1- "Jell-O" hearing 2- Tiny capillaries 3-Stop drinking water 4- New organ 5- Tiny lizard-like muscles 6-World's oldest people 7-Brain efficiency 8- Immune cell X 9- Tongues can smell 10- Limit to human endurance

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2. • Humans are incredible living
machines, with legs strong
enough to run marathons and
brains smart enough to know that
invisible dark matter exists.
• Our bodies make sure we hear
the correct frequencies, send the
right immune cells to a paper cut
and know when to stop drinking
water.
• But there's still much to untangle about our human bodies, so all
the time, we are discovering new organs and new secrets about
how all of our nooks and crannies keep us going.

3. • Humans might hear so well because of a
tiny "Jell-O" violin that sits inside the
ears.
This optical microscope image illustrates wave motion in the
tectorial membrane, a gooey membrane somewhat reminiscent of
Jell-O that sits on top of the sensory hair cells in the cochlea. New
research shows that the membrane is able to tune its stiffness to
better translate sounds at certain frequencies into neural
impulses.
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• The thin, blob of tissue, otherwise known
as the tectorial membrane, is made up of
97% water.
• This tissue helps to bring sound waves from
the ear to nerve receptors, which then
translate that vibration into an electrical
signal the brain can read.
• New research conducted on mice has found that this ear Jell-O helps the cochlea
— a cavity in the inner ear that contains these nerve receptors — separate high
frequencies from low frequencies. It does so by changing its stiffness, based on
water flow that runs through its tiny pores, similar to what happens when you tune
a violin or guitar.

4. • Our bones might be full of a previously
unknown network of microscopic tunnels.
These pathways might be vital for
transporting immune cells — made in bones
— out to the blood for circulation.
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• A group of researchers discovered
hundreds of these tiny blood vessels,
or capillaries, in the leg bones of
mice.
• But finding something in mice doesn't
necessarily translate to humans, so
one of the researchers decided to
stick his own leg into an MRI machine.
The scans of the researcher's leg
showed that there were holes in the
bone tissue that could indicate that
these capillaries also exist in humans.

5. BIG IMAGE
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3. Stop drinking water
• The brain makes sure that we don't drink too much or too
little water, using a prediction mechanism in the gut,
according to new research.
• The group figured this out by implanting optical fibers
and lenses in mice near the hypothalamus
— a brain region that regulates blood pressure and other
bodily processes and is home to "thirst cells." A few
seconds after drinking something, the mouth and throat
begin firing signals to the brain.
• These signals tell the brain that you feel less thirsty — so you stop drinking. That
way, you don't keep drinking for the 10 minutes to an hour it takes for that liquid to
actually enter the bloodstream and circulate to cells in the body.
• But your mouth and throat would tell your brain to quench your thirst, irrespective of the
type of liquid you're drinking, if it weren't for another mysterious signal.
• This one comes from the gut, and it makes sure the brain knows that the water reaching it is
salty — which can dehydrate the body — or nonsalty, ensuring that the brain quenches thirst
only when the mice drank fresh water.

6. • last year, scientists discovered a
previously unknown organ that sits
right under the skin, and it may help
you feel the pain of a pinprick.
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• It was previously thought that needle
pricks were sensed by nerve endings
that sit below the outer layer of the
skin. But a new study conducted on
mice (but which is also thought to
apply to humans) found that nerves
tangled up in special cells are what
help us feel this sensation.
• This mesh of branched cells called "Schwann cells" and nerves together makes up a new
"sensory organ" because it responds to external pressure signals (pricks or jabs) and
relays that information to the brain.

7. 7
• Human embryos grow extra, lizard-like muscles in their hands and feet
that disappear before birth, scientists found. By looking at 3D images
from an embryonic image database, a group found that at about week
seven of gestation, human fetuses had hands and feet that contained
about 30 muscles each.
• Six weeks later, they contained only 20. Before the baby is born, those
extra muscles either meld into other muscles or shrink away, but it's
unclear why or how.
• These temporary muscles might be leftovers from our ancestors and
may have vanished from adult humans over 250 million years ago,
when mammals first began evolving from mammal-like reptiles, the
researchers suggest.
• But because the study was small, it needs to be replicated with a much larger group before
researchers can say for certain that these appearing and disappearing muscles exist in all fetuses.

8. • Bernice Madigan was the world’s fifth-oldest
living person until her death at age 115 in
January 2015.
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• Supercentenarians, or people who are 110 years of age or
older, might have a secret.
• A study published last year found that supercentenarians have
higher-than-average concentrations of an immune cell called a
"T helper cell" that may protect them from viruses and tumors.
• They then isolated the immune cells and figured out what
they were doing by measuring the messenger RNA that is
produced by the genes in the cells.
• To figure this out, researchers drew blood from seven
supercentenarians and five control participants, who ranged
in age from those in their 50s to those in their 80s.
• Messenger RNA translates genetic instructions from DNA
and brings it to the nucleus of the cell, so that specific
proteins can be produced.
• The supercentenarians had a type of T helper cell
called CD4 CTLs that had the capability to attack
and kill other cells.
• Of course, it's not clear if supercentenarians owe their longevity
to these immune cells, but previously, such cells have been
shown to attack tumor cells and protect against viruses in mice.

9. • There might be a reason why some people are really good at trivia and
seem to "know everything": very efficiently wired brains.
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• A group of researchers in Germany analyzed the brains of 324 people
who had varying degrees of general knowledge or semantic memory
(the type of information that would come up in a game of trivia), based
on questions given to them concerning various fields such as art,
architecture and science.
• Brain scans of the participants showed that those people who had
retained and could recall more general knowledge had more efficient
brain connections — stronger and shorter connections between
brain cells. This makes sense, because imagine answering the
question, "What year did the moon landing happen?"
• We might have the word "moon" stored in one area of the brain, but
the "moon landing" in another, and knowledge of the year it happened
in yet another. People with an efficient brain can better connect those
various items together to quickly answer the question. (But, the
researchers didn't find any link between more general knowledge and
more brain cells.)

10. 10
• Scientists have discovered a previously unknown
type of cell in the human body called the "immune
cell X," and it could act as two other immune cell
types, playing a role in triggering type 1 diabetes,
new research suggests. There is likely not a lot of
these cells in the human body — maybe less than 7
out of every 10,000 white blood cells, but they might
be powerful players in driving autoimmunity —
when the body mistakes its own cells for something
foreign and attacks them.
• These X cells resemble both B cells and T cells, two cell types that are important for
fighting infections (but are also responsible for autoimmune diseases). The X cell
makes antibodies like B cells that activate T cells, which then go on to attack anything
it deems foreign. In the case of type 1 diabetes, immune cells mistakenly destroy
healthy beta cells in the pancreas that make the hormone insulin. The researchers
found evidence that these X cells exist in those with type 1 diabetes, but not in healthy
controls. Even so, it's not clear if there are one or multiple cells responsible for the
disease.

11. • In other news, the cells in your tongues have
the ability to smell. Researchers discovered
this after growing human taste cells in the lab.
• They found that those cells contained a
couple of molecules found in olfactory
cells, the cells found in the nose that are
responsible for, well, smelling. When
they exposed taste cells to odor
molecules, the cells responded just like
the olfactory cells do.
• But this isn't uncommon — olfactory cells
have also previously been found in the gut, in
sperm cells and even in hair.
• Though we knew that taste and smell were greatly
intertwined (which becomes apparent when a blocked-up
nose makes food taste more bland), this study suggests
human taste cells might be much more complicated than
previously thought.

12. • It turns out, humans, even endurance athletes, have limited energy. Scientists
calculated the limit of human endurance to be around 2.5 times the body's resting
metabolic rate (the number of calories the body burns for basic physiological
needs such as maintaining body temperature or breathing), or 4,000 calories per
day for an average person.
• By calculating the data from some of the most extreme endurance events that
take place on our planet, such as the Race Across the USA, and by comparing
that data to other endurance events, They found that the longer the event, the
more difficult it became to burn calories.
• But athletes don't fall to the ground when they reach this 2.5-times threshold. They
can keep going, but they can't maintain a balance of the number of calories consumed
and the amount burned, so they begin to lose weight, which isn't sustainable in the
long term.
• What's more, researchers found that pregnant women operated at around 2.2 times their
resting metabolic rate, just by growing a baby. So no matter the activity, growing a baby,
cycling or running across the U.S., the body seems to have a limit to the amount of energy
it can give you in the long term.

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Omar apocrypha
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apocrypha.omar@gmail.com