17, May 2014

New technology may improve light-based cancer treatment

Researchers have developed a new technology that could bring photodynamic therapy (PDT), which uses lasers to activate special drugs to treat easily accessible tumours such as oral and skin cancer, into areas of the body which were previously inaccessible. The procedure, till now, has not been adept at fighting cancer deep inside the body. The approach involves using near-infrared beams of light that, upon penetrating deep into the body, are converted into visible light that activates the drug and destroys the tumour.  

‘We expect this will vastly expand the application for an effective cancer phototherapy that is already in use,’ said Tymish Ohulchanskyy, associate professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The researchers used the tumour’s natural environment to tune the light into necessary wavelengths. For example, the near-infrared laser beam can interact with the natural protein collagen, which is found in connective tissues. The interaction changes the near-infrared light to visible light, a process known as second harmonic generation.  

Likewise, natural proteins and lipids within the cells can interact with near-infrared laser light and change it to visible light through another process called four-wave mixing. Thus, visible light can be generated in tumours deep inside the body, and it can be absorbed by the drug. This activates the drug, which then destroys the tumour, researchers said. The study appeared in the journal Nature Photonics.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

17.05.2014

Women with more feminine faces do better in politics

Researchers have highlighted voters’ perception of traditional femininity, political competence. According to the Dartmouth College-led study, female politicians’ success can be predicted by their facial features, especially in conservative states where women with more feminine faces tend to do better at the ballot box. The researchers used software called MouseTracker that was developed by the study’s senior author Jon Freeman, an assistant professor and director of the Social Cognitive and Neural Sciences Lab at Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth-led study demonstrates for the first time that gendered cues uniquely predict female politicians’ electoral success above and beyond competence, suggesting a discrepancy between traits used to evaluate male and female politicians. Freeman said that it’s important to examine how facial cues could inadvertently affect female politicians’ electoral success, especially given the possibility of a female U.S. president in the near future and the rising number of women in Congress.

The researchers tracked the computer mouse movements of nearly 300 participants who were shown politicians’ faces – the winners and runners-up in U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections between 1998 and 2010 — and asked to categorize them as male or female. About 10 percent of the participants were Dartmouth students who viewed the politicians’ faces in a controlled lab setting and were asked whether they would vote for them, although no information was provided about the politicians’ background, competence or other factors. The other 90 percent of participants lived across the United States and took the facial test over the Internet, providing a diverse national sample.

The results showed that the more participants were drawn to select the male response when categorizing the gender of a female politician’s face, the less likely she was to win her election. In other words, female politicians with more feminine features tend to win elections, while those with more masculine features tend to lose. The study has been published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

17.05.2014

Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you