The first ‘next generation’ MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) body scanner in the world will be officially launched at Hope Hospital later this week (Friday 18th February).
The Achieva 3T MR Scanner has been purchased by The University of Manchester and will be used by researchers to further their studies in a wide range of medical areas.
The state-of-the-art technology involved will revolutionise the way scanning takes place and means that higher quality scans can be carr
A novel technology that can test cells in minutes for responses to any stimulus, including antibiotics, pathogens, toxins, radiation or chemotherapy, has been developed by scientists at the University at Buffalo.
The paper describing the sensor will appear in the Feb. 15 issue of Analytical Chemistry, and currently is available as an “ASAP” article on the American Chemical Society Web site http://www.chemistry.org.
Susan Z. Hua, Ph.D., UB assistant professor of mech
Take a moment and look at a picture near you. What did you see? How long did it take you to understand what was in the image, meaning how long did it take you to realize the green blob was a tree? Or that the orange circle was a piece of fruit? Most likely you assume that it took you no time at all, you just knew.
Psychologists who study how we perceive images used to think that, before the process of object recognition and categorization could begin, the brain must first separate
A large, multisite trial designed to examine the safety and preliminary effectiveness of two candidate topical microbicides to prevent HIV infection has opened to volunteer enrollment. The trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, represents a partnership among various research institutions in Africa and the United States. Although no licensed microbicides are available to the public currently, scientists h
The existence of growth spurts and growing pains in children may be perpetually evident to parents, but their cause has lacked scientific explanation. A new study by Emory University anthropologist Michelle Lampl, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison now sheds some light on this childhood phenomena.
In a five-year study using lambs, the research team found that leg growth occurred primarily when the animals were at rest. While the research does not pro
Dutch researcher Corine Visser investigated a new way of transporting medicines into the brain. Her approach made use of an iron transport system located on the blood-brain barrier. The smaller the medicine, the more easily it penetrates the brain.
A special barrier between the blood and the brain, the so-called blood-brain barrier (BBB), protects the brain from toxic substances. It only lets through important nutrients for the brain such as iron, glucose and oxygen. Visser allowe
Patienten mit schweren Herzerkrankungen, die eine Transplantation benötigen würden, müssen häufig zu lange auf das lebensrettende Organ warten. Neue mechanische Unterstützungssysteme für den Herz-Kreislauf können nicht nur dabei helfen, die Wartezeit zu überbrücken, sondern auch die Transplantation überhaupt ersetzen, berichtete Prof. Dr. Christof Schmid bei der Jahreskonferenz der Herzchirurgen in Hamburg.
Geschätzte 1.200 bis 1.500 Menschen warten in Deutschland jährlich auf e
A meticulous diary kept by a mother of twins has revealed indicators of autistic behaviour in children as young as six months of age. The findings are published today in Neurocase.
Mel Rutherford, assistant professor of psychology at McMaster University, says the diary provides a rare and unprecedented opportunity to observe the early development of autism. She says the mother of fraternal twins recorded her observations almost daily for about five years, beginning before the twi
A behavioral neuroscientist at the University at Buffalo holds that the ingestion of afterbirth by a mother, a feature of pregnancy in nearly all non-human mammals, not only relieves postpartum pain, but optimizes the onset of maternal behavior by mediating the activity of specific opioid activity circuits in the brain.
Mark Kristal, Ph.D., professor of psychology at UB and director the graduate program in behavioral neuroscience, has received a two-year $200,000 grant from the Nat
Women with a history of caesarean section deliveries do not have a higher risk of a subsequent stillbirth, according to researchers at Yale School of Medicine and Columbia University.
Yale Obstetrics and Gynecology scientist Mert Ozan Bahtiyar, M.D., presented the findings today at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, held February 7-12 in Reno, Nevada. “Caesarean sections have been associated with some pregnancy complications, but when a physician consul
Food of animal origin, contaminated with E.coli, can lead to urinary tract infections in women, according to a team of bacteriologists.
“We found out that UTIs may be caused by ingesting food contaminated with E. coli,” said Dr. Chobi DebRoy, director of Penn State’s Gastroenteric Disease Center. Previously, this link was not established, she noted.
Senior author, Dr. Lee W. Riley, University of California-Berkeley, found that E.coli strains isolated from patie
A recent study attempting to quantify misclassification of HIV/AIDS deaths concluded that for the year 2000–01, the number of deaths related to HIV/AIDS was likely to be almost three times as high as that published in the Government’s statistical report compiled from death certificates. The study suggests that 80% of the excess deaths in men and 70% in women attributable to HIV were classified as tuberculosis or lower respiratory tract infections.
Social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS pr
Treating chest infections in young cystic fibrosis patients with an antibiotic once instead of three times daily is as effective and less toxic, conclude the results of a randomised trial published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Aminoglycoside antibiotics are widely used for the management of patients who have cystic fibrosis and chronic chest infection with a bacterium called Pseudomonas aerginosa. Currently patients are given aminoglycosides three times daily. The drugs ca
Over 380,000 people have been protected from dengue fever in Vietnam thanks to the implementation of a novel strategy to control mosquitoes in the country, concludes a report in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Dengue fever is the most common insect-borne virus infection, causing more than 50 million infections, 500 000 cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever and at least 12 000 deaths per year. The mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is the major global vector of dengue viruses. It needs stagnan
Resistance to antibiotics is more common in southern and eastern Europe than in northern Europe because the regions have high rates of antibiotic use, suggests a study published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Herman Goossens (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and colleagues compared antibiotic use with antibiotic resistance rates in 26 European countries from the beginning of 1997 to the end of 2002. To control for the different population sizes the investigators expressed d
Scientists at the Institute for Medical Research at North Shore-LIJ have made a discovery that refutes two longstanding beliefs about the most common leukemia in the western hemisphere. Due to the relatively slow disease progression of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), doctors thought it was caused by a gradual accumulation of leukemia cells that could not die. The new findings, published online today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, prove the exact opposite. The study will appear in
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