If you've taken biology, then you would be familiar with the endosymbiotic theory. A simple prokaryotic cell like bacteria somehow folded its outer membrane inward, pinched off little pockets inside itself, and one of those pockets eventually became the nucleus. Mitochondria got in later by being swallowed whole. Everything complicated was formed inside a pre-existing outer wall. A 2014 paper by David Baum and Buzz Baum, published in BMC Biology, argues the opposite. They cal

Introduction The question of whether space exploration is a necessity or an indulgence assumes that these categories are mutually exclusive. They are not. Rather, the question becomes: under what theory of distributive justice can governments spend $93 billion on a lunar programme while 700 million people currently exist on less than $2.15 a day? The answer, I will argue, is none. Space exploration is not intrinsically wrong and some of it is genuinely necessary. But the scal

When I was in class learning about Markovnikov's rule, the whole concept of carbocation stability was drilled into my brain with one golden rule: alkyl groups are electron-donating. We were taught that those little methyl groups act like generous friends, pushing electron density onto that poor, positive carbon atom via the "+I effect", or the inductive effect to save it from collapsing. It made perfect sense on paper and helped us pass our exams. Turns out, it was also compl

Why de-extinction is a seductive idea we should resist There is a photograph taken in 1933 of the last known thylacine, more commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, pacing its concrete enclosure at Hobart Zoo. It circles. It circles again. Three years later it was dead, and with it went an entire lineage of a marsupial predator, four million years in the making. When people look at that photograph, maybe they share articles, feel briefly concerned, but eventually move on. That

In a typical neurology clinic, Dr. Reshma Narula often saw young women with a specific, terrifying problem: sudden, excruciating "thunderclap" headaches that signaled their brain's blood vessels were dangerously constricting. Separately, in a nearby cardiology unit, Dr. Samit Shah treated women experiencing chest pain so severe it mimicked a heart attack, caused by inexplicable spasms in the arteries feeding the heart. For years, these conditions—Reversible Cerebral Vasoconst

Advances in regenerative medicine and neuroscience have opened the door to revolutionary methods for generating human brain cells. One such approach, direct cell reprogramming, also known as transdifferentiation, bypasses the pluripotent intermediate state and converts mature somatic cells—such as skin cells—directly into another mature cell type, such as neurons or brain stem cells. This method offers a promising platform for studying the human brain, modeling neurological d

Civil Engineering refers to the design and maintenance of roads, bridges, dams, airports, sewage systems, pipelines and structural components of railways and buildings. It is important to note that there are several different sub-specialised types of Civil Engineering, such as General Civil Engineering, Coastal Engineering, Construction Engineering, Earthquake Engineering and Environmental Engineering. All of these contribute to playing an essential role of Civil Engineering

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), also known as drug resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines. It refers to the ability of microbes to withstand the effects of drugs that previously managed to kill them, or inhibit their growth. For example: bacteria that were once vulnerable to antibiotics might evolve to become resistant. One case of this would be multidrug-resistance tuberculosis (TB), which entails resistance