Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA. It has probably happened to everyone at one time or another. You're driving to a restaurant for the very first time. At a crossroads, you make a turn. You drive for several minutes,...
Bristol, UK. When we are confronted by threatening siruations, the speed at which we react could have life or death implications. In our distant and more primitive past, the application of speed and wit c...
Bloomington, IN, USA. An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain respon...
Edinburgh, UK. New research into the brain puts us one step closer to understanding it's evolutionary origins and basic design principles. The findings suggest that size alone does not dictate brain power. The...
Stockholm, Sweden. Research into the origins and activation of sexual orientation have become more rigorous with the advent of neuro-based tools and quantitative measurements. Such efforts surpass social ...
Vancouver, BC, CAN. Entering the world, we reach out to our environment, with a brain map of essential pathways for exploration. But what really goes on between our brains, eyes and appendages? And h...
Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Sharing our experiences depends on our ability to visualize and describe the contents of our memories. Prediction of future actions by ourselves and others is founded on our here-and-now p...
Rehovot, Israel. Women refer to the smell of testosterone; this is an especially common occurence for HBS females following transition. Men generally catch a female's biological scent of estrogen before tu...
Chicago, IL, USA. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technology primarily used to visualise various structures and their functions in the body. It provides images with much greater contrast between soft tissues and other structures.
This makes it especially useful when studying neurological, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and oncolological processes.
MRI machines have already illuminated many biological processes within the human brain. The patient benefits from the fact that MRIs uses no ionizing radiation. However, the current resolution of clinical units impose limits on the resulting information. It also prevents views of fundamental biologcal processes in real-time.
Safety of human MRI at static fields above the FDA 8T guideline: Sodium imaging at 9.4T does not affect vital signs or cognitive ability. Ian C. Atkinson, Laura Renteria, Holly Burd, Neil H. Pliskin, Keith R. Thulborn. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2007;26(5):1222-1227.
The new MRI may soon offer physicians a real-time view of biological processes in the human brain. "Because the more powerful magnet allows us to visualize different types of molecules, we are seeing activity in the brain along a completely different dimension," said Dr. Keith Thulborn, director of UIC's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research.
Researchers and physicians hope that the new unit will usher in a new era of brain imaging in which they will be able to observe metabolic processes and customize health care.
A view from the other side of the table where patients will be examined using the 9.4 Tesla, the world's most powerful MRI. The magnet has more than three times the field strength of current clinical units. The device is first one large enough to scan the head and visualize the human brain.
Photo:
Roberta Dupuis-Devlin
UIC Photo Services.
Oncologists, for example, may one day be able to tailor radiation therapy based on a brain tumor's real-time response to treatment. Currently, physicians often must wait weeks to see if a tumor is shrinking in response to therapy. With the 9.4T, it will be possible to see if individual cells within the tumor are dying long before the tumor has begun to shrink.
The MRI scanner creates a powerful magnetic field, aligning the magnetization of the body's hydrogen atoms. Radio waves are used to alter the alignment of this magnetization, causing the hydrogen atoms to emit a weak radio signal. The scanner amplifies this signal which then can be manipulated by additional magnetic fields. The end result is an accumulation of sufficient information to reconstruct an image of the body.
Current MRI units visualize water molecules to track biochemical processes. By visualizing the sodium ions involved in those processes instead, the 9.4T permits researchers to directly follow one of the most important energy-consuming processes in the cellular machinery in the brain.
The strength of magnetic resonance scanners has increased from less than 0.5T up to the first 8T in 1998. As human safety data became available, the FDA limits were revised upwards accordingly — to the current level of 8T in 2003.
In this safety trial, 25 healthy volunteers — 12 men and 13 women — were exposed, in random order, to the 9.4T scanner, in which they were exposed to a static magnetic field and to sodium imaging, and to a mock scanner with no magnetic field. An audio recording simulated the sound of a real scanner.
Vital signs and cognitive ability were measured in all volunteers before and after the sodium imaging at 9.4T and the mock scanning. There were no significant changes in heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate or other vital signs when volunteers were exposed to either the magnetic field or the imaging. There were no significant differences in the cognitive testing of volunteers following mock versus real scanning.
The most frequently reported discomfort was lightheadedness or vertigo when being moved into the magnetic field. A few subjects reported a metallic taste, nausea, or a visual effect of seeing sparks. The sensations went away once they were stationary in the magnetic field.
The researchers concluded that exposure to a 9.4T static magnetic field does not present a safety concern. With the FDA-required safety trials completed, UIC researchers will begin to put the 9.4T to use.
"This initial evaluation of safety is only the first step towards realizing metabolic imaging of the human brain," Thulborn said. "We are now moving towards patient studies of sodium imaging and towards safety testing for oxygen and phosphorus imaging in humans.
"These early metabolic signatures of cellular health have great potential to advance detection and monitoring of diseases in the earliest stages, when treatment can produce the greatest benefit."
The study was supported by UIC and the State of Illinois Capital Fund.
Research specialist Ian Atkinson, data analyst Holly Burd, postdoctoral research associate Laura Renteria, and Neil Pliskin, director of the neurobehavior program and neuropsychology service at UIC, made major contributions to the study.
Safety of human MRI at static fields above the FDA 8T guideline: Sodium imaging at 9.4T does not affect vital signs or cognitive ability. Ian C. Atkinson, Laura Renteria, Holly Burd, Neil H. Pliskin, Keith R. Thulborn. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2007;26(5):1222-1227.
Abstract
Purpose. To assess whether exposure to a 9.4T static magnetic field during sodium imaging at 105.92 MHz affects human vital signs and cognitive function.
Materials and Methods. Measurements of human vital signs and cognitive ability made before and after exposure to a 9.4T MR scanner and a mock scanner with no magnetic field are compared using a protocol approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Results. Exposure to a 9.4T static magnetic field during sodium imaging did not result in a statistically significant change in the vital signs or cognitive ability of healthy normal volunteers.
Conclusion. Vital sign and cognitive ability measurements made before and after sodium imaging at 9.4T suggest that performing human MRI at 105.92 MHz in a 9.4T static magnetic field does not pose a health risk.
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When I had problems at work shortly after my operation I sought out legal help to stop the harrassment and the attorney said I was a transsexual, I said I was not...he looked up in surprise,
I then said I am not in transition anymore and was simply a woman with a transsexual history.
The Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP identified all of the genes in the human genome and mapped their individual sequencing. Basic work began in 1990 and reached completion in 2005, sparking continuous refinements and new projects. Though the HGP is finished, data analyses will continue for many years.
A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes and other materials. Genes carry information for making all the proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolizes food or fights infection, and to an extent even how it behaves.
DNA is made up of four similar chemicals (called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G) that are repeated millions or billions of times throughout a genome. The human genome, for example, has 3 billion pairs of bases. The particular order of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs is extremely important.
The order underlies all of life's diversity, even dictating whether an organism is human or another species such as yeast, rice, or fruit fly, all of which have their own genomes and are themselves the focus of genome projects. Because all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, insights gained from nonhuman genomes often lead to new knowledge about human biology.
Video:An introduction to the ongoing Human Genome Project, courtesy of the US National Institutes of Health NIH) (18 May 2007). Time: 00:03:33. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
But now the world's most powerful MRI machine, the 9.4 Tesla (9.4T) at the 
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