NBC News
24 September 2018
Multi-Media / 800-1500 Words
Louisville, Kentucky, United States
At least five people who were paralyzed are walking, thanks to a pain stimulator and physical therapy. The stimulator, which is implanted in the body, sends electricity to the spine, and combined with therapy, can retrain the body to walk again. “The first day I took steps on my own was an emotional milestone in my recovery that I’ll never forget, as one minute I was walking with the trainer’s assistance and, while they stopped, I continued walking on my own.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/playing-with-toys-and-saving-lives
Tina Rosenberg
The New York Times
29 January 2014
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Many different people are inventing health devices for resource-poor settings, but some organizations - like M.I.T.’s Little Devices group - are empowering developing communities and increasing access to healthcare by building medical devices that nurses and doctors in very poor settings can adapt themselves — or kits for making their own, often harvesting parts from toys to cleverly rig up medical equipment. It’s part of a major idea shift, one that’s transforming the design of foreign aid.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-24/scientists-search-palaus-coral-reefs-new-anti-cancer-drugs
Ari Daniel Shapiro
Public Radio International (PRI)
24 February 2014
Radio / 5-15 Minutes
Often it is faster and easier to harvest molecules for medical purposes from nature than to make them in a laboratory. A scientist is looking for cancer-fighting molecules in coral and sponges in the tropical Pacific.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/helping-new-drugs-out-of-academias-valley-of-death
David Bornstein
The New York Times
2 May 2011
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Despite significant increases in funding and advances in biomedical research, the rates of new treatments and drugs for illnesses that reach the market every year have plummeted. A group called the Myelin Repair Foundation, along with several other foundations, uses an intensely goal-directed and collaborative method to tackle the bottleneck.
http://theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/how-to-beat-dengue-and-zika-add-a-microbe-to-mosquitoes/494036
Ed Yong
The Atlantic
8 August 2016
Text / Over 3000 Words
The dengue virus is spread by mosquito and infects 400 million people every year with no vaccine or successful treatment. Scientists have started to inject mosquitoes with a bacteria they have found to stop the virus to prevent and control the spread of dengue. Trials have shown success in Australia, so the project is in the process of scaling to other countries that have dengue more widespread, and new experiments will begin on whether it can effectively stop the spread of the Zika virus.
https://www.thetrace.org/2017/05/gun-violence-trauma-treatment-voca-hospitals
Elizabeth Van Brocklin
The Trace
1 May 2017
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Gunshot victims are often treated at hospitals only to be sent back into the community, where 1/3 will end up back in the hospital again. With a new emphasis on prevention and addressing the underlying issues, Ohio is now using federal assistance to create a Trauma Recovery Network that helps with crisis intervention, counseling, and even providing safe emergency housing for gunshot victims.
http://narrative.ly/this-all-amputee-softball-team-is-changing-the-way-we-think-about-treating-trauma
Mark Oprea
Narratively
31 August 2017
Text / 1500-3000 Words
As the number of veterans with both physical and psychological injuries balloons, this softball team of 11 wounded warriors wards helps one another deal with war trauma and combat isolation by playing a little ball.
https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/nov/28/engineering-solutions-for-the-future-of-modern-medicine
Lucy Jolin
The Guardian
28 November 2017
Text / Under 800 Words
The healthcare world is highly innovative right now as it tries to make medicine more personalized and harnesses engineering. Hitachi is trying to aggregate data in order to prevent disease and help the healthcare system function better.
https://ensia.com/features/pandemic
Karl Gruber
Ensia
7 December 2017
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Zoonotic outbreaks are increasingly a threat to human populations and other species as they spatially converge in the same environments. In preparation, the project PREDICT has discovered over 1000 distinct diseases and helped guide the development of infrastructure to help protect against outbreaks, while the Global Virome Project is identifying and sequencing the DNA of viruses.
https://apolitical.co/solution_article/women-failed-medical-research-heres-policy-can-help
Odette Chalaby
Apolitical
20 November 2017
Text / 800-1500 Words
Medical research studies have failed to address the impact of gender, and some studies even exclude females in “later stage clinical trials.” This discrepancy results from women being underrepresented in the medical science. The Office of Research on Women’s Health has piloted a Policy on Sex as a Biological variable to fund research that is addresses gender differences; the National Institute of Health has initiated a Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers.
http://ensia.com/features/welcome-to-the-wild-world-of-rhino-conservation
Adam Welz
Ensia
18 March 2015
Text / 1500-3000 Words
There are only five northern white rhinos left in existence - all in captivity and unable to breed. Researchers work to identify the most valuable solution to rhino poaching in order to prevent the animal from going extinct.
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