By: Meenu Johnkutty ’21 The need to sleep is one of health and medicine’s biggest paradoxes. Though we spend nearly a third of our lives asleep, little is really known about this process. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, over 30 to 35% of the population suffers from insomnia, which is characterized by a difficulty in initiating or maintaining sleep throughout the night. … Continue reading The Genetics Behind Sleep Duration
By: Meenu Johnkutty ’21 If you have ever felt the strong impulse to sleep during a boring lecture or movie, researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan can explain why. In their study, published in Nature, the researchers led by Yo Oishi implicated a region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens in the onset of slow wave sleep. The nucleus accumbens is a … Continue reading Boredom and the Urge to Sleep: The Link Explained
By Meenu Johnkutty ’21 Eating fish might be more beneficial than originally thought. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania recently published a study outlining the benefits of fish consumption on sleep quality and cognition in children. The study was originally published in Scientific Reports, a branch of Nature, with Jianghong Liu as the lead author. Long chains of omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and … Continue reading The Effects of Fish Consumption on Sleep and Cognition in Children
By Marcia-Ruth Ndege ’21 In human embryos, the brain begins to develop during the first trimester of pregnancy. Proper brain development is critical at its early stages and could have detrimental effects if something goes awry. Scientists and researchers have investigated and familiarized themselves with the basics of brain development. A new study has shown that an unexpected participant plays a major role in this … Continue reading Ultraconserved Elements Found to Affect Brain Development
By Gene Yang ’19 Over 216 million cases of malaria, a disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite and transmitted by mosquitos, were recorded in 2016. While this disease still results in an estimated half a million deaths per year, the majority of which occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa, mortality rates are on the decline thanks to increased prevention and control. However, if malaria eradication is to … Continue reading Searching for New Anti-Malaria Drugs
By: Gene Yang ‘19 Reciprocity, the act of responding to kind actions with other kind actions, has been known to stabilize cooperation within populations and communities. When applied on a global scale, models of international cooperation have shown reciprocity to be a key factor in stabilization. However, empirical research to verify these models have so far been limited to small-scale studies involving two or three … Continue reading Reciprocity and International Cooperation
By: Gene Yang ‘19 When it was discovered that cancer cells with the protein PD-L1 avoid detection by the immune system, clinical trials involving PD-L1-targeted drugs emerged. These drugs, part of a class known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, block the interaction between the cancer cells’ PD-L1 protein and the immune system’s T cells, which then allows the immune system to detect and attack the tumor. … Continue reading The Microbiome’s Influence on Immunotherapy
By: Gene Yang ‘19 The question of whether the central nervous system evolved once or multiple times is a subject of much study and debate. Humans and other animals with bilateral symmetry, all of which possess central nervous systems, are known to have descended from a common ancestor. In the past, it was believed that the central nervous system evolved just once in our bilateral … Continue reading Evolution of the Nervous System: Independent or Conserved?
By Marcia-Ruth Ndege ‘21 Trends throughout the years have underlined the fact that women tend to be more eco-friendly than their male counterparts. This trend has long been attributed to personality differences between the two sexes. Through a series of various psychological experiments, Dr. Aaron Brough and his team explore the role of masculinity in the commitment to make eco-friendly decisions. Brough and his team … Continue reading What Masculinity Has to do With the Environment
By Marcia-Ruth Ndege ’21 Over the past few decades, global climate change has become a widely debated issue. Its believability, however, is no longer relevant as we are living through its effects across the globe; whether it be through melting glaciers in the Arctic, droughts and wildfires in California, or decreased rainfall in Ethiopia, the effects of climate change are prominent and devastating. A new … Continue reading Weight of Rising Sea Levels Causes Ocean Floor to Sink
By Marcia-Ruth Ndege ’21 For over a century, researchers have pondered the question of how the brain intakes, processes, and retains new information. Researcher Elisabeth Wenger and her team at the Max Plank Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany probed deeper into this process by examining the volumetric changes in human grey matter and linking them to the process of skill acquisition in humans. … Continue reading Brain Cells Live and Die in the Process of Learning
By Meghan Bialt-DeCelie ‘19 Sixty to seventy percent of schizophrenic patients and twenty-five percent of patients diagnosed with psychotic disorders struggle with both visual and auditory hallucinations. Drug and long-term cognitive therapies have been developed to conquer this, but they are often ineffective or only effective for a very select group of patients. Researchers led by Dr. Tom KJ Craig tested the effectiveness of a … Continue reading New Therapy for Hallucination Caused by Psychotic Disorders
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