A strong international collaboration and a single patient with mild muscle disease and severe cognitive impairment have allowed University of Iowa researchers to identify a new gene mutation that causes muscular dystrophy. Furthermore, by engineering the human gene mutation into a mouse, the researchers, led by Kevin Campbell, Ph.D., professor and head of molecular physiology and biophysics at the UI Carver College of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, have created a new mouse model that could help screen potential drugs to treat this type of ...

What happened to being "quiet as a mouse"? Researchers have recently shown that, rather than being the silent creatures of popular belief, mice emit ultrasonic calls in a variety of social contexts, and these calls have song-like characteristics. So if mice sing, where do they get their music? Are they born with the songs fully formed in their heads, or do they learn them from their peers? This question is of great interest to scientists as, while many organisms produce genetically regulated vocalizations, only a select few species (such as ourselves) can actually learn ...

Neena Singh, MD, PhD and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified the first disease-specific biomarker for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), a universally fatal, degenerative brain disease for which there is no cure. sCJD is one of the causes of dementia and typically leads to death within a year of disease onset. The finding, published in the March 9th issue of PLoS ONE, a scientific journal produced by the Public Library of Science, provides a basis for developing a test to diagnosis sCJD while patients are still alive. ...

A new study demonstrates that specific traits that distinguish humans from their closest living relatives – chimpanzees, with whom we share 96 percent of our DNA – can be attributed to the loss of chunks of DNA that control when and where certain genes are turned on. The finding mirrors accumulating evidence from other species that changes to regulatory regions of DNA – rather than to the genes themselves – underlie many of the new features that organisms acquire through evolution. Seeking specific genetic changes that might be responsible for the evolution of uniquely ...

Cerebrospinal fluid—the clear and watery substance that bathes the brain and spinal cord—is much more important to brain development than previously realized. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Christopher Walsh, his postdoctoral fellow Maria Lehtinen, former student Mauro Zappaterra, and their colleagues have discovered that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) contains a complex mix of proteins that changes dramatically with age. In the lab, CSF by itself is enough to support the growth of neural stem cells, and this effect is particularly robust in young brains. What's ...

Scientists have shed light on why some people are apple-shaped and others are pear-shaped. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have pinpointed a protein that plays a part in how fat is stored in the body. The latest findings give greater understanding of how the protein works, which could help development of medicines to treat obesity. Levels of the protein – known as 11BetaHSD1 – tend to be higher in the presence of an unhealthy type of body fat which tends to be stored around the torso – typical of "apple-shapes". Healthier fat, linked to lower levels ...

Movement disorders such as Parkinson's diseases and dystonia are caused by abnormal neural activity of the basal ganglia located deep in the brain. The basal ganglia are connected to the cerebral cortex in the brain surface through complex neural circuits. Their basic structure and connections, as well as the dysfunctions in movement disorders, have been examined extensively by using experimental animals. On the other hand, little is known about the human brain that is much more complex in either normal or diseased states. An international joint research team led by ...

Growing numbers of people enjoy listening to music on portable music players or cell phones, and many tend to turn up the volume, especially in noisy surroundings. In a study published March 2, 2011 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, researchers explore the potential effects of this behavior on hearing. The study was a collaboration between Drs. Hidehiko Okamoto and Ryusuke Kakigi from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, and Drs. Christo Pantev and Henning Teismann from the University of Muenster. The researchers demonstrated that listening to ...

A study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has shown that the body's ability to break down medicines may be closely related to exposure to sunlight, and thus may vary with the seasons. The findings offer a completely new model to explain individual differences in the effects of drugs, and how the surroundings can influence the body's ability to deal with toxins. The study will be published in the scientific journal Drug Metabolism & Disposition and is based on nearly 70,000 analyses from patients who have undergone regular monitoring of the levels ...

Milan, Italy, 9 March 2011 – The Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once wrote in his autobiographical book (What do you care what other people think?): "When I see equations, I see letters in colors - I don't know why […] And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students." This neurological phenomenon is known to psychologists as synaesthesia and Feynman's experience of "seeing" the letters in colour was a specific form known today as "grapheme-colour" synaesthesia. What is perhaps most puzzling about this condition is that people actually claim to ...

MINNEAPOLS / ST. PAUL (March 9, 2011) – University of Minnesota researchers are using salmonella – the bacteria commonly transmitted through food that sickens thousands of U.S. residents each year – to do what was once unthinkable: help people. U of M Masonic Cancer Center researchers believe salmonella may be a valuable tool in the fight against cancer in organs surrounding the gut – such as the liver, spleen, and colon – since that's where salmonella naturally infects the body. Researchers want to "weaponize" salmonella, allowing the bacteria to then attack cancer ...

Cardiff University astronomers believe that a young star's long "napping" could trigger the formation of a second generation of smaller stars and planets orbiting around it. It has long been suspected that the build up of material onto young stars is not continuous but happens in episodic events, resulting in short outbursts of energy from these stars. However, this has been largely ignored in models of star formation. Now, by developing advanced computer models to simulate the behaviour of young stars, Cardiff University Astrophysicists Dr Dimitris Stamatellos and ...

The reduced risk of colorectal cancer associated with taking aspirin or other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may be confined to individuals already at risk because of elevations in a particular inflammatory factor in the blood. In a paper in the March issue of Gastroenterology, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report finding that higher baseline levels of a novel inflammatory marker indicated increased risk of developing colorectal tumors and also predicted who might benefit from taking aspirin or NSAIDs. ...

Milan, Italy, 9 March 2011 – Consider the simple situation in which you are walking around the kitchen and decide to pick up your own cup of tea, which is identical to others lying on the table. Your brain chooses the correct cup of tea by using different types of information that you have stored about the position of the cup in relation to the kitchen table. The information can be represented in qualitative terms (left, right, above, below) or quantitative terms (distances and angles). Previous studies have claimed that the brain's left hemisphere is critical for processing ...

Milan, Italy, 9 March 2011 – Human social interactions are shaped by our ability to recognise people. Faces and voices are known to be some of the key features that enable us to identify individual people, and they are rich in information such as gender, age, and body size, that lead to a unique identity for a person. A large body of neuropsychological and neuroimaging research has already determined the various brain regions responsible for face recognition and voice recognition separately, but exactly how our brain goes about combining the two different types of information ...

A history of alcohol abuse significantly impacts quality of life for patients after liver transplant, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital. "Transplant recipients with alcoholic cirrhosis experienced less improvement in physical quality of life and reported greater pain and physical limitations than non-alcoholics after transplant surgery," says Anne Eshelman, Ph.D., Henry Ford Behavioral Health Services, lead author of the study. "Understanding alcoholic and nonalcoholic patients' post-transplant change in quality of life may assist in treatment planning. ...

Increased imports often mean cheaper products for EU consumers and greater opportunities for producers in other countries to export their products, but also increased competition for EU producers. "I have compared various product groups and found that the effects of a reduction in tariffs would be different for fruit and vegetables and for cereals", says Cecilia Hammarlund, who is behind the report Handel med hinder – effekter av tullar på EU:s jordbruksimport (Trade with obstacles – effects of tariffs on EU agricultural imports). The study shows that an average reduction ...

As many as 100 million Americans may currently be misclassified as having abnormal blood pressure, according to Dr. Brent Taylor from the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. Their findings1 show that these people are not actually more likely to die prematurely than those with 'normal' blood pressure, i.e. below 120/80. Taylor and colleagues' article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer, also shows that in those under 50, diastolic blood pressure* is the more important predictor ...

Our brains process many more stimuli than we become aware of. Often images enter our brain without being noticed: visual information is being processed, but does not reach consciousness, that is, we do not have an impression of it. Then, what is the difference between conscious and unconscious perception, and can both forms of perception be changed through practice? These questions are important not only for basic research, but also for the treatment of patients with perceptual deficits due to brain lesions e.g. following a stroke. Scientists at the MPI for Brain Research ...

For people, being touched can initiate many different reactions from comfort to discomfort, from intimacy to aggression. But how might people react if they were touched by a robot? Would they recoil, or would they take it in stride? In an initial study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found people generally had a positive response toward being touched by a robotic nurse, but that their perception of the robot's intent made a significant difference. The research is being presented today at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. "What ...

Quebec City, March 9, 2011 – Another step has been taken in matter imaging. By using very short flashes of light produced by a technology developed at the national infrastructure Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) located at INRS University, researchers have obtained groundbreaking information on the electronic structure of atoms and molecules by observing for the first time ever electronic correlations using the method of high harmonic generation (HHG). Made by a team of researchers from the Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications Center of INRS and the National Research ...

This release is available in Spanish. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are working to give melon growers some relief from cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus, or CYSDV. In 2006, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant pathologist Bill Wintermantel with the U.S. Agricultural Research Station in Salinas, Calif., and university colleagues identified the plant disease that growers in California's Imperial Valley and nearby Yuma, Ariz., noticed was spreading through their cucurbit fields. Cucurbit crops affected included cantaloupe and honeydew melons. ARS ...

This release is available in German. Proteins are the most important functional biomolecules in nature with numerous applications in life science research, biotechnology and medicine. So how can they be modified in the most effective way to attain certain desired properties? In the past, the modifications were usually carried out either chemically or via genetic engineering. The team of Professor Arne Skerra from the TUM Chair of Biological Chemistry has now developed a more elegant combined solution: By extending the otherwise universal genetic code, the scientists are ...

To the surprisingly inventive uses for banana peels — which include polishing silverware, leather shoes, and the leaves of house plants — scientists have added purification of drinking water contaminated with potentially toxic metals. Their report, which concludes that minced banana peel performs better than an array of other purification materials, appears in ACS's journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Gustavo Castro and colleagues note that mining processes, runoff from farms, and industrial wastes can all put heavy metals, such as lead and copper, into ...

Scientists are reporting an "important step" toward development of a universal blood product that would eliminate the need to "type" blood to match donor and recipient before transfusions. A report on the "immunocamouflage" technique, which hides blood cells from antibodies that could trigger a potentially fatal immune reaction that occurs when blood types do not match, appears in the ACS journal, Biomacromolecules. Maryam Tabrizian and colleagues note that blood transfusions require a correct match between a donor and the recipient's blood. This can be a tricky proposition ...