A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
Many consumers take precautions against identity theft, but what about medical identity theft? In addition to financial peril, victims can suffer physical danger if false entries in medical records lead to the wrong treatment.
“The crime occurs when someone uses a person's name and sometimes other parts of their identity -- such as insurance information -- without the person's knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods,” said Laurinda B. Harman, PhD, RHIA, associate professor and chair of the health information management department at Temple University’s College of Health Professions.
Is using a Wii too much workout for you? Developers at the University of Washington may have something you like better. Designed for people with disabilities, their new software lets users control a computer cursor without any tactile involvement. Early tests suggest that an experienced user of Vocal Joystick would have as much control as someone using a handheld device.
"There are many people who have perfect use of their voice who don't have use of their hands and arms," said Jeffrey Bilmes, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering. "I think there are several reasons why Vocal Joystick might be a better approach, or at least a viable alternative, to brain-computer interfaces." The tool's latest developments will be presented this month in Tempe, Ariz.
There hasn't been an emergency on the launch pad that required the use of an emergency evacuation system for astronauts but, to be safe, NASA has updated earlier systems of escape for Launch Complex 39B, hosting the new Orion spacecraft and Ares I rocket of the Constellation Program, which were basically cables running from the spacecraft’s crew level to an area near a bunker, to one with rails. And linked cars. 380 feet above the ground.
Yes, it is the most spectacular roller coaster around, and we will never get to ride it.
Kelli Maloney, lead designer for the launch pad escape system, said requirements call for astronauts to be able to get out of the spacecraft and into the bunker within 4 minutes.
If you grew up on a farm, the first thing you were taught about fertilizer is that you can't use waste from anything that eats meat. Cows okay. Humans bad.
Researchers in Finland disagree and say that human urine is virtually sterile, free of bacteria or viruses and naturally rich in nitrogen and other nutrients.
Urine fertilization is rare today though they say it was common in ancient times. Maybe in Finland.
Which came first, the chicken genome or the egg genome?
Researchers have answered a similarly vexing (and far more relevant) genomic question: Which of the thousands of long stretches of repeated DNA in the human genome came first? And which are the duplicates?
The answers, published online by Nature Genetics on October 7, 2007, provide the first evolutionary history of the duplications in the human genome that are partly responsible for both disease and recent genetic innovations.
Almost immediately after it is donated, human blood begins to lose a key gas that opens up blood vessels to facilitate the transfer of oxygen from red blood cells to oxygen-starved tissues.
They also found that adding this gas back to stored blood before transfusion appears to restore red blood cells’ ability to transfer oxygen to tissues.
Residents of small isolated fishing villages on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland have participated in the ritual of “mumming” for centuries. According to the tradition, small groups of villagers, or mummers, disguise their identities and go to other houses to threaten violence, whereupon the people of the houses try to guess the intruders’ identities.
A study by researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia argues that this tradition is a manner of communicating trust and trustworthiness.
Scientists are on the trail of Iapetus' mysterious dark side, which seems to be home to a bizarre 'runaway' process that is transporting vaporised water ice from the dark areas to the white areas of the Saturnian moon.
This 'thermal segregation' model may explain many details of the moon's strange and dramatically two-toned appearance, which have been revealed in exquisite detail in images collected during Cassini’s recent close fly-by of Iapetus.
Cornell researchers and Sathguru Management Consultants of India have successfully led an international consortium through the first phase of developing a pest-resistant eggplant. By about 2009 this eggplant is expected to be the first genetically engineered food crop in South Asia. Farmers have grown genetically altered cotton in India since 2002.
The engineered eggplant expresses a natural insecticide derived from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), making it resistant to the fruit and shoot borer (FSB), a highly destructive pest. The tiny larvae account for up to 40 percent of eggplant crop losses each year in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines, and other areas of South and Southeast Asia.
A special protein can be injected into the body to reverse learning problems in mice that have an animal version of Alzheimer’s disease, Saint Louis University researchers have found.
The protein -- part of the immunoglobulin M (IgM) class -- is an antibody that grabs onto the amyloid beta protein in the brain and prevents it from changing into the toxic substance believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our research in an animal model showed that antibodies can be developed rationally for treating Alzheimer’s disease,” says William A. Banks, M.D. professor of geriatrics and pharmacological and physiological science at Saint Louis University. “It’s a major thing that people have been trying to do -- get antibodies into the brain in the right amount to treat illnesses.
Using a molecular cellular compass, individual cells in complex organisms know which way is up or down, in epithelial cells known as apical-basal polarity. Determining the orientation is essential for an individual cell to perform it’s designated tasks.
Now it appears that the same compass also defines the direction of cells when migrating by establishing a morphological back and a front. These are the conclusions of a recent study lead by scientists Michiel Pegtel and John Collard from the Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital (NKI-AVL) in the Netherlands published in the October 9th issue of the scientific journal Current Biology.
Many cell types acquire asymmetry for their biological function.
A nationwide study examining the safety of Tasers® used by law enforcement agencies suggests the devices are safe, causing a low occurrence of serious injuries.
“This study is the first large, independent study of injuries associated with Tasers. It is the first injury epidemiology study to review every Taser deployment and to reliably assess the overall risk and severity of injuries in real world conditions,” said William Bozeman, M.D., the lead investigator and an emergency medicine specialist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “The injury rate is low and most injuries appear to be minor. These results support the safety of the devices.”
Bozeman will present the study results at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Research Forum in Seattle, Wash., Oct. 8.
