More men than women develop Parkinson’s disease and new work presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies says that it is do to sex differences in how brain cells change. Parkinson’s disease affects about 9 million people and becomes increasingly prevalent with age.
We're in a lifelong struggle against nature every single day, the ultimate arms race. Viruses have continually infected humans just as they do today. Some early viruses even became integrated into our genome and are now known as human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). Over millions of years, they became inert due to mutations or major deletions in their genetic code. Today, one of the most studied HERV families is the HERV-K family, which has been active since the evolutionary split of humans and chimpanzees with some members perhaps actively infecting humans within the past couple hundred thousand years.
Kids are stimulated by new experiences. So are pigs. If you watched the 2014 video where a camera falls out of a plane and crashes into a pig sty you saw how intrigued they were by it, even though it clearly was not food.A new study says that such "consumerism", a preference for shiny new stuff, is universal across the animal kingdom. And they showed it in piglets.
Lab-grown cartilage grown shows similar mechanical and chemical properties to the natural articular cartilage which allows our joints to move smoothly, according to a new study in Nature Materials.
A team biomedical engineers from University of California, Davis, created the lab-grown tissue similar to natural cartilage by giving it a bit of a stretch, growing it under tension but without a supporting scaffold. Their results show similar mechanical and biochemical properties to natural articular cartilage.
A randomized controlled trial of the use of acupuncture in emergency departments has found the treatment is a safe and effective alternative to pain-relieving drugs for some patients who visit looking for relief from things like a self-reported ankle sprain, a headache (invariably called a migraine) or back pain.
A new study from the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine has found a connection between common household chemicals, quaternary ammonium compounds or "quats,", and birth defects, despite the fact that experts have never found evidence of harm.Quats are often used as disinfectants and preservatives in household and personal products such as cleaners, laundry detergent, fabric softener, shampoo and conditioner, and eye drops. The research declared a link between quats and neural tube birth defects in both mice and rats and immediately sent out a press release, hoping mainstream journalists who love weak correlational studies will believe that mice are little people.
A new study has found that found that flavonoid levels and antioxidant activity in organic onions are higher than in conventional onions, which disputes a meta-analysis which debunked claims by discredited industry-funded economist Dr. Chuck Benbrook and colleagues who asserted that the organic process led to higher nutritional quality.The new paper did find just that, though the benefit may be meaningless. Antioxidants and flavonoids have yet to show any measurable health benefit, but the demographic that buys organic food is more likely to buy those kinds of supplements touting benefits of phytochemicals.
Mothers supportive of their children's negative emotions rate their children as being more socially skilled than teachers do. Not really a big surprise, parents often think the way they have chosen to do things is the best way, even if their kids seem like many to be, well, brats.Mothers’ supportive reactions were instead correlated to fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors by third-grade teachers, who obviously see a different side of children.Nonetheless, these contrasting patterns suggest a potential downside to mothers’ supportiveness of children’s negative emotions for third-grade children’s social adjustment in school. Or not, since it's surveys.
Formaldehyde sounds scary because it is for dead bodies. But it is also produced in our natural cellular respiration. Clearly "the dose makes the embalming fluid" but groups who want to scare people about diet soda whisper about its presence. And it is present, in levels that will be carcinogenic if you drink 7,000 sodas per day. More recently its presence in nicotine vaping liquid was being touted.
The oldest-known primate skeleton, 62-million-years-old, dwelled in treetops, not on the ground, according to a new analysis.The study shows that Torrejonia, a small mammal from an extinct group of primates called plesiadapiforms, had skeletal features adapted to living in trees, such as flexible joints for climbing and clinging to branches. Previously, researchers had proposed that plesiadapiforms in Palaechthonidae, the family to which Torrejonia belongs, were terrestrial based on details from cranial and dental fossils consistent with animals that nose about on the ground for insects.
A new paper found that the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 can introduce hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome, important as it starts to move into clinical trials. CRISPR-Cas9 editing technology—by virtue of its speed and unprecedented precision—has been a boon for scientists trying to understand the role of genes in disease. The technique also has raised hope for more powerful gene therapies that can delete or repair flawed genes, not just add new genes.
Capacity for vicarious experiences is a fundamental aspect of human social behavior. For example, seeing others experiencing pain can activate brain circuits that are known to support actual first-hand experience of pain. A new study has revealed how the human brain’s opioid system modulates responses to other people’s pain. The less opioid receptors the participants had in their brain, the stronger were their emotion and pain circuits’ response to seeing others in distress. Similar association was not found for the dopamine system despite its known importance in pain management.
The effects of a "bug" in the analysis of functional neuroimages (AFNI) software was greatly exaggerated, a finding that is in defiance of numerous other studies which have found that false positive rates in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain may negate the findings of countless previous studies.
