The Daily Populous

Monday February 5th, 2018 evening edition

image for Scientists Have Figured Out How to Make Wounds Heal Without Scars

If you've ever wondered why scar tissue looks so different from regular skin, it's because scar tissue doesn't contain any fat cells or hair follicles.

But scar tissue is made up almost entirely of cells called myofibroblasts, and doesn't contain any fat cells at all.

So instead of blending into the surrounding skin once the wound has fully healed, it looks completely different - permanently.

The same goes for ageing skin - as we age, we lose our adipocytes, which leads to discolouration and deep, irreversible wrinkles.

This is something that would never occur in nature, seeing as scar tissue has no hair follicles in it.

If hair follicles were induced to grow where a wound was healing, the resulting skin was found to be indistinguishable from pre-existing skin.

Let's hope that some of that knowledge will lead to treatments in the future that can help wounds heal without scarring - because seriously, the pain is bad enough. »

The number of people using Facebook daily in North America dropped for the first time

Authored by cnbc.com

The number of people using Facebook daily in North America dropped for the first time 11:19 AM ET Thu, 1 Feb 2018 | 00:48.

The number of people in the U.S. and Canada who check Facebook every day dropped between the third and fourth quarter of 2017, the first such quarterly drop in company history.

Facebook usage in North America has been largely flat for the last several years, leaving international growth to pick up the slack. »

Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago. 1. Ice Cores and Glaciers

Authored by journals.uchicago.edu

Evidence suggests that the YDB cosmic impact triggered an “impact winter” and the subsequent Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural shifts and population declines.

The YD onset also exhibits increased dust concentrations, synchronous with the onset of a remarkably high peak in ammonium, a biomass-burning aerosol.

The ice record is consistent with YDB impact theory that extensive impact-related biomass burning triggered the abrupt onset of an impact winter, which led, through climatic feedbacks, to the anomalous YD climate episode. »

TIL Canada has the "Apology Act", whereby apologising to someone after an incident can't be used in court to establish guilt or liability of the person apologising.

Authored by bclaws.ca

"court" includes a tribunal, an arbitrator and any other person who is acting in a judicial or quasi-judicial capacity.

(a) does not constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability by the person in connection with that matter,.

(d) must not be taken into account in any determination of fault or liability in connection with that matter. »