A new, nanoparticle vaccine could one day grant patients immunity to the flu with fewer trips to the doctor and without health officials correctly guessing which flu strains will become dominant each year.

In older adults, activity of the brain’s language processing network is nearly identical to that seen in the brains of younger adults during language tasks, according to a new brain imaging study from MIT and Boston University. 

Doctors who carry out ethnographic research in hospitals occupy an unusual position: they are both clinicians and researchers. Their medical knowledge and professional authority can affect what people say to them, how staff behave around them, and what they are able to observe. Drawing on fieldwork in acute hospital settings, physician-researcher David Wenzel reflects on moments when he was treated as a doctor, a student, or something in between. He found that these different positions made different aspects of clinical care visible. When staff recognized him as a physician, conversations often became more technical. When he was treated as a student or outsider, staff were more likely to discuss uncertainty, emotions, and the less visible relational work of care. The article argues that a clinician's professional identity should not simply be treated as a source of bias to eliminate. Instead, careful reflection on how that identity shapes interactions can itself become a source of insight into hierarchy, responsibility, and decision-making in healthcare.

Low- and middle-income countries bear a disproportionate burden of gynecologic malignancies—cancers of the cervix, endometrium, ovary, vagina, and vulva. A review published by Wiley online in CANCER reveals that survival disparities for these cancers are driven by late-stage diagnosis, limited screening coverage, inadequate radiotherapy infrastructure, workforce shortages, and restricted access to essential and novel therapies.