There are many components to aging, both mental and physical. When it comes to the infrastructure of the human body—the musculoskeletal system that includes muscles, bones, tendons and cartilage—age-associated decline is inevitable, and the rate of that decline increases the older we get. The loss of muscle function—and often muscle […]
Meier-Gorlin syndrome, or MGS, is a rare genetic developmental disorder that causes dwarfism, small ears, a small brain, missing patella and other skeletal abnormalities. In severe cases, MGS results in miscarriages and stillbirths. Igor Chesnokov, Ph.D., and his University of Alabama at Birmingham colleagues study this recessive, autosomal disorder in […]
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London have rebuilt a human thymus, an essential organ in the immune system, using human stem cells and a bioengineered scaffold. Their work is an important step towards being able to build artificial thymi which could be used as transplants. The […]
When a coronavirus—including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19—infects someone, it hijacks the person’s cells, co-opting their molecular machinery for its own survival and spread. Researchers at Gladstone Institutes and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, in collaboration with scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Synthego Corporation, have identified critical molecular processes in […]
Ocean pollution is widespread and getting worse, and when toxins in the oceans make landfall they imperil the health and well-being of more than 3 billion people, according to a new report by an international coalition of scientists led by Boston College’s Global Observatory on Pollution on Health and the […]
Sedentary adults looking to spend less time on their keisters and more on their feet may find help from a virtual counselor, according to a new Stanford Medicine study. It’s no secret that physical activity is good for the body, but studies have shown that certain populations still face challenges […]
More than 380,000 babies are born prematurely in the United States each year, according to the March of Dimes. “Preemies” can be severely underweight babies and struggle to get the nutrients they need from breast milk alone, so neonatal intensive care units provide an additional milk fortifier, either in the […]
In the Medical Image Processing Lab, Dimitri Van De Ville and Thomas Bolton have studied the impact that computational imaging has on cognitive and clinical neuroscience by reviewing more than one hundred articles. How are human behavior and brain activity linked? That question has been eating away at Thomas Bolton […]
Despite researchers’ efforts to understand pregnancy — both healthy and high-risk — the human placenta remains something of a mystery. Tissue samples are nearly impossible to obtain until after birth, making it difficult to study the placenta’s role in pregnancy complications. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in […]