Plaques

Dr. Carl Sagan helped design the plaques carried by both Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. These plaques, bearing the images of a man and a woman as well as a diagram showing Earth's location in the Galaxy, may one day be found by an extraterrestrial civilization.

The early stage gum disease, gingivitis, occurs when oral bacteria forms a biofilm or plaques on teeth. This dental plaque can then harden into tartar which then must be scraped away by dentists.

Researchers then showed that a simple sugar, called trehalose, stimulated macrophages in the same way. In experiments with mice prone to atherosclerotic plaques, injection of the sugar molecule decreased plaque size by 30 percent.