Researchers are advancing against a rare, deadly lung disease (related to hormones) that no one had even heard of a decade ago. The disease targets only women, striking them down during their childbearing years. It can be triggered by pregnancy, progresses rapidly, and often results in death within 10 years.
Computer scientists are building mathematical models to represent the safest and most effective ways to perform surgery, including tasks such as suturing, dissecting and joining tissue.
In a review article in the December Nicotine and Tobacco Research, researchers at the University of Vermont have found an unexpected, effective alternative to motivate smokers to quit smoking ? cutting back. According to the qualitative review of 19 studies on smoking reduction in individuals who did not want to quit, this method, typically coupled with the use of nicotine replacement products, led to an increase in quitting in 16 of the studies.
Doctors may be able to better evaluate the stage of colorectal cancer using a technique that combines two imaging systems used to make a 3-D image of the whole body, a new study suggests.
It looks, contracts and responds almost like natural heart muscle ? even though it was grown in the lab. And it brings scientists another step closer to the goal of creating replacement parts for damaged human hearts, or eventually growing an entirely new heart from just a spoonful of loose heart cells.
Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have demonstrated in mice a way that might reduce the time it takes for a bone marrow transplant to rebuild a child’s immune system, and so reduce the risk of potentially fatal virus infections that can occur during this time.
A new Surgical Simulation and Technology Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center, one of only a few hospital-based centers of its kind in the United States, will open on December 6, 2006. The center brings together a diverse group of experts to solve important challenges in surgery, such as how to improve and expand minimally invasive surgical procedures that enhance patient care, how to advance the design of surgical instruments and how to redesign operating rooms to prevent surgeons from suffering from shoulder and neck injuries.
Shopkeepers who sell cigarettes to underagers should lose their right to sell tobacco products, Health Minister Andy Kerr said today as he launched a consultation on whether the legal age to buy cigarettes should be raised from 16 to 18.
Yahoo! Inc. Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel, pressed by investors to shore up the stock price, promoted Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker to a new job overseeing advertising sales as part of a broader shake-up.
“Nanoscale science and engineering promise to be as important as the steam engine, the transistor, and the Internet, and have the potential to revolutionize all other technologies” according to Neal Lane, former science advisor to US President Bill Clinton. “But that outcome is not guaranteed.”Dr. Lane made his remarks today at a Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies event at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.