So let’s pretend that your car wasn’t built by human hands, but just kind of landed in your driveway one day, after a morning drive through outer space. You, and auto-mechanics everywhere, have no idea how it works and getting around that is made particularly difficult because you can only get under the hood when ...
Uterine fibroids. Not something most of us like to talk about. What are they? Calcified deposits stuck to the lining of a woman’s uterus. Are they common? Yes. Are they dangerous? Not usually. Painful? Yes — when they get big enough….and they can weigh up to several pounds. Also, they can range from very soft ...
How are you feeling right now? Can you pinpoint the specific emotions? Maybe a little excited that it’s almost the weekend, but also sad because it’s raining outside and you won’t be able to bike home like you’d hoped. Or maybe you can’t get that level of differentiation and all you can say is “unpleasant” ...
This afternoon, reading through Professor Kim Lewis’ soon to be published article in Cell Press (available ahead of print here), I may have fancied myself something of a private investigator with the high stakes job of providing a comprehensive picture of his new findings for you, my dedicated reader. It was a pretty action-heavy couple ...
I love starting the week off with a bang. The topic of this morning’s symposium, hosted by the Institute on Urban Health Research, just totally gets my engines going. Four experts in personal health technology came from all over the country to talk shop. As IUHR Interim Director Alisa Lincoln said, there were people from ...
The Puerto Rican population is the largest Latino group in the northeastern United States, but data about health disparities is largely focused on Mexican Americans, according to Katherine Tucker, whose Puerto Rican Health Study is the longest, most comprehensive study of its kind for the Puerto Rican population. “This is important, because all Hispanics are ...
Last month, Atul Gawande had a popular article in the New Yorker questioning whether the hospital industry could learn a thing or two from the likes of the Cheesecake Factory. In the article, he points to qualities like management oversight and standardization common to large-scale restaurant chain operations as areas for hospitals to work on. ...
Sepsis is a whole-body inflammatory response to an overwhelming infection by bacteria or other microogransim. At first glance, it may not seem like a big enough issue to dedicate a whole day toward. But consider the following and then decide: Every 3-4 seconds, someone dies of sepsis. 70% of all infant deaths worldwide are due ...
A few years ago chemistry and chemical biology professor Mike Pollastri met a researcher name Larry Ruben at a conference. Ruben was presenting a poster on an enzyme that is important to the survival trypanosoma brucei, the culprit parasite in the neglected tropical disease known as African sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis. The poster ...
Earlier in the year I wrote a story for the News@Northeastern about psychology professor Derek Isaacowitz, who is using eye tracking to explore the fact that people older than 60 tend to report more happiness than young adults aged18 to 23. While plenty of data suggest that older people are happier than younger people, and ...
Since you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably heard of network science and big data by now. It’s the field of research in which scientists leverage the amazing amounts of data we have these days to understand the world’s myriad networks, be they social, genetic or even transportation-based (ie., the network of airline flights across the ...
If I were to ask you how to protect yourself from osteoporosis, what would you say? Probably something like, “drink more milk,” or “take a calcium or vitamin D supplement,” right? I recently met with Katherine Tucker, professor of nutritional epidemiology in the department of health sciences, and she said that while calcium and vitamin ...