ScienceIQ.com

What's So Bad About The Badlands?

Hundreds of square miles of South Dakota are known as 'Badlands', a dry terrain of colorful rock formations and little vegetation. For pioneers crossing them in the 19th century, these lands were indeed 'bad', as there was little food or water. But for tourists in the 21st century, the Badlands are a unique and wonderful treat. The rock of the ...

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WhatsSoBadAboutTheBadlands
Biology

Neurogenesis

Until recently, any doctor would have told you that when you lose brain cells, you can never replace them. Scientists now know that the human brain has the ability to regenerate brain cells, or ... Continue reading

Neurogenesis
Engineering

The Right Stuff for Super Spaceships

Revolutions in technology - like the Industrial Revolution that replaced horses with cars - can make what seems impossible today commonplace tomorrow. ... Continue reading

SuperSpaceships
Chemistry

Catalysts

Chemical reactions are interactions between atoms and molecules that result in a change in their relative arrangements and interconnections. The reaction affects only individual atoms and molecules, ... Continue reading

Catalysts
Geology

The Mineral Chalcedony

Chalcedony is a catch all term that includes many well known varieties of cryptocrystalline quartz gemstones. They are found in all 50 States, in many colors and color combinations, and in ... Continue reading

TheMineralChalcedony

SARS: Mother Nature Strikes Again!

SARSMotherNatureStrikesAgainSARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is big news this spring. By the middle of April 2003, over 2000 people had been diagnosed with it in China and Hong Kong, another few hundred in the rest of Asia, and over a hundred in the US and Canada. Over 100 victims had died.

SARS is a 'new' disease, which feels like a bad case of flu (fever, headache, bad cough). But it's not caused by the flu virus. Scientists aren't sure what causes it, but at present the most likely culprit is a new kind of coronavirus. Well-known coronaviruses cause colds in humans and severe illnesses in cats and dogs, but this is the first to cause severe illness in people. SARS is not the first new disease in recent memory, nor is it the worst. AIDS was first found in humans in the 1980s, and now infects millions. Modern airplane travel makes it easy to spread new diseases to all corners of the world in just a few weeks.

How does a 'new' virus happen? A virus is nothing but DNA in a protein capsule, hardly even worth being called alive. In order to make you sick, it must enter the cells in your body, splice itself into your DNA, and take over running the infected cell, forcing the cell to make more virus copies instead of going about its usual business. At various times in their travels from one host to another, viruses can pick up extra genes, including some that enable them to make people sick (when they couldn't before). This is Mother Nature at work, always coming up with something new!