Northwestern
The powerful chemotherapy and radiation used to save cancer patients' lives can also destroy their fertility.
Physicians at Northwestern Memorial Hospital successfully removed a patient's gallbladder through the vagina, making them the first in the Midwest and the third in the country to perform the innovative procedure.
Two compounds developed by Northwestern University chemists have been shown to be effective in pre-clinical trials in protecting against cerebral palsy, a condition caused by neurodegeneration that affects body movement and muscle coordination.
You know the feeling. You make a decision you're certain is merely a "lucky guess."
Northwestern University seismologists have determined that the Dec. 26 Sumatra earthquake that set off a deadly tsunami throughout the Indian Ocean was three times larger than originally thought, making it the second largest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded and explaining why the tsunami was so destructive. By analyzing seismograms from the earthquake, Seth Stein and Emile Okal, both professors of geological sciences in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, calculated that the earthquake's magnitude measured 9.3, not 9.0, and thus was three times larger.
A new use of an ultra-sensitive method that employs bionanotechnology might lead to a clinical test capable of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages -- instead of during an autopsy. Scientists at Northwestern University have become the first to detect in living humans a biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a development that promises early intervention when therapeutics may be most effective -- long before plaques and tangles develop in the brain and dementia sets in.
Physicians at the Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center at Northwestern University are conducting a research study to evaluate an experimental treatment intended to improve motor fluctuations associated with the "wearing-off" effects of medications to treat Parkinson's disease. Individuals with advancing Parkinson's disease develop inconsistent responses to medications, known as fluctuations and "wearing off."
False memories are the controversial subject of hotly contested arguments about the validity of repressed memories that can surface years after a traumatic event and about the credibility of eyewitness accounts in criminal trials. Because memories are imperfect under ordinary circumstances -- forming, storing and retrieving them, with great variations in factors influencing those processes -- it is unlikely that a one-answer-fits-all will settle those controversies soon. But a group of researchers from various disciplines at Northwestern University literally have peered into the brain to offer new evidence on the existence of false memories and how they are formed.
A month before the fall of the Berlin Wall, 70,000 people gathered in the streets of Leipzig, East Germany, on Oct. 9, 1989, to demonstrate against the communist regime and demand democratic reforms. Clearly, no central authority planned this event; so how did all of these people decide to come together on that particular day?
A new radiation treatment for inoperable liver tumors uses tiny radioactive glass beads ? or microspheres ? carrying high doses of radiation (yttrium-90) to kill cancerous tumors within the liver. This new treatment consists of injecting millions of tiny microspheres into the artery supplying blood to the liver. The interventional radiologist guides a small catheter into the liver's hepatic artery and then delivers the microspheres that carry the radioactive yttrium directly to malignant cells in liver tumors.
Cardiac patients are benefiting from a pump dispense system used to treat pain specifically after heart surgery. The pain relief pump delivers non-narcotic numbing medication directly to the surgical incision site, resulting in less pain and narcotics use, shorter hospital stays, and a quicker recovery for patients.
Three decades of research on men's sexual arousal show patterns that clearly track sexual orientation -- gay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by images of men and heterosexual men by images of women. In other words, men's sexual arousal patterns seem obvious. But a new Northwestern University study boosts the relatively limited research on women's sexuality with a surprisingly different finding regarding women's sexual arousal.
The federal government is urging Memphis and other parts of the Midwest to adopt a new building code that would make buildings as earthquake resistant as those in southern California, where shaking is much more likely to seriously damage a building. A new study by researchers at Northwestern University, the Reaves Firm in Memphis, and Los Alamos National Laboratory finds that the prescribed measures for the Midwest's New Madrid seismic zone (NMSZ) would cost far more than the damage prevented. The New Madrid seismic zone includes parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, and Mississippi.
The majority of patients who take baby or coated aspirin to prevent strokes are not getting the blood-thinning results they may need to help avoid these health threats, according to preliminary research presented today at the American Stroke Association's 28th International Stroke Conference. The American Stroke Association is a division of the American Heart Association. "While research has established that aspirin reduces the risk of stroke in patients with cerebrovascular disease, the optimal dose and formulation still remains somewhat unclear," according to Mark Alberts, M.D., the study's lead author and director of the Stroke Program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "This study is significant in that it points researchers in the right direction ? showing how we can maximize the effectiveness of aspirin."
Employing high-tech, digital X-ray microtomography (microCT), Northwestern University scientists have discovered the way in which newts form new bone and cartilage during limb regeneration. Newts are a type of salamander, the only vertebrates capable of rebuilding lost structures such as limbs throughout their lifetimes. Reporting in the January issue of Developmental Dynamics, Northwestern researchers Hans-Georg Simon and Stuart Stock showed that bone formation in a regenerated forelimb combines elements of embryonic development and of adult wound healing.
