Archive for July, 2012
From Milk to QMilch: Creating an Environment Friendly Textile Fiber
Anke Domaske, the great granddaughter of a seamstress in East Germany, began to draw, sew, and design dresses as a child. At the age of 19, she opened her own fashion label, Mademoiselle Chichi, and a few years later, prominent celebrities like Mischa Barton and Ashlee Simpson were seen wearing her clothes.1 But that doesn’t [...]
Is Ethanol the Champion Bio-Fuel?
The United States, along with the rest of the world, is currently facing a growing energy crisis due to rising oil prices. A potential war with Iran in the near future does not help alleviate these concerns, as regardless of who comes out of this possible conflict as a victor, that fuel is being used [...]
The STEM Imperative: Science Education in America
Science education in America is an incredibly pressing issue; in his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama made it his key theme. He stressed the need to lead the nation into a new Sputnik era in which the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are popular and robust.1 This is because the STEM fields [...]
Fighting Cancer by Inhibiting Telomerase
Finding new ways to improve cancer therapies has presented opportunities and challenges to biomedicine and biotechnology. After learning that telomere length might serve as an effective predictor of cancer risk and survival, scientists have looked to these chromosomal ends for purposes that go beyond their use as signals of cell deterioration. By inhibiting telomerase, a [...]
Continued Progression in Cancer Diagnostics and Discussion
Editor’s Note: In this article the author continues an interview with Dr. Richard Schilsky, previously covered in “Cancer: A New Age in Treatment?” “As our population ages, cancer will increase in incidence and in prevalence,” says Dr. Richard Schilsky. As I continue my interview with Dr. Schilsky, however, he appears to be promoting a more [...]
Save the Drama for Your Mama: Do You Really Need That Screening?
My grandfather recently went into the hospital with appendicitis. Appendectomies are simple – open the abdomen, sew the patient up, send him home. Unfortunately, when the doctors opened him up, they discovered that the real source of his illness was not bacteria, but a tumor; he had stage four colon cancer. As I write this, [...]
Harnessing the Placebo? The Human Side of Medicine
“Placebos are the ghosts that haunt our house of biomedical objectivity, the creatures that rise up from the dark and expose the paradoxes and fissures in our own self-created definitions of the real and active factors in treatment”.1 So writes Harvard professor Anne Harrington, and today, the mysteries and contradictions generated by the placebo continue [...]
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