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.
Washington, DC-- It turns out that forests in the Andean and western Amazonian regions of South America break long-understood rules about how ecosystems are put together, according to new research led by Carnegie's Greg Asner and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their findings could help scientists understand how tropical forests will respond to global climate change.
One of forest ecology's fundamental undertakings has long focused on how tree growth is influenced by a host of environmental factors ranging from soils and elevation to hydrology and climate. These factors create an economy of resources that the trees must exploit through different strategies, some of which are optimized for quick growth while others favor slow growth.
OAK BROOK, Ill. - A single oral dose of methylene blue results in an increased MRI-based response in brain areas that control short-term memory and attention, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology.
Methylene blue is used to treat methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder in which oxygen is unable to release effectively to body tissues, and as a surgical stain.
Animal studies have shown a single low dose of methylene blue enhances long-term contextual memory--the conscious recall of the source and circumstances of a specific memory--and extinction memory, a process in which a conditioned response from stimuli gradually diminishes over time.
PISCATAWAY, NJ - Misuse of prescription pain medications remains a major public health problem -- but programs to prevent it may be underused, according to a study in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The study comes out of Maine, one of the U.S. states hardest hit by the "epidemic" of prescription painkiller and heroin abuse. Researchers say that although there have been some positive trends recently, there are also troubling ones.
In 2014, a high percentage of women in their 80s -- 38 percent -- had prescriptions for powerful painkilling medications known as opioids.
"That's very concerning," said researcher Stephanie Nichols, PharmD, BCPS BCPP, of Husson University School of Pharmacy in Bangor, Maine.
Stable flies and house flies are a concern in livestock and poultry farming because they can transmit harmful pathogens, and animals can harm themselves while trying to avoid bites from the flies. Researchers at the University of Florida found that a commercial formulation of the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum was effective at reducing house fly and stable fly egg-laying and inhibiting house fly development. Formulations of another fungus called Beauveria bassiana were also found to be effective, albeit less so. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Insect Science.
Rising sea temperatures in the Mediterranean are encouraging alien lionfish species to invade and colonise new territories with potentially serious ecological and socioeconomic impacts.
Evidence collated from divers and fishermen reveals that in the space of a year, the poisonous predators have colonised Cyprus - and these may be at the vanguard of a pan-Atlantic Ocean invasion following the widening and deepening of the Suez Canal.
UPTON, NY-Lignin is a natural component of plant cell walls, the scaffolding that surrounds each cell and plays a pivotal role in plants' ability to grow against gravity and reach heights ranging from stubbly grasses to the sky-scraping splendor of redwoods. But lignin is a problem for scientists interested in converting plant biomass to biofuels and other sustainable bio-based products. Lignin makes it hard to break down the plant matter so its carbon-rich building blocks can be converted into forms suitable for generating energy or running automobiles.
A simple solution might be to engineer plants with less lignin. But previous attempts to do this have often resulted in weaker plants and stunted growth-essentially putting the brakes on biomass production.
Biologists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered that the evolutionary history of a hormone responsible for sexual maturity in humans is written in the genes of the humble starfish.
The onset of puberty and sexual development in humans is triggered by the release of a brain hormone known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone or GnRH. Scientists at QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, working in collaboration with teams at the University of Warwick and KU Leuven in Belgium, have found that the history of this important sex hormone is a tale of loss.
In Vancouver, heat exposure and social vulnerability can be a lethal combination.
New research from the University of British Columbia shows a higher risk of mortality during extreme heat events in neighbourhoods that tend to get hotter and where people tend to be poorer.
"Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme hot weather events," said Sarah Henderson, senior author on the study and an assistant professor in UBC's school of population and public health and a research scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control. "Being able to map and target the most vulnerable areas will be highly beneficial for public health intervention."
Realistic workloads and ongoing emotional support are essential if social workers are to manage stress and perform their job effectively, according to new research by the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The study by the Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence - the ability to identify and manage emotions in oneself and others - stress, burnout and social work practice. It also assessed whether emotional intelligence training for social workers would reduce their burnout rates over time.
Listeners can hear a difference between standard audio and better than CD quality, known as high resolution audio, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
The study compared data from over 12,000 different trials from 18 studies where participants were asked to discriminate between samples of music in different formats.
Dr Joshua Reiss from QMUL's Centre for Digital Music in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science said: "Audio purists and industry should welcome these findings -- our study finds high resolution audio has a small but important advantage in its quality of reproduction over standard audio content."
Researchers have developed systematic search methods to discover one of the world's biggest helium gas fields, associated with volcanoes in the Tanzanian Rift Valley. This is the first time that helium has been found intentionally -previous finds were by accident- and opens the way for further large finds. This work is reported at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan.
Eating a powdered food supplement based on a molecule produced by bacteria in the gut, reduces cravings for high-calorie foods such as chocolate, cake and pizza, according to a small pilot study which asked 20 volunteers to consume a milkshake that either contained an ingredient called inulin-propionate ester, or a type of fiber called inulin.
Previous studies have found that bacteria in the gut release a compound called propionate when they digest the fiber inulin, which can signal to the brain to reduce appetite. However the inulin-propionate ester supplement releases much more propionate in the intestines than inulin alone.
