News by Subject Medicine & Health

A team of researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, in collaboration with colleagues at Peking University and Yikon Genomics in China, have evaluated a new way to conduct preimplantation genetic testing and present results showing that this new method may improve the reliability of the test. Their findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Zillionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who see the 'colonization' of space as an answer to the Earth's ever threatened resources will be reassured to learn that human sperm retains its complete viability within the different gravitational conditions found in outer space.

Researchers found that embryonic stem cells commit to a cell fate far more rapidly than anticipated.

Two papers publishing June 20 in the journal Cell show that Egyptian fruit bats and mice, respectively, can 'sync' brainwaves in social situations. The synchronization of neural activity in the brains of human conversation partners has been shown previously, as a result of one person picking up social cues from the other and modulating their own behavior based on those cues. These studies suggest that something similar occurs when animals engage in natural social interactions.

A new study, published in Pediatrics, indicates that the initiative yielded positive results on improving rates of prenatal human milk education, early milk expression and skin to skin care among mothers of very low birth weight infants during initial hospitalization, but did not lead to sustained improvement in mother's milk provision at hospital discharge.

Cell biologists at the University of Toronto shed light on the very first step stem cells go through to turn into the specialized cells that make up organs. The findings published online in Genes & Development implicate the ability of proteins to hang around in cells -- their stability -- as a major factor in controlling a stem cell's state, and in the decision to remain a stem cell or transform into a specialized cell.