If you were diagnosed with a disease, there are two questions you would immediately want answered: 1. How can we treat it? 2. What caused the disease? Those two questions are the foundation of my Ph.D. thesis. I study a muscle disease called inclusion body myositis (IBM), which is sometimes referred to as the “Alzheimer’s(...)
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Fresh or Frozen Embryos? Equal Live-Birth Rates Among Infertile Women
Posted by | Did You See This?, Recently PublishedAbout 40 years ago (July 1978), Louise Joy Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital in England, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces. This birth may sound like any ordinary baby story, but the conception and delivery of Louise, the first human conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), symbolized the possibility of having children for women(...)
Do You Want to Write For Us?
Posted by | Did You See This?Do you blog? Journal? Write in your spare time? Are you interested in pursuing communications at any level in parallel with your professional training? We need you! Biomedical Odyssey: Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is a newsfeed dedicated to showcasing the accomplishments of the students, postdocs, residents and fellows here at the Johns(...)
Last Year’s Resolutions — A Brief Summary of Some of 2017’s Greatest Scientific Advances and Discoveries
Posted by | Did You See This?The onset of each new year is frequently marred by overly ambitious and quickly neglected resolutions — an onslaught of new gym memberships, Jenny Craig enrollments, and Kindle purchases that will likely remain unread for years. New Year’s resolutions aside, the beginning of the year is a timely opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come.(...)
Sleep: Our Panacea
Posted by | Did You See This?, Perspectives in ResearchHumans and animals share the most basic drives in life: the need for food and water, and the urge to procreate. Yet only humans have built a modern world in which these drives seem to cause more problems than they solve. Bookstores worldwide have dedicated whole sections to literature about reconciling your natural desires with(...)
Understanding NIH’s New Definition of a Clinical Trial
Posted by | Did You See This?The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) recent change to the definition of a clinical trial will go into effect later this month. The change, done in an effort to restructure and clarify what clinical trials are, will affect NIH grant submission deadlines on or after Jan. 25, 2018. Redefining Clinical Trails The NIH now defines(...)
The Future of Alternative Agriculture
Posted by | Did You See This?The food industry is a fast-paced, constantly evolving market, wrought with disruptive ideas and technologies, ever-changing trends and new health crazes. However, today’s latest food fads aren’t as simple as the switch from regular to Greek yogurt, or the ushering in of free-range chicken products. Recent years have seen a boom in a burgeoning field(...)
Watching Your Heart with the First FDA-Approved Apple Watch Accessory
Posted by | Did You See This?Imagine you are an incredibly busy and stressed out graduate student (this shouldn’t be hard to do) and you have started to experience increased fatigue over the last three months. In addition, you sometimes feel odd heart palpitations and even shortness of breath when you are simply walking across campus to give your samples to(...)
Science on the Streets
Posted by | Did You See This?“You’ve heard about some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.” -Sarah Palin As a graduate student in a lab(...)
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine—Science Fiction Now Science Fact
Posted by | Did You See This?What is artificial intelligence today? While innovators and philosophers debate the consequences and likelihood of C-3PO or HAL appearing on Earth, we have already accepted a variety of forms of artificial intelligence in our daily lives. Self-driving cars are proving to be successful on our streets, and over 90 percent of flight time on airplanes(...)