Antioxidants offer pain relief in patients with chronic pancreatitis

Tweet

The culture of medicine

Tweet

Waltham, Mass.—Everybody is familiar with the stereotypes of medical education from the student perspective: grueling hours, little recognition, and even less glory. Now a novel Brandeis study published in Academic Medicine this month pulls back the curtain on the dominant environment of academic medicine from the perspective of faculty, the providers of medical education in medical schools.

Fewer deaths with preventive antibiotic use

Tweet

Administering antibiotics as a preventive measure to patients in intensive care units (ICUs) increases their chances of survival. This has emerged from a study involving nearly sixthousand Dutch patients in thirteen hospitals. Researchers at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht have published their findings in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Smokers with stroke in the family 6 times more likely to have stroke too

Tweet

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A new study shows that people who are smokers and have a family history of brain aneurysm appear to be significantly more likely to suffer a stroke from a brain aneurysm themselves. The research is published in the December 31, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology and will appear in the January 6, 2009, print issue of Neurology®.

The type of stroke, called subarachnoid hemorrhage, is one of the bleeding types of stroke and is deadly in about 35 to 40 percent of people.

Lung cancer cells activate inflammation to induce metastasis

Tweet

Trapped water cause of regular tremors under Vancouver Island: UBC researchers

Tweet

University of British Columbia researchers are offering the first compelling evidence to explain regular tremors under Vancouver Island.

Bright lights, not-so-big pupils

Tweet

A team of Johns Hopkins neuroscientists has worked out how some newly discovered light sensors in the eye detect light and communicate with the brain. The report appears online this week in Nature.

These light sensors are a small number of nerve cells in the retina that contain melanopsin molecules. Unlike conventional light-sensing cells in the retina—rods and cones—melanopsin-containing cells are not used for seeing images; instead, they monitor light levels to adjust the body's clock and control constriction of the pupils in the eye, among other functions.

New visualization techniques yield star formation insights

Tweet

New computer visualization technology developed by the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing has helped astrophysicists understand that gravity plays a larger role than previously thought in deep space's vast, star-forming molecular clouds.

The insight, to be reported in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Nature, is being illustrated in the journal's online version through new three-dimensional Portable Document Format (PDF) technology that will allow readers to view the article's key graphics using free PDF software already commonly found on computers.

Scientists make strides toward defining genetic signature of Alzheimer's disease

Tweet

Scientists have new information about the complex genetic signature associated with Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of cognitive decline and dementia in the elderly. The research, published by Cell Press in the January issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, uses a powerful, high-resolution analysis to look for genes associated with this devastating neurodegenerative disorder.

How to enhance nonthermal effects of ultrasound

Tweet