News Articles

Though they perch far apart on the avian family tree, birds with the ability to learn songs use similar brain structures to sing their tunes. Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center now have an explanation for this puzzling likeness.
In all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities – songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds – the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, the researchers discovered. The team also found that areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing. This suggests that the brain pathways used for vocal learning evolved out of the brain pathways used for motor control.

Bipolar Disorder (BPD or manic-depressive illness) is one of the most serious of all mental disorders, affecting millions of individuals worldwide. Affected individuals alternate between states of deep depression and mania. While depression is characterized by persistent and long-term sadness or despair, mania is a mental state characterized by great excitement, flight of ideas, a decreased need for sleep, and, sometimes, uncontrollable behavior, hallucinations, or delusions.
BPD likely arises from the complex interaction of multiple genes and environmental factors. Unlike some brain diseases, no single gene has been implicated in BPD.

Cocaine addicts often suffer a downward emotional spiral that is a key to their craving and chronic relapse. While researchers have developed animal models of the reward of cocaine, they have not been able to model this emotional impact until now.
Regina Carelli and colleagues report experiments with rats in which they have mimicked the negative affect of cocaine addiction and even how it drives greater cocaine use. They said their animal model could enable better understanding of the emotional motivations of cocaine addiction and how to ameliorate them.

Photosynthesis by plants, algae, and some bacteria is crucial to life on Earth. It results in food from sunlight and in its process organisms release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide.
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution say a new discovery puts a dramatic twist on what we know - namely that certain marine microorganisms have evolved a way to break the established rules of photosynthesis.
The studies, in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta and Limnology and Oceanography, suggest these marine microorganisms get a significant proportion of their energy without a net release of oxygen or uptake of carbon dioxide.

Macrophages, derived from Greek and meaning “eating cells”, are biological cells that spring from white blood cells to destroy foreign or dying cells. They are basically cellular “policemen” that can differentiate between good and bad cells.
But some cancer cells over-express the molecular protein that macrophages recognize as friendly — they create a fake ID — which allows the cancer to avoid being perceived as foreign by macrophages. In addition, the molecules involved in the recognition mechanism appear somewhat variable from person to person, with possible links to success or failure in transplantation of stem cells.

If participants in the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer study have their way, a telescope on the moon will allow astronomers to see 'back in time' and study the young Universe during the first 100 million years of its existence.
Although the night sky is filled with stars, these stars did not form instantaneously after the Big Bang. There was an interval, now called the “Dark Ages,” in which the Universe was unlit by any star.
The most abundant element in the Universe, and the raw material from which stars, planets, and people are formed, is hydrogen. Fortunately, the hydrogen atom can produce a signal in the radio-wavelength part of the spectrum, at 21 cm; a wavelength far longer than what the human eye can detect.

Ant colonies are always used as the model for working together rather than for individual gain but that isn't so, say researchers from the University of Leeds and the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Bill Hughes and Professor Jacobus Boomsma say they have found evidence that, far from being a model of social cooperation, the ant world is riddled with cheating and corruption – and it goes all the way to the top.
Certain ants, they say, are able to cheat the system, ensuring their offspring become reproductive queens rather than sterile workers.
It's Gattaca, except with ants.

In the largest and longest study to date of weight loss maintenance strategies, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that personal contact – and, to a lesser extent, a computer-based support system – were helpful in keeping weight off.
“The results of this study send a strong signal to those who seem to believe that obesity is such an intractable problem that nothing can be done about it,” says Dr. Laura Svetkey, professor of medicine at Duke and the lead author of the study. “Our research shows that is not true. A large majority of the participants in the Weight Loss Management study lost weight and kept weight off for two and one-half years.”

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude.
“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health. “Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

Scientists have discovered epigenetic changes (i.e. chemical changes to a gene that do not alter the DNA sequence) in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This is the first epigenome-wide investigation in psychiatric research, and this groundbreaking data may be a significant step on the journey to fully understanding major psychosis.
Dr. Arturas Petronis, senior scientist in the Krembil Family Epigenetic Laboratory at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and his team studied 12,000 locations on the genome using an epigenomic profiling technology developed at CAMH. Approximately one in every two hundred of these genes showed an epigenetic difference in the brains of psychiatric patients.
Significantly, these changes were noted on genes involved in neurotransmission (the exchange of chemical messages within the brain), brain development, and other processes linked to disease origins.

Science has developed sophisticated models of the atmosphere and instruments can help make detailed weather forecasts but to truly understand global climate change, scientists need more than just a one-day forecast or a seven-day guess. They need a deeper understanding of the complex and interrelated forces that shape climate.
They need applied mathematics, says Brad Marston, professor of physics at Brown University. He is working on sets of equations that he says can be used to more accurately explain climate patterns.
“Climate is a statement about the statistics of weather, not the day-to-day or minute-by-minute fluctuations,” Marston said. “That’s really the driving concept. We know we can’t predict the weather more than a couple of weeks out.

Snakes don't eat fugu, the seafood delicacy prepared from blowfish meat and famed for its poisonous potential. However, should a common garter snake wander into a sushi restaurant, it could fearlessly order a fugu dinner.
The snakes have evolved resistance to the blowfish poison, tetrodotoxin (TTX), by preying on rough-skinned newts, which also secrete the toxin. Some newts are so poisonous that they harbor enough TTX to kill a roomful of adult humans.
Why would a small animal produce such an excessive amount of poison" The answer lies in the evolutionary back-and-forth between newts and garter snakes.