An Alchemist’s Travels, according to Himself

Alchemists and toxicants.

Toxicology has emerged from relative obscurity to a place of prominence in the fields of human and environmental health. No longer is toxicology an esoteric discipline only of interest to and understood by the toxicologist. Chemists, who face potential health effects from materials they work with in laboratories and industrial settings, have become increasingly interested and involved in such s...

A sharp end to sugary Wingless travels

Drosophila melanogaster follicle stem cells are controlled by Wingless (Wg) ligands secreted 50 µm away, raising the question of how long-distance Wg spreading occurs. In this issue of JCB, Wang and Page-McCaw (2014. J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201403084) demonstrate a potential mechanism by which the heparan sulfate proteoglycan Dally-like (Dlp) promotes Wg travel, whereas matr...

Nurturing empathy: an oncologist looks at medicine and himself.

Troublesome Thai travels.

A previously fit and well 15-year-old Caucasian boy presented with a week of intermittent pyrexia, nonbloody, non-mucoid diarrhoea and bilious vomiting. He also presented with persistent headache, general myalgia, and had episodes of rigours. He had returned 48 hours previously from a family holiday touring Thailand for three weeks with no travel towards the Vietnamese and Laos borders. All rec...

Multiverse Time Travels

We suggest a hypothesis of the Multiverse which, contrary to other similar hypotheses, can be verified experimentally already at the present time. This Multiverse allows for bidirectional visits of inhabitants from different parallel Universes through portals which have nothing to do with the so-called ‘wormholes’. However, since portal borders are invisible and portals themselves may appear an...