In the 1980s, scientists captured the precise mechanics of a protein machine. It looked strange, to researchers its tall thin structure with stubby legs invoked the enchanted broomstick that stole the show in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Disney's 1940 Fantasia film.
If you like coffee, here is a delightful taste of confirmation bias. If you usually make fun of epidemiology, put your skepticism back in the pot, because coffee reduces diabetes.
As many as 380 million people worldwide have diabetes, with an economic estimate of up to $548 billion, making it one of the most significant global health problems in terms of pretend money no one earned.
The Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) has brewed up its annual diabetes report outlining the latest research on coffee and type 2 diabetes and its delicious news.
The research round up report concludes that regular, moderate consumption of coffee may decrease an individual's risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Key research findings include:
We may talk about a battle of the sexes when it comes to our species, but in the rest of the primate world, it really is a battle. We have the luxury of cultural hand-wringing about the shirt a Rosetta mission engineer wore in a YouTube video, but when it comes to chimpanzees, a shirt is the least of female problems.
Male on female violence among chimpanzees is frequent - and it has to do with sex.
Frightening experiences stick with us but a new study finds that the bonding hormone oxytocin inhibits the fear center in the brain and allows fear stimuli to subside more easily.
With over one billion people worldwide using social media, including 80 percent of employees using private sharing sites at work, members have been scrambling to insist that not only does it not negatively affect their work performance, but that it improves it. Yahtzee! probably wishes they could get the kind of free public relations Twitter gets.
Few studies have been done to examine the issue. Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Cecilie Schou Andreassen and colleagues at the University of Bergen looked at the consequences of the use of social media during working hours.
Everyone inherits two copies of most genes, one copy from each parent. In a recent study, researchers found in a rare mutation, people with one inactive copy of the gene NPC1L1 appeared to be protected against high LDL cholesterol, commonly called the "bad" cholesterol, and coronary heart disease, a narrowing of the heart's arteries that can lead to heart attacks.
This mutation meant a 50 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack, at least epidemiologically, according to the paper
in The New England Journal of Medicine. NPC1L1 is of interest because it is the target of the drug ezetimibe, often prescribed to lower cholesterol.
Uranus is generally boring but it recently got interesting. It has become so stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright, that for the first time ever amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet's hazy blue-green atmosphere.
An analysis of two African tribes has led anthropologists to suggest that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills - the ability to mentally manipulate objects - can roam farther and have children with more mates.
Driving to work is routine, you might even forget you are doing it, but how aware would you be if you had to doit in reverse?
We're used to seeing objects pass behind us as we go forward. Moving backwards feels unnatural and a new study finds why that is: Moving forward actually trains the brain to perceive the world normally. The relationship between neurons in the eye and the brain is more complicated than previously thought--in fact, the order in which we see things could help the brain calibrate how we perceive time, as well as the objects around us.
Reversing the Map
Supplement marketers have been aggressively claiming that vitamin B12 and folic acid reduce the risk of memory loss, but a large study on long-term use of supplements found no benefits.
The study involved people with high blood levels of homocysteine, an amino acid. High levels of homocysteine have been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer's disease. Early observational studies claimed there may be some benefit to thinking and memory skills in taking folic acid and vitamin B12, but the results were not duplicated in later randomized, controlled trials.
The yellow fever mosquito sustains its taste for human blood thanks to a genetic tweak that makes it more sensitive to human odor, according to a paper in Nature. They have a version of an odor-detecting gene in its antennae that is highly attuned to sulcatone, a compound prevalent in human odor.
The gene, AaegOr4, is more abundant and more sensitive in the human-preferring "domestic" form of the yellow fever mosquito than in its ancestral "forest" form that prefers the blood of non-human animals.
In the fight against HIV, microbicides, which are chemical compounds applied topically to the female genital tract to protect against sexually transmitted infections, are touted as an alternative to condoms.
There's just one problem. They don't work outside a petri dish. Clinical trials using microbicides have failed and a new study from the Gladstone Institutes and the University of Ulm finds that this may be due to the primary mode of transportation of the virus during sexual transmission, semen.
17 genomes of supercentenarians, people living beyond 110 years of age, haven't led us any closer to discovering protein-altering variants significantly associated with extreme longevity, according to a study in PLOS ONE by Hinco Gierman from Stanford University and colleagues.
There are 74 supercentenarians alive worldwide, with 22 in the United States. The authors of this study performed whole-genome sequencing on 17 of them to explore the genetic basis underlying extreme human longevity.
