News Articles

Nearly anyone touched by ovarian cancer will tell you that almost 80 percent of patients reach advanced stages before diagnosis and that most patients are expected to die within five years. One quarter of women diagnosed have no warning that they are resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy, the main line of defense and they probably have less than 18 months to live. 
Diagnosis, prognosis, and even treatment of ovarian cancer have remained largely unchanged for 30 years - the best indicator for how a woman will fare, and how her cancer should be treated, has been the tumor's stage at diagnosis. 

Literacy has been getting declining support in recent years. The Obama administration only wants to spend $187 million for its Effective Teaching and Learning: Literacy initiative while the Bush administration had devoted $1 billion annually to the Reading First program. That means it is necessary to find out which programs work best.
A new study uses a scientific lens to look at the conversational art of instruction, a team of researchers identify specific ways teachers talk to students that measurably impact literacy skills.

Faster increases in life expectancy do not necessarily produce faster population aging, a counterintuitive finding that came as a result of applying new measures of aging developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in order to project future populations for Europe out to the year 2050.
Traditional measures of age simply categorize people as "old" at a specific age, usually 65, but previous research by Scherbov, Sanderson, and colleagues has shown that the traditional definition puts many people in the category of "old" who have characteristics of much younger people. 

Poor sanitation is linked to 280,000 deaths per year worldwide but it has lots of benefits besides just saving lives. That is why sanitation is a key policy goal in many developing countries.
Strange sociological voodoo like a "community motivation" model to improve hygiene has done nothing, according to a recent analysis of Bangladesh, but it would if there are subsidies for hygienic latrines targeted to the poor. 

Scientists at the Vetmeduni Vienna investigated whether stomach ulcers in cattle are related to the presence of certain bacteria. For their study, they analyzed bacteria present in healthy and ulcerated cattle stomachs and found very few differences in microbial diversity. Bacteria therefore appear to play a minor role in the development of ulcers.
The microbial diversity present in the stomachs of cattle has now been published.

A drug commonly taken to prevent seizures in epilepsy may surprisingly protect the eyesight of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015.
For the study, the researchers randomly selected 86 people with acute optic neuritis within two weeks of having symptoms to receive either the epilepsy drug phenytoin or a placebo for three months. The researchers then used medical imaging to measure the thickness of the retina, the light sensitive nerve layer at the back of the eye at the beginning of the study and then six months later. Each patient's eyesight (including sharpness and color perception) was also tested. 

James Hansen, a former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who was one of the first scientists to raise concerns about global climate change, spoke at MIT Tuesday in the biennial David J. Rose Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). Hansen came to prominence in the late 1980s, when he first testified before Congress about the perils of accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A new wearable device turns the user’s thumbnail into a miniature wireless track pad, which could let users control wireless devices when their hands are full or enable subtle communication in circumstances that require it, such as sending a quick text to a child while attending an important meeting.Next week at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction conference in Seoul, MIT researchers will describe the prototype of NailO.

Using technology like tablets in schools has turned into a heated political debate. Los Angeles infamously spent $1.3 billion on a program to give iPads to each student, a program that has been plagued with problems.
In the United Kingdom, the head of the National Association of Head Teachers claimed he was dubious about using tech as a teaching aid in non-IT classes. 

Neuroscientists say the brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors. 
Until now, oxytocin - the "love" hormone - has been linked to sexual attraction and things like regulating breast feeding and promoting maternal-infant bonding, but its precise effect in social behaviors is not known.

Uninsured cancer patients are asked to pay anywhere from 2 to 43 times what Medicare would pay for chemotherapy drugs, according to a new paper. Uninsured patients who did not negotiate the billed amounts could expect to pay $6,711 for an infusion of the colorectal cancer drug oxaliplatin. However, Medicare and private health plans only pay $3,090 and $3,616 for the same drug, respectively.
Although uninsured cancer patients were asked to pay on average two times more than Medicare paid for expensive chemotherapy drugs, very high payment differences were seen for drugs that were quite inexpensive on Medicare. For example, carboplatin was estimated at $26 for one infusion with Medicare, but the estimate for uninsured patients was $1,124.

A study of college students links eating in restaurants with high blood pressure, even in young people.
Globally, high blood pressure - hypertension - is the leading risk factor for death associated with cardiovascular disease. Studies have shown that young adults with slightly elevated blood pressure are at very high risk of hypertension. Eating meals away from home has been shown to be associated with higher caloric intake, higher saturated fat intake and higher salt intake, which are thought to cause high blood pressure.