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.
PHILADELPHIA -- In the era of precision medicine, targeting the mutations driving cancer growth, rather than the tumor site itself, continues to be a successful approach for some patients. In the latest example, researchers from Penn Medicine and other institutions found that treating metastatic thyroid cancer patients harboring a BRAF mutation with the targeted therapy vemurafenib -- originally approved for melanoma patients with the mutation -- showed promising anti-tumor activity in a third of patients. The results were published in this week's Lancet Oncology.
(Toronto - July 21, 2016) Since the discovery of their true nature 140 years ago, lichens have been the poster children for symbiosis. In the textbook definition of a lichen, the filaments of a single fungus provide protection for photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria, which in turn provide food for the fungus.
But 140 years after the term "symbiosis" was coined to describe lichen, it turns out there's a third party involved in the relationship - a yeast that may help provide the structure found in large "leafy" and "branching" lichens.
The combination of two plant compounds that have medicinal properties - curcumin and silymarin - holds promise in treating colon cancer, according findings in the Journal of Cancer.
Curcumin is the active ingredient in the spice turmeric, which is present in spicy curry dishes, and silymarin is a component of milk thistle, which has been used to treat liver disease.
Think tanks are designed to help policy makers shape decisions by giving them evidence-based information in an apolitical format.
Who doesn't claim to be doing that? Though Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund were both inspired by rabid eugenics proponents who simply reframed their beliefs about the poor being vermin into the "population control" rhetoric after World War II, they still claim they are more consumer advocacy oriented than corporations that actually help people. And government-controlled panels like the International Agency for Research on Cancer agree, an expert on a pesticide who works for the private sector can't be on their pesticide working group but an anti-pesticide consultant for EDF can be.
WASHINGTON -- Is empathy the result of gut intuition or careful reasoning? Research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that, contrary to popular belief, the latter may be more the case.
"Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others - that is, to be empathically accurate. Some are better at this than others, a difference that may be explained in part by mode of thought," said Jennifer Lerner, PhD, of Harvard University, a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Until now, however, little was known about which mode of thought, intuitive versus systematic, offers better accuracy in perceiving another's feelings."
The death of King Albert I of Belgium in 1934 -- officially a climbing accident -- still fuels speculation. Forensic geneticist Maarten Larmuseau and his colleagues at KU Leuven (University of Leuven, Belgium), have now compared DNA from blood found on the scene in 1934 to that of two distant relatives. Their analysis confirms that the blood really is that of Albert I. This conclusion is at odds with several conspiracy theories about the king's death.
Human childbirth is not only unpleasant, it's also assumed to take a toll on women's health, even while women have a greater life expectancy. A new study led by UC Santa Barbara researchers, however, finds that indigenous women in the Bolivian Amazon with some of the highest birth rates in the world today experience negligible health costs from their intense reproductive effort.
A team of researchers based in Israel and the US has found a mathematical resemblance between swarm dynamics and gravitational interactions. The study, which has just been published in the New Journal of Physics, could provide a big leap forward in understanding the mass movement of flying insects.
Scientists have long been fascinated by the collective behaviour of animals. The coordinated motion of schools of fish or flocks of birds, for example, can be built up from short-range interactions where individuals tend to move much like their neighbours. So far, so good, until you get to the swarming of insects, where a different approach is required.
In humans and other mammals, the cerebral cortex is responsible for sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. Understanding the organization of the neuronal networks in the cortex should provide insights into the computations that they carry out.
A study shows that the global architecture of the cortical networks in primates (with large brains) and rodents (with small brains) is organized by common principles. Despite the overall network invariances, primate brains have much weaker long-distance connections, which could explain why large brains are more susceptible to certain mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer disease.
If man-made greenhouse gas emissions are going to cause more droughts and storm surges on a persistent basis, why did it take so long? And why is it only a concern in the last 25 years, rather than in the 1930s, when things were really hot?
A new estimate claims it's because the natural atmosphere already contained carbon dioxide that human-induced changes were relatively small. Had these natural concentrations been lower, the effects of the emission of harmful greenhouse gases would have been felt much earlier.
A new class of high-performing organic molecules inspired by vitamin B2 can safely store electricity from intermittent energy sources like solar and wind power in large batteries.The high-capacity flow battery uses organic molecules called quinones, which store energy in plants and animals, and a new class of battery electrolyte material. They contend in their study that it is high-performance, non-flammable, non-toxic, non-corrosive, and its low-cost could enable large-scale, inexpensive electricity storage.
How does Zika get transmitted? In America, it seems to be sex, but in South America it is mosquitoes? While all three vectors are ecologically useless - they could be blasted out of existence with no impact at all anywhere - it is helpful to know which ones are the real culprits.
Researchers have now been able to directly connect the Aedes aegypti mosquito with Zika transmission in the Americas during an outbreak in southern Mexico.
