by: Samar Bhat Today, one of the most daunting challenges physicians face in treating cancer is containing its growth. If a cancerous tumor can be confined to a known region in the body, it would be much easier to treat with conventional methods. The problem is that most, if not all cancerous tissue, upon reaching […]
Size Matters: Protein Segregation at Membrane Interfaces
by: Niharika Desaraju Cells communicate with each other by sending and receiving signals. One way to receive a signal is by binding with a receptor on another cell. The ability of two membranes to interact with each other is highly dependent on the proteins that are located on the surface of the membranes. These proteins […]
Anxiety Neurons: Cells that Elicit Stress in the Brain
by: Ankita Chatterjee Shortness of breath and the terrible feeling of choking. An overwhelming fear of nearby danger. An uncontrollable heartbeat. Sudden nausea and dizziness. Any of these symptoms, with no previous warning. These are the ways sufferers of anxiety disorders describe the experience of having an anxiety attack. Although current treatments for anxiety do […]
Human DX: Man, Machine and Medicine
by: Leo Zhang WebMD is a health information services website that contains health care publications, physician blogs, and a symptoms checklist that tries to diagnose medical conditions based on the symptoms the user describes. There is a running joke on the internet about how using this symptom checker for something like a mild headache will […]
Allergies: a Thing of the Past?
by: Mark Houdi Early exposure is almost always a good thing, but no one really considered said approach with allergies until now. A recent study has shown a significant reduction in peanut and egg allergies specifically by the use of early exposure. Using a special derivative of peanut butter as a substitute at an early […]
Economics of Antibacterial Drug Research
by: Sage Geher The discovery of penicillin prior to WWII is one of the most important milestones in modern medicine, and its wide-scale use during the war made it arguably one of the best defensive weapons employed in the war. Antibiotics are just as important a defensive weapon today as they were in the 1940s, […]
Sleep Disorders: A New Perspective on Preterm Birth
by: Mathias Tevendale While there have been significant advancements in medicine in recent years, premature births remain an unsolved problem. Recent studies conducted at the University of California San Francisco suggest that sleep disorders could be the likely cause of this phenomena. Normal births typically occur at forty weeks of gestation. Premature births, also known […]
Understanding Emotions: it’s not always easy
By: Malika Saxena Human interactions are primarily based on our ability to understand and empathize with the words and actions of others. Often, our thoughts and feelings are conveyed without using words, and this is may be the result of a mirror neuron system (MNS). The job of the MNS is to reproduce tasks when […]
Olfaction and Metabolism: Your sense of smell directs how your body handles food
by: Rusheil Patel Can the perception of what you smell act as a biological mechanism for storing fat? Phrased simply, does your sense of smell influence weight gain? Researchers at UC Berkeley have found compelling information suggesting that the odor of what we eat may strongly affect how our body manages the incoming calories. For […]
Bioengineered Hemoglobin-like Protein Paves Way for Potential Clinical Cure to CO Poisoning
by: Patrick Lin Many of us probably have experienced this scenario before: while pan-frying some leafy vegetables, a few seconds of inattention lead to sharp alarm beeps following billowing clouds of grey smoke erupting from the now-burnt food. You proceed to take the smoke detector off from the wall to turn it off. What you […]