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.
A paper by researchers at LSU Health New Orleans in a little known journal called Translational Cancer Research suggests that age is an important factor in the association between cancer and sugar-sweetened beverages and recommends that intervention programs to reduce consumption of added sugar be focused on lower socio-economic status, young males, as well as cervical cancer survivors. Sugar intake or sugar-sweetened beverage consumption has also been associated with obesity, diabetes and cardio-metabolic diseases, and just about everything else. As more people are surviving cancer, the consumption of added sugar will be an increasingly important risk factor.
According to a music researcher, discrimination of women is common in the club scene. Female DJs don’t get gigs because the music they play is “too feminine.”
It's no secret that elite clubs are fast-tracking customers that fit the "vibe" they are trying to create, but it isn't just the young, pretty ones. If the clothes are wrong, they will not get past the velvet rope, and that's discrimination, argues Tami Gadir, a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo, who is researching women’s experiences in the electronic music scene. She is studying female DJs in particular, but in her experience, the gender differences pervade the electronic club scene in its entirety.
Scientists have measured the catastrophic genetic damage caused by smoking in different organs of the body and identified several different mechanisms by which tobacco smoking causes mutations in DNA. The researchers found that smokers accumulated an average of 150 extra mutations in every lung cell for each year of smoking one pack of cigarettes a day.
In rare cases, someone who is thin could still end up with type 2 diabetes while an obese person may be surprisingly healthy. Some Asian countries have a higher diabetes rate than the United States even though the obesity rate is relatively low. New research points toward an answer to the riddle of the obesity paradox: An accumulation of a toxic class of fat metabolites, known as ceramides, may increase the risk for type 2 diabetes.
Among patients in Singapore receiving gastric bypass surgery, ceramide levels predicted who had diabetes better than obesity did. Even though all of the patients were obese, those who did not have type 2 diabetes had less ceramide in their adipose tissue than those who were diagnosed with the condition.
Evolutionary biology long ago solved the philosophical conundrum 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?' by showing that eggs came long before chickens. But more relevant to evolution is the 'mother' molecule that led to the formation of life. What is it and how did it replicate itself?RNA may be the answer to the first question, because it has more flexibility in how it recognizes itself than previously believed. The finding might change how we picture the first chemical steps towards replication and life.
With the aid of a new immunosuppressive agent known as PIF (preimplantation factor), researchers at the World Health Organisation (WHO) Institute of Primate Research in Nairobi, Kenya, have successfully transplanted an ovary from one individual to another, even managing to restore a monthly cycle. Approximately 11 percent of women worldwide suffer from premature ovarian failure. This can have many different causes: chemotherapy administered for a malignant disease might irreversibly damage the ovaries and, because of the advances in modern cancer therapy, the number of young women surviving cancer is on the increase. The women, some of whom are still very young, prematurely enter menopause. Genetic diseases can also trigger early menopause.
It would seem obvious that a diluted nicotine vapor is much less harmful than toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke - yet groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Tobacco Free Kids have instead adopted a 'quit or die' mentality about smoking.Yet we engage in harm reduction when it comes to needle exchanges and, strangely, the political party that was against those is for e-cigarettes, while the party that is on the other side wants any smoking cessation or harm reduction tool not controlled by pharmaceutical companies to be penalized.
Thanks, but no thanks, say British scientists about controversial British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, primarily known for his criticism of religion.A majority of those surveyed who mentioned Dawkins’ work during research interviews reject his approach to public engagement and said his work misrepresents science and scientists because he conveys the wrong impression about what science can do and the norms that scientists observe in their work.
The giant planets in our solar system have very diverse rings. Observations show that Saturn’s rings are made of more than 95% icy particles, while the rings of Uranus and Neptune are darker and may have higher rock content. Since the rings of Saturn were first observed in the 17th century, investigation of the rings has expanded from earth-based telescopes to spacecraft such as Voyagers and Cassini. However, the origin of the rings was still unclear and the mechanisms that lead to the diverse ring systems were unknown.
In the late 16th century, two brothers from the illustrious Fugger merchant family had news from all over the world sent to them in Augsburg by mail. At the time, so-called "novellantes" compiled and wrote down news which they forwarded to wealthy subscribers such as the Fuggers, thus establishing the first commercial news medium in Europe.The Fugger brothers had these newsletters bound and compiled in annual volumes, which eventually comprised about 16,000 newsletters in German and Italian.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal forms of cancer. Early detection is essential to improve prognoses. Working toward that goal, a collaboration of researchers in Japan has discovered proteins in the blood which improve the detection of pancreatic cancer. When used in combination with conventional pancreatic cancer biomarkers, it enables the diagnosis of early stage pancreatic cancer, which was previously thought to be difficult.
The Biomat research group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) is using marine waste on the Basque coast (squid, fish and algae waste) to obtain new materials. This line of research is offering a fresh take on plastics aligned with the principles of the circular economy, which is based on preserving and improving natural capital by controlling finite stocks and balancing the flows of renewable resources.
In this context, the group’s research is highlighting, in particular, the upgrading of industrial by-products or waste through processes that minimize the use of resources, both material and energy ones, to obtain competitive, sustainable products.
