Researchers have discovered a new type of brain activity that underlies the timing of voluntary actions, allowing them to forecast when a spontaneous decision will occur more than a second in advance. 'Experiments like this have been used to argue that free will is an illusion, but we think that this interpretation is mistaken,' says Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, Portugal, who led the research, published on Sept. 28, 2014, in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The scientists used recordings of neurons in an area ...

The peptide —a small protein— beta-amyloid is strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease; however, researchers are still looking for unequivocal proof that this peptide is the causal agent of the onset and development of the disease. The main obstacle impeding such confirmation is that beta-amyloid is not harmful when found in isolation but only when it aggregates, that is when it self-assembles to form the so-called amyloid fibrils "We are not dealing with a single target, beta-amyloid alone, but with multiple ones because each aggregate of peptide, which can go from ...

Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 metre rise in global sea level. The research published in Nature Communications found that in the past, when ocean temperatures around Antarctica became more layered - with a warm layer of water below a cold surface layer - ice sheets and glaciers melted much faster than when the cool and warm layers mixed more easily. This defined layering of temperatures is exactly what is ...

An international team of scientists has shown that more than 80 per cent of bowel cancers could be treated with existing drugs. The study found that medicines called 'JAK inhibitors' halted tumour growth in bowel cancers with a genetic mutation that is present in more than 80 per cent of bowel cancers. Multiple JAK inhibitors are currently used, or are in clinical trials, for diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, blood cancers and myeloproliferative disorders. Bowel cancer is the second-most common cancer in Australia with nearly 17,000 people diagnosed ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University team has found that nanoparticles called single-walled carbon nanotubes accumulate quickly in the bottom sediments of an experimental wetland setting, an action they say could indirectly damage the aquatic food chain. The results indicate little risk to humans ingesting the particles through drinking water, say scientists at Duke's Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT). But the researchers warn that, based on their previous research, the tendency for the nanotubes to accumulate in sediment could indirectly ...

Computer modelling of the human eye, the brain of a rat and a robot could revolutionise advances in neuroscience and new technology, says a QUT leading robotics researcher. Dr Michael Milford from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty says the new study uses new computer algorithms to enable robots to navigate intelligently, unrestricted by high-density buildings or tunnels. "This is a very Frankenstein type of project," Dr Milford said. "It's putting two halves of a thing together because we're taking the eyes of a human and linking them up with the brain of a rat. "A ...

An international group of researchers led by Dr. Warren E. Piers (University of Calgary) and Dr. Heikki M. Tuononen (University of Jyväskylä) has been able to isolate and characterize an important chemical intermediate whose existence has, so far, only been inferred from indirect experimental evidence. Chemical reactions rarely go from starting materials to final products in one single step, but instead they progress through a number of intermediates. In many cases the intermediates are not stable enough to be studied by conventional characterization methods, which thwarts ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 1, 2014 – Patients with increased inflammation, including those receiving cytokines for medical treatment, have a greatly increased risk of depression. For example, a 6-month treatment course of interferon-alpha therapy for chronic hepatitis C virus infection causes depression in approximately 30% of patients. Omega-3 fatty acids, more commonly known as fish oil, have a long list of health benefits, including lowering the risk of heart disease and reducing triglyceride levels. These nutritional compounds are also known to have anti-depressant ...

When appointing a new leader, selectors base their choice on several factors and typically look for leaders with desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness. However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner? New research published in The Leadership Quarterly looked to discover whether power corrupts leaders. Study author John Antonakis and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain, "We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'" To ...

Chicago, October 1, 2014 – Patients receiving lungs from donors whose cause of death was asphyxiation or drowning have similar outcomes and long-term survival as patients receiving lungs from traditional donors, according to a study in the October2014 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points: Lungs from donors whose cause of death was asphyxiation or drowning can be safely transplanted into patients with end-stage lung disease. Patient survival rates were not affected when lungs from cases involving asphyxiation and drowning were used. The researchers note ...

Chicago, October 1, 2014 – Patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery may not have to follow a strict blood sugar management strategy after surgery, according to a study in the October 2014 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Liberal management of a patient's blood sugar levels following CABG surgery leads to similar survival and long-term quality of life as achieved through stricter blood sugar management. The findings applied to all patients, regardless of diabetes status. The results may encourage hospitals to consider ...

Despite advances, millions of children worldwide still die before their fifth birthday, with complications from preterm birth and pneumonia together killing nearly 2 million young children in 2013, according to a study led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their report, published online Oct. 1 in The Lancet, examines what caused an estimated 6.3 million children under the age of five to die in 2013, one-third fewer than the 9.9 million estimated to have died around the world in 2000. While preterm births and pneumonia were also the top killers in ...

A major medical discovery by scientists at The University of Nottingham could lead to the development of an entirely new type of painkiller. A drug resulting from the research, published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, would offer new hope to sufferers of chronic pain conditions such as traumatic nerve injury, for which few effective painkillers are currently available. The work, led by Dr Lucy Donaldson in the University's School of Life Sciences, in collaboration with David Bates, Professor of Oncology in the University's Cancer Biology Unit, focuses on a ...

Cancer vaccines have recently emerged as a promising approach for killing tumor cells before they spread. But so far, most clinical candidates haven't worked that well. Now, scientists have developed a new way to deliver vaccines that successfully stifled tumor growth when tested in laboratory mice. And the key, they report in the journal ACS Nano, is in the vaccine's unique stealthy nanoparticles. Hiroshi Shiku, Naozumi Harada and colleagues explain that most cancer vaccine candidates are designed to flag down immune cells, called macrophages and dendritic cells, that ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1—Inspired by a desire to help wounded soldiers, an international, multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Assistant Professor Conor L. Evans at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) has created a paint-on, see-through, "smart" bandage that glows to indicate a wound's tissue oxygenation concentration. Because oxygen plays a critical role in healing, mapping these levels in severe wounds and burns can help to significantly improve the success of surgeries to restore limbs and physical ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Given a choice, most patients would prefer to take a drug orally instead of getting an injection. Unfortunately, many drugs, especially those made from large proteins, cannot be given as a pill because they get broken down in the stomach before they can be absorbed. To help overcome that obstacle, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have devised a novel drug capsule coated with tiny needles that can inject drugs directly into the lining of the stomach after the capsule is swallowed. In animal studies, the team found that the capsule ...

People are significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward those suffering from drug addiction than those with mental illness, and don't support insurance, housing, and employment policies that benefit those dependent on drugs, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. A report on the findings, which appears in the October issue of the journal Psychiatric Services, suggests that society seems not to know whether to regard substance abuse as a treatable medical condition akin to diabetes or heart disease, or as a personal failing ...

Americans love their dogs, but they don't always love to pick up after them. And that's a problem. Dog feces left on the ground wash into waterways, sometimes carrying bacteria — including antibiotic-resistant strains — that can make people sick. Now scientists have developed a new genetic test to figure out how much dogs are contributing to this health concern, according to a report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Orin C. Shanks, Hyatt C. Green and colleagues explain that our waterways are susceptible to many sources of fecal contamination, including ...

One of the most iconic forms of avant-garde cuisine, also known as molecular gastronomy, involves the presentation of flavorful, edible liquids — like cocktails or olive oil — packaged into spheres. Now a team of scientists, in collaboration with world-renowned chef Ferran Adriá, is getting to the bottom of what makes these delectable morsels possible. Their findings appear in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Christophe Chipot, Wensheng Cai and colleagues explain that the technique of "spherification" was invented 70 years ago but was popularized in avant-garde ...

And the winner is ... ZEB1! There are many actors involved in the process of adipogenesis, used by the body to store the fat that it absorbs from food. Up to now there had been some uncertainty as to how it was regulated. Yet, understanding this mechanism is of crucial importance to prevent the diseases related to fat accumulation in adipose tissue. A research team led by Carine Gubelmann and Petra Schwalie at EPFL's Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, directed by Bart Deplancke, joined forces with Christian Wolfrum's researchers from ETH Zurich, to decode the ...

KNOXVILLE—More than one hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin hypothesized that species could cross oceans and other vast distances on vegetation rafts, icebergs, or in the case of plant seeds, in the plumage of birds. Though many were skeptical of Darwin's "jump dispersal" idea, a new study suggests that Darwin might have been correct. A new computational method, published in the journal Systematic Biology, tested two competing theories about how species came to live where they do and found strong evidence for jump dispersal, especially for island species. The ...

WASHINGTON—Researchers plan and plot every considerable aspect of their work, but sometimes it's something unexpected and seemingly insignificant that leads to the real discovery. That was the case for Scott Powell, assistant professor of biology at the George Washington University. While conducting field research on turtle ants in the savannah region of Brazil, Dr. Powell noticed something peculiar: a species of ant infiltrating the region of a host ant, Crematogaster ampla. The C. ampla is known for its hyper-aggressiveness, but did not attack the invading species, ...

ORANGE, Calif. – Researchers in Chapman University's Food Science Program have just published a study on pet food mislabeling. The study focused on commercial pet foods marketed for dogs and cats to identify meat species present as well as any instances of mislabeling. Of the 52 products tested, 31 were labeled correctly, 20 were potentially mislabeled, and one contained a non-specific meat ingredient that could not be verified. "Although regulations exist for pet foods, increases in international trade and globalization of the food supply have amplified the potential ...

A comparison of prophylactic antibiotic regimens applied to an area in the mouth and throat and digestive tract were associated with low levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and no differences in patient survival and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay, according to a study published in JAMA. The study is being posted early online to coincide with its presentation at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine annual congress. Reductions in the incidence of ICU-acquired respiratory tract infections have been achieved by some antibiotic regimens, such as selective ...

Scientists have discovered a new form of non-genetic inheritance, showing for the first time that offspring can resemble a mother's previous sexual partner – in flies at least. This confronting idea, known as telegony, dates back to ancient Greek times, but was discredited in the early 20th Century with the advent of genetics. To test it out, UNSW Australia scientists Dr Angela Crean, Professor Russell Bonduriansky and Dr Anna Kopps manipulated the size of male flies and studied their offspring. They found that the size of the young was determined by the size of the ...