The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Ask Stanford Med: Expert in reproductive medicine responds to questions on infertility: Valerie Baker, MD, the division chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility and director of Stanford’s Program for Primary Ovarian Insufficiency, responds to questions on infertility research and treatments in this edition of Ask Stanford Med.
The disturbing trend of science by press release: Keith Humphreys, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, discusses the dangers of putting the press release before peer review in scientific research. His piece was written in response to a recent unpublished study suggesting that Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine.
BBC study: Oh, what a difference an hour of sleep makes: A small study initiated by the BBC and conducted at the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Centre examined outcomes at the genetic level in participants who got six-and-a-half or seven-and-a-half hours of sleep a night.
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: A 2012 article in the San Francisco Chronicle offered a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
On the hunt for ancient DNA, Stanford researchers improve the odds: A paper by Carlos Bustamante, PhD, professor of genetics, Meredith Carpenter, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in genetics, and colleagues describes a novel method that can greatly enrich the yield of DNA from ancient samples.
