Commonwealth targets climate change with regeneration projects

The Commonwealth on Friday launched an ideas-sharing network to tackle the effects of climate change through replicable regeneration projects.

Divers fight Senegal's plastic tide

When the sight of plastic bags, bottles and other debris littering the seabed becomes too much, there's just one thing to do: don your diving suit, strap on an air tank and fish out the stuff yourself.

US state upholds e-cigarette ban amid vaping deaths

The US state of Massachusetts upheld a ban on e-cigarettes Friday amid a spate of deaths and injuries linked to vaping across the country.

At Fukushima plant, a million-tonne headache: radioactive water

In the grounds of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sits a million-tonne headache for the plant's operators and Japan's government: tank after tank of water contaminated with radioactive elements.

Treating pulmonary embolism: How safe and effective are new devices?

Pulmonary embolism (PE), a blood clot lodged in one of the pulmonary arteries in the lungs, is the third leading cause of cardiovascular-related death in the United States. While most patients are treated with anticoagulants (commonly known as blood thinners), the use of novel interventional devices that remove or dissolve clots in the lungs has significantly increased in recent years. Yet, there is little data—particularly, as it pertains to the treatment of patients with "intermediate-risk PE"—that suggests these approaches are more safe and effective than the use of anticoagulation alone, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) that was led by Penn Medicine.

Long-term study data shows DBS is effective treatment for most severe form of depression

A study published online on Friday, October 4, in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of an area in the brain called the subcallosal cingulate (SCC) provides a robust antidepressant effect that is sustained over a long period of time in patients with treatment-resistant depression—the most severely depressed patients who have not responded to other treatments.