The Disease Detective

Meningitis itself isn’t a disease, just a description meaning that the tissues around the brain and spinal cord have become inflamed. In the United States, bacterial infections can cause meningitis, as can enteroviruses, mumps and herpes simplex. But a high proportion of cases have, as doctors say, no known etiology: No one knows why the…

The Wedding Dress Repurposed

On May 17, at 9 a.m., Vanessa Reiser was in position, and all decked out in a $3,500 bridal dress from Lovely Bride in Manhattan specially designed for her first one-woman run through New York. The 285 miles, starting in Oswego, N.Y., and ending in Jay Hood Park, N.Y., would be completed over 12 days.…

Do I Really Have to Tip?

Now that we use credit cards to pay for coffees and ice cream cones, I’ve gotten used to seeing payment screens that show tip options. I consider these tips income transfers (from me to workers) rather than gratuities for services rendered. (Does scooping ice cream really require a tip?) Still, I was shocked recently when…

The Life and Death of Your Jeans

Early on in “Unraveled,” a new book about the dark underbelly of fashion, the author, Maxine Bédat, describes walking through a factory in Guangdong, China, that specializes in acid-washing jeans, picking her way over dark puddles of “iridescent, bubbling content” that had spilled from industrial washing machines and was sloshing around on the floor. This…

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles awarded $2m to address adverse childhood experiences

Los Angeles (June 3, 2021) Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has been awarded a $2 million grant from the state of California to study a precision medicine approach to screening children for adverse childhood experiences. The three-year grant–part of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine–was announced by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, in…

Analyzing tumor microenvironment at single cell level sheds light on metastatic melanoma outcomes

TAMPA, Fla. — There are several new treatment options available for patients with advanced melanoma. While these therapies have greatly improved the prognosis for patients, each person can respond to the treatments differently. Treatment of melanomas that have spread to the central nervous system is especially challenging. In a new article published in Clinical Cancer…