conditions in the womb, and which are influenced by mum's genetic legacy.
Take the case…
amillikan | December 19, 2008When doctors opened the skull of a 3-day old from Colorado Springs to remove what they thought was a brain tumor, they were surprised to find a collection of organized body parts—including two small feet, a partial hand and intestines. "This was the most well-organized 'tumor' I've ever heard of," said ScienceBlogger PZ Myers, who discusses similar cases of developmental abnormalities on his blog, Pharyngula.
zooillogix | November 25, 2008Riverdance Miniatures in Victoria, Australia may have set a new record for the world's smallest horse. This prematurely born foal stands only 15 inches high, or 3.3 "hands", in horse-speak. The previous record for a fully grown horse was 4 hands and 1 inch.
Miniature horses are in fact, miniature horses, and not ponies. They have a higher rate of dwarfism than normal horses, because, well, they were bred for it (see earlier post on a tiny horse going bonkers).
Add one of these horses, one of the formerly featured miniature pigs, and maybe a tiny sheep, and you'd have yourself the most…