Social Media and the Speed of Science

Access to scientific literature has had its ups and downs. As a student during the Cold War, I recall the difficulty some Europeans had in obtaining the latest journals, often waiting months — or opting to receive the literature through “alternative channels.” Some findings were also “shielded” from Western eyes by limited circulation or simply [...]

Rochester Principal Wins Award for Zebrafish Classes

Next month principal Jim Sonju from Lincoln Choice School in Rochester will be honored at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul. Working with Mayo researchers, he instituted hands-on science and a concept that translated into other subject areas as well. Read about it in the Post Bulletin. One of the people he worked with at [...]

Arthritis and Epidemiology

One out of every dozen American women will contract a rheumatic disease in her lifetime. One in 12. That’s the first time a lifetime risk of these diseases has been determined — and it’s higher than many had thought. So says Cynthia Crowson and the other authors of a research paper published online in the [...]

Mayo News “Eyed” by Most on Medscape

Medscape, the online news source for medical specialists, has told us that an article on research by Keith Baratz, M.D, and colleagues was one of the most read by people in the field of opthalmology visiting their site in 2010. In fact, the story written by Fran Lowry came in second of all the Medscape [...]

Healthy Tech Help Down the Road

This week’s science section of the Times seems even more bountiful than usual. One article noted that we are gaining roughly a year of life for every year we are alive and healthy, but cautioned that we are probably going to live that extra year and more enduring some kind of debilitating illness. That should [...]

Translocations in T-cell lymphoma: A first

A Mayo research team recently scored a first that garnered some valuable information regarding biomarkers for T-cell lymphoma, a fatal condition that has a 60 to 70 percent mortality rate. The up side is that this discovery may lead to therapeutic targets for future study, once the findings published in the journal Blood are validated. [...]

Proton Beam Program Also Advances Research

By now you may have heard about Mayo Clinic’s plan to initiate a proton bean therapy program. It will consist of two centers, one on the hospital campus in Arizona (Phoenix) and one on the Minnesota campus (Rochester). These will use pencil beam therapy, which is a more precise form of proton therapy treatment that [...]

National Science Writers Look Ahead

I’m sitting in a large ballroom at Yale University with roughly 600 fellow scribblers. They are here (those who could get here given their restrictive travel budgets) listening to the president of the National Academy of Sciences, among other noted researchers. We have heard about deep brain stimulation, feathers on dinosaurs, regeneration of organs, particle [...]

Mayo Participates in Karolinska Symposium

As part of its continuing relationship with the Karolinska Institute, Mayo Clinic research leaders are participating in the upcoming symposium on regenerative medicine in Sweden, November 3-5. The event is part of the Frontiers in Biomedical Research relationship established earlier this year between Karolinska and the Minnesota Partnership members (Mayo and the University of Minnesota). [...]

Jensen Honored for Obesity Research

Michael Jensen, M.D., Mayo endocrinologist has been honored for his achievements in research on why people become obese. Dr. Jensen, research chair for endocrinology at Mayo, received the TOPS Research Achievement Award at the recent Obesity Society Annual Meeting. The Society presents the award which is made possible by a grant from the Take Off [...]