Today’s Solutions: May 08, 2024

Medicine

From advancements in the fight against malaria to new cancer treatments, to novel medical technologies, find all positive news about incredible medical breakthroughs and life-saving technology from all corners of the globe.

Doctors discussing treatment for a brain aneurysm.

A new approach to treating brain aneurysms

A brain aneurysm is defined as a weakness in a blood vessel. This area then becomes susceptible to filling with blood and creating a dome, just like a balloon. Causing increased pressure in the brain and loss of oxygen to the surrounding cells, leading to sometimes deadly outcomes. A wide-necked Read More...

Practitioner administering ultrasound treatment in the brain to an elderly patient.

Ultrasound could be used to treat addiction and OCD

The 'credit assignment' problem refers to when someone attributes an event to the wrong outcome. For example, passing an exam and instead of assigning your success to the many hours of studying put in, you put it down to the number of times you brushed your teeth that day. This psychological Read More...

young woman pulls down mask to reveal irritated skin or

How to deal with "maskne"

Mask-wearing helps keep us and everyone else safe and healthy, but we can all agree that mask-wearing-induced skin irritation and acne (otherwise known as “maskne”) is not ideal. The two types of maskne that people get when wearing face masks are: contact friction and breakouts. While they Read More...

A person in a grey t-shirt measures their belly fat with a yellow measuring tape.

CRISPR-Cas9 may be able to solve obesity

Cases of obesity have been steadily increasing worldwide, especially during the pandemic. Lack of physical activity through more office-based jobs, plus a lack of access to fresh healthy food means more and more people are experiencing obesity. Having too much fat on your body can be extremely Read More...

A black cab driving through London.

London’s black cabbies help navigate research into Alzheimer’s disease

What do squirrels and London’s licensed black cabbies have in common? An extraordinarily large hippocampus—the area of the brain that deals with spatial navigation. London’s licensed black cabbies don’t need the modern convenience of GPS devices. Instead, they rely on “the Read More...

Mitochondria in,HeLa cervical cancer cells.

WHO recognizes Henrietta Lacks for her life-changing contributions to medicine

When Henrietta Lacks sought treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in the 1950s, her cancer cells were harvested without her consent. These “HeLa cells” became the first sample of human cells to divide indefinitely in a lab, providing the basis for life-changing Read More...

Blue opioid pills in a jar

This device can save people from opioid overdoses

The strain of health care systems around the world caused by the pandemic means many other services have been cut. This includes those tackling the opioid epidemic, which accounted for 70 percent of overdoses in 2019, according to the CDC. While many government policies look at this issue from a Read More...

Surgeons working on a patient

Doctors complete first successful pig to human kidney transplant

For the first time ever, doctors at NYU Langone Health in New York City have successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a human. The primary function of this organ is to filter waste products and excess fluid from the blood, which is subsequently turned into urine. When this process breaks down, a Read More...

Turning of the year 2021 to 2022

8 Trends from 2021 We’ll Carry to the New Year

“Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” - Hal Borland  It’s the time of year for reflections and projections as we take stock of all that has happened over the last twelve months and peer with hopeful curiosity Read More...

Woman speech therapist doing speech exercises with with stuttering boy

Novel research could help improve the quality of life of people who stutter

According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, there are about three million people in the US who stutter. Since stuttering can make it difficult to communicate with other people, it can also take a toll on a person’s quality of life by negatively impacting job Read More...