Imagine being able to quickly detect and diagnose blood vessel growth in cancerous tumors, and even predict how fast the tumors might metastasize or spread. Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System are doing just that in animal models using millions of tiny microbubbles injected into the bloodstream, coupled with contrast-enhanced ultrasound, an inexpensive and widely-used technique using sound waves to “see” inside the body.

Their findings are published in the July 22

Yale researchers have, for the first time, identified two types of reading disability: a primarily inherent type with higher cognitive ability (poor readers who compensate for disability), and a more environmentally influenced type with lower cognitive skills and attendance at more disadvantaged schools (persistently poor readers).

The findings, published in the July 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, show that compensated poor readers were able to overcome some of the disability, impr

Yale researcher M. Marc Abreu, M.D., has identified an area of the brain he calls the brain temperature tunnel, which transmits brain temperature to an area of skin and has the potential to prevent death from heat stroke and hypothermia, and detect infectious diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Abreu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ophthalmology at Yale School of Medicine, found that a small area of skin near the eyes and the nose is the point of

A Yale researcher who invented a test to determine whether a woman’s endometrium (uterine lining) is healthy and ready for embryo implantation has identified two new biochemical markers that improve assessment of the endometrium.

The endometrial function test (EFT®) was created by Harvey J. Kliman, M.D., a research scientist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine. An abnormal EFT is associated with pregnancy failure, whil

With 15,000 tons produced each year for batteries, alloys, and pigments, the heavy metal cadmium is one of the most serious environmental pollutants. Chronic exposure can induce kidney damage and bone disease and is thought to cause cancer. A study in the August issue of Nature Medicine now shows that cadmium mimics the effects of estrogen, and suggests that even at relatively low doses cadmium might have wide-ranging effects on the body.

Mary Beth Martin and colleagues report that,

Discovery of quadruply lensed quasar with Einstein ring

Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla (Chile), an international team of astronomers [1] has discovered a complex cosmic mirage in the southern constellation Crater (The Cup). This “gravitational lens” system consists of (at least) four images of the same quasar as well as a ring-shaped image of the galaxy in which the quasar reside – known as an “Einstein ring”. The more nearby lensing galaxy that causes this intriguing opt