Reconstructive procedures and organ transplants demand nimble fingers that can restore blood flow by stitching together millimeter-scale arteries. It's a tough ask and time-consuming task for even the most skilled surgeon.
Jan 11, 2019
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Two children from Europe and one from Canada, aged four, six and 10, suffer from a previously unknown disease that causes epileptic seizures, loss of magnesium and reduced intelligence. There is currently no way to treat ...
Jan 11, 2019
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Nearly a fifth of heart disease deaths in adults aged 25-69 in 2011 may be attributed to high sodium diets in a large province in China. Reducing salt intake in the region could potentially save thousands of lives, according ...
Dec 19, 2018
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(HealthDay)—With so much emphasis on fresh, farm-to-table foods, it's easy to overlook the value of canned items. These are convenient, often cheaper alternatives to fresh and frozen.
Dec 05, 2018
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A drug treatment, already approved for use in patients, could offer new hope for some patients with brain bleeding and strokes.
Nov 27, 2018
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Drugs that inhibit a hormone that constricts blood vessels also help improve sodium excretion in blacks who hold onto too much sodium in the face of stress, investigators report.
Nov 13, 2018
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The French government on Friday ordered a three-month ban of a widely used pesticide after dozens of people, many of them farm workers, fell ill in western France in recent weeks.
Oct 26, 2018
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Neurons absorb and release water when they relay messages throughout the brain, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. Tracking this water movement with imaging technology ...
Sep 14, 2018
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Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common movement disorder in the world. PD patients suffer from shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking. It is a neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss ...
Sep 11, 2018
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Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute (VTCRI) have found evidence that may disrupt conventional understanding about how electrical activity travels in the heart—a discovery that potentially can lead ...
Aug 27, 2018
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Sodium (pronounced /ˈsoʊdiəm/) is a metallic element with a symbol Na (from Latin natrium or Arabic natrun) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals within "group 1" (formerly known as ‘group IA’). It has only one stable isotope, 23Na.
Elemental sodium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1806 by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide. Elemental sodium does not occur naturally on Earth, but quickly oxidizes in air and is violently reactive with water, so it must be stored in an inert medium, such as a liquid hydrocarbon. The free metal is used for some chemical synthesis and heat transfer applications.
Sodium ion is soluble in water in nearly all of its compounds, and is thus present in great quantities in the Earth's oceans and other stagnant bodies of water. In these bodies it is mostly counterbalanced by the chloride ion, causing evaporated ocean water solids to consist mostly of sodium chloride, or common table salt. Sodium ion is also a component of many minerals.
Sodium is an essential element for all animal life and for some plant species. In animals, sodium ions are used in opposition to potassium ions, to allow the organism to build up an electrostatic charge on cell membranes, and thus allow transmission of nerve impulses when the charge is allowed to dissipate by a moving wave of voltage change. Sodium is thus classified as a “dietary inorganic macro-mineral” for animals. Sodium's relative rarity on land is due to its solubility in water, thus causing it to be leached into bodies of long-standing water by rainfall. Such is its relatively large requirement in animals, in contrast to its relative scarcity in many inland soils, that herbivorous land animals have developed a special taste receptor for sodium ion.
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