You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2008.
I stumbled upon something really cool. Psychology and Psychotherapy fascinate me. This post is not really related to the field of biology but is close to being important for Public Health.
Ever wonder how to treat your fear of heights or bugs or the most silly of things? Ever wonder how many of us actually have such phobias? If yes, according to a recent article, there is a solution. Before I throw the details at you Read the rest of this entry »
Today Alex Coffman of ScienceMode gave an update on the salmonella outbreak. So far 552 people in 32 states and Washington, DC have been affected with the rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain.
It’s a situation that has proved confusing for consumers, who saw tomatoes removed from grocery produce sections and restaurants earlier this month. The FDA has said all along that the tainted tomatoes are only the red Roma, red plum, and red round varieties, and that cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, those on the vine, and home-grown tomatoes are all safe to eat.
If you are wondering whether these infected tomatoes are around you Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, a 1000 survivors wearing pink T-shirts paraded through the Qwest field in Seattle while thousands more cheered for them. It is an incredibly scary feeling knowing that this disease can affect absolutely anyone and although it does have a treatment, we all wish our loved one’s to be far from it.
Mellissa Allison of the Seattle Times penned down the details of this Puget Sound Race for Cure. This year’s event raced quite a lot of money. Read the rest of this entry »
That’s probably not new information. But, the statistics of the number of deaths caused by smoking is. An article published in one of Scotlands news website talks about the findings for this study.
These illnesses cause 930,000 deaths worldwide each year, in addition to more than five million smoking-related deaths estimated by the World Health Organisation as being caused by diseases such as lung cancer, which have long been linked to smoking.
Something more interesting than these statistics is the fact that Scotland officials are proposing a ban on public smoking. Read the rest of this entry »
That’s right! Estrogen, one of the primary female sex hormones, protects breast cancer cells from our immune system. How ironic is that? One part of our body functions to protect while the other wants to destroy the same. I can’t think of other opposing reactions such as these but I am absolutely certain that there are a huge number of such antagonistic reactions present in our body.
Tamoxifen is a drug used to treat breast cancer. How does this drug function? Hormones normally function by binding to a receptor that will cause a series of reactions to occur and result in some kind of change in the system. Estrogen works in the same way and it needs to bind to an estrogen receptor to produce any kind of change. Our smart drug, tamoxifen, saves the day by binding to this estrogen receptor thereby blocking estrogen from doing the same. Smart drug, indeed!
But, what happens when estrogen binds to the estrogen receptor? Read the rest of this entry »
In the past few months, there has been an epidemic of salmonella infected tomatoes. Salmonella is a bacteria that is normally present in the intestine of an animal. So how does Salmonella affect tomatoes? Ryan Hagen from Slate Magazine says its because of animals and animal products such as manure on farm. He also listed run-off water as one of the causes for this case.
Producers do rinse their harvest with chlorinated water to remove most of the harmful bacteria, but enough can be left to make you sick. If the skin of a tomato is punctured when the fruit is picked from the vine or when presliced for sale in a supermarket or restaurant, then bacteria get inside, and no amount of washing will make it safe to eat. This is partly why Read the rest of this entry »
I am going to use this blog to post about research in the fields of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Oral Biology and Public Health. I will post information in simple terms for non-biology folks as well as provide more scientic details for the geeks. The methods page will have information on the experiments that are used for research.
Hopefully, this turns out to be a good resource for people that want information about science in simple terms and don’t have access to scientific journals.
