Journal Refresh #2

I posted something like this early in July, a list of articles I had read up to that point and thought were interesting. And this is the second post in the series.

• Ledford  H.,(2015): CRISPR, the disruptor,  Nature 522, 20–24

• Reardon S.,(2015): DNA editing in mouse embryos prevents disease, in Nature, News

• Reardon S.,(2015): Ethics of embryo editing paper divides scientists, in Nature

• Laird D.W.,Lampe D.P., Johnson G.R.,(2015): Defects in structures that connect cells underlie many diseases, Scientific American 312, no.5

• Kwon D., (2015): What are you doing with my DNA?, Scientific American online

• Courage H. K.(2015): Octopus Genome Reveals Secrets to Complex Intelligence, Scientific American online, also read about it in Nature 

                                    Cristina

A post about synapses

You can try to identify the structures

"SynapseSchematic lines" by Thomas Splettstoesser (www.scistyle.com) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


Synapses resemble a basic conversation between two individuals and of course, leave room for other people to enter. Person A tells something to Person B and because they speak the same language and the two are healthy individuals, the message is delivered to the receptor who may say the same thing to Person C or something as a result of the previously received information. But for our brains, the two persons are representations of two neurons and the language is

Tears are made of this

I found out one interesting fact about our tears this week. 

There was one patient awaiting consultation in the ophthalmology department and whilst he was doing so, he also had to undergo a quantitative assessment of tear production. In other words, testing to see if his lacrimal glands produced enough lacrimal fluid. The action was taken because he was complaining of dryness in his eyes. The Schirmer method was used and the scores that result from taking the test actually represent the length of a paper strip that was crossed by the lacrimal fluid. Turns out, that was the reason his eyes felt dry- his tear production accounted for a low score.

Yet, that was not exactly the most interesting thing that came out of that consultation (and why I won't insist on that matter for now).                                                                                                  

I learnt that while you can assess the quantity of tears secreted, you can also assess the lacrimal fluid in terms of