Patients who have recently undergone an operation experience less breathing problems after being given a cocktail of vitamins C and E. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center following experiments with patients and healthy volunteers.
During the first two to three days after a major abdominal operation, most patients have frequent episodes of airway obstruction and hypoxaemia. This can lead to an increase in the heart rate and blood pressure, w
Raw garlic consumption may help limit the damage done to the heart after surgery because if its natural antioxidant properties, according to a new study published in BMC Pharmacology.
After a heart attack it is important to restore the flow of blood to the heart so that damage to the heart muscle can be minimised. However, the return of blood flow can paradoxically cause further damage, so called “ischemic-reperfusion injury, due to the release of free radicals. Free radicals cause oxidativ
Now physicists need not fully control the growth of laser crystals, because the crystals grow themselves. Professor Nikolay Ledentsov and his team at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute have learned how to provide special conditions in which crystals can grow defectless.
Growing crystals with enhanced characteristics is possible on the basis of the effect of quantum dots. A quantum dot is a tiny islet of one material lost in the monocrystal of the other material. For a long time t
Pilot project for stroke victims to begin this fall
A Queens neuroscientists invention to help understand the role of the brain in arm and leg movement will dramatically improve the assessment and rehabilitation of stroke and spinal cord victims. It will also help lay the groundwork for development of neural prostheses that can re-activate paralyzed limbs.
Dr. Stephen Scotts unique mathematical model, combined with his new experimental device, KINARM (Kines
A researcher in environmental engineering at Staffordshire University has developed a technique to convert unwanted cooking oil into a ‘biodiesel’ which is a much cleaner alternative to fossil diesel.
Dr Tarik Al-Shemmeri, a Reader in Environmental Engineering at Staffordshire University, uses discarded vegetable oil as the basis of his sustainable fuel which, when burnt, DOES NOT
give off sulphur dioxide, unlike conventional diesel.
Sulphur dioxide contributes to what has bee
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh are using immune cells harvested from blood donors to help fight an unusual cancer which can affect transplant patients. And their findings, published recently in The Lancet show that the therapy has proved effective in a number of cases. The treatment proved successful last year in saving the life of a four-year-old boy from Birmingham, who developed the cancer— post-transplant lympho-proliferative disease— following a liver and bowel transplant.