We're bombarded with information at all times, so much that if we had to try and process it all times, we'd be paralyzed. Our cerebellum does information damage control by filtering out what changes. Evolution made it possible for us to conserve energy while still processing anomalies quickly.
Stories about lap dogs are everywhere, but researchers at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering can tell the story of dog lapping.
Using photography and laboratory simulations, researchers studied how dogs raise fluids into their mouths to drink. They discovered that sloppy-looking actions at the dog bowl are in fact high-speed, precisely timed movements that optimize a dogs' ability to acquire fluids.
Their discovery appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It has been estimated that if every nutritional measure known to be helpful were applied to every child in the world, global malnutrition would be decreased by only a third. New research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, the University of Vermont and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh sheds light on why: Damage to the gut from infection explains why food alone is not a solution to malnutrition. To be effective, nutritional therapy will need to include measures to prevent or treat the damage to the gut of infants.
Role of Gut Health
While prescriptions for opioid pain relievers were concentrated in specialties for pain, anesthesia, and physical medicine and rehabilitation, it was general practitioners who dominated total prescriptions among Medicare prescribers based on sheer volume, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers have suggested small groups of prolific prescribers and pill mills drive the opioid overdose epidemic. Medicare data provide an opportunity to examine prescribing patterns across a national population.
What is a catalyst? A material that facilitates (increases the speed and likelihood of) a chemical reaction. In general, catalysts are rare metals (platinum, for example), which are often used in the form of nanoparticles. In the field of renewable energy, catalysts are crucial, and scientists are striving to maximize their efficiency (in part also to avoid wasting these precious materials).
Contrary to claims by vegetarians and the activist groups that promote their world view, eating a vegetarian diet could add to climate change rather than reduce it.
The link between the gut microbiome and obesity seems clear, but just how changes to gut bacteria can cause weight gain is not.
A new University of Iowa study in mice shows that drug-induced changes to the gut microbiome can cause obesity by reducing the resting metabolic rate - the calories burned while sleeping or resting. The findings, published in the journal eBiomedicine, highlight the critical role of gut microbes in energy balance and suggest that unhealthy microbiome shifts can lead to weight gain and obesity by altering resting metabolism.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 14, 2015 -- In a biological system, the ratio of water-to-non-water molecules, known as the hydration level, influences both the arrangement of biomolecules and the strength of the electric interactions that occur between biomolecules, free ions, and functional groups, which are groups of atoms within molecules that strongly influence the molecules' chemical properties. To isolate the contribution of water to the vibrational fluctuations that occur between DNA, bulk water, and the charged biomolecular interface between the two, researchers at the Max-Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin have performed two-dimensional spectroscopic analyses on double-stranded DNA helices at different hydration levels.
How are insomniacs able to function well with less sleep than others? It may be a beneficial biological trait.
With the release of a study that found gender bias in federal agencies that fund Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) research, Congresswomen Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) are demanding immediate action to ensure gender equality in publicly funded research.
Most people can tell if you're angry based on the way you're acting. Professor Jeffrey Jenkins can tell if you're angry by the way you move a computer mouse.
The BYU information systems expert says people experiencing anger (and other negative emotions--frustration, confusion, sadness) become less precise in their mouse movements and move the cursor at different speeds.
Thanks to advances in modern technology, Jenkins and his colleagues can now gather and process enough data points from your cursor movement to measure those deviations and indicate your emotional state.
A rising trend in narcissism is good news for retailing and manufacturing firms offering customizable products, say marketing and psychology scholars in the Journal of Retailing. They say firms can increase the uniqueness of self-designed products by examining consumers' narcissistic behavior.
Engineers have harnessed the molecular machinery of living systems to power an integrated circuit from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of life, and they did it by integrating a conventional solid-state complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, opening the door to creating entirely new artificial systems that contain both biological and solid-state components.
