General

A University at Buffalo biomedical engineer is gaining recognition outside the United States for his work using high-tech devices to diagnose and ameliorate neurological conditions. Anirban Dutta, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been in India, participating in a collaborative project that pairs a virtual reality-based […]

From veins that deliver oxygen to tissues to xylem that send water into stems and leaves, vascular networks are a crucial component of life. In biology, there is a wide range of unique patterns, like the individualized structures found on leaves, along with many conserved structures, such as named arteries […]

A new study, published in PeerJ, shows how University of Liverpool researchers have used a newly developed eye movement test to improve the understanding of how parts of the brain work. Healthy, older adults are widely reported to experience cognitive decline, including impairments in inhibitory control (the ability to stop ourselves […]

Vanderbilt University neuroscientist James R. Booth is publicly releasing two large scale neuroimaging datasets on reading and language development to support other researchers across the world who are working to understand how academic skills development in childhood. “We have been able to follow our curiosity and answer some really interesting questions […]

Studies that started in zebrafish have now pointed to a role for collagen secretion in a wide variety of clinical symptoms — and in a newly identified genetic syndrome. Ela Knapik, MD, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and her colleagues discovered the syndrome caused by mutation […]

UK scientists have identified a new way to kill pancreatic cancer cells by ‘pulling the plug’ on the energy generator that fuels calcium pumps on their cell surface. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, reports how switching off the cancer’s energy supply causes the pancreatic cancer cells to […]

Epigenetic changes occur in the DNA of breast cancer cells that have developed a resistance to hormone therapy, an effective treatment for ER+ breast cancer, which accounts for 70% of all diagnoses. Reversing these changes, researchers say, has significant potential to help reduce breast cancer relapse. A team led by […]

A woman’s supply of eggs is finite, so it is crucial that the quality of their genetic material is ensured. New work from Carnegie’s Marla Tharp, Safia Malki, and Alex Bortvin elucidates a mechanism by which, even before birth, the body tries to eliminate egg cells of the poorest quality. […]

Genetic modification of babies in China one year ago was universally condemned. At the same time, CRISPR treatments are on their way into our clinics. Jacob Corn explains the difference. A huge outcry broke out a year ago when Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced at a conference that he had […]

Some plastic food and beverage containers still contain bisphenol A (BPA), which can mimic the hormone estrogen. Although experts say that small amounts of BPA detected in foods are unlikely to cause problems, some people worry that constant low-level exposures could have health effects, especially for developing fetuses, infants and […]

An organism's genome contains all of the information necessary for each of its cells and tissues to develop and function properly. Written in DNA, each individual gene encodes for something, whether it is a structural protein that helps define a tissue's shape, an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reactions of […]

A stem cell transplant — also called a bone marrow transplant — is a common treatment for blood cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Such treatment can cure blood cancers but also can lead to life-threatening complications, including heart problems and graft-versus-host disease, in which new immune cells from […]