" FIRST-AID TO SAILORS."

First Aid to the Wounded

First Aid

due to a nearby vacuum cleaner or a passing tramear. You will find that these devices will not help you when you are confronted with disease far from the resources of a modern hospital. The only thing that matters is whether or not you have taken heed to the lesson first taught in the Eastern Mediterranean over two thousand years ago, repeated again by the old Cromwellian captain-"the trooper t...

Seeking sailors to help measure phytoplankton populations.

Richard Kirby, a plankton biologist at Plymouth University’s Marine Institute, United Kingdom, has observed that phytoplankton—microscopic organisms dependent on photosynthesis—are being affected by rising sea temperatures. Responding to research indicating a dramatic decline in phytoplankton populations, Kirby says, “Phytoplankton underpin the marine food chain; without them the seas would be ...

First Aid to the Injured and Sick

Chromosome first aid.

Most people take the stability of chromosomes for granted. Some may imagine metaphase chromosomes lined up like a butterfly collection on a page, reassuringly in order and unchanging. However, evidence that has been accumulating for over half a century indicates that genome stability is a dynamic, not a static, process. In the 1940s natural chromosomes ends, or telomeres, were shown to be speci...