For Northwestern University's Karen Smilowitz, the term "industrial engineering" is a bit of a misnomer. It evokes the image of the engineer in a factory with a stopwatch in hand, making sure production is as efficient as possible.
Surely some industrial engineers still do that. But these days, industrial engineering has grown beyond the factory and into the world of business. Others have taken it one step further -- into nonprofits.
LOS ANGELES (February 18, 2011) – Scientists at the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases and The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles today announced a breakthrough discovery in understanding how the body fights leukemia. They have identified a protein called CD19-ligand (CD19-L) located on the surface of certain white blood cells that facilitates the recognition and destruction of leukemia cells by the immune system.
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 18 – Only one out of more than 1,900 people evaluated met the American Heart Association (AHA) definition of ideal cardiovascular health, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings were recently published online in Circulation.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Understanding and managing how humans and nature sustainably coexist is now so sweeping and lightning fast that it's spawned a concept to be unveiled at a major scientific conference today.
Meet "telecoupling."
Joining its popular cousins telecommuting and television, telecoupling is the way Jack Liu, director of the Human-Nature Lab/Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University, is describing how distance is shrinking and connections are strengthening between nature and humans.
Researchers need to use all available resources in an integrated approach to put agriculture on a path to solve the world's food problems while reducing pollution, according to a Penn State biologist. Changes in national and international regulations will be necessary to achieve this goal.
AURORA, Colo. (Feb. 18, 2011) -- When the body is deprived of oxygen during a major surgery, the kidneys, heart muscles or lungs can be injured as a result. The problem is that lack of oxygen can lead to inflammation.
Yet some athletes deliberately train at high altitude, with less oxygen, so they can perform better. Their bodies adapt to the reduced oxygen.
Nele Festjens and Nico Callewaert of VIB and Ghent University have improved the efficacy of the vaccine for tuberculosis. The new vaccine affords - as already proven in mice - better protection against the disease. The development of a new tuberculosis vaccine is a priority in the fight against the disease which claims the lives of 1.7 million people each year. The current vaccine provides only partial protection.
Inducing labor without a medical reason is associated with negative outcomes for the mother, including increased rates of cesarean delivery, greater blood loss and an extended length of stay in the hospital, and does not provide any benefit for the newborn. As the number of scheduled deliveries continues to climb, it is important for physicians and mothers-to-be to understand the risks associated with elective induction.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Among the many differences between girls and boys, add the effects from caffeine -- physiological, behavioral and subjective -- to the list.
Results of a double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-response study of the response of youth to caffeine found that, in general, boys get a greater rush and more energy from caffeine than girls.
Boys also reported they felt that caffeine had a positive effect on their athletic performance. Girls didn't report on this issue.
ROCHESTER, Minn. - Mayo Clinic researchers confirmed that patients who receive therapeutic hypothermia after resuscitation from cardiac arrest have favorable chances of surviving the event and recovering good functional status. In therapeutic hypothermia, a patient's body temperature is cooled to 33 degrees Celsius following resuscitation from cardiac arrest, in order to slow the brain's metabolism and protect the brain against the damage initiated by the lack of blood flow and oxygenation. This study was published in the December 2010 issue of Annals of Neurology.
Nanotechnology offers a range of benefits over traditional materials and enables the development of innovative applications and products. However, there are often concerns about the safety aspects and to what extent these have been investigated. High-quality measurements are the basis for reliable safety assessments, process improvement, quality control and the development of new nanotechnology applications.
One of the goals of the European Research Council, ERC, is to bring the world's leading researchers to work in Europe. American Juleen Zierath is one of those who have received funds from the ERC. She found the best environment for her research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
Knee replacement surgery takes far more time to conduct in overweight and obese patients than in normal weight patients, according to recent research at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. The study will be presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting, held Feb. 15-19 in San Diego, Calif. The study has implications for hospital staff scheduling surgeries, operating room utilization and personnel staffing, and also raises the question of whether knee replacements should be reimbursed based on time.
For years, doctors have used platelet rich plasma (PRP) to promote healing in various surgeries, but a recent study demonstrates that a type of PRP did not improve healing after rotator cuff repair. The study, conducted by Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) investigators, will be presented at the upcoming American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) 2011 Specialty Day meeting, held Feb. 19 in San Diego, Calif., following the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
(Jena, Germany) Professor Dr. Michael Ristow's team along with Japanese colleagues from universities in Oita and Hiroshima have demonstrated by two independent approaches that even a low concentration of lithium leads to an increased life expectancy in humans as well as in a model organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. The research team presents its results in the online edition of the scientific publication European Journal of Nutrition which is now online (see hyperlink below).