The Brain's Drainpipes

The human body is an extraordinary thing! It has intrigued scientists and fascinated painters and sculptors for thousand of years. As early as 3100 BC the ancient Nilotic priests were studying human anatomy in their efforts to heal the sick and injured. The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an example.

Today scientists have been talking about parts of the human anatomy that have become more evident through the use of advanced microscopy and imaging techniques.

The discoveries include the 2017 MRI evidence for lymphatic vessels in the human meninge, the membrane that covers the brain. These vessels drain fluids and removes waste from brain tissues.

Early reports of lymphatic vessels in the meninges appeared in the 18th century but were met with skepticism. However, lymphatic vessels in mouse meninges were reported in 2015.

Related reading: New Discoveries in Human Anatomy

The Amazing Human Eye!

The human eye is an extraordinary member of the body. The human retina contains 125 million rods and about 6 million cones. This is 70 percent of all the human sensory receptors for touch, taste smell, hearing and sight all put together. That’s how important vision is to our survival. But how does the eye actually see?

Light bouncing off an object goes into the eye, through the cornea and the oval-white lens, which focuses that light on the retina. That’s a thin layer of tissue covering the eye’s back wall (inside the sclera). The retina hosts the eyes’ rods and cones. At the center back is the fovea. Most color-sensing cone cells are here. These cells relay signals that move through the optic nerve to the brain.

Read it all here.

Nile Crocodile and American Crocodile Linked

The 7 million year skull of Crocodylus checchiai from As Sahabi, Libya 

was found in the 1930s.

This C. checchiai specimen predates the earliest known crocodile in the Americas by about 2 million years. Genetic research indicates that the animal also was a close relative of the Nile crocodile. 

According to Massimo Delfino, the extinct Crocodylus checchiai “fills a gap between the Nile crocodile in Africa and the four extant American species.” 

It is interesting that the oldest known American fossils of Crocodylus are older than the oldest known fossils of the Nilotic crocodile (C. niloticus). This fossil is older than both. Apparently, these ancient beasts were swimming between continents.

“It’s not so surprising,” Delfino says, "given today’s crocodilians’ ability to survive saltwater and travel hundreds of kilometers when helped by ocean currents."

Source: Old African Fossils Provide New Evidence for the Origin of the American Crocodiles

Saving the Largest Online Linguistics Database

In 2015, spare funds started to dry up at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a Bible translation group that revolutionized the documentation of endangered languages in the mid–20th century. SIL’s budget had long supported a massive online database considered by many to be the definitive source for information on the world’s languages.

The SIL Ethnologue has served anthropological and linguistic research for decades, but it has become to expense for many researchers.

Simon Greenhill, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said, “In the last few years, [Ethnologue has] gotten increasingly expensive and locked down."

Since 2013, SIL Chief Innovation Development Officer Stephen Moitozo has been trying to grow Ethnologue and make it self-sustaining. After the first paywall went up, interactive maps and customer service chatbots were added. Ongoing costs include website maintenance, security, and paying researchers to update the databases whenever new information comes in from independent researchers or SIL’s 5000 field linguists.

To pay for its valuable data, SIL is counting on institutions and corporations, as well as individual subscribers. SIL is planning to sell tailored access to corporations, including business intelligence firms, and Fortune 500 companies.

Source: Science Magazine

Gene Edited for Sickle Cell Disease

Victoria Gray is the first person with a genetic disorder to be treated in the United States with the revolutionary gene-editing technique called CRISPR.

As the one-year anniversary of her landmark treatment approaches, Gray has received good news: She is functionally cured. The billions of genetically modified cells infused into her body are alleviating virtually all the complications of her sickle cell disease.

Gray hasn’t had any severe pain attacks since the treatment one year ago. Nor has she had to receive any emergency room treatments, hospitalizations, or blood transfusions.

In each of the previous two years, Gray required an average of seven hospitalizations and emergency room visits due to severe pain episodes as well as requiring regular blood transfusions. She has been able to significantly reduce her need for narcotics to relieve her pain.

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

Mapping the Earth's Interior

Using a new technique originally designed to explore the cosmos, scientists have unveiled structures deep inside the Earth, paving the way for a new map revealing what Earth's interior looks like.

Brice Ménard, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, reports, "We were finally able to identify the seismic echoes and use them to create a map."

Doyeon Kim, a seismologist at the University of Maryland and co-author on the paper, explains: "Imagine you're outside in the dark. If you clap your hands and then hear an echo, you know that a wall or vertical structure is in front of you. This is how bats echolocate their surroundings."

Using this principle, the team used the Sequencer algorithm to parse through thousands of seismograms for echoes to create a new map showing details of the Earth's mantle, just above the liquid iron core.

Read more here.

CWiS Live in June

Loryn Phillips
CWiS Coordinator
The American Scientific Affiliation
218 Boston Street, Suite 208
Topsfield, MA 01983
O: 978.887.8833 


The June CWiS LIVE online meetings are coming up! Please join us and invite a friend. Here are links for the online meetings. These are also on our website.

Join the women of CWiS for a time of fellowship and discussion about being a "good and faithful servant" in the current socio-political environment. Some questions to consider for discussion include:

+ Are the words we use and the actions we take reflecting our own selfish desires or God's plan and heart?

+ Do you believe defending yourself is important?

+ What does science say about group thinking and systemic thinking?

+ What guidance does the bible provide?


Sunday, June 14 at 5:00 pm EDT
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86135433330?pwd=b293NUFzQXRUaGJXNDFvRGZTajJCUT09
Meeting ID: 861 3543 3330
Password: 138240


Tuesday, June 23 at 7:30 pm EDT
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86505656903?pwd=VW5wbUkwdEFuczdPR1VxZGdMNDdVZz09
Meeting ID: 865 0565 6903
Password: 779945

We invite you to join us at one or both of the June meetings.

Blessings,

Loryn