The chemistry of addiction (video)

DURHAM, N.C. -- Protected areas not only keep significant swaths of Indonesia's shrinking mangrove habitats intact, but also prevent emissions of carbon dioxide that would have been released had these mangroves been cleared, according to a study in the journal Ecological Economics. Published online, the analysis examined the success of protected areas between 2000 and 2010, finding that their use has avoided the loss of 14,000 hectares of mangrove habitat. "This is not a small number," said Daniela Miteva, a postdoctoral researcher at The Nature Conservancy and a Duke ...

Whether you have taken a side or a backseat in the discussion, the "food versus fuel" debate affects us all. Some say growing more biofuel crops today will decrease greenhouse gas emissions, but will make it harder to produce food tomorrow, which has prevented the U.S. from maximizing the potential of environmentally beneficial biofuels. In a recent article, published by the National Academy of Engineering, University of Illinois' Gutgsell Endowed Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences Steve Long and University of California's Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy ...

University of Queensland scientists have found a genetic basis for height and body mass differences between European populations. Queensland Brain Institute researcher Dr Matthew Robinson said the findings could explain why people from northern European countries tended on average to be taller and slimmer than other Europeans. He said the genes that resulted in greater height correlated strongly with genes that reduced body mass index. "Our findings give a genetic basis to the stereotype of Scandinavians as being tall and lean," Dr Robinson said. The study paves ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have found molecular evidence of how a biochemical process controls the lengths of protective chromosome tips, a potentially significant step in ultimately understanding cancer growth and aging. In a paper recently published as the cover story in the online journal eLife, biologist David C. Zappulla and graduate student Evan P. Hass show how in baker's yeast cells, two proteins work together to usher a key enzyme to the chromosome tip, the telomere, to restore its length, which diminishes with each round of cell division. That ...

A new study from researchers at Uppsala University shows that variation in genome size may be much more important than previously believed. It is clear that, at least sometimes, a large genome is a good genome. 'Our study shows that females with larger genome lay more eggs and males with larger genome fertilize more eggs', says research leader Göran Arnqvist, Professor of Animal Ecology at Uppsala University. The study of seed beetles is published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. The amount of nuclear DNA per cell, or the ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 14, 2015 - One in four middle-aged adults who survive to age 85 will develop heart failure, according to current estimates. Intervention programs to improve lifestyles are widely advocated, but do they actually work? Investigators in the U.S. and Taiwan independently examined programs that may reduce cardiovascular risk and concluded that both programs will reduce lifetime risk of heart failure. Results are reported in The American Journal of Medicine. A group of American investigators estimated whether greater adherence to the American Heart ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 14, 2015 - The latest issue of Biological Psychiatry presents the results of three studies implicating metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (mGluR2) as a new molecular target for the treatment of addiction. Group II metabotropic glutamate receptors, which include the subtypes mGluR2 and mGluR3, have been known targets for addiction treatment. Unfortunately, mGluR2/3 agonists studied to date have shown important limitations, including development of tolerance and decreasing food intake along with drug intake. Thus, scientists have been working ...

This news release is available in German. FRANKFURT. Optogenetics is a quickly expanding field of research which has revolutionized neurobiological and cellbiological research around the world. It uses natural or tailored light-sensitive proteins in order to switch nerve cells on and off without electrodes with unprecedented accuracy in respect to time and location. The discovery of the light-gated ion channel channelrhodopsin in algae in 2002 was a key finding for this field. In 2005, Frankfurt scientists working with Prof. Alexander Gottschalk succeeded in transferring ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--The next time someone accuses you of making an irrational decision, just explain that you're obeying the laws of quantum physics. A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans' (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies. According to Zheng Joyce Wang and others who try to model our decision-making processes mathematically, the equations and axioms that most closely match human behavior may be ones ...

An international study led by a University of Queensland researcher has revealed more than half the world's sea turtles have ingested plastic or other human rubbish. The study, led by Dr Qamar Schuyler from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, found the east coasts of Australia and North America, Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and Hawaii were particularly dangerous for turtles due to a combination of debris loads and high species diversity. "The results indicate that approximately 52 per cent of turtles world-wide have eaten debris," Dr Schuyler said. The study ...