Archive: 2007

The knowledge of one's personal and familial history -- be it genealogical, cultural, or medical -- is usually restricted to memories, anecdotes and paper documents. The availability and increasing affordability of DNA sequencing has the potential to…

Microbes have been getting a lot of bad publicity lately. From methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) outbreaks to E. coli in our food, the headlines have made it abundantly clear that bacteria are very inventive when it comes to harming…

Mental disorders are found worldwide, and approximately one in four adults in the United States suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. The biological causes of many mental disorders are unknown and, thus, the mode of treatment is not…

Abnormally high body fat, also known as obesity, has become an epidemic in the United States. The National Institutes of Health estimates that today approximately two-thirds of the population is overweight and nearly one-third is obese. This is a marked…

Sun light is perhaps the only source of energy that can keep up with the world's ever increasing appetite for energy. More solar energy strikes the Earth in one hour than all the global fossil fuels combined can provide in a year. However, utilizing this…

Stem cells are no strangers to media attention. In the midst of all the hype and debate, it can be difficult to determine the scientific facts. Recently, several exciting technological advances have been reported in the stem cell field, and we will…

As usual, it turns out that your mother was right -- the group you surround yourself with might just get you into trouble. Last month in the journal Nature Neuroscience, two groups of researchers reported that in the devastating disease amyotrophic…

While man’s eternal search for “the fountain of youth” continues, a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that we (at least the gourmands among us) may not like what we find. Scientists have known for…

Malaria is a parasitic disease that affects 300 million people worldwide, and kills nearly 1 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. Because it is transmitted by mosquitoes, it is prevalent in sub-tropical regions of the…

Have you ever drunk a big glass of milk or eaten an ice cream cone and then felt sick to your stomach afterwards? If so, you might be one of the estimated 30-50 million Americans who have difficulty digesting milk and other dairy products and are said to…