LabBook February 21, 2014
We’re not optimistic for the prognosis of this patient but David Klein, imaging team leader, runs some tests as he preps Paankhenamun (ca. 700 BC) for a 256-slice CT scan at the Center for Care and Discovery Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014. Radiologist Michael Vannier is using this newest of scanners and is testing different protocols on the mummy that belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago)
Transplant ethics, Albert Einstein’s brain, epilepsy and more in this week’s LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences research news from our blogs, around campus and the internet.
This week on the blog:
- Remembering Sidney Schulman, professor emeritus of neurology at the University of Chicago who once examined part of Albert Einstein’s brain.
- At the 2014 AAAS meeting in Chicago, medical ethicist Mark Siegler laid out a framework for a potentially provocative solution to the shortage of kidneys available for transplantation.
- Researchers at the Computation Institute are using computer models to evaluate what happens when the brain “crashes” in a seizure.
- Organ donation after cardiac death–when a patient’s heart stops beating–is fraught with ethical considerations that pose challenges to more widespread adoption.
From our partner blog UChicago Cancer Conversations:
- Pediatric oncologist Ken Onel is studying cancer genetics with the help of a cloud-based supercomputing system.
- A number of researchers at the UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center show that sometimes it takes a new discovery to put puzzling research findings into the right framework.
Research around the web:
- Scientists and engineers working at our affiliate Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. discovered how a wing is like a fin is like a fluke is like a flipper (it makes sense when you read it, trust us).
- Scientific American covered Richard Kraig’s research on how to use exomes, particles released by the immune system in response to exercise, to treat multiple sclerosis. Science Life spoke to Kraig in September after he received a $1.5M grant from the NIH for his work, which is targeting the exomes’ ability to regenerate a protective sheath around neurons called myelin.
- And finally, this morning the New York Times mentioned a study by UChicago sleep researcher Babak Mokhlesi showing that sleep apnea can worsen blood sugar control in patients who have type 2 diabetes.
