SciMed
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Geneva, Switzerland. A major humanitarian organization has performed close to 20,000 surgical procedures in resource-limited settings between 2001 and 2008 with an operative death rate of only 0.2 percent.
Of the 230 million major surgical procedures performed worldwide each year, an unknown number are performed in countries with marginal incomes, while an estimated 4 percent or less are done in poor-income countries. New findings suggests that surgical care can be provided safely in these ... |
08-30-10
Word count: 1042
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Baltimore, MD, USA. Scientists have produced the very first epigenetic landscape map for tissue differentiation, based on the occurrence of a common chemical change called methylation, often is associated with turning off genes. It takes place while stem cells decide their fates and progress from precursor to progeny, presenting an important key to undersanding cellular development..
The researchers, from Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Harvard, focused on this epigenetic mark because it is foun... |
08-27-10
Word count: 1847
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Houston, TX, USA. The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to mitochondrial Eve — the maternal ancestor of all living humans — confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago.
The study was based on a side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models that each aim to determine when Eve lived using a very different set of assumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and spread across Earth. The research was conducted by investigators from Rice U... |
08-26-10
Word count: 1289
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Washington, DC, USA. In the past decade, prescription drug abuse has soared to new levels. A recent White House study found a 400 percent increase in abuse from 1998 to 2008. Other experts cite the doubling of prescription drug-related emergency room visits from 2004 to 2008.
And the problem continues to escalate nationally, despite prescription drug monitoring programs already running in 33 states. Meanwhile, nine other states have passed legislation to establish such programs, but because ... |
08-25-10
Word count: 1046
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Baltimore, MD, USA. Researchers scanned the human genome and expanded the catalog of reasons people have such a variety of physical traits and disease risks.
A team from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine identified a near complete catalog of the DNA segments that copy themselves, move around in, and insert themselves throughout our genome. The insertion locations of these movable segments — called transposons — in each individual's genome helps determine why some are short o... |
08-16-10
Word count: 1291
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Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK. A consortium of universities and robotic companies has developed robots that form attachments, interact and express emotion through bodily expression as they interact with their human caregivers. The Feelix Growing project developed the robots modelled on the early attachment process that human and chimpanzee infants undergo when they develop a preference for a primary caregiver.
The robots learned to interact with and respond to humans using the same types of exp... |
08-16-10
Word count: 1083
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San Diego, CA, USA. Women and girls in the United States consider and engage in suicidal behavior more often than men and boys, but die of suicide at lower rate — a gender paradox enabled by U.S. cultural norms of gender and suicidal behavior, according to a psychologist who spoke at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
"Everywhere, suicidal behavior is culturally scripted," said Silvia S. Canetto, PhD, of Colorado State University, speaking at a ... |
08-13-10
Word count: 967
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Toronto, ON, Canada. Aggression. Over-eating. Inability to focus. Difficulty making rational decisions. New research shows prejudice has a lasting negative impact on those who experience it.
"Past studies have shown that people perform poorly in situations where they feel they are being stereotyped," says Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Inzlicht at the University of Toronto Scarborough. "What we wanted to do was look at what happens afterwards. Are there lingering eff... |
08-12-10
Word count: 879
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Los Angeles, CA, USA. In one of the first efforts of its kind, UCLA researchers have taken mammalian genome maps, including human maps, one step further by showing not just the sequence (or order) in which genes fall in the genome but which genes actually interact.
Mammals, including humans, have roughly 20,000 different genes. Genes are essential to the orderly development of an organism from pre-conception through birth. They hold instructions to create proteins that determine not only phys... |
08-11-10
Word count: 1247
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Ithaca, NY, USA. Emotions, particularly those provoked by negative events, can cause distorted, inaccurate memories, but less often in children than in adults, according to new research that contradicts prevailing legal and psychological thinking.
Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna at Cornell University previously demonstrated that adults attach far more meaning to events than children do. But leading memory theories embraced by the legal system claim that adults remember negative events bett... |
08-10-10
Word count: 1048
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Chicago, IL, USA. Scientists and fertility doctors have tried for a long time to understand what makes a good egg that will produce a healthy embryo. It is a critical question for fertility doctors deciding which eggs when isolated from a woman will produce the best embryos and, ultimately, babies.
The process of answering this question has reaped unexpected rewards as it entails a detailed examination of both eggs and sperm and further understand how their variations can affect healthy human... |
08-10-10
Word count: 1068
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Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Within 24 hours of culturing adult human stem cells on a new type of matrix, researchers were able to make predictions about how the cells would differentiate, or what type of tissue they would become.
Differentiation is the process of stem cells morphing into other types of cells. Understanding it is key to developing future stem cell-based regenerative therapies.
The results from work led by University of Michigan researchers are published in the journal Nature Methods.... |
08-09-10
Word count: 1044
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Boston, MA, USA. Catherine E. Snow says that with a little guidance, educators can help students learn to read and understand the complex language of science texts. In a new article that appears in the journal Science, she makes the case that students need to be taught academic language in order to learn science and other subjects.
In addition to having its own specialized vocabulary, academic language is more concise, using complex grammatical structures to express complicated ideas in as fe... |
08-09-10
Word count: 808
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Buffalo, NY, USA. Scientists have developed a biophotonic imaging approach capable of monitoring in real-time the transformations that cellular macromolecules undergo during programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Between 50-70 billion cells die each day in an average human adult (approx. 20-30 billion cells for an average child between 8-14). Apoptosis transforms cellular structures in an orderly without harm. Essential to normal development, healthy immune system function, and disease prevention... |
08-07-10
Word count: 1141
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Cambridge, UK. Over thirty-two years ago, the world's first baby was born after in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
However, the work that led to the birth of Louise Brown on 25 July 1978 had to be privately funded after the UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) decided in 1971 against providing the Cambridge physiologist Robert Edwards and the Oldham gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe with long-term financial support.
A paper published in the journal Human Reproduction reveals (for the first time) the r... |
08-02-10
Word count: 1790
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Chicago, IL, USA. Asian carp have been working their way up the Mississippi River since they were first introduced in the Southeast almost 20 years ago and now could begin to enter the Great Lakes. The carp are just the latest alien species to threaten the lakes, following other creatures such as the zebra and quagga mussel and the sea lamprey, all of which have found homes in the lakes’ waters.
Last month, a commercial angler netted a 19-pound Asian carp on Chicago’s Lake Calumet, part o... |
08-02-10
Word count: 1436
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Princeton, NJ, USA. Over millions of years, retroviruses insert genetic material into the host genome as part of replication, leaving behind bits of their genetic material in vertebrate genomes. A research team now finds that human and other vertebrate genomes also contain many ancient sequences from Ebola/Marburgviruses and Bornaviruses — two deadly virus families.
The very things that kill may also be a source of strength. Discovery of the ancient sequences highlights the importance of th... |
07-31-10
Word count: 1328
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Baltimore, MD, USA. Michelangelo appears to have hidden an image of the brainstem and spinal cord in a depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. These findings by a neurosurgeon and a medical illustrator may explain long controversial and unusual features of one of the frescoes’ figures.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was a master sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. As an accomplished anatomist, he is known to have dissected numerous cadavers starting in his teenage yea... |
07-31-10
Word count: 1052
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Boston, MA, USA. What are the risks and rewards involved if patients are invited to review their own medical records?
Technology has placed vast amounts of medical information literally a mouse click away. Yet what often may be central — a doctor's notes about a patient visit — has traditionally not been part of the discussion. In effect, such records have long been out of bounds.
OpenNotes is a demonstration and evaluation project exploring what happens when the medical record becomes ... |
07-28-10
Word count: 1572
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Norwich, Norfolk, UK. Plant scientists have provided a new solution to an old debate on why species hybrids can be more vigorous than their parents.
Biologists have long pondered the question of why it is that hybrids situated between different species can display two opposing features. Hybrids are are often observed to be more vigorous or productive than their immediate parents (hybrid vigor or hybrid superiority).
However, the same hybrid from the same union can show reduced vigor and fert... |
07-26-10
Word count: 1397
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