Insights and Updates

Last weekend, taking the bus from the school gate to the high-speed rail station, I passed vast stretches of golden rapeseed flowers. I was delighted; I had not expected to see such beautiful rapeseed blossoms in the north. In my hometown it is exactly the…

The most frequent problem cancer patients face during radiotherapy and chemotherapy is myelosuppression. Both radiation and most chemotherapeutic drugs have myelosuppression as a side effect. So what does human bone marrow do, and what is myelosuppression? Bone marrow is the birthplace of all blood cells…

Pathology is a required course for medical students, but I want to recommend that ordinary readers buy a pathology textbook and read it in their spare time. There is no need for a fancy edition; the unified textbook for medical colleges published by the People's…

A cup of soy milk before bed to calm the spirit and aid sleep — could anything be nicer? Such a soy-milk recipe actually exists. Drawing on the effects of certain medicinal-edible herbs, I have combined a soy-milk formula that helps some insomnia patients. The…

A rich, delicious cup of coffee used to be my favorite; I liked to treat myself to one from time to time. But now I can no longer love it, so I have had to give it up. Last year, before the college entrance exam,…

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) of the lower extremities is a condition in which a clot forms in the larger veins of the leg. Its main feature is blood coagulating into a thrombus within a deep vein of the leg, blocking the vessel, impeding blood flow,…

On September 15, 2025, Liu Xiaoping, an associate professor at Tsinghua University and a star runner on its morning-run team, died suddenly at age 51 after running triggered a cardiac event. On March 24, 2026, the well-known public figure Zhang Xuefeng also died suddenly at…

Atrophy is a medical term meaning the shrinkage in size of cells, tissues, or organs that have already developed normally; it may be accompanied by a reduction in the number of parenchymal cells. Atrophy generally arises from lowered functional activity of cells, insufficient blood and…

If you are past middle age, you probably know dementia firsthand, because among your elders there is sure to be someone afflicted by it. They were once sharp-minded, cheerful, and vigorous; now they have failing memory, slow reactions, anxiety and depression, stubborn temperaments, and few…

Last weekend I returned to Beijing and took some time to turn over the soil and spread two bags of farmyard manure. After finishing work yesterday afternoon, my wife insisted on accompanying me to the mountains of Mentougou to see the spring wildflowers; she was…