Culture
Cells made by fusing a normal human muscle cell with a muscle cell from a person with Duchenne muscular dystrophy --a rare but fatal form of muscular dystrophy -- were able to significantly improve muscle function when implanted into the muscles of a mouse model of the disease. The findings are reported by researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Stem Cell Review and Reports.
March 16, 2018 - About five percent of older adults on Medicare don't have a "personal physician," and this group scores lower on measures of healthcare quality, reports a study in the April issue of Medical Care, published by Wolters Kluwer.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - An online program persuaded teenage mothers across 10 Kentucky counties to seek medical help for depression, highlighting an inexpensive way to increase mental health treatment rates for the vulnerable group, according to a University of Louisville study.
The website included videos of adolescent mothers describing their experiences with postpartum depression and treatment, questions and answers, and local and national resources, including referrals for counseling services and suicide and child-abuse prevention hotlines.
Scientists have developed a transgender-specific questionnaire, which confirms for the first time that gender surgery significantly improves quality of life for the majority of patients. The study shows that 80% of male-to-female patients perceived themselves as women post-surgery. However, the quality of life of transgender individuals is still significantly lower than the general population.
Metastasis is the process whereby a tumour that grows in one organ breaks away from it and travels to another organ and colonises it. In the colonisation process it needs to create new blood vessels through which the cancer cells obtain the nutrients and oxygen they need to grow. This blood vessel formation process is called angiogenesis and is carried out by the endothelial cells.
A novel quantum effect observed in a carbon nanotube film could lead to the development of unique lasers and other optoelectronic devices, according to scientists at Rice University and Tokyo Metropolitan University.
The Rice-Tokyo team reported an advance in the ability to manipulate light at the quantum scale by using single-walled carbon nanotubes as plasmonic quantum confinement fields.
On the seafloor of the shallow coastal regions north of Siberia, microorganisms produce methane when they break down plant remains. If this greenhouse gas finds its way into the water, it can also become trapped in the sea ice that forms in these coastal waters. As a result, the gas can be transported thousands of kilometres across the Arctic Ocean and released in a completely different region months later. This phenomenon is the subject of an article by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, published in the current issue of the online journal Scientific Reports.
WASHINGTON -- While legal abortions in the U.S. are safe, the likelihood that women will receive the type of abortion services that best meet their needs varies considerably depending on where they live, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In addition, the report notes, the vast majority of abortions can be provided safely in office-based settings.
A major international survey has found that around a quarter of patients are not receiving the recommended treatment for cancer of the penis. It also found that these patients had half the survival rate of those who were treated according to guidelines. The study, presented at the EAU conference in Copenhagen, finds that non-adherence is partly due to patients refusing treatment, or doctors being reluctant to treat appropriately or being unfamiliar with the best procedures.
If you think of the human body, microvascular networks comprised of the smallest blood vessels are a central part of the body's function. They facilitate the exchange of essential nutrients and gasses between the blood stream and surrounding tissues, as well as regulate blood flow in individual organs.
University of Houston scientists are helping to develop a technology that could hold the key to unraveling one of the great mysteries of science: what constitutes dark matter? Scientists believe dark matter makes up 85 percent of the matter in the universe, but nobody actually knows what dark matter is.
Hydropower is the world's top provider of renewable energy, producing a whopping 16 per cent of the global energy supply. That's a good thing when it comes to the climate, especially compared to energy from fossil fuels. But hydropower is not without its environmental costs, particularly when it comes to the land that is drowned under reservoirs or gobbled up by roads and power lines built for a hydropower project.
In a new Johns Hopkins study, researchers have added to evidence that Trichomonas vaginalis (TV), the world's most common curable sexually transmitted infection (STI), disproportionately affects the black community.
A report of the findings, published March 15 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, highlights the major racial/ethnic disparities in TV infection in the United States population, calling on the need to improve racial equity in sexual health.
CHICAGO --- It's well known that a morning cup of joe jolts you awake. But scientists have discovered coffee affects your metabolism in dozens of other ways, including your metabolism of steroids and the neurotransmitters typically linked to cannabis, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine.
In a study of coffee consumption, Northwestern scientists were surprised to discover coffee changed many more metabolites in the blood than previously known. Metabolites are chemicals in the blood that change after we eat and drink or for a variety of other reasons.
The impacts of global warming are felt especially in mountainous regions, where the rise in temperatures is above average, affecting both glacierized landscapes and water resources. The repercussions of these changes are manifold and varied, from retreating glaciers to an increase in the frequency and intensity of snow avalanches. A team of researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has employed dendrochronology- the reconstruction of past disasters as recorded in growth series of trees- to disentangle the role of global warming in the triggering avalanches.