If you’re going to hurl yourself down a mountain at speeds in excess of 70 miles per hour you’d better have a strong core. That’s why Olympians like Ted Ligety, Lindsey Vonn and Sara Schleper work on developing strong “core” muscles all season long. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you make the same mistakes in love over and over again? For example, do you always seem to pick the wrong partner or always experience the same negative romantic outcome? If so, you need to understand your developmental history of love and break the pattern, according to Dr. Mark Beitel, a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist at Greenwich Hospital’s Center for Integrative Medicine in Cos Cob, CT. Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries to joints and cartilage can have serious consequences, including osteoarthritis. Cartilage degeneration in joints is a widespread disease in Germany and worldwide. Prof. Dr. Prasad Shastri is an expert in tissue engineering (TE), tissue construction and tissue cultivation using the body’s own cells. He is Professor of Biofunctional Macromolecular Chemistry at the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies (BIOSS), a Cluster of Excellence at the University of Freiburg, where he has been researching for the last year. Together with peers from Maastricht and Nashville, he has developed a fast and cost-efficient method for producing sufficient amounts of bone and cartilage tissue using the body’s own cells. Read the rest of this entry »

What does the brain look like? What do we really know about our brains? For centuries, we’ve been telling ourselves time and again that we now have an objective view of our brains. However, objectivity depends on technological developments, human actions and social and cultural factors, to name but a few. This has been revealed by research by Sarah de Rijcke, who will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 18 February 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

The chances of suffering a stroke are linked to the presence of a certain type of antibody in the immune system, a new study from Karolinska Institutet shows. The researchers hope to be able to develop a vaccine that can mobilise the body’s own defence against arteriosclerosis and stroke. Read the rest of this entry »