Cells can’t see or hear, but some of them have a sense we lack: they can detect the electric fields generated by a wound. Identifying how they do this could help efforts to boost wound healing. The flow of ions across a cell membrane creates tiny electric fields. Tissue damage changes that field, and cells involved in tissue repair seem to sense this change. Image: Calsidyrose
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An artificial ovary could make hormone replacement therapy (HRT) a thing of the past. Women with damaged ovaries or who are post-menopausal don’t produce sex hormones, which can lead to osteoporosis. Daily HRT helps, but can have side effects. Image: wellcome images
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Some ideas need time to take root: a new analysis suggests it took up to 12,000 years for people in what is now China to go from eating wild plants to farming them. Chinese grinding stones from 23,000 to 19,500 years ago show residues of plants like millet which were not domesticated in the region until 11,000 years ago. Image: aivo2010
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Hollywood director James Cameron found little evidence of life when he descended nearly 11,000 metres to the deepest point in the world’s oceans last year. If only he had taken a microscope and looked just a few centimetres deeper. Researchers have discovered unusually high levels of microbial activity in the sediments at the site of Cameron’s dive – Challenger Deep. Image: Anni Glud
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Homo floresiensis, the human hobbit, had a skull like that of a taller hominin called Homo erectus, suggesting to some that the hobbit was a dwarf species that evolved from this larger one. But the hobbit’s teeth and brain are smaller than expected of a dwarf – the world’s tiniest monkey could explain why. Image: San Diego Shooter
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