Every year, as influenza season – and flu shot season—rolls around, medical experts weigh in on just how effective it will be against that year’s particular strain. What if that equation could take into account a person’s own immune response? Emmanuel Mignot, M.D., Ph.D., known for discovering that narcolepsy is related to the immune system, is taking advantage of a unique opportunity to investigate how the immune systems of twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly respond to the seasonal flu vaccin...

Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC) is a healthcare free economic zone situated in the Emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It's mission is to provide high quality integrated healthcare, education, research and wellness by forming strategic partnerships. This will deliver exceptional customer experiences, ultimately impacting every member of our society. Through strategic partnerships, DHCC provides a wide range of services in healthcare, medical education and research, pharmaceuticals, medica...

Researchers are using nanoparticles to kill tumor cells inside the eye. This nanotechnology also has the potential to be used for multiple applications. Nanotechnology is the creation of useful materials, devices, and systems used to manipulate matter at an incredibly small scale—between 1 and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter—1/80,000 the width of a human hair, or about ten times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Such nanoscale objects can be useful by themselves, or ...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a serious health condition that gets worse over time. In this disease, the body’s natural guard against illness (the immune system) damages fatty coverings called myelin sheaths around the axons of cells called neurons in the central nervous system. The disease makes people’s bodies, eyesight, speech, and minds work poorly. People with MS do not normally live as long as healthy people. In healthy people, myelin sheaths help neurons work. Electric signals in neurons ...

Help an Autistic Child Communicate with the World They Live Augmentative Communication for Autistic Children For any child the ability to communicate is an important part of learning. For autistic children this can prove to be a unique challenge. Using augmentative communication tools even a non-verbal child can learn how to reach their full potential. For years educators have been aware of the advantages of introducing children to enriched learning environments that reinforce a child's...

Fiber, also known as roughage, is the part of plant-based foods (grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and beans) that the body can't break down. It passes through the body undigested, keeping your digestive system clean and healthy, easing bowel movements, and flushing cholesterol and harmful carcinogens out of the body. Fiber comes in two varieties: insoluble and soluble. Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water. It is the bulky fiber that helps to prevent constipation, and is found in who...

Japanese scientists have found a way to decipher dreams for the very first time. Their report shows that patterns of activity in certain visual parts of the brain are the same whether we are awake or dreaming. Researchers from ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, scanned three male volunteers' brains in an exhausting test over several days to examine how activity could be related to their dreams. Analyzing more than 200 dream reports—some 30–45 hours of interview...

In a world’s first, researchers at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou confirmed they had engineered embryos to modify the gene responsible for the fatal blood disorder thalassaemia. The Chinese team used embryos they obtained from fertility clinics that had been created for use in IVF but had an extra set of chromosomes, following fertilization by two sperm, which prevents a live birth. They injected 86 embryos with the Cas9 protein and left them for two days to allow the gene-editing...

Intellectual Ability and Heritability Many researchers have studied how our intellectual abilities are affected by genetics. Most believe that a large number of genes each play a small role in our intellectual abilities, but it is difficult to isolate and identify these genes. Imagine you have a number of necklaces with 20,000-25,000 similar beads strung together. Now imagine you are looking for 3,000 specific beads on each necklace, but you're not sure what they look like or even if they ...