After decades of public safety campaigns focused on drinking and driving, it may be time to focus on the seventh leading cause of injury-related death, according to Bureau of Occupational Health and Injury Prevention at New York State Department of Health and Columbia University scholars looking at New York State.
Scientists have discovered that neurons use minor "DNA surgeries" to toggle their activity levels all day, every day, and since these activity levels are important in learning, memory and brain disorders, it could shed light on a range of important questions.
"We used to think that once a cell reaches full maturation, its DNA is totally stable, including the molecular tags attached to it to control its genes and maintain the cell's identity," says Hongjun Song, Ph.D., a professor of neurology and neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering. "This research shows that some cells actually alter their DNA all the time, just to perform everyday functions."
Bees play an invaluable role in maintaining biodiversity and in pollinating the crops that feed the world, so it is essential to improve our understanding of their biology and to investigate how they respond to environmental threats. Despite their often slow and apparently bumbling flights from flower to flower, bumblebees are anything but lazy. With over 250 bumblebee species globally, these important insects perform the laborious task of pollinating flowers in both wild and agricultural settings. A large number of fruits and vegetables would be missing from our plates had a bumblebee not done its job.
Researchers gave bumblebees the option to choose between a sugar solution with nicotine in it and one without and found that bees infected with the Crithidia bombi parasite were more likely to go for the nicotine-laced nectar than those that weren't infected.
Happy Meals for broccoli?
A paper presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego says that because poor food choices in school cafeterias are a risk factor for childhood obesity, students will make better choices if healthy foods are labeled with smiley faces and have prizes - similar to what fast food corporations do to try and make lunch more fun.
Centrioles - barrel-shaped structures inside cells- are made up of multiple proteins and since mutations in the proteins that make them up can cause a broad range of diseases, including developmental abnormalities, respiratory conditions, male sterility and cancer, they are the focus of a great deal of research
There may be more a natural way to reduce the use of pesticides but still save plants from attack - by recreating a natural insect repellent based on smell.
Scientists from Cardiff University and Rothamsted Research have created tiny molecules which mirror a natural occurring smell known to repel insects by providing the enzyme ((S)-germacrene D synthase), which creates the smell, with alternative substrate molecules.
The effectiveness of the smell or perfume to function as an insect repellent was tested and the team found that the smells repelled insects but in one case a reversal of behavior - an attractant - was observed which raises the prospect of being able to develop a trap-and-kill device.
Celiac disease is a life-long condition that has severe consequences yet many people remain undiagnosed.
Celiac disease is a genetically-determined, autoimmune condition caused by a permanent intolerance to gluten found in wheat, barley and rye. The condition causes inflammation in the small intestine, leading to diarrhea, weight loss, fatigue and other non-specific symptoms. It has been estimated that around 1% of the population may have Celiac disease, although estimates vary between countries. Its prevalence may be increasing. If left undiagnosed and untreated, CD can have a profound effect on quality of life may lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes and has been associated with a reduced life-expectancy.
Chemotherapy has been linked to excessive mind wandering and an inability to concentrate. The condition, colloquially called 'chemo-brain,' has long been suspected.
A new University of British Columbia study says it is the first to explain why patients have difficulty paying attention. Breast cancer survivors were asked to complete a set of tasks while researchers in the Departments of Psychology and Physical Therapy monitored their brain activity. What they found is that the minds of people with chemo-brain lack the ability for sustained focused thought.
When people hear the sound of footsteps or the drilling of a woodpecker, the rhythmic structure of the sounds is striking, says Michael Wehr, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and even when the temporal structure of a sound is less obvious, as with human speech, the timing still conveys a variety of important information.
Neurons in the brain use two different languages to encode information: temporal coding and rate coding.
Neurons are more independent than previously believed - a finding which has implications for a range of neurological disorders and how nerve cells in the brain generate the energy needed to function.
The brain requires a tremendous amount of energy to do its job. While it only represents 2 percent of the body mass of the average adult human, the brain consumes an estimated 20 percent of body's energy supply. Unraveling precisely how the brain's cells - specifically, neurons - generate energy has significant implications for not only the understanding of basic biology, but also for neurological diseases which may be linked to too little, or too much, metabolism in the brain.
A new study shows an "alarming rise" in the costs of drugs used to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS) or reduce the frequency of attacks over the last 20 years.
Yet this increase occurred even as there was a substantial increase in the number of MS drugs in the marketplace, which would ordinarily lead to lower or stabilized costs for patients who use those drugs, especially for first-generation therapies.
The costs of MS drugs accelerated at rates 5X to 7X higher than prescription drug inflation and substantially higher than rates for drugs in a similar class between 1993 and 2013, the researchers report. Drug costs for several MS agents rose on average 20 to 30 percent per year over this time period.
Stem cells cling to feeder cells as they grow in petri dishes and it has been thought that this attachment occurs because feeder cells serve as a support system, providing stems cells with essential nutrients.
