Smoking is a well-known risk factor for subsequent alcohol abuse, but the mechanisms underlying this link are unknown. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Neuron on July 18 show in a study conducted in rats that even a single exposure to nicotine temporarily changes how the brain's reward system responds to alcohol and increases the reinforcing properties of alcohol via stress hormones. "Our findings indicate the mechanisms by which nicotine influences the neural systems associated with alcohol abuse, providing a foundation for conceptualizing strategies ...

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the protein-making factory within cells consisting of tightly stacked sheets of membrane studded with the molecules that make proteins. In a study published July 18th by Cell Press in the journal Cell, researchers have refined a new microscopy imaging method to visualize exactly how the ER sheets are stacked, revealing that the 3D structure of the sheets resembles a parking garage with helical ramps connecting the different levels. This structure allows for the dense packing of ER sheets, maximizing the amount of space available for protein ...

NEW YORK, July 13, 2013 – Experts from the Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging at NYU Langone Medical Center will present new research at the 2013 Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's disease to be held in Boston, MA from July 13th through 18th, 2013. From basic discovery to clinical applications, NYU Langone Medical Center has been at the forefront of the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease since the 1970s. The Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging is devoted to research and clinical advances toward the treatment and cure of all neurodegenerative ...

Washington, DC (July 15, 2013) – The long-distance relationship has plagued college students and people relocated for work for ages. These relationships are seen as destined to fail, but are they actually creating stronger bonds than a geographically closer relationship? A recent paper published in the Journal of Communication found that people in long-distance relationships often have stronger bonds from more constant, and deeper, communication than normal relationships. Crystal Jiang, City University of Hong Kong and Jeffrey Hancock, Cornell University, asked dating ...

Crop rotation has been used since Roman times to improve plant nutrition and to control the spread of disease. A new study to be published in Nature's 'The ISME Journal' reveals the profound effect it has on enriching soil with bacteria, fungi and protozoa. "Changing the crop species massively changes the content of microbes in the soil, which in turn helps the plant to acquire nutrients, regulate growth and protect itself against pests and diseases, boosting yield," said Professor Philip Poole from the John Innes Centre. Soil was collected from a field near Norwich ...

PENSACOLA, Fla.—Forthcoming research in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry analyzes the physiological effects of three separate pesticides on honey bees (Apis mellifera). An international research team ¬- Drs. Stephan Caravalho, Luc Belzunces and colleagues from Universidade Federal de Lavras in Brazil and Institut Nationale de la Recherche Agronomique in France - concludes that the absence of mortality does not always indicate functional integrity. Deltamethrin, fipronil and spinosad, widely used pesticides in agriculture and home pest control, were ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (July 18, 2013) – Writing in his journal about the scientists of his era, Henry David Thoreau bemoaned their blindness to significant phenomena: "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." More than 150 years later, his words still ring true. For more than a century, scientists have been peering through microscopes, carefully watching cells divide. Until now, however, none has actually seen how human cells manage to divide into two equally-sized daughter cells during mitosis. "This is so obvious when you look at it, but no one ever noticed ...

Researchers have created a large new resource of more than 900 genes switched off one-at-a-time in mice to discover which genes are important for a wide range of biological functions such as fertility or hearing. This resource, known as the Mouse Genetics Project, screens for characteristics and early signs of disease, revealing many new functions for well-known genes, as well as for genes with no previously-known role in disease. Many of these variations in body function are likely to underlie human diseases. The human genome has more than 20,000 identified genes, ...

Neurobiologists from the University of Leicester have shown that insect limbs can move without muscles – a finding that may provide engineers with new ways to improve the control of robotic and prosthetic limbs. Their work helps to explain how insects control their movements using a close interplay of neuronal control and 'clever biomechanical tricks,' says lead researcher Dr Tom Matheson, a Reader in Neurobiology at the University of Leicester. In a study published today in the journal Current Biology, the researchers show that the structure of some insect leg joints ...

AKRON, Ohio, (July 18, 2013) – GOJO Industries, a leader in hand hygiene and skin health and inventors of PURELL® Hand Sanitizer, conducted an independent research study at the John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas to determine the impact on hand hygiene compliance rates when the hospital hand hygiene program included an electronic compliance activity monitoring system. The compliance technology system used in the study was the GOJO SMARTLINK Activity Monitoring System. Results of the study were presented at the APIC 2013 Conference. The authors concluded ...

Montreal, Canada, July 18, 2013 – A study conducted by the team of Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif, Director of the Research Centre at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI), has led to the discovery of a new approach to treat aortic valve stenosis through the administration of a compound that prevents valve deterioration and can even reverse the progression of the disease. A condition that is characterized by a narrowing of the aortic valve and that affects approximately 150,000 Canadians , aortic valve stenosis is the most common type of heart valve disease in Western countries. The ...

Adrenocorticotropic hormone is recommended worldwide as an initial therapy for infantile spasms. However, infantile spasms in about 50% of children cannot be fully controlled by adrenocorticotropic hormone monotherapy, seizures recur in 33% of patients who initially respond to adrenocorticotropic hormone monotherapy, and side effects are relatively common during adrenocorticotropic hormone treatment. Feiyong Jia and colleagues from the First Hospital of Jilin University used combined therapy with adrenocorticotropic hormone, topiramate, vitamin B6, and immunoglobulin in ...

A recent study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 18, 2013) combined cognition tasks and functional MRI, and designed multiple repeated event-related tasks; additionally, using the International Affective Picture System-based event-related tasks, this study investigated brain functional characteristics of major depressive disorder patients exhibiting, negative bias brain imaging changes and cognitive dysfunction, as well as their relationship based on biased quantitative data. Results show that (1) the number of error responses was calculated to ...

University of Adelaide research has shown new evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded like birds and mammals, not cold-blooded like reptiles as commonly believed. In a paper published in PLoS ONE, Professor Roger Seymour of the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, argues that cold-blooded dinosaurs would not have had the required muscular power to prey on other animals and dominate over mammals as they did throughout the Mesozoic period. "Much can be learned about dinosaurs from fossils but the question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or ...

Singing in a foreign language can significantly improve learning how to speak it, according to a new study. Adults who listened to short Hungarian phrases and then sang them back performed better than those who spoke the phrases, researchers found. People who sang the phrases back also fared better than those who repeated the phrases by speaking them rhythmically. Three randomly assigned groups of twenty adults took part in a series of five tests as part of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Reid School of Music. The singing group ...

IFR microbiologists are reinvigorating a way of battling C. difficile infections that they hope will help overcome the growing problem of antibiotic resistant superbugs in hospitals. Our digestive system is home to trillions of bacteria, which are crucial to our overall health, through helping us digest food and battling potentially harmful microbes. When we take antibiotics to combat bacterial infections these beneficial bacteria can also be killed off, leaving us at risk of infection by harmful bacteria. Clostridium difficile is one of these harmful bacteria and is the ...

A new computational method for working out in advance whether a chemical will be toxic will be reporting in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics. There is increasing pressure on the chemical and related industries to ensure that their products comply with increasing numbers of safety regulations. Providing regulators, intermediary users and consumers with all the necessary information to allow them to make informed choices with respect to use, disposal, recycling, environmental issues and human health issues is critical. Now, ...

The glial scar is the main inhibitor of axon regeneration and functional recovery in the central nervous system. Appropriate dose X-ray irradiation has been shown to inhibit the formation of glial cells, thereby promoting axonal regeneration. In addition, X-rays militate against the death and degeneration of neurons, and improve the recovery of locomotor function following spinal cord injury. However, the optimal treatment time window and dose of X-irradiation for spinal cord injury is still unknown. Prof. Shiqing Feng and colleagues from Tianjin Medical University have ...

Persons with Alzheimer's disease are able to manage their everyday activities longer and they suffer from less psychological and behavioural symptoms if the diagnosis is made and treatment begun at a very early phase of the disease, indicates a recent study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland. The study followed persons with Alzheimer's disease over a course of three years. The study participants were diagnosed either at the very mild or mild phase of the disease and treated within the standard healthcare system. According to the study, persons with a very ...

The plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s lives on today with a different genetic blueprint and an even larger arsenal of weaponry to harm and kill plants. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, North Carolina State University plant pathologist Jean Ristaino and colleagues Mike Martin and Tom Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen compared the genomes, or sets of all genes, of five 19th century strains of the Phytophthora infestans pathogen with modern strains of the pathogen, which still wreaks havoc on potatoes and tomatoes. The ...

A phase 2 EORTC trial for patients with inoperable desmoid-type fibromatosis has shown that moderate dose radiotherapy is an effective treatment for patients with such a rare type of tumor. The study results published in Annals of Oncology show that response after radiation therapy is slow, and that continuing regression is seen even after three years. Dr. Ronald B. Keus, Arnhem Radiotherapy Institute in The Netherlands and Coordinator of this study says, "Although one should still be cautious to use radiotherapy in these young patients, it is important to have shown ...

Most bacteria are able to communicate with each other by secreting signaling molecules. Once the concentration of signals has reached a critical density («the Quorum), the bacteria are able to coordinate their behavior. Only when this critical population density has been reached certain genes are activated that lead to, for example, the formation of biofilms or the expression of virulence factors. Bacteria utilize this so-called «Quorum Sensing» (QS) to synchronize their behavior to regulate functions that benefit the entire population. The most commonly used signaling ...

Researchers from the University of York have demonstrated that the change in cannabis declassification in 2009 has coincided with a significant increase in hospital admissions for cannabis psychosis - rather than the decrease it was intended to produce. The UK Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) divided controlled drugs into three groups – A, B and C – with descending criminal sanctions attached to each class. Cannabis was originally assigned to Group B, but in 2004, it was transferred to the lowest risk group, Group C. In 2009, on the basis of increasing concerns about a link ...

Scientists in Granada, Spain, have patented a new biomaterial that facilitates generating bone tissue—artificial bones in other words—from umbilical cord stem cells . The material, consisting of an activated carbon cloth support for cells that differentiate giving rise to a product that can promote bone growth, has recently been presented at a press conference at the Biomedical Research Centre, Granada. Although the method has not yet been applied with 'in vivo' models, laboratory results are highly promising. In the future, they could help manufacture medicines for the ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — They say a good man is hard to find. Were it not for a newly discovered protein, the X chromosome of a male fruit fly could never be found by a gene-regulating complex that male flies need to develop and survive. And that case is just one example of what the new finding means. More generally, the research provides biologists with a model of how proteins that govern gene transcription find their targets on chromosomes, a process that's essential to healthy cell function and sometimes implicated in disease. The new protein, dubbed CLAMP ...