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Health Sciences
What Can Twitter Reveal About People With ADHD? Penn Researchers Provide Answers
What can Twitter reveal about people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD?
First Microscopic Video of Blood Clot Contraction Reveals How Platelets Naturally Form Unobtrusive Clots
The first view of the physical mechanism of how a blood clot contracts at the level of individual platelets is giving researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania a new look at a natural process that is part of blood clotting. A team led by John W.
Paving a New Path to Parenthood: Penn Medicine Launches First Clinical Trial for Uterine Transplant in the Northeast
Penn Medicine will conduct the Northeast’s first clinical trial of uterine transplants, to provide women with Uterine Factor Infertility (UFI) - an irreversible form of female infertility that affects as many as 5 percent of women worldwide and 50,000 women in the United States - with a new path to parenthood.
Penn Study Pinpoints H3N2 Mutation in Last Year’s Flu Vaccine as Responsible for Lowered Efficacy
The low efficacy of last year’s influenza vaccine can be attributed to a mutation in the H3N2 strain of the virus, a new study reports.
Penn Biologists Show How Chromosomes ‘Cheat’ for the Chance to Get Into an Egg
Each of your cells contains two copies of 23 chromosomes, one inherited from your father and one from your mother. Theoretically, when you create a gamete — a sperm or an egg — each copy has a 50-50 shot at being passed on. But the reality isn’t so clearcut.
Slowing the spread of an insidious cancer
Cancer of the pancreas is rare, but deadly. Research from Penn Vet may slow its spread.
Connecting Homeless Populations With Health Care
Homeless people are uniquely vulnerable, at risk of a variety of health problems, including chronic illness, hunger, pain, and infections. While resources exist to provide homeless populations with health insurance and care, those resources don’t always make their way to the people who need them.
Penn’s Restoring Active Memory Project Adds Task and Patient Data to Publicly Available Human Brain Dataset
The Restoring Active Memory project run by the University of Pennsylvania has just released human intracranial brain recording and stimulation data for 102 new patients and a new spatial-navigation task developed by researchers at Columbia University.
Targeting enzyme in ‘normal’ cells may impede pancreatic cancer’s spread, Penn Vet team shows
Cancer of the pancreas is a deadly disease, with a median survival time of less than six months. Only one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer survives five years past the diagnosis. The reason is the cancer’s insidiousness; tumor cells hide deep inside the body, betraying no symptoms until late in the disease, when the cancer has almost invariably spread to other organs.
Penn Medicine: Blood Flow in the Developing Heart Guides Maturation of Heart Valves
Congenital heart valve defects appear in 2 percent of all live births, making them the most common type of birth defect. While some of these defects have been linked to specific genetic mutations, the majority have no clearly definable genetic cause, suggesting that epigenetic factors – changes in gene expression versus an alteration in the genetic code -- play an important role.
In the News
Bird flu suspected in deaths of 200 snow geese in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley
Stephen Cole of the School of Veterinary Medicine says that indoor cats are contracting bird flu through raw pet foods of poultry origin or raw milk products.
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The surgeon general calls for new warning labels on alcohol—here’s the truth about how it impacts your health
Henry Kranzler of the Perelman School of Medicine says that alcohol’s effects on the brain are observed more readily because it’s the organ of behavior.
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Tuberculosis rates plunge when families living in poverty get a monthly cash payout
Aaron Richterman of the Perelman School of Medicine says that there are large and underappreciated benefits of cash-transfer programs, such as potentially ending a tuberculosis epidemic.
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Cancer breakthrough as ‘speckles’ may reveal best treatment
A paper co-authored by PIK Professor Shelley Berger finds that patterns of “speckles” in the heart of tumor cells could help predict how patients with a common form of kidney cancer will respond to treatment options.
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Scientists are racing to develop a new bird flu vaccine
Drew Weissman and Scott Hensley of the Perelman School of Medicine are testing a vaccine to prevent a strain of H5N1 bird flu in chickens and cattle.
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