For doctors who treat trauma patients, prediction is key: Will a patient die in the next 30 minutes? Why or why not? What about the next six hours? And after that? What’s the best treatment? How might the patient respond to that treatment in the best- and worst-case scenarios? Then what? These are mortal questions: […]
The universe is a grand book, Galileo noted in 1623, written in the language of mathematics. Those poor souls who don’t understand that language, he cautioned, wander about in a “dark labyrinth.” I wrote a short piece about math in poetry for PNAS; read the whole thing here. Image: painting by Niklaus Bernoulli
For years, biologist Susi von Oettingen at the US Fish and Wildlife Service tracked the devastation in New England wrought by White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a disease that infects hibernating bats. By some estimates, the disease has killed nearly seven million bats since it was first detected in a New York cave in 2006.
Northern Hibernaculum Read More »
Three days before Christmas in 1995, Linda Horton, a medical researcher in Nashville, Tenn., was diagnosed with a large, fast-growing tumor in her breast. She quickly began her treatment course: chemotherapy to shrink the tumor, followed by a mastectomy—her doctors then told her the cancer was stage II—and additional chemotherapy afterward. Horton didn’t
More than a signature Read More »
A person with a failing vital organ usually has only one treatment option: get a new one. But right now, that often means joining a long waiting list and hoping for the best. Moving up that list means someone ahead of you gets taken off it – either through their death, donation from a living
AT SOME point in their career every mathematician comes up against the question, is mathematics invented or discovered? The query makes some cranky. The answer doesn’t directly affect their work, after all, and the discussion often leads nowhere useful. Spending time debating the ultimate nature of mathematics takes away from actually doing it.
Patents for software? Read More »
Not every hypothesis in cancer research has the same staying power. Some emerge with fanfare and hype, only to fade when follow-up research fails to support a promising theory—or when an upstart steals the spotlight. But even when a promising idea gets pushed aside, it’s not always gone for good. The perfect object lesson: treating
Cutting Cancer’s Engine Read More »
To humans, falling rain usually amounts to little more than a minor inconvenience. After all, we are big and raindrops are small – they splatter on our heads and sleeves, and we end up a little wetter. But a mosquito’s mass is only 2–3 μg and the largest rain- drops may weigh up to 100μg.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TENN. — The world’s first artificial bat cave is expecting the arrival of its first winged visitors. The nearly 80-foot-long concrete chamber was built to protect bats against white nose syndrome, a disease named for a white fungus that infects the skin of the muzzle, ears and wings of hibernating bats.
Tennessee’s bat cave Read More »
The potential benefits of taking aspirin every day to lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes are well-known. Now a trio of reports, two from the Lancet and one from Lancet Oncology, suggest that a daily dose of aspirin may also reduce the risk of developing and dying of cancer. The researchers caution, however, that
Aspirin for cancer prevention? Read More »
