Previous studies have shown that proliferation of endogenous neural precursor cells cannot alone compensate for the damage to neurons and axons. From the perspective of neural plasticity, Dr. Yun Xiang and co-workers from Sun Yat-sen University in China observed the effects of functional electrical stimulation treatment on endogenous neural precursor cell proliferation and expression of basic fibroblast growth factor and epidermal growth factor in the rat brain on the infarct side. The researchers found that functional electrical stimulation can promote endogenous neural ...

Getting to the bottom of Alzheimer's disease has been a rapidly evolving pursuit with many twists, turns and controversies. In the latest crook in the research road, scientists have found a new insight into the interaction between proteins associated with the disease. The report, which appears in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, could have important implications for developing novel treatments. Witold K. Surewicz, Krzysztof Nieznanski and colleagues explain that for years, research has suggested a link between protein clumps, known as amyloid-beta plaques, in the ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX (4/23/14) -- Researchers have found evidence of an interaction between prenatal smoking and genetic risk factors that increase aggressive behavior in children, especially in girls. "The interesting issue is that not all children exposed to prenatal smoking will have behavioral problems. Some might, but others will not," said Brian Boutwell, Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University, College of Criminal Justice and senior author on the study. "One possible explanation for this is that the effect of prenatal smoke exposure depends on the presence ...

A team of scientists led by a researcher from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore has identified the cancer specific stem cell which causes gastric cancer. This discovery opens up the possibility of developing new drugs for the treatment of this disease and other types of cancers. The research group, led by Dr Chan Shing Leng, Research Assistant Professor at CSI Singapore, demonstrated for the first time that a cancer-specific variant of a cell surface protein, CD44v8-10, marks gastric cancer stem cells but ...

In a new study, women who were more inclined to have one-night stands had wider hips, reveals Colin A. Hendrie of the University of Leeds in the UK. He is the lead author of a study into how a woman's build influences her sexual behavior, published in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The study into whether hip width or waist-to-hip ratio was a better predictor of a woman's sexual behavior was conducted among 148 women between 18 and 26 years old. The participants all had at least one sexual partner previously. Their hip width (defined as the distance between ...

This news release is available in Portuguese. Speed-reading is a technique used to read quickly. It involves visual searching for clues to meaning and skipping non-essential words and/ or sentences. Similarly to humans, biological systems are sometimes under selective pressure to quickly "read" genetic information. Genes that need to be read quickly are usually small, as the smaller the encoding message, the easier it will be to read them quickly. Now, researchers from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC, Portugal) and Centre for Molecular and Structural Biomedicine ...

The shale gas boom has transformed the energy landscape in the U.S., but in some drier locations, it could cause conflict among the energy industry, residents and agricultural interests over already-scarce water resources, say researchers. They add that degraded water quality is a potential risk unless there are adequate safeguards. The feature article appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Meagan S. Mauter and colleagues point out that a major criticism of extracting shale gas through hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," is that it requires tremendous ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Parents and physicians concerned about an increase in adolescents' marijuana use following the legalization of medical marijuana can breathe a sigh of relief. According to a new study at Rhode Island Hospital which compared 20 years worth of data from states with and without medical marijuana laws, legalizing the drug did not lead to increased use among adolescents. The study is published online in advance of print in the Journal of Adolescent Health. "Any time a state considers legalizing medical marijuana, there are concerns from the public about ...

Some manufacturers are turning away from using triclosan as an antimicrobial ingredient in soaps, toothpastes and other products over health concerns. And now scientists are reporting new evidence that appears to support these worries. Their study, published in the ACS journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, found that triclosan, as well as another commercial substance called octylphenol, promoted the growth of human breast cancer cells in lab dishes and breast cancer tumors in mice. Kyung-Chul Choi and colleagues note that hormonal imbalances seem to play a role in ...

This news release is available in German. It all started out with a comic strip in 1985. A cartoon character explained to her female companion which three requirements a movie had to fulfil for her to want to watch it: (one) it has to have at least two women in it (two) who talk to each other about (three) something besides a man. Born was the Bechdel test, named after American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. The test reveals whether a movie features a minimum of female independence. A lot of Hollywood movies fail the Bechdel test miserably. That movies like "Star Wars" ...

This news release is available in Spanish. So-called "female intuition" could actually have a biological component, related to the lower prenatal exposure to testosterone women receive in the womb. This would lead them to have a "more intuitive and less reflective" attitude to life than men. These are the results of a study carried out by Spanish researchers from the University of Granada, the Barcelona Pompeu Fabra University and the Middlesex University of London, in an article recently published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. According to previous ...

Usually, chemical reactions just take their course, much like a ball rolling downhill. However, it is also possible to deliberately control chemical reactions: at the Vienna University of Technology, molecules are hit with femtosecond laser pulses, changing the distribution of electrons in the molecule. This interaction is so short that at first it does not have any discernable influence on the atomic nuclei, which have much more mass than the electrons. However, the disturbance of the electron distribution can still initiate chemical processes and eventually separate ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Research shows that wealth inequality creates barriers to community development, due to the widespread effects of poverty. A report by the United Nations Children's Fund shows that more than one in five children in the United States falls below the poverty line. Although many organizations address poverty, they often serve similar demographics and may compete for clients and resources. Recently, University of Missouri researchers studied Cooperative Extension's efforts to link community development organizations and concluded Extension is the hub that can ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Lowland South America, including the Amazon Basin, harbors most of the last indigenous societies that have limited contact with the outside world. Studying these tribes, located deep within Amazonian rainforests, gives scientists a glimpse at what tribal cultures may have been like before the arrival of Europeans. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have used satellite images to assess the demographic health of one particular village of isolated people on the border between Brazil and Peru. Remote surveillance is the only method to safely track ...

The most comprehensive study to date of the family of bacteria that causes whooping cough points to more effective vaccine strategies and reveals surprising findings about the bacteria's origin and evolution. The new results could alter public health strategies to control this respiratory disease, which kills 195,000 children worldwide each year. Genomic analysis of 343 strains of the Bordetella pertussis bacteria from around the world collected over the last 100 years illustrates how vaccination has shaped its evolution. Since its introduction across the globe between ...

Alzheimer's disease is the first cause of dementia and affects some 400,000 people in Spain alone. However, no effective cure has yet been found. One of the reasons for this is the lack of knowledge on the cellular mechanisms which cause alterations in nerve transmissions and the loss of memory in the initial stages of the disease. Researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have discovered the cellular mechanism involved in memory consolidation and were able to develop a gene therapy which reverses the loss of memory in mice ...

What if spacetime were a kind of fluid? This is the question tackled by theoretical physicists working on quantum gravity by creating models attempting to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. Some of these models predict that spacetime at the Planck scale (10-33cm) is no longer continuous – as held by classical physics – but discrete in nature. Just like the solids or fluids we come into contact with every day, which can be seen as made up of atoms and molecules when observed at sufficient resolution. A structure of this kind generally implies, at very high energies, ...

A new study by a University of Exeter researcher has shed light on how an estimated one million-strong population of wild camels thriving in Australia's remote outback have become reviled as pests and culled on a large scale. Sarah Crowley, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus, explored the history of the camel in Australia, from their historic role helping to create the country's infrastructure through to their current status as unwelcome "invader." The deserts of the Australian outback are a notoriously inhospitable ...

Like many social mammals, ravens form different types of social relationships – they may be friends, kin, or partners and they also form strict dominance relations. From a cognitive perspective, understanding one's own relationships to others is a key ability in daily social life ("knowing who is nice or not"). Yet, understanding also the relationships group members have with each other sets the stage for "political" maneuvers ("knowing who might support whom"). The results of this study have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. A team of researchers ...

Orange County kids and teens, ages 8-17 will have a chance to take to the skies on Saturday, April 26th 2010, when Orange County's EAA Chapter 92 hosts a Young Eagles Flight Rally. The rally is part of the EAA's Young Eagles program, created to expose kids and teens to the world of aviation. Since the Young Eagles program was launched in 1992, Volunteer EAA pilots have flown more than 1.8 million children. "Free airplane rides are just part of the experience," states Robert Baker, spokesman for the event. "We hope to build one-to-one relationships between pilots and ...

East Coast Wings & Grill, a casual dining restaurant known for its 75 flavors of award-winning buffalo-style wings, is elevating the climate of casual family dining by focusing on success one unit at a time. Set to average more than 23 percent new unit growth in 2014 and 10 years of positive same store sales, the cutting-edge franchise is leading the buffalo wing segment in profitability and franchisee satisfaction. East Coast Wings & Grill grew its Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) by 1.05 percent in 2013 to a 17.6 unit ...

TWIN FALLS BIOTECH today announced a new, all-natural dietary supplement containing CBD that can help people who are suffering from pain and inflammation called ArisiTol and is available nationwide starting today. ArisiTol gives consumers access to a product that can help treat their pain and inflammation without a prescription. "We are so excited about the launch of this fabulous product for people suffering from pain." Says David Mouser, CEO of Twin Falls Biotech. "We've seen so many great stories in the media lately where CBD has been able to help with so many ailments ...

Highly regarded sculptor and Woodbury University Associate Professor Patrick Nickell is among 178 American and Canadian scholars, artists and scientists named John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellows for 2014. Nickell is believed to be the first Woodbury recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and was selected from among nearly 3,000 applicants. Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted more than $315 million in fellowships to almost 17,700 individuals - including scores of Nobel and poets laureate, Pulitzer Prize winners and Fields Medal recipients. ...

"Removing moldy building materials and throwing them into the dumpster is often the least costly and most effective mold remediation," according to Phillip Fry, Certified Environmental Hygienist and webmaster since 1999 of the do-it-yourself mold advice website http://www.moldinspector.com. "Most mold remediation projects fail to solve all of a home or commercial building's total mold infestation problems because the property owner, manager, or mold remediation company does not go far enough in inspecting, removing, and discarding moldy ceiling, wall, and floor building ...

The Jing Ying Institute of Kung Fu & Tai Chi is pleased to announce that World Tai Chi & Qigong Day will be celebrated this year on Saturday, April 26, 2014. The event will be held at Annapolis Towne Centre 10:00 am-noon. On the last Saturday of April each year, World Tai Chi & Qigong Day is celebrated in every time zone around the world. Starting at 10:00am in the first time zone, and moving in a wave around the earth as 10:00am reaches each new time zone, groups will gather to practice Tai Chi and Qigong. There will be demonstrations of Tai Chi and ...