News Article

Jan

2023

Melatonin Searches Spike Every Winter

SleepFoundation.org, January 4, 2023

Melatonin web searches on Google increased 36% from December 2021 to January 2022, as they have the past few winters.
Google searches for “sleep aid” also hit a five-year peak in January 2022.
West Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi are the states with the highest relative search volume for melatonin.

Melatonin’s popularity has grown tremendously in recent years. Google searches for the term “melatonin” have jumped each of the past five winters, peaking each January. According to Google Trends, melatonin searches grew 36% from late December 2021 to early January 2022, spiking again at the end of January. Read More >

Jun

2022

Stanford researchers testing ways to improve clinical trial diversity

Stanford Medicine, June 22, 2022.

Two Stanford Medicine professors are working with the Morehouse School of Medicine to test ways to enroll more diverse patients in clinical trials for heart disease treatments. The research is part of a $20 million project launched by the American Heart Association to improve diversity in clinical trials.

“Many common chronic diseases disproportionately affect communities of color,” said Hannah Valantine, MD, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford Medicine. For example, Black Americans are 30% more likely to die of heart disease than white Americans, according to 2018 data from the U.S. Health and Human Services. “To translate research discoveries into medicines that can make an impact on those communities, we must have diversity in the clinical trials testing them,” she noted. Read More >

Oct

2021

Deflowering

UCSC Inquiry magazine, October 14 2021

Flowers as symbols are loaded with meaning. So, what does a flower mean when seen through the lens of Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer best known for his depictions of radical sexuality? Read More >

Oct

2021

Bandages With Brains

UCSC Inquiry magazine, October 14 2021

Assistant Professor Marcella Gomez is teaching artificial intelligence learning models to heal. With electrical and computer engineering professors Marco Rolandi and Mircea Teodorescu, Gomez co-leads a collaborative project that includes clinical researchers at UC Davis and Tufts University. Funded by a $16 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the project aims to develop a “smart bandage” that can speed the healing of difficult wounds, like those suffered by soldiers with battlefield injuries from explosions. “Our task is to identify where in the healing process we can intervene to accelerate wound closure,” Gomez said. Read More >

Oct

2021

Watching the Clock

UCSC Inquiry magazine, October 14 2021

A ubiquitous blue-green bacteria found in ponds and lakes worldwide may provide the key to unlocking how life on Earth keeps track of day and night. These cyanobacteria—single-celled, microscopic organisms that create energy from sunlight—provide a simple system that Professor Carrie Partch and her collaborators have harnessed to better probe the intricate workings of biological clocks, the molecular machines that keep time in all living organisms. Read More>

Oct

2021

Why does water squirt out of your eye if you blow your nose really hard?

LiveScience, October 9 2021.

The human body is full of quirks. For example, some people can squirt water (or even smoke or milk) from their eyes.

But how can some people spurt unusual fluids from their eyes, and is it dangerous to their health?

It turns out that when someone squirts water out of their eye, they’re putting pressure on a sac in the bridge of the nose (where glasses usually sit) that holds fluid draining from the eyes. This sac is called the lacrimal sac and is a part of the tear duct system. Read More >

May

2021

COVID-19 Vaccine Storage and Stability

Technology Networks, May 25 2021.

COVID-19 vaccines are here, they are headed out globally and the world is faced with a giant logistical task: keeping these vaccines in their desired storage conditions to ensure stability and efficacy of every dose that goes into an arm. This is an even more complex problem because some of these vaccines have requirements to be kept frozen or refrigerated for optimal safety and efficacy.

While many places in the US have had good success in administering vaccines at local drugstores, community centers or clinics, there are many places within the US and outside of it in which these cold-storage chains are not adequate. Read More >

COVID-19-Vaccine-Storage-and-Stability-Download

Nov

2020

Bringing Embryonic Stem Cells to the Blind: Clinical Test Gets FDA Approval

Discover, January 4 2011.

Embryonic stem cell treatments are edging closer to mainstream medicine. An experimental treatment just approved for clinical trials may provide hope to the 10 to 15 million elderly patients in the United States who suffer from a common form of macular degeneration, which causes gradual blindness.

The biotech company behind the treatment, Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., previously won FDA approval to try an embryonic stem cell treatment on patients with a rare, juvenile form of macular degeneration. The new FDA-approved trial will use similar techniques, but targets a much broader patient base. Read More >

Nov

2020

Curious Polar Bears Best Robot Videographers

Discover, January 3 2011.

Even the best-planned documentaries can go wrong, especially when there are curious polar bears involved. In this case, the BBC was spying on the polar bears of the Arctic islands of Svalbard for a documentary called “Polar Bear: Spy on The Ice,” but their spy-tactics could have used a bit of help.

The cameras were “camouflaged” as icebergs and snow drifts, but that didn’t fool these curious bears, who caught on pretty quickly that snow and ice aren’t supposed to move that quickly. Read More >

Nov

2020

Do Chubby Babies Make for Chubby Toddlers and Overweight Adults?

Discover, January 3 2011.

Most children shed their “baby fat.” But researchers say that in more and more cases, chubby babies (which are about 30 percent of all babies) are primed for obesity later in life.

“We are certainly not saying that overweight babies are doomed to be obese adults,” study researcher Brian Moss, PhD, of Detroit’s Wayne State University tells WebMD. “But we did find some evidence that being overweight at 9 months of age is a predictor of being overweight or obese later in childhood.” Read More >