Surprisingly few pharmacies in the U.S. are able to translate prescription medication instructions into Spanish, making it difficult for patients who speak only Spanish to understand how to take their medications properly, according to a new study from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
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University at Buffalo researchers have demonstrated for the first time that injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure. Using an animal model, the researchers showed that this non-invasive procedure increased myocytes, or heart cells, by two-fold and reduced cardiac tissue injury by 60 percent.
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By using ultrafast laser pulses to slice off pieces of chromosomes and observe how the chromosomes behave, biomedical engineers at the University of Michigan have gained pivotal insights into mitosis, the process of cell division. Their findings could help scientists better understand genetic diseases, aging and cancer.
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Kevin Bruhn, PhD, is the winner of the third annual Liu Young Investigator Award, a $10,000 honor aimed at nurturing excellence and providing support for a young scientist on the LA BioMed campus. Dr. Bruhn came to LA BioMed in 2005 after receiving his PhD in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in tumor immunology at UCLA in 2005.
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Mice carrying a “humanized version” of a gene believed to influence speech and language may not actually talk, but they nonetheless do have a lot to say about our evolutionary past, according to a report in the May 29th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication. “In the last decade or so, we’ve come to realize that the mouse is really similar to humans,” said Wolfgang Enard of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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In what could be a major pharmaceutical breakthrough, research published online in The FASEB Journal describes how scientists from St George’s, University of London have devised a one-two punch to stop HIV. First the report describes a new protein that can kill the virus when used as a microbicide. Then the report shows how it might be possible to manufacture this protein in quantities large enough to make it affordable for people in developing countries.
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As the best drugs become increasingly resistant to superbugs, McMaster University researchers have discovered a completely different way of looking for a new antibiotic. In a paper published May 29 in the journal Chemistry and Biology, with colleagues in Germany and Wilfrid Laurier University, they report on work with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, the leading cause of infections in hospitals and the second most common community-acquired infection.
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Researchers from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a remarkable property of the contractile ring, a structure required for cell division. Understanding how the contractile ring works to divide the cell may facilitate development of therapies to prevent uncontrolled cell division in cancer.
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Just as our world buzzes with distractions - from phone calls to e-mails to tweets - the neurons in our brain are bombarded with messages. Research has shown that when we pay attention, some of these neurons begin firing in unison, like a chorus rising above the noise. Now, a study in the May 29 issue of Science reveals the likely brain center that serves as the conductor of this neural chorus.
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When someone becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol, the brain’s pleasure center gets hijacked, disrupting the normal functioning of its reward circuitry. Researchers investigating this addiction “switch” have now implicated a naturally occurring protein, a dose of which allowed them to get rats hooked with no drugs at all. The research will be published Friday in the journal Science.
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