New App Helps Children and Young People Communicate their Pain Experiences
The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) demonstrated the value of a new interactive iPad app that helps young people with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) describe their pain. Almost all of the children preferred the new digital tool, aptly titled 'This Feeling', to other conventional methods and felt it was an interesting and engaging way to communicate about their experiences of pain.
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Intelligent Bacteria for Detecting Disease
Another step forward has just been taken in the area of synthetic biology. Research teams from Inserm and CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) Montpellier, in association with Montpellier Regional University Hospital and Stanford University, have transformed bacteria into "secret agents" that can give warning of a disease based solely on the presence of characteristic molecules in the urine or blood.
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Millimeter by Millimeter Towards a Better Prognosis
A method known as navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) has been gaining importance in neurosurgery for some time now. Among other applications, it is used to map brain tumors before an operation and to test whether important regions of the brain, for example motor and language areas, are affected. Doctors at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have now shown that preoperative nTMS analysis of motor areas improves the prognosis of patients with malignant brain tumors.
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New Gold Standard Established for Open and Reproducible Research
A group of Cambridge computer scientists have set a new gold standard for openness and reproducibility in research by sharing the more than 200GB of data and 20,000 lines of code behind their latest results - an unprecedented degree of openness in a peer-reviewed publication.
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Text Message Reminders Boost Breast Cancer Screening Attendance
Women who received a text message reminding them about their breast cancer screening appointment were 20 per cent more likely to attend than those who were not texted, according to a study published in the British Journal of Cancer*. Researchers, funded by the Imperial College Healthcare Charity, trialled text message reminders for women aged 47-53 years old who were invited for their first appointment for breast cancer screening.
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Scientists Map Brains of the Blind to Solve Mysteries of Human Brain Specialization
Studying the brain activity of blind people, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are challenging the standard view of how the human brain specializes to perform different kinds of tasks, and shedding new light on how our brains can adapt to the rapid cultural and technological changes of the 21st Century.
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Smartphone Thumb Skills Are Altering our Brains
Every region of the body - from the toes to the jaw and tongue - has a particular processing area in the somatosensory cortex. These areas are flexible and can change. In the case of violinists, for instance, the area representing the fingers that guide the instrument is larger than in other people.
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