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.
A diabetes medication described in some studies as an effective treatment for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) works no better than a placebo, report researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, after conducting the first randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial of sitagliptin, an oral antihyperglycemic marketed by Merck & Co. under the name Januvia.
In experiments involving a simulation of the human esophagus and stomach, researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound.
The new work, which the researchers are presenting this week at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, builds on a long sequence of papers on origami robots from the research group of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Eyewitnesses remember the faces of black suspects less accurately in drive-by shootings than they do in serial killings.
Their memories are further skewed when the victims are women or white males, psychology researchers at UBC's Okanagan campus have found.
"What this study shows is that the memory of an eyewitness is heavily influenced by the type of crime that was committed," says Prof. Paul Davies. "In crimes such as drive-by shootings, typically associated with black males, eyewitnesses overwhelmingly remembered the black suspect's face incorrectly.
"In crimes that were are more typically 'white', witnesses remembered the black suspect's faces with a high degree of accuracy."
Wide variations can be seen in how far citizens from different countries evade tax. While this can be attributed to how well institutions deter tax avoidance through audits and fines, cultural differences may also play a part.
Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites - space dust - ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago.
The findings of a new study published today in the journal Nature - led by Dr Andrew Tomkins and a team from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash, along with scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and Imperial College, London - challenge the accepted view that Earth's ancient atmosphere was oxygen-poor. The findings indicate instead that the ancient Earth's upper atmosphere contained about the same amount of oxygen as today, and that a methane haze layer separated this oxygen-rich upper layer from the oxygen-starved lower atmosphere.
A Japanese research group has identified the enzymes that change the grassy odor of plants into a sweeter "green" fragrance. This discovery can potentially be used to grow sweet tomatoes with less of a grassy odor. These findings were published on April 29 in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
This research was carried out by a team from the Kobe University Graduate School of Agricultural Science: Kunishima Mikiko (PhD student), Assistant Professor Yamauchi Yasuo, Associate Professor Mizutani Masaharu, Professor Sugimoto Yukihiro, Associate Professor Kuse Masaki, and Professor Takikawa Hirosato.
Longer, hotter, more regular heat waves could impact crop production in Africa, warn climate scientists in a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, Africa experiences high levels of solar radiation all year round and heat waves can occur in any season, not just during summer months. Running climate models through to 2075, the scientists found that heat waves could occur as frequently as four times per year towards the end of the century. In other words, one dangerously hot spell for every season of the year.
From minor acts of rebellion such as bunking off school, to the more serious experimentation with illicit substances, the teenage years can be a stressful time for parents. But what if your child goes beyond the odd cigarette behind the bike shed or sneaking sherry from the drinks cabinet? Some teenagers develop riskier behavior, such as binge drinking or drug taking, which can follow them into adulthood with all the health concerns that go with them.
New research conducted at the University of Sussex has identified a specific gene that links impulsive behavior to binge-drinking in teens.
As the world grows more social and connects more online, privacy management is becoming more collaborative, according to Penn State researchers.
"This is a paradigm shift, in a lot of ways, because most people think of privacy as being individualistic, but privacy is no longer just about the individual, it's also a collaborative and coordinated process," said Haiyan Jia, a postdoctoral scholar in information sciences and technology.
Mysterious spectacular mounds found in the earth in tropical wetlands in South America are created by earthworms, researchers have found.
The densely packed, regularly spaced mounds cover large areas of the Orinoco Llanos in Columbia and Venezuela. Until now it was not known how they were formed.
A new study shows these mounds, called surales, are largely made up of earthworm casts, heaps of muddy soil ejected by their guts. This is the first research to describe their formation.
Supplements gone awry.
Pregnant women are told they need folate to ensure proper neurodevelopment of their babies, but new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests there could be serious risks in having too much of it.
Want to see social inequality and how it impacts obesity? Look at takeout food in your neighborhood - and in the halls of Cambridge.
Yet the halls of Cambridgee are where a new paper claims takeout food is an indicator of social inequality. Obviously elites at Cambridge have a long and cherished history to gaze upon, including one in which a feudal system made sure poor people were never overweight. Today, there is more equality than ever, poor people can afford to be fat, but the Cambridge scholars believe that even cheap food is a way of promoting oppression.
The Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR) at the University of Cambridge mapped takeout food to obesity and income. Prestige, the kind of paper British comic John Oliver just ridiculed is born:
