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 milestone has been reached in the research of zinc loading in crop seeds with large potential benefits to people in the developing world. A team of scientists, led by Professor Michael Broberg Palmgren from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at University of Copenhagen, has just published an article about their findings in Nature Plants, which might well lead the way to growing crops with more zinc accumulated in the seeds.
Michael Broberg Palmgren explains about the breakthrough:
"We have identified the specific system of transport in the plant cells responsible for delivering zinc into the seeds. That knowledge unveils the path to breeding plants with enhanced activity of this particular transport system resulting in more zinc rich seeds."
Cigarette smoking is a noxious mess of 200 toxic chemicals that are risk factors for all kinds of diseases, and so it is sure to be a burden on a health care system that in the United States is increasingly being funded by the government, and therefore the 80 percent of people who do not smoke.
Yet it is also an addiction, and so a small one-year longitudinal study based on surveys which suggests that smokers remain unemployed longer than nonsmokers might seem to be a self-correcting problem. Or it might be that health issues are being used for discrimination, with implicit government approval, the exact opposite of what the federal government says they wanted to accomplish with their health initiatives.
This news release is available in French.
Astrophysicists at the University of Birmingham have used data from the NASA Kepler space telescope to discover a class of extrasolar planets whose atmospheres have been stripped away by their host stars, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications today (11 April 2016).
According to the study, planets with gaseous atmospheres that lie very close to their host stars are bombarded by a torrent of high-energy radiation. Due to their proximity to the star, the heat that the planets suffer means that their 'envelopes' have been blown away by intense radiation. This violent 'stripping' occurs in planets that are made up of a rocky core with a gaseous outer layer.
A new paper claims the historical involvement of tobacco companies during the early days of the response to the AIDS epidemic was just a cynical marketing ploy to distract the public from the dangers of smoking. The big problem with that assertion is not simply that conspiracy theories require all employees to be in sync, but that the dangers of smoking were over 40 years known by the time that large tobacco companies helped mobilize the AIDS response in the 1990s and onwards.
New study backs up observations in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients showing reduced effectiveness of symptom-reliever medication (β2-adrenoceptor agonists) in flare-ups linked to cigarette smoking and infection with viruses such as influenza.
Research suggests a need for new drugs to treat COPD patients in these categories and a model that could be used to test new medications.
According to the study, which is published in the Portland Press journal Clinical Science, the effectiveness of the commonly used COPD symptom-reliever medication salbutamol is reduced on exposure to cigarette smoke and influenza A infection in an animal model of the respiratory disease.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - The Zika virus may be associated with an autoimmune disorder that attacks the brain's myelin similar to multiple sclerosis, according to a small study that is being released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada, April 15 to 21, 2016.
"Though our study is small, it may provide evidence that in this case the virus has different effects on the brain than those identified in current studies," said study author Maria Lucia Brito Ferreira, MD, with Restoration Hospital in Recife, Brazil. "Much more research will need to be done to explore whether there is a causal link between Zika and these brain problems."
A new study suggests that Neanderthals across Europe may well have been infected with diseases carried out of Africa by waves of anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens. As both were species of hominin, it would have been easier for pathogens to jump populations, say researchers. This might have contributed to the demise of Neanderthals.
Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford Brookes have reviewed the latest evidence gleaned from pathogen genomes and DNA from ancient bones, and concluded that some infectious diseases are likely to be many thousands of years older than previously believed.
New research led by Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Centre has revealed how a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine produces compounds which may help to treat cancer and liver diseases.
The Chinese skullcap, Scutellaria baicalensis - otherwise known in Chinese medicine as Huang-Qin - is traditionally used as a treatment for fever, liver and lung complaints.
Rewards act as external factors that influence and reinforce learning processes. Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now been able to show that the brain can produce its own learning signals in cases where no such external feedback is available. A report on the mechanisms underlying these self-generated feedback signals has been published in the current volume of eLife*, and shows clear parallels between the neurobiological processes involved in learning based on external and self-generated feedback.
Well-trained cadaver dogs can be remarkably adept at discerning the smell of human remains from those of animals. Mimicking these canines' abilities in an artificial nose would be a huge help in disasters when thousands of people go missing. So scientists are trying to figure out what precise odors distinguish a human corpse from an animal one, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.
Washington, DC - April 6, 2016 - Vibrio parahaemolyticus caused an outbreak of food poisoning in Maryland in 2010. The pathogen strain sequenced from patients proved to be the same strain as one of those found in raw oysters from local restaurants, strong evidence that the oysters were the source of the illness. That particular strain of V. parahaemolyticus was not local, but was traced to Asia. The research is published March 18 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
