When you reach a certain age, an individual’s risk of heart attack and stroke is significant enough that prevention becomes essential. While other factors come into the equation, like heart failure and diabetes, blood thinners can quite possibly be part of many people’s futures. One of the most widely prescribed blood thinners is warfarin, also known as Coumadin.

What is Coumadin used for?

Coumadin is generally used for individuals who are at higher risk of blood clots. This is important because blood clots can cause multiple dangerous conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary emboli.

How does Coumadin work?

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Hyperthyroidism is a reasonably common disease in the United States, with around one out of every hundred having some form of it¹. Graves disease, an autoimmune disorder, is the most common type of hyperthyroidism¹. While localized to the thyroid, this disorder often affects other organs, such as the eyes and skin¹.

What are autoimmune disorders?

These are diseases where the immune system attacks a patient’s own body. B and T cells, which contribute to the adaptive immune system that can produce antibodies and attack viruses, are typically involved. Usually, as new immune cells are made, those B and T cells…

In data science, sometimes you get lucky, and all of the data you need is located in a single database/file/etc. In reality, you likely need to review multiple files. This can be too tedious, especially if you want a single output among many other lines in many files.

In this tutorial, I will be going over how to accomplish this task using Unix code. Unix is a useful means of approaching this problem in data science because large data repositories, like what I use for my work, are often based on Linux.

While a user can type functions out on…

While the general public knows of cancer and one aspect of treatment, chemotherapy, and what is often depicted as inevitable nausea and vomiting, cancer care goes beyond this (and nausea does not always happen with chemotherapy). This article will be discussing one aspect of cancer care called radiation oncology.

What is radiation oncology?

Radiation oncology is a type of cancer therapy that involves using radiation to kill cancer cells. Individuals are carefully positioned on a gurney, and a specialized piece of equipment called a linear accelerator delivers a very focused beam of radiation at a tumour.

Using constantly moving radiation…

In my free time, I play video games, among other things. I have recently become re-invested in the Elder Scrolls series, emphasizing high-quality and lore-rich storytelling. As I like more modern graphics, I set out to install mods improving Morrowind before playing it. As I have found, it is not as intuitive as read-me documents can depict it. I list key points that one needs to be mindful of while installing mods, so they are installed in the right way, so you only have to do it once. This is important because sometimes you need to install mods in a…

While pregnancy can be a time of great excitement, it can also be anxiety-provoking and imposing of profound responsibility for a child. The concern of what you put in your body during this time, including vaccines, is quite reasonable.

Fortunately, it is very safe to receive vaccines while pregnant. There is no evidence suggesting that inactivated virus, inactivated bacteria, or toxoid vaccines pose any risk to a fetus¹. This makes sense because these vaccines have nothing that could indeed cause an infection. These vaccines are the equivalent of showing a picture of a virus to the immune system telling it…

While Hi-C maps can be pleasing to look at, it can take time to learn how to read them. This article will focus on enabling one to interpret these data-rich figures. A summary of Hi-C is here, from another one of my articles.

CODEX

The genetics underlying DNA transcription is tightly regulated. Epigenetic mechanisms drive conformational changes that control when transcription factors can permit the central dogma. Given the importance of understanding DNA structure, groups have created 3C techniques (chromosome conformation capture) to map chromatin interactions¹.

Before diving into this technique, a brief review of transcription dynamics is warranted. Genes generally rely on transcription factors to permit the binding of DNA or RNA polymerase for reproduction. The sequences where transcription factors bind can be influenced by distant elements, such as enhancers and repressors. …