Public Health Conference inspires awareness

May 3, 2012 According to researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, injuries sustained in trauma remain the leading cause of death or disability among young people worldwide. In fact, more than 50 million people per year are injured in the United States and approximately 169,000 of them die from trauma.

The U.S. Army announced that the Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) has received an award, worth up to $90 million dollars, to be the lead institution in a consortium of universities undertaking research that will potentially contribute to the development of new armor for the U.

Walking by Levering Hall on Friday, April 27, you might have been infected with the desire to stop at the 3rd Annual Undergraduate Conference in Public Health: Making Public Health Contagious. Held throughout the day, the conference brought together student, alumni and professional voices to shed light on the newest innovations in public health at Hopkins and beyond.

A recent Hopkins study has found that when treating lower back and leg pain, standard steroid injections tend to outperform the emerging treatment using anti-inflammatory pain medicine injections. Lower back pain contributes a significant portion annually — close to $100 million — to health care costs in the United States.

Jason Trageser, the newest faculty addition to Hopkins’ prestigious Neuroscience Program, has a lot on his plate. As a prolific researcher, neuroscience lab co-instructor, and Hopkins’ one and only neuroeconomics professor, Trageser has a lot to say about Hopkins, neuroeconomics, and his passion for research.

According to researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, injuries sustained in trauma remain the leading cause of death or disability among young people worldwide. In fact, more than 50 million people per year are injured in the United States and approximately 169,000 of them die from trauma.

In the May 2012 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Hopkins researchers led by Stephen Juraschek from the School of Medicine found another benefit of vitamin C that gives the little molecule an even better name. Vitamin C is an organic compound derived from glucose and is an essential nutrient for almost all animals.

In a culture dominated by graduate level research, undergraduate Tiras Lin has been making a name for himself at Hopkins. Lin, who is currently a junior, began doing research his freshman year with Rajat Mittal of Mechanical Engineering. “Essentially,” Lin said, “the motivation for our research is to start to understand what we can learn from the dynamics of insect flight.

Recently, a study conducted by the Hopkins Children’s Center and the All Children’s Hospital in Florida found that parents misunderstand the risk factors involved with the onset of early-childhood obesity. The study showed that though parents appreciate the importance of good nutrition and dieting, they greatly underestimate the value of physical activity.

Originally published on April 19th   In the world of the dung beetle, eating and rolling in poop is fun. Dung beetles are classified according to how they interact with manure: rollers mold dung into balls for eating or brooding purposes, tunnelers bury their poop and dwellers make a home out of excrement.

Originally published on April 19th   The unprecedented disappearance of honeybees has been big news for the last six years. Since bees are crucial pollinators for agriculture, their unexpected absence, now known as colony collapse disorder, is felt everywhere, from apple orchards to buckwheat farms.

Originally published on April 19th Imagine a three-year-old with toys. Now picture a seven-year-old in class. Whether it’s the senseless handling of toys or the inability to stay quiet, there is no doubt that there are stereotypical behaviors people attribute to others.

Originally published on April 19th As an increasing number of women choose to delay motherhood until a more advanced age, the perception that assisted reproductive technologies will always be successful has also become more popular. Researchers at Yale University have studied this issue, concluding that education about these technologies as well as about actions that can be taken earlier on in a woman’s life is crucial in the modern medical world.

Originally published on April 19th   A study published in the journal PLoS Pathogens by Scott G. Kitchen, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute, shows that engineered stems were able to successfully identify and attack HIV infected cells in a humanized rodent model.

Originally published on April 19th In trying to improve treatment options, developers of cancer therapies encounter hurdles such as making drugs highly specific and also delivering them to cancer cells. A new delivery method of a highly specific anti-cancer drug appears to have overcome some of these challenges in new work on cancer cell lines.

Originally published on April 19th Scientists at the University of Utah and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory believe they have discovered the cause of massive black holes that exist at the center of many galaxies. There have been numerous theories concerning how these black holes attain their huge masses.

Originally published on April 19th Pancreatic cancer is currently the fourth most common fatal cancer in the world, and unfortunately it often has a poor prognosis as well. In fact, it is diagnosed by doctors in only 14 percent of high-risk individuals under the age of 50.

Originally published on April 5th   MultiDrug-Resistant Organisms (MDROs) are a medical nightmare for drug companies, physicians and patients alike. However, recent research has shown that even though these organisms have the best armor, they are not always the most successful at protecting themselves from harm.

Originally published on April 5th   Ever since the discovery of “Lucy,” the partial skeleton of the potential human ancestral species Australopithecus afarensis found in Ethiopia, researchers have been trying to map out the evolutionary progress to the modern humans species, Homo sapien.

Originally published on April 5th Jai Madhock and his colleagues at the Hopkins School of Medicine have taken the first step in determining the effects of decreasing the core body temperature, or hypothermia, on mammalian brains. This type of hypothermia has previously been shown to protect brain cells from additional damage after head trauma, heart attacks, stroke and spinal cord injury.

Originally published on April 5th One day, technology may allow human beings to possess some of the same abilities as Superman. Ramesh Raskar and Andreas Velten, researchers from MIT, have come up with technology that allows people to be able to see around corners without using their eyes.

Originally published on April 5th Without the aid of vaccines, humans would still have an extremely high risk of dying from diseases such as smallpox or diphtheria. When Edward Jenner created the world’s first vaccine, however, he probably did not realize that manufacturing synthetic chemicals would negatively affect his vaccines.

Originally published on April 5th For years, scientists have speculated about the process that moves water from the Earth’s crust to its interior at the site of subduction zones in the deep ocean. Currently, a project led by seismologist Daniel Lizarralde, associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Doug Wiens, an Earth and Planetary Sciences professor at Washington University in St.

Originally published on April 5th Researchers recently discovered a group of quasars acting as “gravitational lenses.” Using the Hubble Space telescope, three such quasars were found, allowing for imaging of galaxies and measurements associated with the quasars.

Originally published on March 29th   I don’t know if flies can get friendzoned, but new research suggests that Drosophila is not so different from most of us when it comes to dealing with losses in the dating arena. According to the study, while newly-mated flies prefer to drown in each other’s love, chronically sex-deprived flies drown their sorrows by getting drunk.

Originally published on March 29th   When you think of vaccines, you might remember that time you got a flu shot at HelWell. But what many people don’t know is that doctors are currently treating AIDS patients using vaccines that target the HIV virus.

Originally published on March 29th   When making complex decisions, it is generally impractical to consider every existing choice that can be made. Instead, the careful pruning of paths can be effective in highlighting the best choices. Although this “pruning algorithm” in humans is largely unknown, a new study demonstrated the adoption of a very simple strategy people use subconsciously to rule out options.

Originally published on March 29th   The explosion of Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010 led to one of the largest oil spills in the history of petroleum industry. It took approximately three months to cap the leak, which released about 4.9 million barrels of oil.

Originally published on March 29th   Scientists have had trouble keeping track of the mechanism by which some substances undergo extremely fast phase changes. A particularly troubling material was vanadium dioxide, which undergoes the fastest known phase change.

Originally published on March 29th Cancer is perhaps the one disease that strikes the most fear in individuals when they hear about it. An incurable growth that can often lead to death is nothing to laugh about and the fact that, even with modern technology, researchers have yet to find a solution to the issue, makes the disease seem that much more intimidating.

Originally published on March 29th Researchers at Hopkins have been moving forward in the area of mobilized health care. BurnMed is the newest mobile app designed by Hopkins as part of its growing effort to make medical treatments easier to understand, faster to perform and more accessible.

My turtle-crazy roommate and Parry Gripp’s educational video (dude, that’s a tortoise!) about how to differentiate between a turtle and tortoise first introduced me to the world of these wonderful reptiles. Turtles are some of the most bada** animals to grace this earth — they outlasted the dinosaurs, braved the mosasaur-infested prehistoric seas and have even made it into fiction, with bubbly characters like Squirtle from Pokemon and Crush from Finding Nemo.

]New research from Hopkins has found that many cases of epilepsy are misdiagnosed due to similar symptoms from an entirely different disease. According to a paper published in the journal Seizure, these patients are instead suffering from what senior investigator Jason Brandt calls psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, or PNES, resulting from emotional trauma because of the inability to handle stress in an appropriate manner.

A new technique involving nanoparticles has exciting potential benefits for brain cancer patients. According to a recent study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the tiny particles can be imaged in three ways to facilitate and guide the removal of brain tumors from mice.

The application of magnets to generate electricity may soon provide patients who need surgically-implanted electronic devices with better-working options. Researchers led by Holger Lausch at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems (IKTS) in Hermsdorf, Germany, have designed and patented a wireless system to transmit power from a transmitter to a generator.

Last weekend, teams from around the world converged at Wichita, Kansas for the annual Design, Build, Fly competition organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. After its successful initiation last year, the Hopkins team returned with high hopes and a greatly expanded roster.

Researchers from Hopkins and the University of Maryland have uncovered the source behind the amazing stability of RNA transcripts that regulate the expression of genes in cells. Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, is one of the three macromolecules essential for the expression of genes.

The future of the world’s coral reefs may not be as grim as we think. A recent study conducted by researchers at the James Cook University in Australia took a look at the composition of various corals in the Great Barrier Reef and determined that the flexibility across species may allow corals to adapt to future changes in the ocean due to climate change.

Hopkins researchers have recently published a study confirming their hypothesis that levels of blood loss vary in children undergoing corrective spine surgery based on the type of underlying spine deformity condition. The results of this study are helpful to pediatric surgeons and open up more opportunities for spine surgery research.

Recent work done by a group of Hopkins researchers has shed new light on the factors contributing to the development of schizophrenia in individuals. The findings, published in Cell, highlight the connections between schizophrenia and the combination of both genetic and environmental risk factors that can increase the chances of developing this disorder.

I nvasive species are a pain in the gluteus maximus, and the Burmese pythons are no exception. Like poor and desperate college students, these voracious snakes will do almost anything for food. With this insatiable appetite, they have decimated most of the mammal populations in the Florida Everglades and now have their eyes on the birds.

When hearing that the isotopic ratio for uranium has been measured to a more accurate value of 137.818, from a previous value of 137.88, one might not think it is such a big deal. However, a recent study indicates that this small bit of change calls for an age reduction of understood geological processes for up to 700,000 years.

As volatile as the weather is on Earth, weather on the Sun can be just as extraordinary. Recently, scientists observed massive magnetic vortices on the surface of the sun, which can lead to a type of solar tornado. The structures were observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and studied by Xing Li of Aberystwyth University in Wales.

The issue with performing angioplasty, a technique used to widen blood vessels, in hospitals without proper surgical units has long been a controversial topic. Many cardiologists claim that the lack of emergency care can lead to increased adverse events.

When a patient suffering from an acute lung injury enters the intensive care unit, the intensity of the injury is not the only factor that may affect their mortality. Researchers at Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered that using the optimal breath size and pressure settings on mechanical ventilators is essential to the long-term health of these patients.

Have you ever had a single scent, melody or picture transport you to a distant memory? MIT scientists have done something similar but with neurons as the trigger. In other words, they have been investigating whether a few neurons can bring to mind an entire memory.

For the last 40 years, heart transplantation has been the golden standard therapy for patients who suffer from end stage heart failure, a condition in which the heart is unable to pump the blood to the rest of the body sufficiently. A clinical study conducted by the Hopkins Division of Cardiac Surgery sets itself apart from other studies done on heart transplantation, as it observed long-term factors that impacted survival rates of patients.

Miniature horses are always a favorite at petting zoos, and they may be an evolutionary favorite as well. New research shows that 56 million years ago, early horses shrank from about 12 pounds to 8.5 pounds during a period of intense global warming. This dwarfing trend supports other evidence that climate change can affect mammalian body size and may have implications for modern animals given current warming.

The auditory system connects us to the outside world through sounds. Ranging from the musical tone of an orchestra performance to the annoying tapping noises your neighbor won’t stop making in class, every sound is translated into the complex language neurons used to communicate.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found promising evidence that suggests a new biomarker for predicting an infant’s chances of developing autism. The symptom for what may potentially develop into autism later in an infant’s life includes the white matter fiber tract organization in its brain.

Most Americans already know that their energy use results in pollution, but they  may not know the extent of the pollution. A recent National Oceanic & Atmospheric Organization (NOAA) study shows that not even scientists are fully aware of the amount of pollution released from natural gas wells in Colorado.

It is well-known that birds engage in a vocal arms race with humans. To avoid being drowned out by the constant drone of traffic and industrial noise, songbirds have been increasingly pressured to make themselves heard in the urban jungle. Some birds, such as the great tit, can easily rise to the challenge ­— this adaptable species has been shown to sing faster and at higher pitches in urban environments.

New light, or rather, new sound, has been shed on the mystery of Stonehenge, England’s iconic prehistoric monument. At the 2012 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Steven Waller, an independent scholar, presented a study on the archaeoacoustics of the ancient site.

Researchers utilize the Braille system as a model for revolutionized typing on smartphones

Have you ever wanted to be more surreptitious about texting during class? Georgia Tech may have provided a solution for this problem. Researchers there recently created a prototype for an app that utilizes the Braille system so that users don’t have to look at the screen while texting.

Quick, what does the everyday fruit fly have in common with a week-weary Hopkins student on a Saturday night? It might seem odd, but both are probably looking for a tasty drink of alcohol for a bit of a boost. As much as this sounds like a poorly constructed joke, researchers from Emory University’s Department of Biology actually looked into the role that alcohol consumption plays in protecting Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, from one of its natural enemies, the endoparasitoid wasp.

Given the copious amount of sensory stimuli in our surroundings, it is not an easy feat to focus on any one particular piece of information. Take our visual system, for example: how is it possible to locate your friend in a busy lecture hall? Neuroscientists at the Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, identified the connections between different brain regions used to pay attention to selective visual stimuli.

The origin of zebra stripes has long been a subject of creation myths and scientific debate. From an evolutionary perspective, the first answer that probably comes to mind is camouflage. The zebra’s bold patterns are a mixed blessing: when stationary, the contrasting black and white stripes offer little protection from the prying eyes of lions.

Scientists literally watch as a single-celled microorganism population evolves into two distinct spe

Evolutionary biologists may as well ditch their books and race to Russia, where they can now observe the live-action speciation of a single-celled microbe population known as Sulfolobus islandicus. Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new species form, and in this case, it means that Sulfolobus islandicus is on its way to becoming two distinct, new species.

Yale scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that is implicated in maternally inherited deafness, a discovery that was published in Cell. Not only has this study shed light to the molecular interactions in the pathway, but it also has provided a solution for elucidating tissue specificity of human mitochondrial-based disorders.

According to a new study, asteroids could be falling into the supermassive black hole in the middle of our Milky Way. The study is significant because the findings suggest that a huge number of asteroids must be present around the black hole. NASA’s Chandra spacecraft has been detecting X-ray flares coming from Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short) about once a day for several years.

Recent research has reignited interest in the ketogenic diet, a nutritional course of treatment first used in the 1920s, to control the symptoms of epilepsy in children. In 1921, because of the lack of anticonvulsants available for children with juvenile refractory epilepsy, the ketogenic diet was created at the Mayo Clinic to treat the seizures characteristic of this disease.

Soon, people may be able to carry their therapists around in their pocket in the form of a smartphone. Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine want to use technology to assist people with mental health problems by creating an app that will recognize when people are depressed and try to help them by sending them reminders to call or see friends.

The neonatal mortality rate in the United States is significantly lower than in many countries across the globe. Based on data from 2009 collected by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, an average of 4.19 infants out of every 1000 dies before becoming 28 days old in our country (this represents 0.

Forget about the joys of pot: driving within three hours after smoking marijuana increases your likelihood of causing a severe car crash. Thanks to observational studies done by researchers in Canada, the world’s most popular illegal substance could join sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption as a widely-acknowledged contributor to driver impairment.

Exploding batteries are not what you want to hear about when there is a cellphone in every pocket and bag. So a team of researchers has developed a diagnostic method for figuring out why batteries fail. Instead of cutting into the batteries and potentially destroying evidence in the process, the new technique uses an MRI to give a noninvasive picture of what’s going on.

Ever look at a map and wonder what it would be like if South America and Africa still fit together like puzzle pieces in one massive supercontinent? Geologists had previously thought that the next supercontinent would either form in the same place as the prior one, Pangaea, or on the complete opposite side of the world.

Electronic devices in the past few decades have increasingly been focused on portability and ease of use.  Look at the Apple iPod: the earliest iPod offered the ability to store thousands of songs on a pocket-sized device.  Since then, the basic premise of a small music player has persisted, with features such as touch-screen and voice control, giving the user a better experience.

Depicting the interactions of the greater cosmic world, a computer-generated illustration by a Hopkins researcher has won the National Science Foundation’s 2011 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge in the “Informational Posters and Graphics” category.

Schizophrenia severs one’s connection to reality by inhibiting perception of real voices, leaving the patient at the mercy of his or her inner voice. A research team at the University of Borgen recently elucidated the neural basis of these auditory hallucinations, using their findings to develop an electronic application that may help patients to better cope with schizophrenia’s symptoms.

For the 20 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds who wear contact lenses, high-tech applications will soon be available in a very small form. The Washington-based company Innovega focuses on connecting eyewear with digital media and is currently developing full-color megapixel displays that can be viewed using contact lenses.

Amidst the slow crawl of life in Antarctica, from the strut of the Emperor Penguin to the waddle of the Weddell Seal out of water, there is a flurry of activity by scientists from Russia’s Artic and Antarctic Research Institute, as they attempt to reach an ice-buried lake which sits two miles beneath the surface.

According to the study published in the journal Science, neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found a promising drug that reversed the cognitive, social and olfactory deficits and improved the neuronal circuit function in mice caused by the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

For every cell in our body, allocation of proper energy supply is very important. Lack of it could lead to fatal outcomes, such as death or cancer. Adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase, also known as AMPK, plays a critical role in maintaining cellular energy homeostasis.

Ever since its discovery in 1905, the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex has attained a celebrity status that is unique among dinosaurs. While larger and more ruthless dinosaurs have since been discovered, T. rex and his famished companions, the Allosaurus and Velociraptor, continue to secure leading roles in films such as Jurassic Park, Night of the Museum and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

The technology placed into giving football fans sky-cam views of their favorite NFL teams could one day offer another method by which cargo could be transported across the globe. Currently, ships make about 500 million trips back-and-forth across the seas moving all forms of trade between nations, landing in major port cities that have the fortune of being able to accommodate the hundreds of ships coming and going each day.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have applied a process called "squeezing" to one of the smallest building blocks of matter in an attempt to fully understand the nature of atoms. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a theory in quantum mechanics that says that the measurements of the position and the momentum of an object cannot be simultaneously known within the same degree of certainty.

If all goes well, a car-sized probe weighing in at a little over 1300 pounds is set to make an intimate exploration of the Sun's outer atmosphere by 2018. Scientists at the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have gotten the green light from NASA to move onto the next phase in designing the Solar Probe Plus.

A study by UCLA researchers was published on the online edition of Neurotherapeutics that reported the development of a novel drug that could break down harmful protein groups in Parkinson's disease. Known as the "molecular tweezer," the compound was able to degrade protein aggregates implicated in Parkinson's without interfering with brain activity in zebrafish.

With the coming of March, it seems safe to say that this year's winter is officially over. However, this statement leaves many wondering why most of North America didn't have to pull out the heavy jackets and electric snow plowers, which typically make their appearance at least once per year.

Ron Weasley's high-pitched squeals demonstrate all too well how the dire fear of spiders can manifest itself. Recent psychological research demonstrates that individuals who fear spiders tend to overestimate the size of these creatures and perceive them as physically larger than their actual size.

Almost a decade has passed since a new blood group protein has been identified, but an international team of researchers has recently discovered two transport proteins on red blood cells. Labeled as ABCB6 and ABCG2, they are responsible for the rare Langereis and Junior blood types, respectively, and bring the total number of identified blood type proteins to 32.

Everyone knows the danger of texting or talking on a cell phone while driving, but a new study has found that using a cell phone while walking may hold hidden dangers as well. A study done at Stony Brook University shows that cell phone usage in combination with walking interferes with memory recall.

Chronic wound infections are often difficult to prevent and a hassle to treat. Fortunately, Sarah Maddocks and her colleagues from Cardiff Metropolitan University recently published a study that suggests the effectiveness of manuka honey in both treating bacterial infections and preventing them in the first place.

Alexander Fleming discovered the lysozyme, which is an enzyme that is abundant in tears, saliva, human milk and mucus, back in 1923. The lysozyme defends us against bacterial attacks by catalyzing the hydrolysis of the glycosidic bonds in the polysaccharide found in bacterial cell walls.

A family of proteins related to prions may play a critical role in the formation of memories, according to research from the Stowers Institute for Medicine. This family of proteins, called cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding proteins (CPEBs), forms chains between neurons in the brain that are critical for long-term memories.

When faced with infertility, many women adopt, but some continue to try anything to get pregnant. Fertility clinics have cropped up all over the nation, aiding women in their attempts to become pregnant by offering counseling and several tests and treatment options, including in vitro fertilization.

Photosynthesis incorporated into solar energy system Researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a solar collection system that mixes organic system with inorganic components. The results of the collaboration, led by Barry Bruce of UT, were published in Nature: Scientific Reports.

Researchers at the Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Michigan Health System recently discovered the first major gene mutation associated with prostate cancer. This rare and hereditary mutation, they found, is connected to a notably higher risk of the disease.

Most of the battery-powered electronics you use, as well as battery packs in electric-powered and hybrid vehicles, rely on lithium-ion batteries. They are popular for their high energy density, resulting in growing interest from other industries. However, cases of battery fires have been responsible for recalls of many devices in recent years, raising safety concerns among consumers and manufacturers.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Nebraska offers evidence of differences between conservatives and liberals that extend beyond political beliefs. The researchers found that conservatives more often focus on negative stimuli in comparison to liberals when it comes to observing their environments.

A group of five Bottlenose dolphins at the Planète Sauvage aquarium in Port-Saint-Père, France, was found to mimic whale sounds at night. These dolphins were exposed to whale songs through the soundtrack from their daily shows, which included bird cries and other marine sounds.

Petroleum from recently discovered sources is just barely making up for the dirth left by old and depleted supplies, according to a report in Nature. "There is less fossil-fuel production available to us than many people believe," the researchers wrote.

The scientific community was significantly shaken this past December when, for the very first time in history, the US government requested that research journals withhold details of a study from the public. The study concerns a highly pathogenic avian influenza strain known as H5N1, whose transmissibility features have been genetically altered by a team of Dutch scientists, leaving the virus highly contagious and a threat to global security.

Airborne pollution can come in many forms, but one of the most dangerous ones is secondhand smoke. While many individuals can avoid significant exposure, employees of bars and restaurants that do not have bans on smoking are forced to work in a potentially hazardous environment.

A team of ecologists recently captured the vocalizations of deep-sea fish in a recording that includes familiar sounds, such as dolphin and humpback whale calls. These findings support long-standing hypotheses about fish communication in the under-explored mesopelagic zone.

What makes a tree a ‘miracle tree'? The plant known as Moringa oleifera, or drumstick tree (due to the shape of its seedpods), has been dubbed miraculous by some who are optimistic about its ability to increase the availability of clean water to areas susceptible to drought and contamination.

As the body develops over time, nearly all of the heart's regeneration mechanisms become inactive. Consequently, after a heart attack, dead cardiac cells do not redevelop. Instead, dead cardiac muscle tissue is replaced by inactive scar tissue, which permanently weakens the functionality of the heart and often damages quality of life.

The Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine recently published a study on pluripotency in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. The study engages the possibility of repudiating the popularly conceived notion that pluripotency is necessary to achieve transformation from a general cell type into a specific one.