The five most-read posts on Scope this week were:
A beautiful blood clot: A colorized scanning electron micrograph of a blood clot. The image comes from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where findings showed how fibrin behaves in blood clots.
It's Match Day: Wednesday was Match Day for medical students across the country. If you're not familiar with Match Day, back in 2009 the medical school produced a video showing one Stanford student's day before the match and the moment when she discovers where she's headed after graduation.
"Superbug" author discusses dangers, history and treatment of MRSA: In recent years, the number of people in the U.S. who died from Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) surpassed those who died from AIDS. Maryn McKenna, author of the popular read Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, talks about what makes this form of staph bacteria so lethal and the challenges involved in treating MRSA infections in this podcast posted on Boing Boing this week.
Gene therapy for Parkinson's: success in a mid-stage trial: Promising results of a randomized, double-blind, Phase 2 trial in patients with Parkinson's disease may help resurrect a therapeutic approach that had fallen on hard times. The study was published Wednesday online in Lancet Neurology.
Surviving pediatric brain cancer: A look at the life of six-year-old brain cancer survivor Isabelle Wagner and a discussion of the challenges children face when recovering from a life-threatening illness.
