“Dark matter” sounds like something George Lucas would tell us is at the heart of the empire. In reality, it’s the parts of the human genome that science has yet to identify -- which still sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi movie, but the discovery could provide researchers with a new type of specimen with which to analyze the human genome. A ...

ADVANCE Discourse: Lab Knowing Let’s forget about money for a second. I know that can be difficult – what, with all of those pesky adult responsibilities and everything, but bare with me.  If money wasn’t an object, and your physician wanted to order a test that you knew wouldn’t be covered under your insurance, would you get ...

The rise of personalized treatment has healthcare professionals completely rethinking the way they treat cancer. At the molecular level, each is different and should be treated accordingly, but similarities shouldn’t be ignored either. A study from the Cancer genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network on endometrial tumors divided the cancer types into ...

Imagine a healthcare facility where a small sample of blood is taken as you walk in the door, just .25 attomoles -- you’d barely notice. They drop your sample into a small, handheld device and, by the time your physician has come to see you, they are ready to tell you if they would like further testing for diseases like Alzheimer’s or cancer ...

Most of us know amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by its other name, Lou Gehrig’s disease. After a recent preliminary trial at Emory University yielded positive results, a phase II trial has been approved by the FDA. An article from Newswise described the first phase of the trial as fairly successful, stating all procedures were “delivered ...

An acronym pulled from the alphabet soup is CQI, or Continuous Quality Improvement. Managers and quality improvement people use this to show that everything can be improved, even processes that work. Continuously trying to improve quality generates incremental improvements; rather than completely redesigning a process, it is changed in response ...

With so many new technologies emerging in recent years, trying to combine multiple advances can be challenging, especially when those advances haven’t been standardized yet. In a recent article from Newswise, doctors and researchers from both the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School discussed “a new problem in the delivery of personalized ...

The handheld testing application has always been something I’ve only ever imagined as a bad plot device in science fiction. For researchers at Columbia University’s The Flu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, it was apparently much, much more than that. A recent news briefing from Dark Daily announced the introduction of a ...

It turns out the gym rats were right – it’s all about the protein. Maybe not anything found in our energy bars, supplements or shakes, but rather the protein found in our biological makeup.  A research team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota hasn’t necessarily found the key to eternal youth, but they seem to have taken some ...

In a time of transition in the field of medical research, focus is shifting towards big data analytics. While the notion of information so dense it can’t be processed using traditional applications is intimidating, a DarkDaily news release noted “at least one data scientist” that considers it to be the future in genomic medicine. Previous ...