News Articles

An analysis of marijuana-related Twitter messages sent during a one-month period in early 2014, shows that the "Twitterverse" is a pot-friendly place. How friendly? 15X as many pro-pot Tweets as anti-pot ones among more than 7 million tweets referenced marijuana.What is the explanation for that? People who don't smoke a lot of pot are likely at work while those sending and receiving pot tweets were under age 25, with many in their teens, a demographic group at increased risk for developing marijuana dependence and other drug-related problems. 

Scientists have described a unique monoclonal antibody with the potential to treat Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) infections through the simultaneous neutralization of multiple key toxins produced by S. aureus, including alpha-hemolysin and four additional leukocidins. The findings are published online this week in the journal mAbs and demonstrate superior in vitro potency compared to antibodies targeting alpha-hemolysin alone. The mAb also shows high protective efficacy from lethal S. aureus infections in several animal models.

How is it that people can sometimes show such empathy when other times our ability to feel compassion seems to be in such short supply? A study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 15 shows that stress is a major factor.
A drug that blocks stress hormones increases the ability of college students and mice to "feel" the pain of a stranger, the study shows. That phenomenon, known as "emotional contagion of pain," is one form of empathy. In even better news, a shared round of the video game Rock Band worked just as well as the drugs among those undergrads.

Fortifying food with folic acid saves about 1,300 babies each year from serious birth defects of the brain and spine known as neural tube defects (NTDs), according to new data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.The number of babies born in the United States with these conditions has declined by 35 percent since 1998.
About 3,000 pregnancies in the U.S. still are affected by neural tube defects annually. The March of Dimes says that even with folic acid-fortified grain products, many women still may not be getting enough folic acid so they recommend that all women take vitamins containing folic acid, though only about one-third of women do.

Adult sea turtles find their way back to the beaches where they hatched by seeking out unique magnetic signatures along the coast, according to new evidence.
"Sea turtles migrate across thousands of miles of ocean before returning to nest on the same stretch of coastline where they hatched, but how they do this has mystified scientists for more than fifty years," says J. Roger Brothers of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Our results provide evidence that turtles imprint on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings and then use this information to return as adults."

A new study found a causal link between the activation of serotonin neurons and the amount of time mice are willing to wait, and rejected a possible link between increased serotonin neuron activation and reward.
Serotonin is a neuromodulatory chemical that is targeted by antidepressant drugs, such as Prozac, which are widely used to treat depression and other disorders such as chronic pain. Serotonin is normally released by a small set of cells in an area of the brain called the raphe nuclei. However, what naturally causes these neurons to become active and release serotonin and how this affects brain function are still poorly understood.

A National Institutes of Health white paper that was released today finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain, despite the explosive recent growth in the use of the drugs.
The paper, which constitutes the final report of a seven-member panel convened by the NIH last September, finds that many of the studies used to justify the prescription of these drugs were either poorly conducted or of an insufficient duration.
An NIH white paper finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain.

A study has found that reducing expression of the Myc gene - found in the genomes of all animals, ranging from ancestral single-celled organisms to humans - significantly increased the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice, the first such finding regarding this gene in a mammalian species.Myc is a major topic of biomedical research and has been shown to be a central regulator of cell proliferation, growth, and death. Though animals cannot live without it, in humans and mice too much expression of the protein that Myc encodes has been closely linked to cancer, making it a well-known but elusive target of drug developers.

Political conservatives in the United States are somewhat like East Asians in the way they think, categorize and perceive, while liberals in the U.S. are more extreme in thought, categorization and perception, according to a new cultural psychology analysis.

We use our hands a lot each day. Humans have highly developed fine motor skills and so we are able to perform grasping movements with variable precision and power distribution, everything from tying our shoelaces to holding a balloon.

An analysis of Danish women of reproductive age suggests that long-term use of hormonal contraceptives is associated with an increased risk of brain tumors. Hormonal contraceptives, commonly called "the pill" in oral contraceptive, contain female sex hormones and are commonly referenced as the foundation of the "sexual revolution" in the 1960s because widespread usage has given women all over the world control over childbearing.

In the brain, blood flow and cognitive function peak during young adulthood, but a new study of 52 young women found that oxygen availability, which is known to positively relate to brain health and function, is higher in adults who exercise regularly.
Women who exercised on a regular basis had higher oxygen availability in the anterior frontal region of the brain and performed best on difficult cognitive tasks.
“Our findings suggest that regular engagement in physical activity may improve brain functioning even in young adults in their prime,” said Dr. Liana Machado, senior author of the Psychophysiology study. “Both blood supply to the brain and cognitive functioning appear to benefit from regular exercise.