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.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Burnout among U.S. physicians is getting worse. An update from a three-year study evaluating burnout and work-life balance shows that American physicians are worse off today than they were three years earlier. These dimensions remained largely unchanged among U.S. workers in general, resulting in a widening gap between physicians and workers in other fields. The study conducted by Mayo Clinic researchers in partnership with the American Medical Association compared data from 2014 to metrics they collected in 2011 and found that now more than half of U.S. physicians are experiencing professional burnout. The findings appear in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Scientists have identified a network of nine genes that play a key role in the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.
The finding could help scientists develop new treatments to delay the onset of the disease, said lead researcher Associate Professor Mauricio Arcos-Burgos from The Australian National University (ANU).
In a study of a family of 5,000 people in Columbia, scientists identified genes that delayed the disease, and others that accelerated it, and by how much.
Associate Professor Arcos-Burgos (centre) with Dr Claudio Mastronardi and Dr Hardip Patel. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU
Folsom, Calif., (Dec. 1, 2015) - A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that one serving of walnuts (1oz) may provide 146 calories, which is 39 calories less, or 21 percent fewer, than the 185 calories listed in the USDA Nutrient Database. (1) The study takes into account the digestibility of walnut pieces and halves, and further research is needed to better understand the results of the study and how this technique for calculating calories could potentially affect the calorie count of other foods. The research was led by Dr. David J. Baer, PhD, Supervisory Research Physiologist at the Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Many goals, from finding your dream job to finding a date to the movies, can feel completely out of your control. A common piece of advice to manage this uncertainty is: "Always have a backup plan." But is it actually wise to invest time and energy into backup plans, or is it better to focus all of your energies on trying one way to achieve a goal? To address these questions, psychologists from the University of Zurich developed a new theoretical model to study the use and usefulness of backup plans, which will be published in the January issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Cancer cells are continuously produced in our bodies, where most of them are recognized by our immune systems and destroyed. Some, however, escape this innate surveillance system and find a place to survive and grow.
Several factors expelled by tumor cells are concentrated in the area immediately surrounding the tumor, called the tumor microenvironment. While it is established that these factors support and enhance cancer cell growth and multiplication, it was not known whether these factors influence neighboring normal cells.
In a study into the prevention of HIV transmission, people who took the antiretroviral drug Truvada were 86% less likely to contract the disease than those who took a placebo, report the researchers who led the study.
DURHAM, N.C. -- When you're as soft and delicious as a cuttlefish, evading predators is a full-time job.
Not only do these squid-like creatures employ stealthy visual camouflage when a predator looms nearby, new research shows they also manage to cloak their electrical fields.
One of the cuttlefish's major predators, the shark, has eyes on the side of its head, making it effectively blind straight ahead and near the front of the mouth. So the shark relies instead on a snout studded with sensitive detectors of faint electrical fields to get the meat in the maw.
How can you tell if your mathematical model is good enough? In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University implemented a Turing test in the form of an online game (with over 1700 players) to assess how good their models were at reproducing collective motion of real fish schools. The results are published in Biology Letters.
Part of the reason people find smoking difficult to quit is that each time they have a cigarette, feelings of craving, irritability and anxiety melt away. This component of addiction is known as negative reward and is controlled in part by a region of the brain called the habenula. The neurotransmitters acetylcholine and glutamate are thought to influence nicotine dependence in the habenula, but the molecular details of this regulation are unclear.
Ovarian cancer is the seventh most common cancer among women worldwide, and it often goes undetected until it has spread to other parts of the body. More than 70% of ovarian cancer patients experience relapse; when recurrent cancers become resistant to chemotherapy, they become extremely difficult to treat. But what if patients could make use of their own immune system?
A group of researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Edinburgh have been the first to find the genetic material of a human virus from old human bones. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study analysed the skeletal remains of Second World War casualties from the battlefields of Karelia.
Upon infection, many viruses remain in the tissues and their DNA can be analysed even decades thereafter. Although their genetic material has been found in many organs, the researchers show that viral DNA is also present in bone.
"Human tissue is like a life-long archive that stores the fingerprint of the viruses that an individual has encountered during his or her lifetime," describes Klaus Hedman, professor of clinical virology.
Scholars have found that the causes of congenital face blindness can be traced back to an early stage in the perceptual process.
