Sniffing out Cancer with Improved 'Electronic Nose' Sensors
Scientists have been exploring new ways to "smell" signs of cancer by analyzing what’s in patients’ breath. In ACS’ journal Nano Letters, one team now reports new progress toward this goal. The researchers have developed a small array of flexible sensors, which accurately detect compounds in breath samples that are specific to ovarian cancer. Diagnosing cancer today usually involves various imaging techniques, examining tissue samples under a microscope, or testing cells for proteins or genetic material.
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Acoustic Imaging with Outline Detection
Reverberated sound can make objects visible. The sonar is used in the shipping industry to acquire information about the seabed or shoals of fish, while gynaecologists use ultrasound images to study foetuses in the womb. Material testing procedures that regularly check for fissures in rail tracks or aircraft support structures are also based on ultrasound.
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Digital 'Rosetta Stone' Decrypts How Mutations Rewire Cancer Cells
Scientists have discovered how genetic cancer mutations systematically attack the networks controlling human cells, knowledge critical for the future development of personalized precision cancer treatments. Since the human genome was decoded more than a decade ago, cancer genomics studies have dominated life science worldwide and have been extremely successful at identifying mutations in individual patients and tumors.
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Clinic Notes Should Be Re-Engineered to Meet Needs of Physicians
When physicians prepare for patient visits, one of their first steps is to review clinic notes or health records that recap their patients' medical history. Since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, approximately 78 percent of office-based physicians in the United States have adopted electronic health records (EHR).
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Cellphone Data Can Track Infectious Diseases
Tracking mobile phone data is often associated with privacy issues, but these vast datasets could be the key to understanding how infectious diseases are spread seasonally, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Princeton University and Harvard University researchers used anonymous mobile phone records for more than 15 million people to track the spread of rubella in Kenya and were able to quantitatively show for the first time that mobile phone data can predict seasonal disease patterns.
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Mammography Benefits Overestimated
An in-depth review of randomised trials on screening for breast, colorectal, cervical, prostate and lung cancers, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, shows that the benefits of mammographic screening are likely to have been overestimated.
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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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