This news release is available in German. Scientists at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn led by Prof. Stefan Remy report on this in the journal "Neuron". Their investigations give new insights into the workings of spatial memory. Furthermore, they could also help improve our understanding of movement related symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease. In a familiar environment our movements are purposeful. For example, if we leave our office desk for a coffee break, we naturally follow a predefined route that has ...

This news release is available in German. Contaminated samples have evidently created some confusion in the timetable of life. On the basis of ultra-clean analyses, an international team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, has disproved supposed evidence that eukaryotes originated 2.5 to 2.8 billion years ago. In contrast to prokaryotes such as bacteria, eukaryotes have a nucleus. Some researchers thought they had discovered molecular remnants of living organisms in rock samples up to 2.8 billion years old. However, as the ...

A team of New York University neuroscientists has determined how a pair of growth factor molecules contributes to long-term memory formation, a finding that appears in the journal Neuron. "These results give us a better understanding of memory's architecture and, specifically, how molecules act as a network in creating long-term memories," explains the paper's senior author, Thomas Carew, a professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science and dean of NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science. "More importantly, this marks another step toward elucidating the intricacies of memory ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Scientists at Duke Medicine have produced a 3-D map of the human brain stem at an unprecedented level of detail using MRI technology. In a study to be published June 3 in Human Brain Mapping, the researchers unveil an ultra high-resolution brain stem model that could better guide brain surgeons treating conditions such as tremors and Parkinson's disease with deep brain stimulation (DBS). The new 3-D model could eliminate risky trial-and-error as surgeons implant electrodes -- a change akin to trading an outdated paper road atlas for a real-time GPS. "On ...

An international team of scientists led by Cardiff University researchers has provided the strongest evidence yet of what causes schizophrenia - a condition that affects around 1% of the global population. Published today (17:00BST, 03/06/2015) in the journal Neuron, their work presents strong evidence that disruption of a delicate chemical balance in the brain is heavily implicated in the disorder. In the largest ever study of its kind, the team found that disease-linked mutations disrupt specific sets of genes contributing to excitatory and inhibitory signalling, ...

A large majority of Americans--including gun owners--continue to support stronger policies to prevent gun violence than are present in current federal and most state law, according to a new national public opinion survey conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The survey is a follow-up to one conducted by the same researchers in early 2013, shortly after the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that left 26 dead. The results are published online in Preventive ...

This news release is available in French. Professors Frederick Gosselin and Daniel Therriault, along with their master's student Renaud Passieux, are not related to Spiderman. Nevertheless, these Polytechnique Montreal researchers have produced an ultra-tough polymer fibre directly inspired by spider silk! They recently published an article about the project in the journal Advanced Materials. Spider silk: a thread with stunning properties Three to eight microns in diameter but five to ten times tougher than steel or Kevlar: despite its lightness, spider silk has ...

Love the opera? Hungry for hip hop? It turns out that your musical likes and dislikes may say more about you than you think, according to UBC research. Even in 2015, social class continues to inform our cultural attitudes and the way we listen to music, according to the study, which was recently published in the Canadian Review of Sociology. "Breadth of taste is not linked to class. But class filters into specific likes and dislikes," said Gerry Veenstra, study author and professor at UBC's Department of Sociology. The study involved nearly 1,600 telephone interviews ...

A NASA-generated animation of NOAA's GOES-West satellite imagery from June 1 to 3 showed Hurricane Andres' eye disappear as the storm weakened into a tropical storm. NOAA's GOES-West satellite has provided continuous visible and infrared imagery of the former hurricane since it was born. An animation created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland captured the storm as it made the transition from a hurricane, back into a tropical storm. Andres is located in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, south of Baja California, Mexico. ...

Alcohol use disorder as defined by a new diagnostic classification was widespread and often untreated in the United States, with a lifetime prevalence of 29.1 percent but only 19.8 percent of adults were ever treated, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Alcohol use disorders are among the most prevalent mental health disorders worldwide, resulting in disability and contributing to illness and death. Because of the seriousness of alcohol use disorders, updated epidemiologic data are needed given the changes to the alcohol use disorder diagnostic ...

Tropical Storm Blanca strengthened into a hurricane while remaining almost stationary and about 400 miles west of the west coast of Mexico on June 3. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Blanca before it strengthened, while NOAA's GOES-West satellite saw the strengthening storm develop a pinhole eye. Satellite data indicate that Blanca continues to rapidly strengthen as a small eye has become apparent in infrared imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite during the early morning hours today, June 3. Blanca hasn't moved much in the last day but has continued to ...

When the scent of a fragrant product triggers a fond memory that a customer holds, it is more likely to be a hit. So says Rachel Herz of Brown University, and Haruko Sugiyama and colleagues at the Kao Corporation in Japan and the US, who conducted a study now published in Springer's journal Chemosensory Perception. Its results indicate how a product's scent often evokes personal emotional memories and influences its appeals to customers. Herz and colleagues set out to test how odor-evoked memories influence customers' perceptions of a product, as this has never been ...

As astronauts embark on increasingly ambitious space missions, scientists have to figure out how to keep them healthy for longer periods far from Earth. That entails assuring the air they breathe and the water they drink are safe -- not an easy task given their isolated locations. But scientists are now reporting in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry a new method to monitor the quality of both in real time with one system. Current options for testing air and water for contaminants, including microbes and radiation, require collecting samples and sending them back to ...

New research finds that when viewing black-oriented entertainment television that evokes black stereotypes in its comedy, black audiences are more comfortable watching the programming among their black peers than among their white counterparts, and viewing conditions did not make any difference among whites. The study led by Omotayo Banjo, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of communication, is published online in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and will appear in the fall issue of the print publication. The article states that "The study examined ...

Since 2002, close to 300 drug candidates to treat Alzheimer's have run into clinical dead ends. But now, having learned from those failures, researchers are testing -- and retesting -- a batch of the most promising compounds designed to slow the disease's progression. An article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, describes what made this possible and what lies ahead. Lisa M. Jarvis, a senior correspondent at C&EN, reports that just a few years ago, Alzheimer's research suffered from several high-profile setbacks. ...

To visualize cancer throughout the body, physicians often turn to positron emission tomography (PET), which lights up areas that are metabolically active or growing, like tumors. Today in ACS Central Science, researchers report development of new PET probes composed of labeled antibody fragments that were tested in mice. These probes could someday be used to create targeted probes, giving doctors more information about tumors and how to treat them. The most common PET imaging probe is a labeled sugar molecule called 18F-2-deoxyfluoroglucose (FDG). PET indicates those ...

Women with obesity have a range of increased health risks in pregnancy, both for them and their babies, compared with those in the healthy weight category, according to a new systematic review of research by academics at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Gothenberg, and City University London. The paper, which was published today in the international peer-reviewed journal Obesity Reviews, recommends women with obesity should lose weight before they become pregnant, and also highlights the current lack of support available ...

Life without bright screens on our smart phones and TVs is hard to imagine. But in 20 years, one of the essential components of the liquid-crystal displays, or LCDs, that make many of our gadgets possible could disappear. To address the potential shortage of this component -- the element indium -- scientists report in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering a new way to recover the valuable metal so it could be recycled. Many consumer electronics from laptops to tablets contain thin films of indium tin-oxide that act as transparent conductive coatings in ...

Montreal, June 3, 2015 -- For many, summer holidays mean hitting the highway -- but nothing puts a damper on a road trip like an accidental collision with a deer. For Jochen Jaeger, a professor in Concordia University's Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, improving roadkill prevention is best approached through experimentation. In a study recently published in the Journal of Environmental Management, Jaeger and a group of co-authors from international universities show that protecting animals from speeding vehicles doesn't have a one-size-fits-all solution. ...

Decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes are a way to model autonomous robots' behavior in circumstances where neither their communication with each other nor their judgments about the outside world are perfect. The problem with Dec-POMDPs (as they're abbreviated) is that they're as complicated as their name. They provide the most rigorous mathematical models of multiagent systems -- not just robots, but any autonomous networked devices --under uncertainty. But for all but the simplest cases, they've been prohibitively time-consuming to solve. Last ...

The first feeding study of tropical Australia's Irukandji box jellyfish has found that they actively fish. They attract larval fish by twitching their extended tentacles, highlighting their nematocyst clusters (stinging structures) and using them as lures. It's an impressive feat by any standards, but particularly so for an animal that doesn't have a defined brain. The laboratory-based study of Carukia barnesi, the tiny but deadly Irukandji jellyfish, was conducted at James Cook University (JCU) in Cairns, Australia, and has been published in the online journal PLOS ONE. ...

WASHINGTON - Contrary to popular belief, cyberbullying that starts and stays online is no more emotionally harmful to youngsters than harassment that only occurs in-person and may actually be less disturbing because it's likelier to be of shorter duration and not involve significant power imbalances, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire analyzed data from the Technology Harassment Victimization Study, funded by the National Institute of Justice. They focused on telephone interviews conducted ...

Blood clots often form when lipid-rich plaques on the inner surface of arteries rupture and platelets aggregate at the site of injury. Cardiologists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have now compared the effects of two new platelet aggregation inhibitors. Blood clots that form in arteries - so-called arterial thrombosis -are among the most common causes of heart attack and stroke. They are particularly prone to develop when 'atherosclerotic plaques', fatty deposits that build up within the inner lining of major arteries, fracture and break. Circulating ...

Published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the treatment, which involves targeting tiny blood and lymphatic vessels inside the kidneys, is shown to improve renal function and slow progression of disease in mice. Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a genetic disorder where fluid filled cysts grow in kidneys and destroy normal renal tissue. It is the world's most common inherited kidney disease, affecting between 1 in 400 and 1 in 1000 people worldwide - around 12.5 million individuals. A rarer form of the disease, which occurs in about one in every ...

The hippocampus plays a crucial role in memory formation. However, it is not yet fully understood in what way that brain structure's individual regions are involved in the formation of memories. Neuroscientists at the Collaborative Research Center 874 at RUB have recreated this process with the aid of computer simulations. Their findings challenge the model of memory forming in the hippocampus established to date. Their results have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Unique anatomy of the hippocampus The hippocampus' importance for memory forming ...