Giana Brown is one tough little girl. When she was 7 years old, an orthopedic surgeon, Jeffrey Young, MD, from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, …
Month: August 2014
From plant to pill: Bioengineers aim to produce opium-based medicines without using poppies
Stanford bioengineer Christina Smolke, PhD, and her team have been on a decade-long mission to replicate how nature produces opium in poppies by genetically engineering the …
"Sleep drunkenness" more prevalent than previously thought
A phenomenon known as "sleep drunkenness" may be more prevalent than previously thought, affecting as many as 1 in 7 adults, Stanford researchers report in …
Civilization and its dietary (dis)contents: Do modern diets starve our gut-microbial community?
Our genes have evolved a bit over the last 50,000 years of human evolution, but our diets have evolved a lot. That's because civilization has …
Countdown to Medicine X: Specially designed apps to enhance attendees’ conference experience
Last year's Stanford Medicine X conference explored ways in which technology could be used to augment the attendees' experiences. During breaks between sessions, organizers used …
Mining Twitter to identify cases of foodborne illness
During this year's Big Data in Biomedicine conference at Stanford, Taha Kass-Hout, MD, chief health informatics officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, talked …
Study shows number of American teens using sunscreen is declining
Despite an increase in cases of melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer, growing percentage of high school students get a failing grade when …
Study shows poor sleep habits as a teenager can "stack the deck against you for obesity later in life"
New research examining the effect of sleeplessness on weight gain in teenagers over time offers strong evidence that inadequate sleep may increase the risk of …
A surgeon battles her own unexpected complications
I first interviewed Stanford surgeon Sherry Wren, MD, a year and a half ago for an article about a course she taught to other surgeons on …
Regularly practicing hatha yoga may improve brain function for older adults
Past studies have suggested that practicing yoga can help those suffering from insomnia rest easier and boost the immune system. Now new research shows that …
Targeted stimulation of specific brain cells boosts stroke recovery in mice
There are 525,949 minutes in a year. And every year, there are about 800,000 strokes in the United States - so, one stroke every 40 …
Foldscope inventor named one of the world's top innovators under 35 by Technology Review
Stanford bioengineer Manu Prakash, PhD, has said that he wants to make high-tech science available to the developing world. This year, his “frugal science” approach …
Remembering Kenyan statesman and Stanford medical school alumnus Njoroge Mungai
On a visit to Kenya in 2005, I spent an extraordinary afternoon with Njoroge Mungai, MD, one of the country's elder statesmen and a 1957 …
The amazing photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg
I had heard from Rosanne Spector, the editor of Stanford Medicine, that our design team had hired an East Coast photographer to shoot for …
Kids’ brains reorganize as they learn new things, study shows
Why do some children pick up on arithmetic much more easily than others? New Stanford findings from the first longitudinal brain-scanning study of kids solving …
Study questions safety of excessive exercise for heart attack survivors
A recent article in PsychCentral highlighted findings published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings offering more evidence that extreme exercise for heart attack survivors could put …