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.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Prescribing certain medications on the basis of a patient's race has long come under fire from those uneasy with using race as a surrogate for biology when treating disease.
But there are multiple challenges to overcome before we can move beyond race-based treatment decisions, writes Duke University geneticist and bioethicist Charmaine Royal in a perspective piece published May 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In "Will Precision Medicine Move Us beyond Race?" Royal and colleagues Vence Bonham of the National Institutes of Health and Shawneequa Callier of The George Washington University describe some of the thorny issues raised by race-based drugs.
Cincinnati, OH, May 27, 2016 -- Many pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists believe that their clinical care extends from treating ill children through end-of-life care. However, are pediatricians actually meeting the needs of families and their dying child? In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers surveyed bereaved parents and found that pediatric end-of-life care needs improvement.
A year and a half ago, researchers at Brown University found a molecular gas pedal for melanin production. Now they've found a brake. For scientists, the finding deepens not only the basic understanding of how eyes, skin and hair gain color, but also what perhaps can be done in disorders, such as albinism, when that doesn't happen.
The study in the Nature journal Scientific Reports shows that pigmentation is reduced by the activity of "TPC2," a protein that channels the flow of positive sodium ions out of the melanosomes, compartments that produce melanin in cells. When TPC2 lets those ions out, the inside of the melanosomes become more acidic, the researchers found, and that shuts down the enzyme that drives melanin production.
Government subsidies should be used to encourage investment in energy storage systems if renewable power is to be fully integrated into the sector, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Variable output renewable energy systems, such as wind turbines and solar panels, are growing across Europe and contribute to supply and price volatility in electricity markets.
Systems for energy storage, for example reversed hydro power plants, large scale compressed air systems and batteries, provide ways to compensate for this variable power supply by storing excess power and releasing it when there is a production shortage.
A new meta-analysis showing the effectiveness of ketamine for dealing with persistent post-surgical pain (PPSP) is to be presented at Euroanaesthesia 2016 (London, May 27-30 ). Ketamine, a cheap and safe drug, may have the potential to save health systems billions of dollars globally by being used in place of other drugs to prevent PPSP.
Mammals have an exquisitely tuned sensory system that tells them whether they are smelling an orange or a rose. Like keys on a piano keyboard, each component of an odor blend strikes only one chord of olfactory neuron activation. These chords are combined to form a melody that is "heard" in the brain as distinctly citrusy or sweet and flowery.
Smell in mammals turns out to be more complex than we thought. Rather than one receptor family exclusively dedicated to detecting odors, a study in mice reports that a group of neurons surrounding the olfactory bulb use an alternative mechanism for catching scents. These "necklace" neurons, as they're called, use this newly discovered olfactory detection system to respond to odors that elicit instinctive responses, such as pheromones and the smell of seeds and nuts. Harvard researchers report the finding May 26 in Cell.
Malnourished children are most likely to die from common infections, not starvation. New experimental evidence, reviewed May 26 in Trends in Immunology, indicates that even with a healthy diet, defects in immune system function from birth could contribute to a malnourished state throughout life. Researchers speculate that targeting immune pathways could be a new approach to reduce the poor health and mortality caused by under- and overnutrition.
Through new experiments involving the famous Schrödinger cat state paradox, researchers have shown that a "quantum cat" can be both alive and dead, and in two places at once.
The results, which involve inducing a large number of photons to have matching states (or to become entangled), show the ability to manipulate complex quantum states, with applications for computation and long-distance communication. They also represent perhaps the first time scientists have been able to achieve such quantum coherence at a macroscopic scale.
A research team co-led by a scientist at New Zealand's University of Otago has sequenced the first complete mitochondrial genome of a 2500-year-old Phoenician dubbed the "Young Man of Byrsa" or "Ariche".
This is the first ancient DNA to be obtained from Phoenician remains and the team's analysis shows that the man belonged to a rare European haplogroup -- a genetic group with a common ancestor -- that likely links his maternal ancestry to locations somewhere on the North Mediterranean coast, most probably on the Iberian Peninsula.
The findings are newly published in the prestigious international journal PLOS ONE.
Meerkats live in groups of up to 50 individuals, yet a single dominant pair will almost completely monopolise reproduction, while subordinates help to raise offspring through feeding and babysitting. Since only a small minority of individuals ever get to be dominants, competition for the breeding role is intense in both sexes and females are unusually aggressive to each other.
Within groups, subordinate females are ranked in a hierarchy based on age and weight, forming a "reproductive queue". When dominant females die, they are usually replaced by their oldest and heaviest daughter, though younger sisters sometimes outgrow their older sisters and can replace them in breeding queues.
An international team of scientists has identified a common phenomenon in galaxies that could explain why huge numbers of them turn into cosmic graveyards.
Galaxies begin their existence as lively and colourful spiral galaxies, full of gas and dust, and actively forming bright new stars. However, as galaxies evolve, they quench their star formation and turn into featureless deserts, devoid of fresh new stars, and generally remain as such for the rest of their evolution. But the mechanism that produces this dramatic transformation and keeps galaxies turned off, is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in galaxy evolution.
