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 team of researchers has developed the first scalable method to identify different subtypes of neurons in the human brain. The research lays the groundwork for "mapping" the gene activity in the human brain and could help provide a better understanding of brain functions and disorders, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia and depression.
By now we are used to the idea of seasonal weather forecasts - whether to expect an El Niño ski season, or an unusually warm summer. These same types of climate models are now being adapted to make seasonal forecasts for the region's coastal waters.
Researchers from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have created a seasonal outlook for the Pacific Northwest waters, which would help tell if it's going to be a great year for sardines or a poor crab season. A paper evaluating the forecast's performance was published in June in the interdisciplinary, open-access journal Nature: Scientific Reports.
PITTSBURGH, June 23, 2016 - Potent doses of broccoli sprout extract activate a "detoxification" gene and may help prevent cancer recurrence in survivors of head and neck cancer, according to a trial by the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, partner with UPMC CancerCenter, confirming preliminary results presented last year at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting.
It is the first study demonstrating that the extract protects against oral cancer, with the results of human, animal and laboratory tests reported today in the journal Cancer Prevention Research. This research is funded through Pitt's Specialized Program of Research Excellence grant in head and neck cancer from the National Cancer Institute.
Future global warming will not only depend on the amount of emissions from man-made greenhouse gasses, but will also depend on the sensitivity of the climate system and response to feedback mechanisms. By reconstructing past global warming and the carbon cycle on Earth 56 million years ago, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute among others have used computer modelling to estimate the potential perspective for future global warming, which could be even warmer than previously thought. The results are published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
DURHAM, N.C. -- By combining super-fine electrodes and tiny amounts of a very specific drug, Duke University researchers have singled out a circuit in mouse brains and taken control of it to dial an animal's mood up and down.
Stress-susceptible animals that behaved as if they were depressed or anxious were restored to relatively normal behavior by tweaking the system, according to a study appearing in the July 20 issue of Neuron.
Neurons are the basic information processing structures in the brain and consist of three parts: dendrites, responsible for receiving information; axons, responsible for sending information; and the soma, the cell body that contains the nucleus.
For communication between neurons to occur, an electrical impulse, called an action potential, must travel down an axon to its synaptic terminal.
A major technical challenge impeding the direct examination of this process, axonal excitability, is the small diameter of a typical axon - less than 500 nanometers.
LA JOLLA, CA - June 23, 2016 - A team of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) and Illumina, Inc., has completed the first large-scale assessment of single neuronal "transcriptomes." Their research reveals a surprising diversity in the molecules that human brain cells use in transcribing genetic information from DNA to RNA and producing proteins.
The researchers accomplished this feat by isolating and analyzing single-neuronal nuclei from the human brain, allowing classification of 16 neuronal subtypes in the brain's cerebral cortex, the "gray matter" involved in thought, cognition and many other functions.
Finding out which is the highest mountain in the US Arctic may be the last thing on your mind, unless you are an explorer who skis from the tallest peaks around the globe. Ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers joined forces with glaciologist Matt Nolan to settle a debate of more than 50 years, while testing a new, affordable mapping technique in a steep mountainous region. Their research is published today (23 June) in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
By the 2080s, as many as 3,331 people could die every year from exposure to heat during the summer months in New York City. The high estimate by Columbia University scientists is based on a new model--the first to account for variability in future population size, greenhouse gas trajectories, and the extent to which residents adapt to heat through interventions like air conditioning and public cooling centers. Results appear online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Researchers project that as many as 1,779 annual heat-related deaths could be avoided if the climate adheres to the more moderate of two greenhouse gas trajectories--known as representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5. High levels of adaptation could save an additional 1,198 lives.
Researchers have improved the integration of disparate sources and types of data which will advance scientists' understanding of disease using Wikipathways. This study, published in PLOS Computational Biology, will help other scientists better utilize open data and will aid the discovery of new therapeutic targets for disease.
WASHINGTON -- Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Australian National University have developed new technology that aims to make the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) even more sensitive to faint ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.
Scientists at Advanced LIGO announced the first-ever observation of gravitational waves earlier this year, a century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence in his general theory of relativity. Studying gravitational waves can reveal important information about cataclysmic astrophysical events involving black holes and neutron stars.
When it comes to autonomous cars, people generally approve of cars programmed to sacrifice their passengers to save others, but these same people are not enthusiastic about riding in such "utilitarian" vehicles themselves, a new survey reveals.
