sheep
dr. dolittle | August 22, 2016 Merino sheep. Original: User:Fir0002 Derivative work: Charles Esson at en.wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers from Friedrich Schiller University (Jena, Germany) and Heinrich-Heine-University (Düsseldorf, Germany) teamed up to test whether a heart failure medication that is currently being tested might also improve blood flow in the brain. Their findings were published last month in the American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology.
According to the study authors, the small blood vessels in the brains of sheep closely resemble those in the human brain. Using…
dr. dolittle | April 16, 2015 Image of sheep from Wikimedia Commons
Insulin is a major hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar. Its main function is to lower sugar by increasing glucose uptake into muscle and fat cells. Insulin resistance is the hallmark of type 2 diabetes and occurs when tissues in the body are not able to respond to insulin resulting in sustained elevations in blood sugar, also known as hyperglycemia.
An alternative mechanism for lowering blood sugar is muscle contraction as it stimulates a pathway distinct from insulin in the muscles to cause glucose uptake from the blood. Exercise also helps…
oracknows | July 23, 2012Many are the forms of quackery to which autistic children are subjected to. It's amazing just how many dubious and dangerous treatments (dubbed "biomedical treatments" or "autism biomed") parents will try in an effort to "recover" their children. Perhaps the most shocking of this quackery that I've recently covered is something called "miracle mineral solution" (MMS), which is in reality nothing more than a powerful bleach. Parents make their autistic children drink diluted MMS, bathe in it, and even take bleach as an enema. They try to claim that what they are using is no more powerful than…
tsmith | June 21, 2012This is the tenth of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Jean DeNapoli.
I own a small back yard flock of sheep and lambing season is the most exciting and rewarding time of the year. Nothing is more enjoyable than watching a lamb who takes a few wobbly steps and nurses for the first time as her mother nickers encouragement. Within a day, the lamb will be playing, bucking, running, and exploring her world.
Despite the pastoral wonders of the season, lambing is also inherently stressful. I must constantly check the barn to monitor for birthing problems and help out when necessary. This…
edyong | July 2, 2009The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium. They're generally smaller than the average domesticated sheep, and that difference is getting larger and larger. Over the last 20 years, the Soay sheep have started to shrink.
They are becoming gradually lighter at all ages such that today's lambs and adults weigh around 3kg less than those from 1986. Their hind legs have also shortened to a…
ddobbs | March 27, 2009The shepherds responsible for the sheep art I featured earlier (i.e., Sheep + LEDs - Mona Lisa, Fireworks, etc.") explain how it was done. Via the BBC:
ddobbs | March 19, 2009Were the makers of that sheepherding-art video I put in an earlier post (and further below in this post as well) pulling the wool over our eyes? Can you really get sheep to do that stuff? My sister Ann, who sent me the link to start with and who has spent some time training sheepdogs and watched others do so, says Yes:
I think they're being true to "extreme sheepherding". Watch the tiny dots in the Pong game and you'll get a good idea; the tiny dots are the sheepdogs. The walking sheep is speeded up, but yes, it's great sheepdogs and great shepherds, hence the "extreme sheepherding". From…
zooillogix | March 30, 2007To baaa or not to baaa?
Professor Esmail Zanjani from the University of Nevada unveiled a genetically engineered sheep- well, technically a sheep, we think -that has 15 percent human cells and 85 percent sheep cells this past week. Zanjani injects adult human cells into sheep fetuses to create these chimeras with the eventual goal of "growing" human organs inside the sheep for transplant into humans.
In an example given by Zanjani, he hopes one day to take bone marrow cells from a sick patient, implant the cells into a sheep fetus and literally grow bone marrow for the patient inside the…