Health

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain On a recent Friday night at Lake Ridge High School in this suburb south of Arlington, Alex Hawkins sat by himself in the upper reaches of a gymnasium that, in the vernacular of the day, allowed plenty of social distancing. Although not everyone in the gym …

A patient is pushed on a trolley outside the Royal London Hospital in the Whitechapel area of east London, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022. The omicron variant is exposing weaknesses at the heart of Europe’s public health system. In France and Britain, a sharp rise in coronavirus hospitalizations coupled with staff …

People, some wearing surgical masks, others FFP2 masks, to cope with the surge of COVID-19 cases stroll past stalls at the Porta Portese open air market, in Rome, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. Italy, Spain and other European countries are re-instating or stiffening mask mandates as their hospitals struggle with mounting …

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new ultra-rapid genome sequencing approach developed by Stanford Medicine scientists and their collaborators was used to diagnose rare genetic diseases in an average of eight hours—a feat that’s nearly unheard of in standard clinical care. “A few weeks is what most clinicians call ‘rapid’ when …

“What we found was that the joint activity of the grid cell network resided on and moved along the surface of a torus, a doughnut. For the awake rat, the activity moved across the doughnut in synchrony with the animal’s movement in the room. At any given time, researchers could …

Credit: Wikipedia Around half of the genome is made up of transposable elements or ‘jumping genes’ that derive from ancient viral integrations. They persist in various states of decay like an old fashioned ‘pull your own’ junkyard where parts from old scrapped vehicles can be harvested and repurposed. While most …

A man wearing a mask is seen walking in a Melbourne park as Melbourne goes into Stage 4 Lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. The coronavirus variant has swept across Australia despite its high vaccination rate and strict border policies that kept the country largely …

Registered nurse Rachel Chamberlin, of Cornish, N.H., right, steps out of an isolation room where where Fred Rutherford, of Claremont, N.H., left, recovers from COVID-19 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. Hospitals like this medical center, the largest in New Hampshire, are overflowing with severely …

Judit Kagan, 75, receives her fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine in a private nursing home in Petah Tikva, Israel, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022. Israel’s prime minister says a 4th vaccination against the omicron variant of the coronavirus generates a five-fold increase in antibodies to fight the virus. Naftali Bennett …

Medical Technologist Erika Alvarado performs a COVID-19 test on a patient who just delivered a baby outside a hospital in Manila, Philippines on Friday, Dec. 24, 2021. In the Philippines, one of the worst-hit by the pandemic in Southeast Asia, daily COVID-19 infections have considerably dropped from an average 22,000 …

Credit: Gumbariya/Shutterstock COVID passes for England were given the green light in parliament in December, with 369 MPs voting in favour and 128 against. From now on, people attending large events will be required to show proof of vaccination—two doses, to become three after a “reasonable” amount of time—or a …

Adolescent girls ages 11 to 13 receive HPV Vaccination in Sao Paulo Brazil. This image has been cropped. Credit: HR@PAHO/WHO, CC BY-ND 2.0 Ugandan street vendor Saudah Namutebi found out about cervical cancer one day when she was listening to the radio. “During a radio talk show a doctor was …

“Obesity is a complex metabolic disease with a clear biological basis, and we can treat it with targeted therapy aimed at the biology,” says Ania Jastreboff, MD, PhD, a Yale Medicine adult and pediatric endocrinologist. Credit: Anthony DeCarlo There is no magic pill that will cure obesity, a condition that …

People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it’s a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in …

Participants gather to demonstrate against COVID-19 measures in downtown Hamburg, Saturday Dec. 18, 2021. Credit: Markus Scholz/dpa via AP Nations across Europe moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing …

Nurse Sheena Davis administers a dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic at the Keystone First Wellness Center in Chester, Pa., Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke U.S. officials intensified calls Friday for unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated in the face of the new omicron …