Alien Refugees - Part 4 The big day finally arrived. The stealth-cloaked ship with the Brantas would arrive soon. I thought the first batch could stay near my stream. There were a couple of small ponds nearby, in addition to my own lodge reservoir. I was certain the area would easily support fifty more birds. And I could keep a ...

The com screen went blank and I sank back on my haunches, trying desperately to catch my breath. I wasn’t used to talking to anyone as important as the Admiral. I was an academic that tried to avoid the notice of my dean. As long as I got funding, no one at the university needed to know who I was ...

Admiral Jaraicocer’s dour face appeared in the screen, his mouth tentacles writhing in agitation. I jerked my focus to the background. Anything to avoid looking at the living mustache of moving tendrils on an otherwise hairless head. The weird Terrans were much easier to look at, even though they were too tall and tailless and relatively hairless. I hadn’t thought ...

Greetings. My name is Gothar. I’m an anthropologist and a lieutenant in the Alliance Reserve Army. Sounds pretty fancy, I know, but my post is on a world far from the Falgaran war, so life can be boring. And I’m okay with boring. I’m far more of an academic than a soldier. Volponine 10, my home planet is far from ...

Since it's spooky season, and fall is definitely in the air, along with leaves from tons of trees, I thought I'd share my first flash fiction Halloween story. Warning - it's not a romance. LOL Hope you enjoy, and remember to be kind to pumpkins. Pumpkin’s Revenge Mike's heart leapt with joy when the doorbell rang. He adored everything about ...

Our Natural Killer (NK) cells already do a good job at looking for wrong cells. They work much like T cells in the immune system. A currently approved therapy is known as CAR-T, which modifies NK outside the body. These cells learn to recognize a common cancer marker and destroy those cells. So far this works well on blood cancers, ...

A combination of gene therapy and optogenetic vision restoration is showing some promise, partially restoring vision in one eye of a man suffering from retinitis pigmentosa. The improvement only worked when he was wearing special goggles that sent light pulses to his eyes. This is an exciting time for medical research. All sorts of new things being figured out every ...

Ever wonder how bacteria can grow enough to produce an infection in the bladder? There aren't a lot of intact components in urine. You have to have the four nucleic acids that compose DNA to be able to copy your DNA to make a nucleus for your child. Now we know that a few species can make their own guanine, ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/our-bodies-do-have-a-natural-answer-for-killer-allergies-and-autoimmune-diseases ...

Some bright people have come up with a microneedle patch that will be able to test the fluid between cells for the presence or absence of different antibodies or other biomarkers. It can replace a traditional blood draw and the needles are too short to hit the sensory nerves, making it a practically pain-free experience with many potential applications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-pain-free-microneedle-patch-antibodies-fluid.html ...

In monkeys, for now. Healthy pigmented epithelium cells from a donor eye have been implanted under the macula of a blind monkey. And they took over the function of the non-working cells! This is a promising line of study to help with repairing retinal disease. https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/01/14/Study-Retinal-stem-cells-from-cadavers-may-help-restore-vision-in-blind/6921610635179/ ...

Turkeys can be pretty bizarre when they want to be. http://www.sciencealert.com/turkeys-performed-a-death-dance-around-a-cat-corpse-and-it-s-kind-of-disturbing?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1 ...