How squid could help people get over their needle phobia
Cephalopod ink propulsion is inspiring an alternative to syringes
Needles, THOugh essential for delivering a great many vital medications, are not universally popular among patients. This distaste has serious consequences: an aversion to needles leads one in six American adults to skip vaccinations, and is an important reason why people who rely on injectable drugs such as insulin fail to keep up with their dosage. Now new work led by Giovanni Traverso at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is revealing a way to get medication into patients without having to jab them at all, by copying the jet-propulsion techniques used by squid and their kin.
The two types of human laugh
One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else
Scientists are building a catalogue of every type of cell in our bodies
It has thus far shed light on everything from organ formation to the causes of inflammation
Norway’s Atlantic salmon risks going the way of the panda
Climate change and fish farming are endangering its future
Artificial intelligence is helping improve climate models
More accurate predictions will lead to better policy-making
Physics reveals the best design for a badminton arena
The key is minimising the disruptive effects of ventilation
There’s lots of gold in urban waste dumps
The pay dirt could be 15 times richer than natural deposits