The term “mitochondrial donation” might be a foreign concept even to professionals who are at the forefront of the biological fields. It is a newly developed medical technique used to repair the genetically defective mitochondria in a mother’s egg before it can be fertilized with a father’s sperm in a lab setting.
Recently, the outbreak of the Zika virus has been a cause for global concern. It is widely understood that the virus can be spread through mosquitoes, blood, sexual contact and contact between a pregnant mother and her fetus. However, a case in Utah where the virus may have been spread through tears or sweat has puzzled many scientists.
Mindfulness, a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s current internal and external experience, has increasingly gained traction as a psychotherapeutic tool in emotion regulation.
First, you see someone nearby turning their head towards their inner elbow to cough or sneeze. Then you see someone else sniffling while desperately looking for a tissue. Yes, it’s that time of year again when everyone gets sick: flu season.
The U.K. placed a ban on microplastics because of a recently published study in Scientific Reports. Scientists working in the mid-Atlantic and southwest Indian Oceans have found evidence that deep-sea animals such as hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers, eat the microbeads, which are typically found in cosmetics and cleaning products.
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that ethanol followed the same biochemical pathway as rapidly effective antidepressants. Consequently, patients with major depressive disorder who ingested ethanol felt non-depressant effects that lasted at least 24 hours. This study supports the high comorbidity between alcoholism and depression and supports the notion of self-medication, although researchers emphasized that alcohol is not a treatment for depression.
Recent research conducted by Pennsylvania State University Assistant Professor of Psychology Suzy Scherf suggests that facial recognition transforms as adolescents transition into adulthood. That is, Scherf identifies puberty, not age, as refining one’s ability to recognize faces.
New research, led by Xiaoyang Zhu, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University, reveals the potential of using a new kind of material, hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs), to manufacture solar cells. The results conclude that HOIPs can achieve much higher solar efficiencies than traditional solar cells, which are typically made out of silicon.
Developmental biologist Fredrik Lanner of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm recently publicized his successful editing of human DNA in embryos. Despite previous attempts to edit genes in human embryos, Lanner is the first to yield viable human embryos after gene editing and announce it to the public.
Hopkins neuroscientists published on Sept. 19 new findings that the brain network involved in numerical reasoning is identical in both blind and sighted people.
If you consider Siberian tigers or saltwater crocodiles to be the toughest animals on the planet, think again. Tardigrades, also known as “water bears,” are microscopic aquatic animals with four pairs of legs that average half a millimeter in length.
Temporary tattoos might someday become the primary form of treatment for chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Nanoparticles called PEG-HCCs (polyethylene glycol combined with hydrophilic carbon clusters) were created in the lab of James Tour, a chemist at Rice University. They help inhibit T lymphocyte cells that sometimes mistakenly attack innocuous cells in the body.
Vice Provost for Research Denis Wirtz, a polymer physicist, is on the way to making one of the largest breakthroughs in pancreatic cancer research... without having taken a single formal biology class.
A study published in the 2016 issue of Translational Cancer has suggested that there may be an association between certain cancers and sugar-sweetened beverages. The study was conducted at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and states that the link between cancer and sugar-sweetened drinks varies with age.
At a United Nations General Assembly meeting on Sept. 21, the first ever called only to discuss drug-resistant bacteria, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated that antimicrobial resistance is a “fundamental threat” to global health and safety.
A recent study done by the Copenhagen Centre for Social Evolution showed that parents who have kids later in life are more likely to have children with autism disorders. However, the link between later reproduction and schizophrenia in children was disproved.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope
Students from across the country competed in the second annual MedHacks, where medicine and technology meet.
