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misciwriters Public health, Research

How Your Electronic Health Records Could Help Biomedical Research

Author: Brooke Wolford

Editors: Jimmy Brancho, Shweta Ramdas, Belle Moyers

Think back to the last time you visited your primary care physician. Was the health care provider using a laptop or tablet to take notes and update your health information? In many doctors’ offices across the country your health records have gone digital. In addition to their exciting potential to help doctors’ offices reduce human error and better serve patients, electronic health records (EHRs) also make available a new source of “big data” for researchers.

EHRs are patient-specific digital records your health care provider maintains. The information in your EHR helps your doctor efficiently track your health over time and helps researchers learn more about diseases, which ultimately improves the clinical care your doctor provides to you and other patients. Believe it or not, EHRs from patients like you and me have already helped researchers make discoveries that improve health care for everyone!

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misciwriters Biology, Public health

Rabid: How to Beat a Gold-Medal Virus

Author: Shannon Wright

Editors: Ellyn Schinke, Jessica Cote, Alisha John

What is the most deadly virus in the world? The answer may surprise you. If we consider case fatality rate (the number of people infected who die from the virus if left untreated), it’s not Smallpox (20-60%), or even the Ebola virus (~50%), but rather, a common mammal-targeting virus you almost certainly have heard of: rabies. With no known cure, this infamous virus has a 100% fatality rate – certainly worthy of a gold-medal if we were giving out medals for how deadly viruses are.

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misciwriters Astrophysics, Physics, Technology

NASA’s Juno mission: Unlocking secrets about Jupiter and ourselves

Author: Irene Park

Editors: Ada Hagan, Alisha John, Shweta Ramdas, Scott Barolo

On July 4th 2016, NASA announced that the spacecraft Juno arrived at Jupiter after traveling two billion miles over five years. Juno was designed to investigate the origin of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet.

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misciwriterseditors Biology, blog, Microbiology, Research

Spinach and siderophores, part 2: Getting the upper hand

Author: Ada Hagan

Editors: Alisha John, Scott Barolo

As we discussed last time, bacteria that infect the human body face a major challenge: iron, which is essential for bacterial growth, is hard to obtain from human tissues.  Many pathogenic bacteria solve this problem by deploying “stealth siderophores,” which steal iron from human iron-binding proteins while evading our defenses. In the battle between humans and pathogenic bacteria, our best weapons, antibiotics, are being weakened by widespread resistance. Is there a way to use bacteria’s need for iron against them?

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misciwriterseditors Biology, blog, Microbiology

Spinach and siderophores: The bacterial battle for iron

Author: Ada Hagan

Editors: Alisha John, Irene Park

Many remember the boisterous, muscle-bound, tattooed sailor Popeye and the thin-as-a-rail Olive Oyl from Saturday morning cartoons. In times of need, such as when his rival Bluto stole Olive Oyl for the 50th time, Popeye would squeeze open a tin can of spinach. Eating the spinach, sometimes miraculously through his corn-cob pipe, gave Popeye that extra boost of energy needed to escape his bonds and rescue his lady-friend. What was so special about spinach that gave Popeye his superpower?

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misciwriterseditors Biology, blog, Disease research, Research, Technology

Regenerative medicine – Panacea or hype?

Author: Kaitlin Weskamp

Editors: Brittany Dixon, Zuleirys Santana Rodriguez, Scott Barolo

Zebrafish may not look impressive, but they can do something that no human can: regenerate large portions of organs that are damaged or lost. These fish, each about as long as your pinky finger, are able to regrow amputated fins, repair lesioned brains, and mend damaged eyes, spinal cords, and hearts. This remarkable ability to heal has fascinated scientists for some time, and in recent years, large strides have been made towards translating this regenerative ability to humans. Continue reading “Regenerative medicine – Panacea or hype?” →

misciwriters genetics

It’s all in the family! But how? The biology of inheritance Part 2

Author: Shweta Ramdas

Editors: Molly Kozminsky, Christina Vallianatos, Belle Moyers

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last five years, you have definitely come across headlines to the tune of “Researchers Find Gene for X”, where X can be anything from happiness, to political affiliation, to your preference for cilantro. There are quite a few people who respond to these studies with “but surely that’s not genetic!” I work on the genetics of psychiatric disorders and have fielded this question from most people with whom I discuss my research: “Isn’t something like depression just caused by things that happen to you or your upbringing? Why do we place the blame on genetics instead?”

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misciwriters Microbiology, Research, science behind the scenes, Technology

In silico biology: How math and computer science teach us about life

Author: Hayley Warsinske

Editors: Molly Kozminsky, Ellyn Schinke, Irene Park

We live in a world of science and technology. Biomedical research helps improve our lives everyday by providing us with vital information about everything from hygiene to Alzheimer’s disease. Computers provide us with access to wealth of information on any subject in an instant and expedite many of our daily activities. Often these two worlds overlap and computers are also used to provide scientists with information about our own health and survival to facilitate biomedical research.

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misciwriters Biology, evolution, genetics

What the octopus genome can tell us

Author: Shweta Ramdas

Editors: Irene Park, Ada Hagan, Alisha John

The team at MiSciWriters certainly finds cephalopods fascinating, and we aren’t alone. Last year, the octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) was added to the growing list of organisms whose genome sequence is known.

Octopuses belong to a class of organisms called cephalopods, which literally means ‘head-feet’ (members of the cephalopod family have a head and tentacles or arms). These tentacles enable the creatures to do some very clever maneuvering, such as escaping their aquariums to eat crabs outside their tanks. It’s no surprise then that these are the most intelligent amongst invertebrates and now new information about the octopus genome can tell us more about these fascinating creatures.

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misciwriters Biology, Microbiology, Public health

Superbugs and a new school year: How you can help slow antibiotic resistance

Author: Carrie Johnson

Editors: Ada Hagan, Irene Park

Whether you have heard about it or not, antibiotic resistance is a growing threat that affects us all.

For generations, we have benefited from antibiotics to fight bacterial infections that would otherwise threaten our lives.  Unfortunately, the effectiveness of antibiotics is increasingly at risk.  Bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics already have already taken a significant toll and the severity of the problem is only growing.  In the United States, it already costs us over 23,000 lives and an estimated $55 billion each year.

As we head into a new school year and the colder winter months when illness risks seem to rise, the timing couldn’t be better to remind you that everyone (yes, you!) plays a role in combating this growing problem of antibiotic resistance. But first we need to understand the basics of this problem, including the three major factors at play.

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