BOSTON, MA -- The genes activated for human speech are similar to the ones used by singing songbirds, new experiments suggest. These results, which are not yet published, show that gene products produced for speech in the cortical and basal ganglia regions of the human brain correspond to similar molecules in the vocal communication areas of the brains of zebra finches and budgerigars. But these molecules aren't found in the brains of doves and quails -- vocal birds that do not learn their sounds. "The results suggest that similar behavior and neural connectivity for ...

VIDEO: A pair of studies published by Cell Press on February 14th in the journal Cell sheds new light on genetic variation that may have played a key role in human... Click here for more information. A pair of studies published by Cell Press on February 14th in the journal Cell sheds new light on genetic variation that may have played a key role in human evolution. The study researchers used an animal model to study a gene variant that could have helped humans adapt to humid ...

Babies as young as seven months can distinguish between, and begin to learn, two languages with vastly different grammatical structures, according to new research from the University of British Columbia and Université Paris Descartes. Published today in the journal Nature Communications and presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, the study shows that infants in bilingual environments use pitch and duration cues to discriminate between languages – such as English and Japanese – with opposite word ...

The first animal model of recent human evolution reveals that a single mutation produced several traits common in East Asian peoples, from thicker hair to denser sweat glands, an international team of researchers reports. The team, led by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fudan University and University College London, also modeled the spread of the gene mutation across Asia and North America, concluding that it most likely arose about 30,000 years ago in what is today ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Recurrent bladder infections, which are especially common among women, may result from a defect among the bladder's immune fighters that keeps them from remembering previous bacterial infections. The immune memory lapse can hamper a timely and effective attack, according to researchers at Duke Medicine and Duke-National University of Singapore. Their study, which involved mice, may provide a new route to develop vaccines and treatments for urinary tract infections, which are the second-most common infection and account for more than 8 million health care ...

A research team from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has discovered an approach that could make gene therapy dramatically more effective for patients. Led by professor Eric Arts, PhD, the scientists discovered that the process of gene therapy is missing essential elements thereby reducing the effectiveness of this treatment. Re-introducing this element into their model system suggests that improvements for gene therapy areon the horizon. The findings are detailed in the article, "A new genomic RNA packaging element in retroviruses and the interplay ...

BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE, Mass.––Tumors are not factories for the mass production of identical cancer cells, but are, in reality, patchworks of cells with different patterns of gene mutations. In a new study, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute show, more fully than ever before, how these mutations shift and evolve over time in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) – providing a strobe-like look at the genetic past, present, and future of CLL tumors. Their report, which will be published online today by the journal Cell, suggests that evolution ...

Gene wars rage inside our cells, with invading DNA regularly threatening to subvert our human blueprint. Now, building on Nobel-Prize-winning findings, UC San Francisco researchers have discovered a molecular machine that helps protect a cell's genes against these DNA interlopers. The machine, named SCANR, recognizes and targets foreign DNA. The UCSF team identified it in yeast, but given the similarity of yeast and human cells, comparable mechanisms might also be found in humans, where they might serve to lower the burden of inherited human disease and death, the researchers ...

Teaching children about the environment can affect the knowledge and behaviour of their parents, according to new research. Scientists from Imperial College London surveyed the families of 160 schoolchildren in the Seychelles, some of whom took part in educational activities about the island's valuable wetland resources. They found that the parents of children who took part in the wetland activities were more knowledgeable about wetlands and, were more inclined to undertake 'environmentally friendly' behaviours such as conserving water in their homes. The findings ...

Supposedly 'primitive' reflexes may involve more sophisticated brain function than previously thought, according to researchers at Imperial College London. The Vestibular-Ocular Reflex (or VOR), common to most vertebrates, is what allows us to keep our eyes focused on a fixed point even while our heads are moving. Up until now, scientists had assumed this reflex was controlled by the lower brainstem, which regulates eating, sleeping and other low-level tasks. Researchers at Imperial's Division of Brain Sciences conducted tests to examine this reflex in left- and right-handed ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists at the Georgia Regents University Cancer Center have identified an Indian plant, used for centuries to treat inflammation, fever and malaria, that could help kill cancer cells. Cancer cells typically avoid death by hijacking molecular chaperones that guide and protect the proteins that ensure normal cellular function and then tricking them into helping mutated versions of those proteins stay alive, says Dr. Ahmed Chadli, a researcher in the Molecular Chaperone Program at the GRU Cancer Center and senior author of the study named the Journal ...

LOS ANGELES (Feb. 14, 2013) – New research from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) found a progestogen-only treatment halted bleeding in women suffering from extremely heavy periods, according to the study published online by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "Excessive uterine bleeding is a common problem we see in gynecological practices and emergency rooms. It can interfere with women's daily activities and put them at risk for anemia and other more serious health consequences caused by blood loss," said Anita L. Nelson, MD, ...

Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability – a new study by University of Melbourne researchers has found. Associate Professor Neil McLachlan from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences said previous theories about how we appreciate music were based on the physical properties of sound, the ear itself and an innate ability to hear harmony. "Our study shows that musical harmony can be learnt and it is a matter of training the brain to hear the sounds," Associate Professor McLachlan said. "So if you thought ...

Dogs pick out faces of other dogs, irrespective of breeds, among human and other domestic and wild animal faces and can group them into a category of their own. They do that using visual cues alone, according to new research by Dr. Dominique Autier-Dérian from the LEEC and National Veterinary School in Lyon in France and colleagues. Their work, the first to test dogs' ability to discriminate between species and form a "dog" category in spite of the huge variability within the dog species, is published online in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. Individuals from the ...

Aalto University researchers in Finland have successfully connected a superconducting quantum bit, or qubit, with a micrometer-sized drum head. Thus they transferred information from the qubit to the resonator and back again. - This work represents the first step towards creating exotic mechanical quantum states. For example, the transfer makes it possible to create a state in which the resonator simultaneously vibrates and doesn't vibrate, says professor Mika Sillanpää from Aalto University, who runs the research group. A qubit is the quantum-mechanical equivalent ...

Microbes present in the gut can affect the severity of kidney disease brought on by melamine poisoning, according to an international study led by Professor Wei Jia at the University of North Carolina in collaboration with the research group of Professor Jeremy Nicholson at Imperial College London. In 2008, nearly 300,000 Chinese children were hospitalised with kidney disease brought on by supplies of powdered milk deliberately contaminated with melamine to boost the apparent protein content. Although melamine was known to combine with uric acid in the children's bodies ...

How green algae produce hydrogen in the dark is reported by biologists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry". Hereby, they have uncovered a mechanism for the production of the gas which has hardly been examined before; usually, researchers are interested in light-driven hydrogen synthesis. "Hydrogen could help us out of the energy crisis", says Prof. Dr. Thomas Happe, head of the working group Photobiotechnology. "If you want to make green algae produce more hydrogen, it is important to understand all the production pathways." Green algae ...

Philadelphia, PA, February 14, 2013 – The 18th century natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that the necks of giraffes lengthened as a consequence of the cumulative effort, across generations, to reach leaves just out of their grasp. This view of evolution was largely abandoned with the advent of modern genetic theories to explain the transmission of most important traits and many medical illnesses across generations. However, there has long been the impression that major life events, like psychological traumas, not only have effects on individuals who directly ...

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 14, 2013 – Adults undergoing bariatric surgery who are more physically active are less likely to have depressive symptoms and to have recently received medication or counseling for depression or anxiety than their less active counterparts, according to new research led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. "Typically, clinical professionals manage their patients' depression and anxiety with counseling and/or antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication," said Wendy C. King, Ph.D., epidemiologist at Pitt Public Health and lead ...

(WASHINGTON)- While advancements in cancer treatment over the last several decades have improved patient survival rates for certain cancers, some patients remain at risk of developing treatment-related leukemia, according to results of a study published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Chemotherapy is often a highly effective treatment for cancer, but certain drugs have also been shown in a range of studies to increase a patient's risk of developing therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (tAML), a rare but frequently fatal ...

Scientists investigating how certain genes affect an individual's risk of developing coronary heart disease have identified a new therapeutic target, according to research published today in The American Journal of Human Genetics. They have discovered that an enzyme known as ADAMTS7 plays a crucial role in the build-up of cells in the coronary arteries which lead to coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease (also known as coronary artery disease) is the nation's biggest killer, with around 94,000 deaths in the UK each year*. The condition happens when the blood ...

For the first time scientists studying the cellular processes underlying the body's response to healing have revealed how a flash of calcium is the very first step in repairing damaged tissue. The findings, published in Current Biology, could lead to new therapies that speed up the healing process following injury or surgery. Until recently, very little was known about how damaged tissue activates and attracts the first white blood cells to the wound — the first stage in the healing process. However, researchers from the University of Bristol's School of Biochemistry ...

Mice with many of the pathologies of Alzheimer's Disease showed fewer signs of the disease when given a protein-restricted diet supplemented with specific amino acids every other week for four months. Mice at advanced stages of the disease were put on the new diet. They showed improved cognitive abilities over their non-dieting peers when their memory was tested using mazes. In addition, fewer of their neurons contained abnormal levels of a damaged protein, called "tau," which accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Dietary protein is the major dietary regulator ...

Utilizing optical characteristics first demonstrated by the ancient Romans, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a novel, ultra-sensitive tool for chemical, DNA, and protein analysis. "With this device, the nanoplasmonic spectroscopy sensing, for the first time, becomes colorimetric sensing, requiring only naked eyes or ordinary visible color photography," explained Logan Liu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering at Illinois. "It can be used for chemical imaging, biomolecular imaging, ...

The first animal model of recent human evolution reveals that a single mutation produced several traits common in East Asian peoples, from thicker hair to denser sweat glands, an international team of researchers report. The team, led by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fudan University and University College London, also modeled the spread of the gene mutation across Asia and North America, concluding that it most likely arose about 30,000 years ago in what is today central ...