Being a leading cause of death each year, cancer is a word that strikes fear into many of us. All it takes is for a rogue cell to divide uncontrollably and feed off your body until you’re worn out. We sometimes take solace with the assumption that it’s…

The human body has feet, arms, a spine, a heart and a brain. In comparison, an octopus has eight arms, blue blood, no bones and a bulbous head. Given these many differences, what could an octopus and a human have in common? The answer lies in the brain.…

“In a matter of six weeks, you couldn’t even tell he had a stroke.” This is what Arik Yates, a physical therapist assistant, said about a chronic stroke patient who had tried virtual reality therapy for the first time. The aforementioned stroke patient was a huge action movie…

Hearing is a complicated process. To help decode how we hear and the issues that can occur within the ear, researchers have been studying chinchillas for over 50 years. Chinchillas hear similarly to the way in which humans do, making them great models for researchers to use. For…

Learning that their child has been born with a heart defect is devastating news for parents and for good reason. Some congenital heart defects can be fatal though many, including heart valve abnormalities, can be successfully repaired. The surgical ‘fix’ usually involves replacing a faulty natural valve with…

Imagine you wake up one morning with a tickle in your throat and the dull headache of a seasonal cold throbbing behind your eyes. You go to school, thinking it’s just a simple illness and that you can shrug it off. The constant anxiety over your sloppy handwriting…

Even though COVID-19 is currently on a downward trend, pharmaceutical scientists are working hard to find additional vaccines and treatments as variants continue to emerge. Computers have also been at the forefront of the fight to understand this disease, from computational modeling of disease trends to determining the…

The general public may think animal research is all about lab rats receiving drug cocktails in some hidden away laboratory. In reality, the field of animal research is rapidly changing, not with lab rats but with invaluable, minuscule fish. Meet the zebrafish. Shorter than your finger, a zebrafish…

Throughout history, psychiatric disorders have been cast aside or ignored entirely, causing even more problems for the individuals who suffer from them. Decades ago, rather than being considered as something health-related, psychiatric disorders and their symptoms were often thought to be caused by the moon, spirits, witchcraft, or…