Volunteering with Tails of the Trail

By: Amelia Gibson, PhD, MBA, Kerafast Director of Business Development More than three million dogs are estimated to enter animal shelters in the United States annually. The stress dogs experience living in the shelter environment can lead to physical and emotional issues that threaten their health as well as make them less likely to be 

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New gel regenerates heart muscle after a heart attack

For reasons that are not fully understood, mammalian cardiac muscle cells do not regenerate after suffering an injury. After a heart attack, for example, many of these cells, called cardiomyocytes, are lost and the body is unable to replace them. With fewer cardiomyocytes, the body cannot pump blood as efficiently, which leads to the increased 

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Zombie ants and biological clocks

Nature does some pretty cool things and some very cruel things. Scientists have been fascinated by zombie ants for some time. These ants depart from their nest and normal duties to bite a piece of vegetation, after which they soon die. New research at the University of Central Florida sheds light on the mechanism by 

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Silence is Golden – The Power of siRNAs

What is siRNA? Short interfering RNAs, sometimes referred to as silencing RNAs or siRNA for short, are a common tool to induce transitory suppression of coding genes. In 1928, the Plant Pathology head at Virginia Tech, SA Wingard, noticed that as tobacco plants infected with ringspot virus continued to grow, their outer leaves showed signs 

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A Universal Flu Shot

Heading to the doctor’s office to get a flu shot may become a remnant of the past. Unlike vaccines for other viruses, the flu vaccine requires annual renewal to be effective. Researchers are aiming to change this paradigm by designing a universal vaccine that would be effective against most flu strains. Caused by the influenza 

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