Good mental health and clear thinking depend upon our ability to store and manipulate thoughts on a sort of "mental sketch pad." In a new study, Yale School of Medicine researchers describe the molecular basis of this ability — the hallmark of human cognition — and describe how a breakdown of the system contributes to diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. "Insults to these highly evolved cortical circuits impair the ability to create and maintain our mental representations of the world, which is the basis of higher cognition," said Amy Arnsten, professor ...

Testimonials and responses to a survey from 375 past teen participants in a Canadian biotechnology competition -- mentored in professional labs by expert scientists -- show a majority of respondents were influenced by the experience to pursue science research studies and careers, offering a model for countries worldwide to advance their health and economic interests. In a survey of 375 past participants by Bioscience Education Canada, which runs the "Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada," 84% said their participation helped determine their field of study or career plan; ...

The most common inherited form of mental retardation and autism, fragile X syndrome, turns some brain cells into chatterboxes, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. The extra talk may make it harder for brain cells to identify and attend to important signals, potentially establishing an intriguing parallel at the cellular level to the attention problems seen in autism. According to the researchers, understanding the effects of this altered signaling will be important to developing successful treatments for fragile X and autism. "We ...

The high cost of medication, stigmatisation and poor acceptance of their condition are causing young adults to take a dangerous approach to managing their asthma, according to new research published today in the journal BMJ Open. In the UK 5.4 million people are currently receiving treatment for asthma: 1.1 million children (one in 11) and 4.3 million adults (one in 12). There were 1,131 deaths from asthma in the UK in 2009. Most asthma deaths are preventable. Despite the availability of effective treatments, poor asthma control is common. The overuse of short-acting ...

A hospital is not the best place to get a good night's sleep, especially in a noisy intensive care unit. It's a cause for concern because studies have shown that a lack of sleep can cause patients to experience delirium—an altered mental state that may delay their recovery and lead to short and long-term confusion and memory problems. A team of doctors, nurses, psychologists and pharmacists in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) at The Johns Hopkins Hospital implemented a project to see if by taking simple steps to reduce nighttime noise, light,and staff interruptions, ...

PITTSBURGH—The Web makes it possible for lots of people to collaborate on projects, but it doesn't make it easy to lead them. A Carnegie Mellon University researcher has developed a new tool that helps leaders see complex, collaborative projects through to completion by redistributing leadership responsibilities. The tool, called Pipeline, makes it easier to assign, critique and track the progress of individual tasks within a project and makes it easy for leaders to delegate responsibility to others. As evidenced by a case study in which Pipeline was used to manage the ...

Electrodes operated into the brain are today used in research and to treat diseases such as Parkinson's. However, their use has been limited by their size. At Lund University in Sweden, researchers have, for the first time, succeeded in implanting an ultrathin nanowire-based electrode and capturing signals from the nerve cells in the brain of a laboratory animal. The researchers work at Lund University's Neuronano Research Centre in an interdisciplinary collaboration between experts in subjects including neurophysiology, biomaterials, electrical measurements and nanotechnology. ...

This press release is available in German. The study published in "Angewandte Chemie" might help to work out strategies for developing potential drugs. As the team of scientist including Markus Zweckstetter and Eckhard Mandelkow report, methylene blue inactivates molecular residues that promote the bonding of tau proteins. Methylene blue is a multi-talented substance with a long history. The synthetic compound was first produced in 1876, and since then has served not only as a blue dye, but also as a medical drug – for example to treat malaria and prevent urinary ...

A study conducted at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada, has revealed that bilingual children develop a better working memory –which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time– than monolingual children. The working memory plays a major role in the execution of a wide range of activities, such as mental calculation (since we have to remember numbers and operate with them) or reading comprehension (given that it requires associating the successive concepts in a text). The objective of this study –which was published ...

New research shows that people can recover from poor performance when rivals comment on their failures. The research, to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, shows that while criticism from team members sends individuals into downward performance spirals, external criticism can be a trigger that boosts performance as people try to prove the outsiders wrong. The research carried out by the University of Exeter, Amherst College and the University of Stirling offers a method of improving performance following setbacks and can be applied both in the ...

Physicists have gained new insights into the inner intricacies of the structural variations of metallic nanoclusters. This work by Luca Pavan, Cono Di Paola and Francesca Baletto from King's College London, UK, is about to be published in EPJ D. It takes us one step closer to tailoring on-demand characteristics of metallic nanoparticles. Indeed, the geometric structure of these nanoclusters influences their chemical and physical properties, which differ from those of individual molecules and of bulk metals. The problem resides in the difficulty in evaluating the optimal ...

Both AMD, which affects around 50 million people worldwide, and aHUS, a rare kidney disease that affects children, are associated with incorrectly controlled immune systems. A protein called complement factor H (CFH) is responsible for regulating part of our immune system called the complement cascade. Genetic alterations in CFH have been shown to increase a person's risk of developing either AMD or aHUS, but rarely both. Why this is the case has never been explained until now. Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research and the Ophthalmology and ...

The DNA, just like hair, has a tendency to become knotted, thus it may be useful to disentangle it. Unfortunately, it is not possible to "actively" choose at random (or better, in one solution) the filaments with the desired features, and this is why scientists adopt "passive" solutions like, for instance, having the DNA pass through nano-pores or nano-channels. "Channels and filaments have physical features we may exploit to selectively let a type of molecule pass through" explains Micheletti. "You can have more or less entangled filaments and featuring knots of different ...

Luis Hueso, the CICnanoGUNE researcher, together with researchers from the University of Cambridge, among others, has developed a new technology in the magnetic cooling of chips based on the straining of materials. Compared with the current technologies, this advance enables the impact on the environment to be lessened. The work has been published recently in the prestigious journal Nature Materials. Current cooling systems, be they refrigerators, freezers or air conditioning units, make use of the compression and expansion of a gas. When the gas is compressed, it changes ...

Scientists are reporting development of what they describe as the first self-healing protective coating for cracks in concrete, the world's most widely used building material. Their study on the material — which is inexpensive and environmentally friendly — appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Chan-Moon Chung and colleagues explain that protecting concrete roads, bridges and other structures from developing tiny cracks has been a major technological challenge. Cracks allow water, salt used for deicing and air to enter the concrete. During winter ...

WASHINGTON -- The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved and improved millions of lives worldwide and offered proof that HIV/AIDS services can be effectively delivered on a large scale even in countries with high rates of disease and resource constraints, says a new congressionally mandated evaluation conducted by the Institute of Medicine. Moving forward, PEPFAR needs to intensify efforts to help its partner countries develop the capacity to manage their own programs, sustain the gains that have been made in controlling the HIV epidemic, and improve ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2013— Digital cameras, medical scanners, and other imaging technologies have advanced considerably during the past decade. Continuing this pace of innovation, an Austrian research team has developed an entirely new way of capturing images based on a flat, flexible, transparent, and potentially disposable polymer sheet. The team describes their new device and its possible applications in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express. The new imager, which resembles a flexible plastic film, uses fluorescent ...

New Rochelle, NY, February 20, 2013–Reducing financial barriers to medication access—a strategy known as value-based insurance design (VBID)—can improve medication adherence and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes. The economic and patient-perceived benefits of eliminating co-payments for diabetes-related medications and supplies are described in a trend-setting study published in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population Health Management website at http://www.liebertpub.com/pop. In ...

A bright blue pigment used 5,000 years ago is giving modern scientists clues toward the development of new nanomaterials with potential uses in state-of-the-art medical imaging devices, remote controls for televisions, security inks and other technology. That's the conclusion of an article on the pigment, Egyptian blue, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Tina T. Salguero and colleagues point out that Egyptian blue, regarded as humanity's first artificial pigment, was used in paintings on tombs, statues and other objects throughout the ancient Mediterranean ...

It may be the 21st century, with all its technological marvels, but 6 out of every 10 people on Earth still do not have access to flush toilets or other adequate sanitation that protects the user and the surrounding community from harmful health effects, a new study has found. The research, published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, says the number of people without access to improved sanitation is almost double the previous estimate. amie Bartram and colleagues explain that the current definition of "improved sanitation" focuses on separating humans ...

Why do straight women and gay men form close relationships with one another? A new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests the glue that cements these unique relationships is honest, unbiased relationship advice. The study, published online in the February issue of Evolutionary Psychology, is the first to provide empirical evidence that the emotional closeness shared by straight women and gay men is rooted in the absence of deceptive mating motivations. "Friendships between straight women and gay men are free of hidden mating agendas," says ...

The research was published early in the January issue of the journal Technology in Cancer Research and Treatment. The article describes experiments using ultrasonic molecular imaging (USMI) and Dynamic Contrast Enhanced-Perfusion Imaging (DCE-PI) to measure response to therapy for pancreatic cancer. Paul Dayton, PhD, senior author says, "What we found is that using two non-invasive technologies, we can detect response to therapy earlier than by relying on tumor volume changes. Having new non-invasive, inexpensive technologies available to measure response to therapy earlier ...

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 19, 2013 – A new study published online today in the American Journal of Managed Care found that in Medicare Part D, generic drug coverage was cost-saving compared to no coverage in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, while also improving health outcomes. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health, and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC note that policymakers and insurers should consider generic-only coverage, rather than no gap coverage, to both conserve health care resources ...

With biomedical scientists struggling to collect and analyze millions of gigabytes of data in their efforts to improve human health, the National Institutes of Health has launched a $700 million project to develop a common data-sharing framework and start training future scientists to tap that gold mine of information. That's the topic of a story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Britt E. Erickson, C&EN senior editor, explains that biomedical researchers ...

The tropics are home to an extraordinary diversity of insect species. How great is it, exactly? We do not know, but today, researchers at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History published a study on tropical beetles that can help us progress towards an answer to this question. The paper was published in the open access, peer-reviewed journal Zookeys. Entomologists Michael Caterino and Alexey Tishechkin have named 138 new species within the genus Operclipygus (the name refers to their clamshell-like rear end), thereby increasing the size of the genus over six times. ...