Tag: disease

When It Comes To Heart Disease The Sex Of Your Cells Matter
SCIENCE

When It Comes To Heart Disease The Sex Of Your Cells Matter

Most mammals, including humans, have two sex chromosomes, X and Y. One sex chromosome is usually inherited from each parent, and they pair up as either XX or XY in every cell of the body. People with XX chromosomes typically identify as female, and people with XY chromosomes typically identify as male. The genes on these chromosomes play a key role in development and function – including how heart disease develops. Before I became a biomedical engineer studying how sex chromosomes affect the heart, I learned about one curious function of X chromosomes in my high school science class, with the calico cat example. Female calico cats almost always have orange and black splotches of fur, because the gene that defines coat color is found on the X chromosome. When an orange cat mates with a bl...
Celebrity Chef Sean Brock Shares A Taste Of Life With A Rare Disease
LIFESTYLE

Celebrity Chef Sean Brock Shares A Taste Of Life With A Rare Disease

(BPT) - No art form engages all five senses the way cuisine can. We hear it being prepared, we smell it and see it as our anticipation builds, we feel it on the lips and in the mouth, and of course taste its delicious flavors. All five senses come together to complete an immersive sensory experience that only few creators can master. Sean Brock is one such artist - a James Beard award-winning chef, founder of the renowned Husk restaurants in the Southeast, former partner and chef at McCrady's Charleston, and owner of The Continental and Audrey in Nashville. He has written two New York Times best-selling cookbooks and been featured in television cooking programs like Chef's Table and Mind of a Chef. His innovative, original dishes using authentic Southern ingredients with West African infl...
7 Questions Answered By A Pediatric Infectious Disease Expert – Should My Child Get The COVID-19 Vaccine?
HEALTH & WELLNESS, LIFESTYLE

7 Questions Answered By A Pediatric Infectious Disease Expert – Should My Child Get The COVID-19 Vaccine?

The Food and Drug Administration expanded emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include adolescents 12 to 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed with recommendations endorsing use in this age group after their advisory group meeting on May 12. The American Academy of Pediatrics also supports this decision. Dr. Debbie-Ann Shirley is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia specializing in pediatric infectious diseases. Here she addresses some of the concerns parents may have about their teen or preteen getting the COVID-19 vaccine. 1. Does the vaccine work in adolescents? Yes, recently released data from Pfizer-BioNTech shows that the COVID-19 vaccine seems to work really well in ...
Black Churches In Philadelphia Overcame Disease, Depression And Civil Strife
Religion

Black Churches In Philadelphia Overcame Disease, Depression And Civil Strife

The Black Church is an institution that was forged in crises. Through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the civil rights era, the network of places of worship serving traditionally Black congregations has seen its fair share of traumatic events. In 2016, the Rev. Robert Franklin, former president of Morehouse College, acknowledged as much in a speech on urban ministries: “Disruption is the question, but the radical love ethic of Jesus is the response.” And that was before 2020 delivered the COVID-19 pandemic, the related economic crisis and the global movement for Black Lives – forcing Black churches to find new ways to worship and serve their communities. As a scholar who looks at how the Black Church engages with the community, I believe looking at how the institution ...
Research on voting by mail says it’s safe – from fraud and disease
POLITICS

Research on voting by mail says it’s safe – from fraud and disease

As millions of Americans prepare to vote in November – and in many cases, primaries and state and local elections through the summer as well – lots of people are talking about voting by mail. It is a way to protect the integrity of the country’s voting system and to limit potential exposure to the coronavirus, which continues to spread widely in the U.S. I am a political scientist and part of a National Academy of Public Administration working group offering recommendations to ensure voter participation as well as public confidence in the election process and the outcome during this coronavirus pandemic. To meet that goal, our work has found that state and local governments will need to make significant adjustments to their voting systems this year – changes that will likely require new f...
Is the COVID-19 pandemic cure really worse than the disease? Here’s what our research found
COVID-19

Is the COVID-19 pandemic cure really worse than the disease? Here’s what our research found

The coronavirus pandemic catapulted the country into one of the deepest recessions in U.S. history, leaving millions of Americans without jobs or health insurance. There is a lot of evidence that economic hardship is associated with poor health and can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, mental health problems, cognitive dysfunction and early death. All of that raises a question: Is the U.S. better off with the public health interventions being used to keep the coronavirus from spreading or without them? In a new working paper, I and a team of health economists from U.S. universities set out to answer that question from a humanitarian perspective. To do that, we reviewed the latest data and scientific research about the virus to evaluate the number of lives saved if public healt...
How people react to the threat of disease could mean COVID-19 is reshaping personalities
COVID-19, TECHNOLOGY

How people react to the threat of disease could mean COVID-19 is reshaping personalities

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be “imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time,” predicted Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. No doubt in the future people will mourn those who’ve died and remember the challenges of this period. But how would COVID-19 shape people’s personalities – and into what? I am a psychology researcher interested in how people’s minds shape, and are shaped by, their life circumstances. Human beings are born into this world ready to deal with basic problems – forming close relationships, maintaining status in groups, finding mates and avoiding disease. People are adaptable, though, and react to the circumstances they find themselves in. Psychological research suggests that concerns...
Predicting the coronavirus outbreak: How AI connects the dots to warn about disease threats
AI, COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, TECHNOLOGY

Predicting the coronavirus outbreak: How AI connects the dots to warn about disease threats

Canadian artificial intelligence firm BlueDot has been in the news in recent weeks for warning about the new coronavirus days ahead of the official alerts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. The company was able to do this by tapping different sources of information beyond official statistics about the number of cases reported. BlueDot’s AI algorithm, a type of computer program that improves as it processes more data, brings together news stories in dozens of languages, reports from plant and animal disease tracking networks and airline ticketing data. The result is an algorithm that’s better at simulating disease spread than algorithms that rely on public health data – better enough to be able to predict outbreaks. The company uses the t...
The Trump administration has made the U.S. less ready for infectious disease outbreaks like coronavirus
COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

The Trump administration has made the U.S. less ready for infectious disease outbreaks like coronavirus

As coronavirus continues to spread, the Trump administration has declared a public health emergency and imposed quarantines and travel restrictions. However, over the past three years the administration has weakened the offices in charge of preparing for and preventing this kind of outbreak. Two years ago, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates warned that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic in the same serious way it prepares for war”. Gates, whose foundation has invested heavily in global health, suggested staging simulations, war games and preparedness exercises to simulate how diseases could spread and to identify the best response. Colorized scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles (blue) budding from an infected cell (yellow-green). NIAID,...
Ozzy Osbourne has a type of Parkinson’s disease called Parkin: A neurologist explains
CELEBRITY NEWS

Ozzy Osbourne has a type of Parkinson’s disease called Parkin: A neurologist explains

For many, hearing the word “Parkinson’s” conjures an image of tremors. But Parkinson’s disease, brought about by loss of nerve and other brain cells, is actually an incredibly complex movement disorder that can cause symptoms as wide-ranging as smell loss, thinking issues, depression and swallowing problems. More than 1 million people in the U.S. have the illness, and millions more loved ones and caregivers are affected by it, too. Rocker Ozzy Osbourne announced Jan. 21, 2020 that he has a type of Parkinson’s called Parkin, named after the gene associated with this type of Parkinson’s. Parkin is involved in maintaining the energy-producing area of cells, called mitochondria. This type of the disease often responds well to deep brain stimulation. While Osbourne, 71, said it’s been “terrib...