Health and Medicine

Biomedical scientist Shuming Nie is testing the use of nanoparticles called quantum dots to dramatically improve clinical diagnostic tests for the early detection of cancer. The tiny particles glow and act as markers on cells and genes, giving scientists the ability to rapidly analyze biopsy tissue from cancer patients so that doctors can provide the most effective therapy available.

Nie, a chemist by training, is an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Eng

Women with a combined HIV/malaria infection more frequently experience complications during pregnancy than healthy women. This is revealed in research from Kenya. However, to their surprise the researchers established that HIV-infected mothers with a mild malaria infection less frequently transmit the HIV infection to their children than HIV-infected mothers without malaria.

In Kenya, the epidemiologists Annemieke van Eijk and John Ayisi investigated the interaction between HIV and malaria a

A headache is often regarded as an excuse for not having sexual intercourse, but neurologists in Germany have been conducting a trial to investigate the true nature of this condition. They found that men in their early 20s are more likely to get a sexual headache, delegates at the European Federation of Neurological Societies congress were told today (28 October).

Sexual headache occurs in up to one percent of the population who suffer from it at least once in their life. It is not caused b

A new generation of realistic models of the human body could give radiation scientists and medical workers a better view of how exposure to radiation affects different internal organs. These so-called “voxel phantoms” offer a new way to reveal the effects of radioactive particles that have been ingested or breathed in or otherwise entered the body. (The word “voxel” means volume element and is the three-dimensional equivalent of pixel).

Maria Zankl of the Institute of Radiation Protection in

Penn State engineers have developed a prototype for an ultrasound insulin delivery system that is about the size and weight of a matchbook that can be worn as a patch on the body.

Dr. Nadine Barrie Smith, assistant professor of bioengineering, says, “The new Penn State ultrasound patch, which operates in the same frequency range as the large commercially available sonic drug delivery devices, is about an inch-and-a-half by an inch-and-a-half in size and weighs less than an ounce. Commerciall

Non-high density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) may help predict heart problems in people who have heart disease, according to a report in today’s Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Reducing low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol has long been the goal of medications and other cholesterol-lowering treatments. But researchers are finding that other lipoproteins appear to be involved in developing heart disease. These include some very low-density lipop