Scientists, what do you know that would blow a regular person's mind?

Geneticist here, different people have different forms of various enzymes, meaning that medication is horribly, awfully and precise, and affects people differently.

For example, some people break down codeine into morphine very quickly, which can result in a far too potent dose, and some

people hardly break it down at all, so there's no pain-killing effect. Until very recently, there was

no way to know, but try it. The lab I worked in developed a way to record the vibrations a caterpillar

producers when feeding on a leaf. We found that plants are able to respond to this vibration

when it's played back to them. It not only primes their defenses, but they can distinguish this

vibration from vibrations caused by wind blowing, insects walking on them, insect mating calls,

etc. And they will not prime their defenses to those vibrations. In short, plants don't have ears, but they can still hear?

Okay, and what's the point of responding? The caterpillar is eating it, and the plant goes,

man, that hurts, and the caterpillar keeps eating? It's more like the plant releases toxins for its

friend caterpillar to munch on. Exactly, then releases pheromones to the surrounding plants of the same species to do the same, and sends further messages through the underground fungal-fi networks.

Plants are sophisticated things and are far more complex and active than we commonly realize.

Giraffes have to eat from trees that are upwind from other trees they eat from because they release pheromones to warn the other trees.

Anything downwind goes into defense mode and releases chemicals that make the giraffe not want to

eat from that tree. Funny that animals have to hunt their plants and find unsuspecting trees to

eat from. My research involves Parkinson's disease, and recently there's been findings that

contracting an infection

such as the flu, whilst having PD, will make the disease progress much faster, as your immune

system will kill the brain cells responsible, in a kind of accidental collateral damage response.

So we're looking at how some anti-inflammatories could slow the progress of PD by stopping infections

from taking their toll. Early days, but very

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