Last month the New Horizons spacecraft from NASA woke from hibernation about 135 million miles away from its destination — the dwarf planet Pluto.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) spark numerous debates regarding human safety and the efficient use of resources. Some advocate GMOs as a way through which humans can battle hunger and disease. The flood of cheap and beautiful genetically modified crops in supermarkets and the success of genetically modified mosquitoes in wiping out their disease-carrying counterparts seem to support this view. However, opponents of GMOs cite the potential dangers to human health if genetically modified foods are consumed and the possibility of mutations in genetically modified organisms. Recently a research team at Harvard has discovered a method of biocontainment, built-in mechanisms that prevent GMOs from surviving in unintended places.
The body’s fight or flight response is all too familiar to many of us, even if we’ve never been confronted with a life or death situation before. As college students, we may have to give a presentation in front of a large class, drink several cups of coffee in order to finish an essay or even just ask our romantic interest out on a date — situations which can induce a variety of responses from the human cardiovascular system. These symptoms include stomach “butterflies” and an accelerated heart rate. However, some people may experience these symptoms without any sort of external stimulus. Medical and psychological conditions, such as heart disease and schizophrenia, can cause the heart to race uncontrollably and unpredictably, and in some cases it can be deadly.
IPads are really fun to use, with functionality ranging from watching Netflix to playing Angry Birds. Even beyond evening entertainment, light-emitting electronic devices are entering the realm of education through waves of e-books and applications that promote learning, and their utility explains their ubiquity in our lives. However, have we really fully considered the implication of such technologies beyond their use in work and play? This question has been raised many times before. Some say that technologies make us lazier and more dependent on electronics. Others say they take away from interpersonal relationships as people glue their eyes to the small screen of their mobile phones, fingers rapidly firing away text messages.
Nisu Patel, a 19-year-old junior, has spent his time outside class working in a research lab on Homewood Campus. He tells us how he thinks computational sciences are the key to understanding and treating diseases in the future.
Organ donation is typically a difficult process: Recipients must wait on organ donation waiting lists for indefinite periods of time, and the families of donors are forced to make an extremely hard decision during a time already marred by painful and recent loss.
According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, an average of 18 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant. Instead of relying solely on people to donate organs to recipients, imagine if scientists could construct the necessary organs using readily available materials. Fortunately, this science fiction fantasy may soon become a viable reality for patients who require heart transplants.
Researchers from Oxitec, a British biotechnology company, have developed genetically-altered mosquitoes in an effort to quell mosquito populations and prevent the spread of diseases. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering releasing these genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.
The structure and functions of the brain are highly complex, and in turn, the way it reacts to injury and insults can be perplexing. In fact, it is arguably the most complex and least understood structure in nature. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have recently published some interesting and startling findings on the pathological effects observed in the brains of soldiers exposed to improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Like many college students, freshman Maggie Koo always gets her flu shot, and this year was no exception.
The performance of daily activities such as grocery shopping, daily household cleaning and meal preparation could be affected by breathing problems during sleep. A new study suggests that older women with sleep apnea are at a high risk for declining ability to perform such activities.
With recent advances in nanotechnology, computers and microchips have gotten exponentially smaller and more powerful over the past few decades. In fact, this phenomenon is so well known that it’s been given a name: Moore’s Law, after the scientist who first described it. Many may be doubtful that this trend will continue forever, due to the physical limits of technological materials, but as it turns out, our bodies already contain tiny, natural computing agents — the bacteria Escherichia coli. Recently, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a way to store information in this common bacterium.
For a very long time, the idea that the adult mammalian brain could make new neurons was regarded as a ludicrous idea. The then-pervading dogma in the field posited that we have as many neurons in the brain as we are born with.
Individuals faced with the prospect of choosing a new doctor consider a variety of factors when making their decision. Experience, recommendations from friends and family, specialized training, location, convenience and quality of medical education are just a few of the factors that may run through patients’ minds after receiving a diagnosis. Given that choosing a physician and a treatment are among the most important choices that cancer patients will make, researchers recently looked into how patients make these decisions.
This past decade has seen significant advancements in the efficacy of medical procedures, and research on the genetics of type 2 diabetes is one area that has greatly expanded in recent years. As of now, type 2 diabetes is known to be influenced by more than 50 genetic variants, some of which have been studied for their effect on responses to treatment.
Parents of premature infants are already concerned about their baby’s health, and they may now have another worry. Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers discovered that plastics used to treat premature babies, or preemies, contain levels of a chemical called DEHP up to 160,000 times the safe amount. The finding means doctors might need to find alternative products to save our littlest patients.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Depression has long been a misunderstood disorder. Even its classification remains tenuous: It has been characterized as a disease, an emotional disorder and a dysfunction of the brain, among many other labels. And the affliction itself continues to resist understanding.
Nov. 6 is definitely a date that will go down in our history books. Ten years of speculations and calculations finally became reality when Rosetta successfully landed its probe, Philae, onto the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Warm fuzzy feelings are not the only things being shared when you kiss someone — a study published in science journal Microbiome reveals that a single, 10-second kiss can transfer as many as 80 million bacteria. The study also discovered that couples who kiss each other more than nine times a day share similar communities of oral bacteria.
