In ancient China crabs were smashed open and thrust into wounds in battles because chitosan is antimicrobial, meaning it heals and kills bacteria.
Chitosan's properties allow it to rapidly clot blood and promote hemostasis (stops bleeding). Chitosan bonds with platelets and red blood cells to form a gel-like clot which seals a bleeding vessel.
DDRC Healthcare, based in Plymouth England, are running a Taster Day on Monday 14th March 2016.
This one day course includes presentations and practical experience, and offers practising doctors an overview of diving and hyperbaric medicine, and diving accident recognition and management.
Topics covered;
Leading personnel from the British Sub Aqua Club and Global Underwater Explorers have confirmed a review has been completed on how to integrate GUE divers into BSAC branches.
The useful discussions centred around reinforcing common training features and identifying any mismatches that might cause inconsistencies on branch dives between GUE and BSAC-trained divers.
Drs. José I Castro, Keiichi Sato, and Ashby B. Bodine, have discovered a new method of embryonic nourishment in sharks. The tiger shark secretes a nutritive liquid which fills the egg sacs where the embryos are growing, permitting higher numbers of offspring to attain a large size. Their paper, entitled "A novel mode of embryonic nutrition in the tiger shark, (Galeocerdo cuvier)," has just been published in the journal Marine Biology Research.
According to a new study by Rachel Cartwright and colleagues from California State University, Channel Islands, baleen whale calves develop oxygen-carrying myoglobin as they mature, with exercise driving the vital component of early development.
Natural products play an invaluable role as a starting point in the drug discovery process, and plants and animals use many interesting biologically active natural products as chemical defence mechanisms against predators. Among marine organisms, many nudibranch gastropods are known to obtain toxins from what they are eating, such as sponges.
These toxins are used as chemical defences and bright colours to warn potential predators away,
New research suggests that major hurricanes, though devastating to humans, have a minimal impact on salt marshes. The Boston University study reveals coastal ecosystems are more at risk of erosion by waves from moderate storms than from full-fledged tropical storms. In eight different marshes studied in the United States, Italy and Australia, extreme storm events accounted for less than one per cent of erosion.
