PITTSBURGH—We've all heard the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Now neuroscientists are beginning to explain the science behind the adage. For years, neuroscientists have struggled to understand how the microcircuitry of the brain makes learning easier for the young, and more difficult for the old. New findings published in the journal Nature by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine show how one component of the brain's circuitry — inhibitory neurons — behave during critical periods ...

(TORONTO, Canada – Aug. 25, 2013) – Stem cell scientists at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered the gene GATA3 has a role in how blood stem cells renew themselves, a finding that advances the quest to expand these cells in the lab for clinical use in bone marrow transplantation, a procedure that saves thousands of lives every year. The research, published online today in Nature Immunology, provides an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the mechanisms that govern the blood stem cell self-renewal process, says principal investigator Norman Iscove, ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A new genome-wide association study (GWAS) estimates the number of different places in the human genome that are involved in schizophrenia. In particular, the study identifies 22 locations, including 13 that are newly discovered, that are believed to play a role in causing schizophrenia. "If finding the causes of schizophrenia is like solving a jigsaw puzzle, then these new results give us the corners and some of the pieces on the edges," said study lead author Patrick F. Sullivan, MD. "We've debated this for a century, and we are now zeroing in ...

Concealed within the vastness of the human genome, (comprised of some 3 billion base pairs), mutations are commonplace. While the majority of these appear to have neutral effect on human health, many others are associated with diseases and disease susceptibility. Reed Cartwright, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, along with colleagues at ASU, Washington University and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, report on a new software tool known as DeNovoGear, which uses statistical probabilities to help identify mutations and more ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—They're not exactly the peanut butter and jelly of semiconductors, but when you put them together, something magical happens. Alone, neither lanthanum aluminate nor strontium titanate exhibit any particularly notable properties. But when they are layered together, they become not only conductive, but also magnetic. In the current online edition of Nature Physics, researchers at The Ohio State University report the first-ever theoretical explanation to be offered for this phenomenon since it was discovered in 2004. Understanding how these two semiconductors ...

A study in mice reveals an elegant circuit within the developing visual system that helps dictate how the eyes connect to the brain. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, has implications for treating amblyopia, a vision disorder that occurs when the brain ignores one eye in favor of the other. Amblyopia is the most common cause of visual impairment in childhood, and can occur whenever there is a misalignment between what the two eyes see—for example, if one eye is clouded by a cataract or if the eyes are positioned at different angles. The brain ...

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that primary care clinicians provide interventions, including education or brief counseling, to prevent initiation of tobacco use in school-aged children and adolescents. This recommendation statement is being jointly published in the peer-reviewed medical journals Annals of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. This recommendation is an update. In 2003, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to recommend for or against primary care relevant interventions for youth tobacco prevention. Smoking is the ...

A new screening strategy for ovarian cancer appears to be highly specific for detecting the disease before it becomes lethal. The strategy is described in a study published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. If verified in an ongoing clinical trial, it could potentially help save the lives of thousands of women each year in the United States alone. There currently are no established screening strategies for ovarian cancer. The disease often causes no specific symptoms and is difficult to detect in the early stages when it ...

Hamilton, ON (August 26, 2013) – While it's rare for a parent to fabricate an illness in their child, a McMaster University researcher says physicians and other health professionals need to be on the alert for this form of child abuse. Dr. Harriet MacMillan, a pediatrician and child psychiatrist of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, said caregiver-fabricated illness in a child often goes unrecognized. "It is probably more common than we realize," said MacMillan, who conducts family violence research, including trials of interventions aimed at preventing child ...

Readmission rates of adult patients to the same hospital within 30 days are an area of national focus and a potential indicator of clinical failure and unnecessary expenditures. However, a new UC San Francisco (UCSF) study shows that hospital readmissions rates for children are not necessarily meaningful measures of the quality of their care. In the first multi-state study of children’s and non-children’s hospitals, assessing pediatric readmission and revisit rates – being admitted into the hospital again or visiting the emergency room within 30 days of discharge ...

HOUSTON – Evaluating its change over time, CA-125, the protein long-recognized for predicting ovarian cancer recurrence, now shows promise as a screening tool for early-stage disease, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The updated findings are published in Cancer; preliminary data were first presented at the 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting. If a larger study shows survival benefit, the simple blood test could offer a much-needed screening tool to detect ovarian cancer in its early stages – even ...

The idea of having to negotiate over the price of a new car sends many into the cold sweats, but new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that sweaty palms and a racing heart may actually help some people in getting a good deal. As researchers Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan of the Sloan School of Management at MIT demonstrate in two experiments, physiological arousal isn't always detrimental: "It turns out that the effect depends on whether you are someone who dreads or looks forward to negotiating," ...

In a world first, new Australian medical research has given pregnant women with epilepsy new hope of reducing their chance of having a baby with physical birth defects. According to research published in the September 2013 issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, epilepsy experts at The Royal Melbourne Hospital have discovered a link between high doses of common epilepsy drug valproate and the increased risk of having a baby with spina bifida or hypospadias. Royal Melbourne Hospital epilepsy specialist and Head of the Department ...

Cloud top temperatures warmed up on NASA infrared imagery, indicating that the uplift in Tropical Storm Pewa was waning. By Aug. 23, Pewa was reduced to a tropical depression. Infrared imagery also showed that wind shear has pushed Pewa's precipitation away from the storm's center. On Aug. 22 at 01:35 UTC (2:53 p.m. EDT) NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite showed a limited area of cloud top temperatures in bands of thunderstorms east of the center of Tropical Depression Pewa were as cold as -63F/-52C, indicating ...

The ninth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season strengthened into Tropical Storm Ivo on Aug. 23 as NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead. Ivo is expected to bring heavy surf and rainfall to southern Baja California over the next couple of days. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission/TRMM satellite captured the rainfall rates occurring in Tropical Storm Ivo on Aug. 23 at 0815 UTC/4:15 a.m. EDT. TRMM noticed some thunderstorms were reaching heights of 7.4 miles /12 km, and the heaviest rainfall was falling at a rate of 1.18 inches/30 mm per ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 15, 2013—Existing urban water systems are at the end of their design lifetimes. New, innovative solutions are needed, and these must combine technology and engineering with an understanding of social systems and institutions. The current issue of Environmental Engineering Science, the Official Journal of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, focuses on Re-inventing Urban Water Systems. Of particular note is an insightful article that presents the challenges and opportunities facing urban water system innovation, available ...

One of two of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft flew over the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin and investigated the Saharan Air Layer in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 20 and 21. The instruments aboard the Global Hawk sampled the environment of ex-Erin and revealed an elevated dust layer overrunning the storm. "Our goal with this flight was to look at how the Saharan air would move around or into the former storm, but the circulation was so shallow and weak that, according to our instruments, the Saharan air simply moved westward right over what was left of Erin," ...

VIDEO: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) provides many water-related products derived from data acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument aboard the Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water... Click here for more information. The melting of sea ice in the Arctic is well on its way toward its annual "minimum," that time when the floating ice cap covers less of the Arctic Ocean than at any other period during the year. While the ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), led by Dr. Lee Bulla, have demonstrated for the first time the selective cytotoxicity of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis Cry4B toxin is mediated by BT-R3. The Cry toxins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis exert their insecticidal activity by binding with high-affinity to their cognate cadherin receptors located on the surface of epithelial cells that line the midgut of susceptible insects. In the case of Anopheles gambiae, binding of the Cry4B toxin by BT-R3, in turn, triggers an internal signaling event ...

Researchers at the Beihang University School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, led by Dr. Yubo Fan, have discovered that Biphasic Electrical stimulation (BES), a non-chemical procedure, may be used as a strategy for preventing cell apoptosis in stem cell-based transplantation therapy. The article describing their studies will be published in the August 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. The scientists believe that their technique will be used for spinal cord injury patients in the future. Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a serious disease of the central ...

Beer-Sheva, Israel, August 23, 2013 – Teens listening to their preferred music while driving commit a greater number of errors and miscalculations, according to a new study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers that will be published in the October issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention. Male novice drivers in particular make more frequent and serious mistakes listening to their preferred music than their less aggressive, female counterparts, the researchers noted. The BGU study evaluated 85 young novice drivers accompanied by a researcher/driving instructor. ...

A lightweight and field-portable device invented at UCLA that conducts kidney tests and transmits data through a smartphone attachment may significantly reduce the need for frequent office visits by people with diabetes and others with chronic kidney ailments. The smartphone-based device was developed in the research lab of Aydogan Ozcan, a professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute. Weighing about one-third of a pound, the ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a way that corrupted, disease-causing proteins spread in the brain, potentially contributing to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other brain-damaging disorders. The research identifies a specific type of receptor and suggests that blocking it may aid treatment of theses illnesses. The receptors are called heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs). "Many of the enzymes that create HSPGs or otherwise help them function are good targets for drug treatments," said senior author Marc I. ...

HONOLULU, HI – University of Hawaii Cancer Center Researcher Song-Yi Park, PhD, along with her colleagues, recently discovered that a greater consumption of fruits and vegetables may lower the risk of invasive bladder cancer in women. The investigation was conducted as part of the Multiethnic Cohort (MEC) Study, established in 1993 to assess the relationships among dietary, lifestyle, genetic factors, and cancer risk. Park and her fellow researcher's analyzed data collected from 185,885 older adults over a period of 12.5 years, of which 581 invasive bladder cancer cases ...

Fairbanks, Alaska— Sea ice decline and warming trends are changing the vegetation in nearby arctic coastal areas, according to two University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists. Uma Bhatt, an associate professor with UAF's Geophysical Institute, and Skip Walker, a professor at UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology, contributed to a recent review of research on the response of plants, marine life and animals to declining sea ice in the Arctic. "Our thought was to see if sea ice decline contributed to greening of the tundra along the coastal areas," Bhatt said. "It's a relatively ...