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.
Scientists from Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania have identified a biological pathway that could explain why current asthma therapies often prove ineffective.
The discovery has the potential to lead to new treatments for many of the 25 million people in the U.S., including seven million children, who suffer from the chronic condition.
Researchers Reynold A. Panettieri, inaugural director of the clinical and translational science institute at Rutgers, and Edward E. Morrissey, director of the Penn Center for Pulmonary Biology, determined that when certain genes in mice were inactivated, the mice developed an asthma-like condition, exhibiting airway hyper-responsiveness, or AHR, a classic sign of asthma.
A recent study has identified specific intake levels of xanthohumol, a natural flavonoid found in hops, that significantly improved some of the underlying markers of metabolic syndrome in laboratory animals and also reduced weight gain.
Laboratory mice were fed a high-fat diet, and given varying levels of xanthohumol. Compared to animals given none of this supplement, the highest dosage of xanthohumol given to laboratory rats cut their LDL, or "bad" cholesterol 80 percent; their insulin level 42 percent; and their level of IL-6, a biomarker of inflammation, 78 percent.
Contemporary chroniclers wrote about a "mystery cloud" which dimmed the light of the sun above the Mediterranean in the years 536 and 537 CE. Tree rings testify poor growing conditions over the whole Northern Hemisphere - the years from 536 CE onward seem to have been overshadowed by an unusual natural phenomenon. Social crises including the first European plague pandemic beginning in 541, are associated with this phenomenon. Only recently have researchers found conclusive proof of a volcanic origin of the 536 solar dimming, based on traces of volcanic sulfur from two major eruptions newly dated to 536 CE and 540 CE in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.
Social problems are key characteristics in psychiatric disorders and are insufficiently targeted by current treatment approaches. By applying brain imaging methods, researchers at the University of Zurich now show that a small amount of psilocybin changes the processing of social conflicts in the brain. As a result, participants experienced social exclusion and social pain as less stressful. This could help to improve therapy of social problems.
HOUSTON - (April 18, 2016) - Thank the little "muscles" in your neurons for allowing you to remember where you live, what your friends and family look like and a lot more.
New research at Rice University suggests actin filaments that control the shape of neuron cells may also be the key to the molecular machinery that forms and stores long-term memories.
The Rice lab of theoretical biological physicist Peter Wolynes reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a theory about how long-term memories are made; the theory is based on simulations that analyze the energy landscapes of the proteins involved.
Using unique demographic records on 140,600 reproducing individuals from the Utah Population Database, a research team led from Uppsala University has come to the conclusion that lowered birth rates are one reason why women outlive men in today's societies. The study is published in Scientific Reports.
The causes underpinning sex differences in lifespan are hotly debated. While women commonly outlive men, this is generally less pronounced in societies before the demographic transition to low mortality and fertility rates.
You can never predict what treasure might be hiding in your own basement - a year ago, a 1917 image on an astronomical glass plate from the Carnegie Observatories' collection shows the first-ever evidence of a planetary system beyond our own Sun.
Here's what happened: about a year ago, the review's author, Jay Farihi of University College London, contacted our Observatories' Director, John Mulchaey. He was looking for a plate in the Carnegie archive that contained a spectrum of van Maanen's star, a white dwarf discovered by Dutch-American astronomer Adriaan van Maanen in the very year our own plate was made.
During their life, plants constantly renew themselves. They sprout new leaves in the spring and shed them in the fall. No longer needed, damaged or dead organs such as blossoms and leaves are also cast off by a process known as abscission. By doing so, plants conserve energy and prepare for the next step in their life cycle.
But how does a plant know when it is the right time to get rid of unnecessary organs? It is regulated by receptor proteins located at the surface of specific cells that form a layer around the future break point. When it is time to shed an organ, a small hormone binds to this membrane receptor and, together with a helper protein, the abscission process is initiated. Their findings are now published in the journal eLife.
Methane, the abundant and inexpensive natural gas, is often burnt off around the world at oil fields and refineries but it's a great energy source and base material for the chemical industry, if only there was a viable way to put it in liquid form, which is easier to transport and more reactive.
A 20 percent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks would result in widespread, long-lasting public health benefits and significant health cost savings, an estimated $400 million a year and reduce annual health expenditure by up to $29 million, according to a computer model.
A phase I study of the drug LOXO-101 appears to significantly reduce tumors in patients with varied types of genetically defined cancer, according to a study led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The results of the study, which followed patients with unique proteins called tropomyosin receptor kinase fusions (TRKs), were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting held April 16-20 in New Orleans.
"We saw efficacy with significant tumor regression in all six TRK fusion patients enrolled in the study," said David Hong, M.D., associate professor of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics. "We were surprised by the fact that the study demonstrated efficacy in every one of the TRK fusion-positive patients."
Encountering information suggesting that it may be tough to find a romantic partner shifts people's decision making toward riskier options, according to new findings from a series of studies published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"Environmental cues indicating that one will have a relatively difficult time finding a mate can drive people to concentrate their investment choices into a few high-risk, high-return options," says psychological scientist Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan, lead author on the research. "This is true even when the decisions people are making are not explicitly relevant to romantic outcomes."
