Save the tick that bites you: it may not be the one you think
This year’s mild winter and early spring were a bonanza for tick populations in the eastern United States. Reports of tick-borne disease rose fast.
While Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, new research results emphasize that it is not the greatest cause for concern in most Southeastern states.
The findings are published today in a paper in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Witch hunts are common and sometimes deadly in the tea plantations of Jalpaiguri, India. But a surprising source – small groups of women who meet through a government loan program – has achieved some success in preventing the longstanding practice, a Michigan State University sociologist found.
Soma Chaudhuri spent seven months studying witch hunts in her native India and discovered that the economic self-help groups have made it part of their agenda to defend their fellow plantation workers against the hunts. (more…)
Discovery may hold key to restoring speech after paralysis
Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease at 21, British physicist Stephen Hawking, now 70, relies on a computerized device to speak. Engineers are investigating the use of brainwaves to create a new form of communication for Hawking and other people suffering from paralysis.
—Daily Mail (U.K.)
Scientists at UCLA and the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, have unraveled how our brain cells encode the pronunciation of individual vowels in speech.
Published in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Nature Communications, the discovery could lead to new technology that verbalizes the unspoken words of people paralyzed by injury or disease.(more…)
Scientists have for the first time watched and manipulated stem cells as they regenerate tissue in an uninjured mammal, Yale researchers report July 1 online in the journal Nature.
Using a sophisticated imaging technique, the researchers also demonstrated that mice lacking a certain type of cell do not regrow hair. The same technique could shed light on how stem cells interact with other cells and trigger repairs in a variety of other organs, including lung and heart tissue.
“This tells us a lot about how the tissue regeneration process works,” said Valentina Greco, assistant professor of genetics and of dermatology at the Yale Stem Cell Center, researcher for the Yale Cancer Center and senior author of the study. (more…)
Mice and monkeys don’t develop diseases in the same way that humans do. Nevertheless, after medical researchers have studied human cells in a Petri dish, they have little choice but to move on to study mice and primates.
University of Washington bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human blood vessels, creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease, test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — When a plant goes into defense mode in order to protect itself against harsh weather or disease, that’s good for the plant, but bad for the farmer growing the plant. Bad because when a plant acts to defend itself, it turns off its growth mechanism.
But now researchers at Michigan State University, as part of an international collaboration, have figured out how plants can make the “decision” between growth and defense, a finding that could help them strike a balance – keep safe from harm while continuing to grow. (more…)
When 25 percent of the payments to community health clinics were based on quality of care, patients received better care and had better depression outcomes. The results of this initiative are published in the American Journal of Public Health.
University of Washington researchers examined records from almost 8,000 patients treated for depression in 29 community health clinics in the Washington State Mental Health Integration Program before and after the implementation of a pay-for-performance incentive. After the incentive was started, patients were seen more quickly and were more likely to receive consultation from a psychiatrist. They were also more likely to show improvements in their depression. (more…)
Can Inflammation Predict Heart Disease and Stroke?
Groundbreaking research may be able to help predict how likely it is that a person will have heart disease or a stroke in the future. Studies have linked inflammation to the risk of cardiovascular disease because of the association between the release of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) and heart disease.
What is C-Reactive Protein (CRP)?
The National Institute of Health explains that CRP is a protein that is released when there is inflammation present in the body. The liver produces the protein and a blood test can be done to find out how much CRP is present in a person’s body.
What is inflammation?
John W. Kimball maintains a website describing in depth how inflammation develops in the body. Inflammation develops as a result of injury to the body. It can often be recognized by swelling and redness at the site of inflammation and may be accompanied by pain. Although inflammation often occurs on the surface of the skin, it can also occur internally. (more…)
