Dr. Monica Bertagnolli began serving as the 16th, and first female, director of the National Cancer Institute in October. Working tirelessly since her arrival, she has spearheaded a collaborative and comprehensive national cancer plan, while herself battling cancer.
Former legislator Warren G. Magnuson has many connections to the NIH. In 1937, he sponsored legislation to establish the National Cancer Institute. And his name is appended to the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center, which opened in 1953 and has hosted hundreds of thousands of patients since. But the former senator and representative is also tied to Americans of Asian heritage through his repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Dr. Soha Bayoumi of Johns Hopkins University recently gave an NLM History Talk on graphic medicine, a freshly minted term that describes “the intersection of the medium of comics and discourse of health care.” Graphic medicine combines Bayoumi's love for comics, medical humanities and the history of medicine.
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) hosted its annual site visit with the fellows from the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University on Mar. 16. Each year, fellows go on site visits to obtain first-hand experience with problem-solving and policymaking processes in public health management.
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These microscopic roundworms, called Caenorhabditis elegans, lack eyes and the opsin proteins used by visual systems to detect colors. However, researchers found that the worms can still sense the color of light in a way that enables them to avoid pigmented toxins made by bacteria. This image was captured using a stereo microscope.
Photo: Eugene L.Q. Lee/Massachusetts Institute of Technology