Hypoxia: good guy or bad guy?

Role of vitamin D in vascular calcification: bad guy or good guy?

The role of vitamin D and its derivatives in vascular calcification is complex. It has long been known that in humans, hypervitaminosis D may be associated with extensive arterial calcium phosphate deposits, mostly in the form of apatite crystals. In experimental animals, the administration of pharmacological doses of vitamin D sterols can lead to widespread arterial calcification, especially i...

Endothelial H2O2: a bad guy turning good?

About a decade ago everyone who read, at least occasionally, the science part of the local newspapers or followed popular science broadcasts “knew” that reactive oxygen species (ROS) are dangerous. They were thought to be bad, really bad, and many looking for a healthier lifestyle took action against these nasty small molecules accused of harming lipids and proteins by taking antioxidants like ...

Predicting the Good Guy and the Bad Guy: Attitudes are Encoded in Language Statistics

Various studies have provided evidence that people activate introspective simulations when making valence judgments. Such evidence is in line with an embodied cognition account that argues that cognition is fundamentally embodied, with perceptual simulation rather than language statistics being the source of lexical semantics. Recently, demonstrations that conceptual knowledge is encoded in lan...

Endoplasmic reticulum stress in glomerulonephritis: the bad guy turns good?

The balance between somatic cellular machinery for defense against local effector molecules determines the tissue fate of inflammation—progression or resolution. We previously proposed the concept of glomerular “self-defense” as essential for spontaneous subsidence of glomerular inflammation.1 A line of evidence supporting this concept is that glomeruli, when faced with activated leukocytes or ...

Like the Good or Bad Guy — Empathy in Antisocial and Prosocial Games