Noted

In a recent study of dialysis patients, blood vessels bioengineered by Yale School of Medicine biomedical engineering professor Laura E. Niklason and her colleagues performed safely and appeared to have outstanding ability to stay open. The vessels are created by vascular cells grown on a blood vessel–shaped polymer scaffold; the scaffold degrades and is replaced by replicated vascular cells and the collagenous matrix they produce. In an analysis of 60 people, published in the May 14 Lancet, Niklason’s team showed that the new vessels are not only safe and well tolerated, but perhaps more durable than synthetic materials.

 
From infancy, most humans are masters at following the gaze of another member of our species. But we’re not alone. Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos and her colleagues have shown that rhesus macaques display a similar behavior, which waxes and wanes in a pattern nearly identical to ours over the monkeys’ life spans: strong in the young, more varied and flexible in adolescence and adulthood, and declining in the elderly. In addition, adult female humans and monkeys alike are more likely to engage in gaze following than males. In the May 11 Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Santos’s team suggests that the behavior, critical for social development, has deep evolutionary roots.

 
The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 helped decrease chronic shortages of important medications. But Arjun Venkatesh, a Yale medical school assistant professor of emergency medicine, and his research team have found that shortages continue for a number of medications, from saline to naloxone (used to reverse drug overdoses). In May’s Health Affairs, the researchers note that the result could be a public health crisis, particularly in acute-care situations like the ER and intensive care.