Neuroscience

Turning back the clock on regeneration in neurons

(Medical Xpress)—When minor wounds heal, the fine nerve endings that sense touch, or control sweating, are usually able to regrow. Like many processes in the body, the ability to regenerate new tissues changes throughout ...

Oncology & Cancer

Reprogramming of immune cells shown to fight off melanoma

A new way of reprogramming our immune cells to shrink or kill off cancer cells has been shown to work in the otherwise hard to treat and devastating skin cancer, melanoma. The University of Bristol-led discovery, published ...

Immunology

Scientists decipher role of a stress response gene

Scientists have long known that chronic stress experienced early in life, or even chronic prenatal exposure to maternal stress hormones in the womb, can shorten lifespan and contribute to age-related chronic diseases like ...

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Larvae

In Roman mythology, the larvae or lemures (singular lemur) were the spectres or spirits of the dead; they were the malignant version of the lares. Some Roman writers describe lemures as the common name for all the spirits of the dead, and divide them into two classes: the lares, or the benevolent souls of the family, which haunted and guarded the domus or household, and the larvae, or the restless and fearful souls of wicked men. But the more common idea was that the Lemures and Larvae were the same. They were said to wander about at night and to torment and frighten the living.

On May 9, 11, and 13, the Lemuralia or Lemuria, the feast of the Lemures, occurred, when black beans were offered to the Larvae in the hopes of propitiating them; loud noises were also used to frighten them away.

Lemurs were so named by Linnaeus for their large eyes, nocturnal habits and unearthly noises they make at night. Some species of lemur were identified by their calls before scientists had seen individuals. Linnaeus also coined the modern use of the word 'larva' to denote the caterpillar stage in the life cycle of insects.

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