Word: detectable
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sexuality is the role of pheromones. In 1971 the University of Chicago's McClintock, then a Wellesley undergraduate, proved scientifically what women in dorms had known for decades: menstrual periods become synchronized when women live together. It's probably because of pheromones, she said--olfactory chemicals that we can detect even though we're not aware of them. In 1998, she did experiments that proved this hypothesis, but, unlike animal pheromones, no human versions have been isolated...
...estimates show that by 2050, a record 13.2 million older Americans will be affected by the progressive brain disease, 3 million more than previous projections. Although the illness is still definitively diagnosed only at autopsy, advances are being made in finding it earlier. Doctors can improve the accuracy of detection 30% by combining various cognitive tests with positron-emission tomography (PET). PET is an imaging technique that shows the brain's metabolism at work. Preliminary research suggests that it may also be possible for physicians to detect certain telltale signs of Alzheimer's disease--the so-called amyloid...
...been screened for prostate cancer with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, but the threshold level that doctors use to biopsy suspicious growths misses up to 82% of cancers. Harvard researchers reported that lowering the PSA level at which doctors recommend biopsies could double the rate at which they detect cancers...
...postdoctoral training, he was put to work in a dank bomb shelter that had been converted into a lab. His task was to use an atomic force microscope to get a "snapshot" of the DNA molecule. All he seemed to be getting, though, was a headache. The microscope, which detects the con-tours of molecules by dragging a flexible sliver of coated silicon over them, was malfunctioning. After puzzling through his problem for months, Thundat realized one rainy day during a rare midday foray outdoors that the microscope's probe was warping as it sponged up moisture from...
Thundat has also shown that his sensor can detect proteins associated with prostate cancer. He and his team are now building arrays to detect markers for other cancers, heart disease and even mutant genes. In his spare time, Thundat is trying to figure out how to make his sensors more robust and discerning than they are, hoping to deploy them as cheap detectors of land mines, which cripple and kill thousands of people every year in war-ravaged nations like Angola. "We have a long way to go," he acknowledges. "Right now my friends tell me they wouldn't walk...