For several years, Caisa Andersson has been trying to create a better barrier against moisture and oxygen in our food packaging. On December 20, she will submit her doctoral dissertation at Karlstad University in Sweden.

Latex has long been used for various types of surface treatment of paper. In recent years, interest has been focused on the polymer’s characteristic of forming a protective coating on the surface of paper.

“Surface treatment is used to create a barrier against mois

A major clinical trial of blood pressure medications has concluded that an inexpensive diuretic (water pill) is more effective in treating high blood pressure and preventing cardiovascular disease than newer more expensive medications.

The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT), conducted from February 1994 though March 2002, compared the drugs for use in starting treatment for high blood pressure.

“The preferred drug is the diuretic fo

It is commonplace for patients with Acute Lung Injury (ALI) to be injected with a dye, known as contrast material, before undergoing a CT (computerized tomography) scan of their lungs. Contrast material helps enhance the image so that doctors can evaluate the state of a patient’s lungs. New research published in Critical Care shows that using contrast material could worsen the condition of patients suffering from ALI because it causes the lungs to fill up with fluid, making it more difficult for

Forget the robot child in the movie “AI.” Vanderbilt researchers Nilanjan Sarkar and Craig Smith have a less romantic but more practical idea in mind.

“We are not trying to give a robot emotions. We are trying to make robots that are sensitive to our emotions,” says Smith, associate professor of psychology and human development.

Their vision, which is to create a kind of robot Friday, a personal assistant who can accurately sense the moods of its human bosses and respond appropriate

Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators are reporting success with a novel gene therapy approach. Working with cells grown in the laboratory, the group is the first to repair a defective gene and demonstrate that the resulting protein product is functional, said Dr. Alfred L. George Jr., senior author of a study published Dec. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Although use of the approach in patients is still years in the future, the findings are an important step in sh

Scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have discovered a new contributor to atherosclerosis, the most common form of hardening of the arteries. Marked by cholesterol-calcium-lipid deposits, atherosclerosis is the main cause of heart attacks, the number one killer in the U.S. Doctors at U.Va. say research on mice has determined for the first time that activated platelets circulating in the blood, long understood as markers for atherosclerosis, really serve as participants in the p