In order to satisfy the equivalence principle, any non-conventional mechanism proposed to gravitationally explain the Pioneer anomaly, in the form in which it is presently known from the so-far analyzed Pioneer 10/11 data, cannot leave out of consideration its impact on the motion of the planets of the Solar System as well, especially those orbiting in the regions in which the anomalous behavio...

The Doppler tracking data from two deep-space spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11, show an anomalous blueshift, which has been dubbed the “Pioneer anomaly”. The effect is most commonly interpreted as a real deceleration of the spacecraft — an interpretation that faces serious challenges from planetary ephemerides. The Pioneer anomaly could as well indicate an unknown effect on the radio signal itself...

Background Tomaso Casoni (Figure 1A &1B) earned his fame by the test named after him [1]. Casoni was first to describe a test for immediate allergic reaction to hydatid fluid injected into the skin (Figure 2). This was in a time when hydatid disease caused by infection by Echinococcus granlulosus was endemic in Europe, Africa and the Middle East in addition to many other parts of the world. The...

This article gives a short and personal portrait of Ernst Hadorn (1902-1976), one of the most influential developmental biologists in Europe. Hadorn initially worked with amphibia, but then soon turned to Drosophila where he very successfully studied lethal factors and the development of imaginal disks.

Werner Forssmann, André F. Cournand, and Dickinson W. Richards were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1956 for seminal work on heart catheterization, Forssmann for his pioneering self-experiment, and Cournand and Richards for establishing heart catheterization as a standard diagnostic and treatment procedure in cardiology. Forssmann's self-experiment pushed the boundaries of medicine into a new era an...

Abstract We discuss astronomical and astrophysical evidence, which we relate to the principle of zero-total energy of the Universe, that imply several relations among the mass M , the radius R and the angular momentum L of a ”large” sphere representing a Machian Universe. By calculating the angular speed, we find a peculiar centripetal acceleration for the Universe. This is an ubiquituous prope...

A brief overview of recent developments in the substance P field is provided, in addition to a historical introduction. It is emphasized that there are multiple tachykinins and tachykinin receptors and that there are examples of coexistence of several tachykinin peptides and of several tachykinin receptors in single cells, and there is evidence for tachykininergic cotransmission. The distributi...

* Professor Adjunto do Departamento de Pediatria da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Presidente do Departamento Científico de Pneumologia da SBP. O primeiro de julho é o Dia da Vacina BCG. O fato de existir uma data comemorativa para a vacina demonstra a sua importância na história da humanidade. Essa vacina encerra inúmeras controvérsias desde que foi emp...

How spiking activity reverberates through neuronal networks, how evoked and spontaneous activity interact and blend, and how the combined activities represent external stimulation are pivotal questions in neuroscience. We simulated minimal models of unstructured spiking networks in silico, asking whether and how gentle external stimulation might be subsequently reflected in spontaneous activity...

The Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft yielded a very accurate navigation in deep space that was, however, limited by a small, anomalous frequency drift of their carrier signals received by the radio-tracking stations of the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). This drift signifies a discrepancy between the frequency of the Doppler signals observed by the DSN and that frequency modeled using modern-day deep sp...