Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
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.
The surface of water drops at 100 nm size changes with temperature. At room temperature, the surface water molecules of these droplets have much stronger interactions than a normal water surface. The structural difference corresponds to a difference in temperature of -50°C.Nanometric-sized water drops are everywhere, as droplets or aerosols in air, in our bodies as medication, and in rocks and oil fields. How they interact with their hydrophobic environment, at the curved droplet interface, a sub-nanometric region that surrounds the small pocket of water, could boost our understanding of atmospheric, biological and geological processes.
Tablet and phone marketing executives can sleep well tonight. While those devices are commonly blamed for recent sleep problems, beams of pure digital energy shot straight into the eyeballs will do that, a new paper seeks to shore up the failing claim that tiny particulate matter, PM 2.5 (2.5 microns per cubic meter of air), is impacting human health and should be the source of new regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Though well-known cancers like breast and prostate cancer are still the most common, America has gotten really good at diagnosing rare cancers, according to a new study. This is a significant achievement, because rare cancers can be challenging to diagnose, often resulting in numerous physician visits, misdiagnoses, and substantial delays in diagnosis. Rare cancers have become an area of priority for some researchers and public health advocates because treatment options are often more limited and less effective than for more common cancers.
Though the trend has been to listen to environmental claims about the benefits of trees in cities, in science they have a well-established dark side: in urban cities, they produce a lot of ground-level ozone, the very thing environmentalists spent decades lobbying against.During hot days, trees emit compounds that worsen ozone, such as formaldehyde, which forms from isoprene, a volatile organic compound that trees can give off when temperatures are hot, and terpenes, which also interact with sunlight to create a "natural" smog. If you have witnessed the haze of the Great Smoky Mountains, you are breathing in natural pollution.
A new paper reports the development of nanoparticles that mimic the behavior of natural melanosomes, melanin-producing cell structures that protect our skin, eyes and other tissues from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation.
Ovaries constructed of 3-D printed scaffolds that house immature eggs were successful in boosting hormone production and restoring fertility by actually ovulating - and they produced healthy offspring which mothers also were able to nurse. By removing a female mouse's ovary and replacing it with a bioprosthetic ovary, the mouse was able to not only ovulate but also give birth to healthy pups. The moms were even able to nurse their young. The bioprosthetic ovaries are constructed of 3-D printed scaffolds that house immature eggs, and have been successful in boosting hormone production and restoring fertility in mice, which was the ultimate goal of the research.
Natural gas has seen a resurgence due to hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") which has allowed geologists and engineers to extract it from wells that were previously considered unusable. CO2 emissions from energy have plummeted back to early 1990s levels and emissions from dirtier forms of energy like coal are back at early 1980s levels.
A paper has linked Monarch butterfly populations to glyphosate - but only when it was first used, and not when it was most heavily used. It also linked the populations to seasonal variation. That is to be expected, except since it's 2017, they try to claim that's climate change rather than wetter weather in some years.
Though photos are considered more credible, if you are evangelizing a controversial energy type like wind, a cartoon may appear more persuasive. In a recent study, participants were shown one of two versions of the same set of brochures. Each set was designed to debunk a myth about wind energy, the intent being to give readers desired information about wind energy and assuage their concerns. Each pair of brochures was identical in design, text, color, size, etc. The only difference was that the originally designed brochures featured a beautiful, professional photograph of wind turbines, while the look-alike brochures created for the study swapped out the photograph with a cartoon.
