Science, Health & Tech

A small group of activists delivered five cardboard boxes containing what they said were the signatures of more than 700,000 “outraged citizens” to Mylan Pharmaceuticals Tuesday morning.

Pennsylvania is still more than a year away from having its medical marijuana system up and running, but local physicians are already thinking about how they will prescribe the drug.

Pennsylvania has officially joined nearly every other state in the U.S. by setting up a program to track prescriptions of powerful drugs like oxycodone and methadone.

It's considered a big step forward to address the addiction crisis.

Doctors, physician assistants and other prescribers can now check the database to see when a patient last received the drugs.

Faculty and staff members at the University of Pittsburgh now receive transgender benefits, including behavioral health support, medications and surgery.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports officials say the change, which was sent to employees last week, is meant to bring the university into compliance with federal rules on sex discrimination in employment.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. is known for employing doctors with highly refined subspecialties, and now St. Clair Hospital doctors can tap into that expertise.

An agreement between the two hospitals, finalized this week, will allow St. Clair doctors to access eTumor Boards – a virtual version of tumor board reviews, in which multiple doctors brainstorm ways to treat an individual patient.

Five years ago, Dr. Lisa Pan had a patient whose depression was so severe that no form of treatment would take away his suicidal thoughts.

A recent Carnegie Mellon University win at a hacking competition in Las Vegas is helping put Pittsburgh on the map as a cyber security hub.

CMU startup ForAllSecure earned $2 million earlier this month at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Cyber Grand Challenge, with an autonomous computer that can find security weaknesses and defend against malware, CEO David Brumley said.  

A new study finds a link between the racial makeup of Philadelphia neighborhoods and the number of primary care doctors who work there.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Christiana Care Health System, the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, and the French Institute for Agricultural Research, measures primary care doctors per resident in Philadelphia's census tracts.

Noelle, who is in labor at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown, tells a nurse that she isn't feeling right. Then her water breaks. The nurse checks the monitors and realizes that the umbilical cord has prolapsed. This is an obstetrical emergency.

Noelle has had this emergency — and others — thousands of times in the past three years that she has been in the simulation lab at Conemaugh. Noelle Birthing Simulator, made by Gaumard Scientific Co., Florida, is a full-size mannequin used to help nurses, residents and physicians practice real-life emergencies.

  Over-prescribing painkillers, marketing and formulation changes and cheap heroin prices led to opioid epidemics in Carrick, Sharpsburg and Allentown, according to a report released Thursday by the Allegheny County departments of Health and Human Services.

The new findings were collected over six years to better define strategies for both prevention and treatment within targeted geographic areas, Health Department Director Karen Hacker said.

The Allegheny County Health Department is seeking public input on a proposed rule that would ban e-cigarettes and vaping from many indoor spaces. A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Monday at 1 p.m.

The ban would apply to places where smoking is also currently prohibited under the state’s Clean Indoor Air Act.

Chatham University ecology professor Ryan Utz says a new moon—when the night sky is at its darkest—is a great time to observe moths in the summertime. And it doesn’t take any special technology to get a look at the diversity the moth world has to offer either.

Utz and his students recently set up a four-by-eight-foot white board at the edge of a field and then simply lit it on a dark night to attract some of the 1,500 species of moths that might pay a visit.

The healthy human gut is home to hundreds of millions of bacteria species.

But people who are missing a few hundred or so particular species are at greater risk for certain health issues, including Crohn’s disease, which is characterized  by chronic inflammation of the bowels. 

Richard Duerr, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is co-senior author of a study linking that lack of gut diversity with a specific genetic variation.

The Perseid meteor shower is back for its annual mid-summer show, but with more force this year.

Stargazers can catch a glimpse of 100 to 150 meteors – remnants of the Swift Tuttle comet – flying by Earth every hour when celestial activity peaks between late Thursday evening and early Friday. The annual pass usually takes place each year from mid-July to mid-August. 

“All of these little particles of rock burn up in our atmosphere and put on a pretty spectacular show,” said Charissa Sedor, planetarium producer of the Carnegie Science Center’s Buhl Planetarium.

Twenty Centers of Excellence, which will treat Pennsylvanians struggling with addiction, will open by Oct. 1.

This would help the roughly 4,500 people across Pennsylvania suffering from opioid use disorders who do not have access to treatment.

Allegheny County needs more resources to battle the opioid epidemic gripping southwestern Pennsylvania, Human Services and Health department representatives said at a state legislative hearing Tuesday.

The phrase “mental math” has a whole new meaning.

Patterns in brain activity are giving Carnegie Mellon University  researchers a glimpse at the stages of thinking involved in solving complex mathematics.

“It’s hard to know what people are thinking while they’re solving problems. We decided to explore how brain imaging data might provide a window to gain insight on the internal stages of problem solving,” said Aryn Pyke, psychology research fellow at CMU and study author.

A coalition of housing and health advocacy groups from across Pennsylvania want Medicaid expanded to include supportive housing services. 

“Even with bricks and mortar dollars and housing subsidies, it’s the supportive services dollars that we are often really struggling with how to find and how to sustain,” said Monica McCurdy of Project HOME in Philadelphia. “We see Medicaid as the missing piece in this equation to solve homelessness.”

Roughly 300 registered nurses at Heritage Valley Health System in Beaver began a 24-hour picket Tuesday morning, demanding better working conditions and benefits.

Registered Nurse Molly Romigh, president of the hospital’s local chapter of the Service Employees International Union, said nurses are dissatisfied with the RN-to-patient ratios maintained by their employer.