In yet another advancement in the expanding field of minimally invasive therapeutic treatments, a study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine today …
Month: September 2010
Do you have the chocolate gene? Study hints consumer preferences may be inherited
From physical appearance to predisposition to certain diseases, genetics is a potent shaper of the human experience. But does your DNA also influence what types …
Happy (half) birthday, health reform law
As is being widely reported today, this week marks six months since President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. In …
Annie Lennox on why she's an HIV/AIDS activist
In this TED Talk, musician Annie Lennox discusses her work on the SING campaign to raise awareness and money to fight HIV/AIDS. She shares the …
Dramatic art depicts triumph over HIV
I stopped by recently to get a peek at Stanford’s new Positive Care Clinic (.pdf) in Atherton, which is getting some attention these days because …
What we can expect from the coming flu season
In this new Lucile Packard Children's Hospital video, Yvonne Maldonado, MD, the hospital's chief of infectious disease, discusses what's coming this flu season and provides …
Victor Fuchs talks health-care costs and reform in Q&A
In a recent post on the Health Care Blog, Stanford health economist Victor Fuchs, PhD, discusses shifting priorities for future biomedical innovations, the challenge of …
Modeling the spread of H1N1 flu
In a release today, the National Institutes of Health highlighted work being done to model the spread of H1N1 and to test the effectiveness of …
TED Talk looks at porcine parts in medicine
In this TED Talk, Christina Meindertsma, author of Pig 05049, looks at the absolutely stunning range of products that are produced using parts from a …
Funding the research enterprise
Harvard's William Sahlman has written a noteworthy column for the layperson in Sunday's Boston Globe on why the ups and downs in funding, especially in …
Do violent video games increase aggression?
Earlier this year, an analysis of 130 studies found exposure to violent video games was associated with increases in aggressive thoughts and behavior, as well …
How a new test for preemies may be superior to the Apgar
Earlier this month, my colleague wrote about a new method that can help predict health outcomes in premature babies and that outperformed the Apgar score, …
Gastric banding surgery gaining popularity among California teens
Weight-reduction surgeries that involve an adjustable band to constrict the stomach appear to be increasing in frequency among teens in California, despite the procedure not …
Exploring the "fading art" of the physical exam
In a Morning Edition segment today, NPR reporter Richard Knox explored how many physicians are abbreviating or skipping the time-honored physical exam. Some are bucking …
Image of the week: woman-run X-ray department, 1934
The above photograph shows the X-ray department (control board, dosimeters, and windows for viewing patients and instruments) at the Marie Curie Hospital for Cancer and …
Grand Roundup: Top posts for the week of Sept. 13
The five most-read posts on Scope this week were: What if gut-bacteria communities "remember" past antibiotic exposures? In a study published on Monday in the …