During depression, the brain becomes less plastic and adaptable, and thus less able to perform certain tasks, like storing memories. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now traced the brain's lower plasticity to reduced functionality in its support cells, and believe that learning more about these cells can pave the way for radical new therapies for depression. "We were able to cure memory dysfunction in 'depressed' rats by giving them doses of D-serine," says Mia Lindskog, biologist and Assistant Professor at Karolinska Institutet's ...

Providing clean delivery kits and improving birthing practices could halve the number of neonatal deaths following home births in South Asia, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. Around half a million babies die in the first month of life from sepsis and around a third of these infections are transmitted at the time of birth. In South Asia, more than half of deliveries occur at home, most without skilled birth attendance. Maintaining clean delivery practices at home can be challenging for mothers and their birthing companions. One way to potentially ...

Amsterdam, February 28, 2012 - Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today the publication of an important clinical guide from the European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) in the February issue of Maturitas. This clinical guide details the role of selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) against postmenopausal osteoporosis as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the use of bazedoxifene and lasofoxifene. Postmenopausal osteoporosis and resulting fractures have a major ...

They achieved this by utilising the phenomena of objects moving slower and shortening in length from Einstein's theory of relativity, along with two pieces of gold foil and a micrometre screw. In Niels Bohr's model of the atom, electrons orbit the nucleus in 'shells' – the so-called stationary states. Light is emitted by a quantum leap between a high-lying shell and one nearer the nucleus. However, it is impossible to find the electron between the two shells, so it could be thought that the light emission process itself was instantaneous: the electron is in the outer shell ...

When the Icelandic banking system was privatised in 2003, it inaugurated a period of furious expansion of both loans and risky investments. The bubble burst in 2008. At that time, the nominal assets of the three largest banks was 14 times bigger than Iceland's entire GDP. The crash shook Icelandic society to its foundations with mass bankruptcy, drastic increases in unemployment, loss of savings, increased indebtedness and raised taxes. Deteriorating health care and emigration of highly educated people are other consequences that will affect Iceland for a long time to ...

Blue Tax Inc. announced that they have reached an agreement with Professional Bull Rider Ryan Dirteater to be his Official Helmet Sponsor. Blue Tax Inc. will activate the partnership through a camera-visible rider's helmet during the PBR's Built Ford Tough Series events in Glendale, Ariz.; Indianapolis; Uncasville, Conn.; Boise, Idaho; and Pueblo, Colo. Blue Tax will provide three custom-painted helmets for Dirteater to wear during his quest to win the PBR World Championship. "Blue Tax Inc. approached me and said that I was a rider that they wanted to put ...

Several specific regions of our brains are activated in a two-part process when we are exposed to deceptive advertising, according to new research conducted by a North Carolina State University professor. The work opens the door to further research that could help us understand how brain injury and aging may affect our susceptibility to fraud or misleading marketing. The study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to capture images of the brain while study participants were shown a series of print advertisements. The fMRI images allowed researchers to ...

We make our eye movements earlier or later in order to coordinate with movements of our arms, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their study, which appears in the journal Neuron, points to a mechanism in the brain that allows for this coordination and may have implications for rehabilitation and prosthetics. Researchers have sought to understand the neurological processes behind eye and arm movements. For example, when you reach for an object, what goes on in our brains so that our eyes and arms are in sync? Such coordination is central to the way different ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Nearly one in three women who have breast cancer surgery will need to return to the operating room for additional surgery after the tumor is evaluated by a pathologist. A new service at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center cuts that number drastically by having pathologists on-site in the operating suite to assess tumors and lymph nodes immediately after they are removed. Meanwhile, the surgeon and patient remain in the operating room until the results are back, and any additional operating can be done immediately. This cut the number ...

According to a 2003 study by German and American scientists, a component of the Lily of the Valley scent known as Bourgeonal alters the calcium balance of human sperm and attracts the sperm. The "Lily of the Valley phenomenon" – also the title of a book about smelling – was born as a result of this discovery that sperm act as swimming olfactory cells which follow a "scent trail" laid by the egg. However, a detailed explanation for the Lily of the Valley phenomenon remained illusive as neither Bourgeonal nor other scents could be identified in the female sex organ. Scientists ...

Fanz Media Group Inc. announced today the launch of fanz.com a social network specifically focused on sports enthusiasts. Web and social media experts, and the gurus of sports media have come together to create the ultimate network of sports fans. Fanz.com is an open forum specifically for any and every sport. Any sport you can think of, fanz.com instantly connects you with the multimedia and social streams and allows instant interaction with other sports fans from around the globe. Fanz.com is a sports network that provides one click content feeds and real time interaction ...

Parents may be misinformed during prenatal scans on whether their twins are identical or non-identical, say UCL researchers in a new commentary piece published today (29 February) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Determining if same-sex twins are identical or non-identical (from one egg or two; monozygotic or dizygotic) is not always straight forward, say the researchers. They looked at data from the Gemini study, a birth cohort of 2402 families with twins born in England and Wales in 2007. Parents of same sex twins (1586) were asked ...

The bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes atypical pneumonia, is helping scientists uncover how cells make the most of limited resources. By measuring all the proteins this bacterium produces, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and collaborators, have found that the secret is fine-tuning. Like a mechanic can fine-tune a car after it has left the factory, cells have ways to tweak proteins, changing their chemical properties after production – so-called post-translational modifications. Anne-Claude Gavin, Peer ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Often faced with overwhelming anxiety, patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer can find themselves in distress, and new research recommends nurses play a key role in alleviating concerns, leading to a better quality of life for patients. A diagnosis of lung cancer – the leading cause of cancer death in the United States – brings with it high levels of stress and raises existential issues and death-related thoughts and concerns in patients, said Rebecca H. Lehto, assistant professor in the College of Nursing at Michigan State University. In a ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Rising sea levels are likely to change Southern California beaches in the coming century, but not in ways you might expect. While some beaches may shrink or possibly disappear, others are poised to remain relatively large -- leaving an uneven distribution of economic gains and losses for coastal beach towns, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and five other institutions. "Some beaches actually stand to benefit economically from sea level rise, creating winners and losers among California beach towns," said Linwood Pendleton, director ...

Trying to make a big decision while you're also preparing for a scary presentation? You might want to hold off on that. Feeling stressed changes how people weigh risk and reward. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews how, under stress, people pay more attention to the upside of a possible outcome. It's a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right, says Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, who cowrote the new review paper ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Women gradually use condoms less frequently during their first year of college, according to a new study by researchers from The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. This was particularly true for women who binge drink, have lower grade point averages or come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The findings, published online in the Journal of Sex Research, offer some of the first clues to how condom use changes during the college years – a time when young people are sexually active and use condoms inconsistently. "We ...

Obesity is considered the leading preventable cause of death worldwide — until you reach old age, that is. Though obesity increases the risk of an early death, shaving an average of six to seven years off a person's lifespan, Tel Aviv University researchers have found that this trend may reverse itself after the age of 85. In these people, excess fat seems to have a "protective" effect, decreasing the risk of death when compared to those who are considered at a normal body weight. When we reach a very old age, some of the factors that affect mortality in younger people ...

The quest for treatments for motor neurone disease, spinal cord injury and strokes could be helped by new research that shows how key cells are produced. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have been able to manipulate the production of motor neurones – which control all muscle activity – in zebrafish. Zebrafish are important in helping scientists understand how motor neurones are produced, because unlike mammals, they are able to create new motor neurones as adults. Humans can generate motor neurones during embryonic development but lose the ability to generate ...

A UT Dallas professor is studying the differences between the social impairments found in autism and schizophrenia to help develop better treatments for people with both disorders. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia are distinct disorders with unique characteristics, but they share similarities in social dysfunction. For many years, this similarity resulted in confusion in diagnosis. Many young people with ASD were thought to have a childhood version of schizophrenia, said Dr. Noah Sasson, assistant professor in the UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain ...

Using genome sequencing and household surveillance, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center and St. George's University of London have pieced together how a newly emerging type of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has adapted to transmit more easily among humans. Their new study underscores the need for vigilance in surveillance of S. aureus. A methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strain known as livestock-associated (LA)-ST398 is a cause of severe infections in people in Europe who have close contact ...

A physical activity and diet program implemented by health educators working in a doctor's office may be a more effective way to get obese people to lose abdominal fat than advice from a doctor alone, according to a study from Queen's University. Most primary care physicians do not have the time to provide high-intensity behavioral counseling to their patients, says the report by Robert Ross, a professor from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. "The cornerstone of health care delivery is the doctor's office and the doctor doesn't have a lot of time to counsel ...

A new study reveals for the first time that activating the brain's visual cortex with a small amount of electrical stimulation actually improves our sense of smell. The finding published in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital - The Neuro, McGill University and the Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, revises our understanding of the complex biology of the senses in the brain. "It's known that there are separate specialized brain areas for the different senses such as vision, smell, touch and so forth ...

People with heart disease may not be able to compensate for their bodies' higher demand for oxygen when inhaling cold air, according to Penn State researchers, making snow shoveling and other activities dangerous for some. "This study can help us understand why cold air is such a trigger for coronary events," said Lawrence I. Sinoway, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and director of the Heart and Vascular Institute, Penn State College of Medicine. Breathing cold air during exercise can cause uneven oxygen distribution throughout the heart. But a healthy body generally ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal, February 28, 2012 - We depend on a barrage of standardized tests to assess everything from aptitude to intelligence. But do they provide an accurate forecast when it comes to something as complex as language? A study by Diane Pesco, an assistant professor in Concordia's Department of Education, and co-author Daniela O'Neill, published earlier this year in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, shows that the Language Use Inventory (LUI) does. Developed by O'Neill at the University of Waterloo, the ...