Written by Sarah Wornow ‘23 Edited by Geat Ramush ‘23 Stem cell therapy is an emerging field of regenerative medicine that has the potential to completely change the standard of care for major diseases. This type of therapy can be utilized in various ways, including repairing any type of diseased or damaged tissue within the body, studying how diseases affect certain tissue types (which leads to more precise drugs being developed for specific diseases), and testing newly discovered drugs in the context of the tissues they will affect [1].
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Written by: Nina Mehta '22 Edited by: Neha Mukherjee '23 Never in a million years would I have thought about freezing my eggs. The horror stories that I have heard about fertility clinics losing eggs and freezers breaking down has pushed me away from ever considering this path to raising a family. Despite the high cost, many women have decided to pursue this route, in order to guarantee they will be able to have children in the future. Women also do not see children in their near future, and have decided to place their eggs in fertility clinics, extracting them only when considered ready to be a mother. As women are becoming more educated and independent, they are moving up the chain in terms of occupational status. For the past few years, technology companies have agreed to fully pay for the freezing of women’s eggs, in order to push them to continue working in the field. This has both positive and negative impacts, as women can continue to fulfil their educational and occupational aspirations, without placing their lives on hold to have children. However, I, along with others, are skeptical about the safety of these eggs and the unnatural nature of doing so.
Written by: Devin Juros ‘23 Edited by: Jason Mero ‘22 Alzheimer’s Disease is a slow progressive disease that is painful for both patients and their loved ones. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, which refers to a group of symptoms characterized by impairment of memory and reasoning. This brutal course of brain degeneration is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States [3]. Despite the focus on Alzheimer’s research amid its rising prevalence, treatments thus far have been largely unsuccessful, leading scientists to look in more unexpected places for answers [8]. One such accelerating field focuses on the relationship between the gut microbiome, which is all of the bacteria and microorganisms living in the gastrointestinal tract, and Alzheimer’s pathology. Besides influencing the healthy functioning of your heart, liver, and muscles, could what you eat affect your brain and memories?
Written by: Alexander Pralea '24 Edited by: Ishaani Khatri '21 One need not be a statistician–although it certainly helps–to notice a trend: a rise in diagnoses of mental health conditions. A 2017 Pew Research Center Report based on representative data from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health confirms the commonly held wisdom, reporting that among adolescents aged twelve through seventeen, 20% of girls and 7% of boys had experienced an episode of major depressive disorder within the past year alone [1]. Especially startling is that these percentages represent a 59% increase from the 2007 values. So what is behind this rise? Is it merely the result of an increased emphasis on mental health care and a reduction in stigma (accompanied by a loosening in diagnostic criteria), or something far more sinister?
Written by: Courtney Lysiak '23 Edited by: Ziwen Zhou '23 As dementia patients progressively lose brain and motor function, the medical community works tirelessly to create new and improved treatments which will boost the dwindling quality of life for those suffering with the condition. A recent study conducted by nurse Jiaying Zheng, and professors Xueping Chen and Ping Yu examines patient outcomes with game-based therapies for adults with dementia, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes deterioration in memory, thinking and motor skills in around 50 million people worldwide [2]. There are around 10 million new cases every year. Dementia may begin as forgetfulness, losing track of time, or feeling lost in formerly familiar places; however, over time symptoms may become much more severe. As sufferers progress toward the late stage of the illness, they may become unaware of both time and place, unable to recognize friends and family, need assisted care for basic tasks, and experience behavioral changes including aggression. Current treatments for dementia patients are inadequate, with mainstream pharmacological options being expensive and causing serious adverse effects including nausea, vomiting, sleep issues, muscle pain, fatigue, and dizziness. Instead, non-pharmacological interventions have been hailed as the best option for dementia sufferers, specifically game interventions that exercise concentration, memory and motor reaction (key targets for rehabilitation in dementia patients).
Written by: Chris Shin '24 Edited by: Elaine Wang '24 One of the primary struggles the world faces today is a shortage of tests to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Most recently, a group of researchers from Osaka, Japan, have proposed a new form of COVID-19 testing, one that is fundamentally based on machine learning, algorithms that improve itself without further intervention.[1] The algorithm developed has proven to detect single viruses and can distinguish the Coronavirus from other common respiratory viruses such as influenza and the adenovirus.
Written by: Gyles Ward ‘21 Edited by: Jordan Feldman ‘24 Our elders often hold the answers to life’s greatest quandaries; but can they also hold the answer to climate change? While the industrialized world races against time to find novel technological solutions to the specter of global warming, the Yao elders of Northern Vietnam have already found a natural and effective alternative, indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is a collection of traditional environmental practices developed through centuries of experiential learning and empirical evidence. In the absence of technology, a number of native communities in Northern Vietnam use Indigenous knowledge as a barrier against the brutal implications of climate change on agricultural production [1]. Could this be a strategy adopted by other agricultural economies? Can indigenous knowledge provide what contemporary science can’t; an accessible, cost effective, natural solution for developing nations?
Written by: Jon Zhang ‘24 Edited by: Angelina Cho ‘24, Elizabeth Ding ‘24 Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) like carbon dioxide are undeniably responsible for accelerating climate change, creating an unprecedented rise in global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events.
In 2015, delegates from every nation convened to address the impending threat of global warming, approving the Paris Climate Agreement. This monumental achievement marked the most ambitious international collaboration yet against climate change. Virtually every country vowed to prevent a worldwide temperature increase of 2℃ above pre-industrial temperatures throughout the 21st century and strived to limit it to 1.5℃ [1]. Written by: Sarah Wornow ‘23 Edited by: Geat Ramush ‘23 According to the CDC, there are over 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in American hospitals annually [1]. HAIs are infections that arise while receiving any form of health care, such as going to the hospital for surgery or visiting your primary care doctor’s office for a checkup. These infections are extremely problematic, as most of the bacteria, fungi, and viruses that cause these infections are multidrug-resistant and very difficult to cure the body of. Unfortunately, this antimicrobial resistance results in HAIs being one of the leading causes of death in the US [1]. Transmission of these infections can either occur through contact with an infected healthcare worker or through touching a contaminated surface, which is why disinfecting high-touch surfaces and washing hands in a hospital (and in general) is essential. However, even with proper cleaning, hospitals still have very high rates of HAIs. There must be another explanation as to why HAIs are so common.
Written by: Will Borges '24 Edited by: Melinda Li '22 Every day approximately 150 species on Earth go extinct [1]. Extrapolated out this means that every decade, approximately 10% of all species on Earth go extinct [1]. If that doesn’t unsettle you, then the fact that the rate of extinction among species is increasing should [1]. While policy-making and advocacy have provided some necessary protections, they are not enough to safeguard species from extinction. Instead, science can offer us a superior approach, one of engineering evolution itself by manipulating genetics. Engineering evolution has the potential to safeguard and reconstitute ecosystems by creating novel species with useful traits and resurrecting extinct species.
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