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Read our latest stories on the people and scientific innovations making a difference in patients’ lives.
The Hidden Powers of Blood, Sweat, And Tears
Science is uncovering how our bodily fluids may contain important cures for diseases like cancer and sepsis, and unlock clues to our bodies. Bodily fluids have a PR problem. Mention blood, sweat or breast milk at a dinner party and you’re certain to make your dining companions squeamish. But, in fact, naturally occurring bodily liquids hold important clues to potential cures. In recent years, scientists have discovered several compounds that point to possible treatments for disease and help...
Why Mitochondria Is The Organelle Of The Moment
Mitochondria, our cells’ energy converters, have become the focus of many areas of disease research. As the power plants in virtually every human cell (as well as animal, plant, and fungi cells), mitochondria play an essential role in creating energy to drive cellular function and basically all of our biological processes. Nearly all cells have these sausage-shaped structures, but muscle and nerve cells, which require more energy, have the highest concentrations of mitochondria, numbering in...
foundations-science
The Skinny on Body Fat
Our fat provides more than just insulation and energy storage. It’s actually an organ that plays an essential role in our body’s functioning. Body fat, also known as adipose tissue, needn’t be seen as our number one enemy. While carrying too much fat is linked to a long list of serious health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers, fat is critical to our survival. Fat cushions vital organs, insulates our bodies from the cold, and serves as our fuel storage tank...
Flashback: Iron Lung
A medical miracle made of metal helped polio sufferers to breathe in the 1900s. The tank respirator, or iron lung, reads like a medical curiosity in modern times thanks to vaccines for the polio virus created by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin in the 1950s and 1960s. But prior to that, for the nearly one in every 200 patients infected with the virus that suffered paralysis, including of the respiratory system, it was the surest way to survive until they could recover and breathe again on their...
foundations-science
Tools of the Trade: Harnessing Bioluminescence
Species from cats to monkeys and protozoa to plants can borrow a jellyfish’s luminescence to help trace the spread of disease. Tagging and tracking disease – visualizing the insidious spread of Alzheimer’s or a metastasizing cancer, or tracing how a pathogen moves – is possible today thanks to the harnessing of a 160-million-year-old protein responsible for a jellyfish’s green glow. Aequorea, a jellyfish species that lives off America’s Northwest Coast that reaches up to ten centimeters in...
Flashback: Carbolic Acid Sprayer
(Science Photo Library) Joseph Lister revolutionizes the world of surgery with an antiseptic idea. Upon reading Louis Pasteur’s work on putrefaction as a result of germs in 1865, budding Scottish physician Joseph Lister was struck with a eureka moment: He wanted to stop the outrageously high rate of deaths, a full 40 percent in the case of amputations, from infection acquired as a direct result of surgery. By 1867, he’d decided that carbolic acid (or phenol, a derivative of coal tar...
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