LA JOLLA, CA-By comparing a clearly defined visual input with the electrical output of the retina, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies were able to trace for the first time the neuronal circuitry that connects individual photoreceptors with retinal ganglion cells, the neurons that carry visuals signals from the eye to the brain. Their measurements, published in the Oct. 7, 2010, issue of the journal Nature, not only reveal computations in a neural circuit at the elementary resolution of individual neurons but also shed light on the neural code used ...

Scientists have discovered a mechanism which raises blood pressure in pre-eclampsia, a potentially deadly condition which occurs during pregnancy. After 20 years of research, scientists from the University of Cambridge have now cracked the first step in the main process that controls blood pressure. Their findings, published today in the journal Nature, are likely to have significant implications for the treatment of pre-eclampsia as well as high blood pressure (also known as hypertension). Blood pressure is controlled by hormones called angiotensins, which cause ...

A systematic review of research into the use of nutritional supplements for the treatment of anxiety disorders has found strong evidence for the use of extracts of passionflower or kava and combinations of L-lysine and L-arginine. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access Nutrition Journal pooled the results of 24 studies involving a total of more than 2000 participants, showing that some nutritional and herbal supplements can be effective, without the risk of serious side effects. The research was carried out by Shaheen Lakhan and Karen Vieira from the Global ...

Mums who are often angry or irritated and those who suppress their emotional expressions can worsen the severity of their children's asthma symptoms, especially when the children are younger. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine studied 223 mothers for a year , investigating how their stress levels, coping styles and parenting styles were associated with their 2 to 12 year old children's disease status. Jun Nagano, from the Kyushu University Institute of Health Science, Fukuoka, Japan, worked with a team of researchers ...

An exciting collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham has resulted in new insights into the hypertension that frequently blights pregnancy. The results, published in the journal Nature [online 6th October], describe the solving of the first step in the principal process that controls blood pressure — the release of the hormone angiotensin from its source protein, angiotensinogen. Every day, millions of people are treated with drugs which either block the production of angiotensin, (ACE inhibitors), or stop it from taking effect in the body once ...

Almost 50 percent of patients undergoing orthopedic surgery have vitamin D deficiency that should be corrected before surgery to improve patient outcomes, based on a study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City. Vitamin D is essential for bone healing and muscle function and is critical for a patient's recovery. The study appears in the October issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. "In the perfect world, test levels, fix and then operate," said Joseph Lane, M.D., professor of Orthopedic Surgery and chief of the Metabolic Bone Disease ...

A team of Spanish scientists followed the brown bear population through the mountains of the Cantabrian Cordillera between 1998 and 2007 in order to find out about their hibernation habits, which had been questioned in historical documents. The results confirm that female bears with babies and independent young bears under the age of two do not usually hibernate, while the other bears follow normal hibernation patterns. Brown bears (Ursus arctos) all over the world hibernate, but according to historical documents this is not always the case. The Libro de la Montería by ...

Washington, DC – In a Perspective piece published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine family medicine physician Susan Okie gives a comprehensive overview of change, and planned change, within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The review comes as the FDA's commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, completes her first year as the agency's leader. Okie writes that the FDA's priorities over the past year have included "finding ways to make the FDA more nimble and proactive, restoring its credibility and refocusing staff ...

Tech savvy humans who use social media sites to instantly update their 'statuses', may be behaving like vultures who use 'face flushing' as a visible way of instantly updating their own status when interacting with peers and rivals. Research, published in Ethology, reveals how the ability to rapidly change skin colour is a key form of interaction for vultures, especially for displays of dominance. The ability to rapidly change skin colour has been well documented in reptiles and fish, which use specialist cells to disperse and concentrate pigments. However, the ability ...

An active stellar nursery lies hidden inside a massive dark cloud rich in molecules and dust in the constellation of Monoceros. Although it appears close in the sky to the more familiar Orion Nebula it is actually almost twice as far from Earth, at a distance of about 2700 light-years. In visible light a grouping of massive hot stars creates a beautiful collection of reflection nebulae where the bluish starlight is scattered from parts of the dark, foggy outer layers of the molecular cloud. However, most of the new-born massive stars remain hidden as the thick interstellar ...

Researchers in India have demonstrated that producing nanoscopic crystals of a pharmaceutical product can allow the medication to be absorbed by the gut even if the drug is not soluble in water. Research suggests that more than half of the medicinal drugs being developed by the pharmaceutical industry dissolve only very weakly in water, if at all. This is a major problem for administering such drugs as it means they are not effective if taken by mouth. The industry has developed many approaches to addressing this problem, such as adding a small quantity of an organic ...

The Sun's activity has recently affected the Earth's atmosphere and climate in unexpected ways, according to a new study published today in the journal Nature. The study, by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Colorado, shows that a decline in the Sun's activity does not always mean that the Earth becomes cooler. It is well established that the Sun's activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle and that as its activity wanes, the overall amount of radiation reaching the Earth decreases. Today's study looked at the Sun's activity over the period ...

Air pollution has already been linked to a range of health problems. Now, a ground-breaking new study suggests pollution from traffic may put women at risk for another deadly disease. The study, published in the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives, by researchers from The Research Institute of the MUHC (RI MUHC; Dr. Mark Goldberg), McGill University (Drs. Goldberg, Dan Crouse and Nancy Ross), and Université de Montréal (Dr. France Labrèche), links the risk of breast cancer – the second leading cause of death from cancer in women – to traffic-related air ...

VTT printed the paper with antibodies that react to the sample. The test result can be read in the form of a line, for example, which either does or does not appear depending on the sample – just like in the pregnancy tests already familiar to consumers. It is also possible to print instructional images or text, for example, either on or alongside the test. Printed paper test can be used to test quickly and easily for the presence of a given substance. The test can be adapted to different purposes by exchanging the identifying antibody printed on the paper for another, ...

CHAPEL HILL – A clinical trial designed to replace the genetic defect causing the most common form of muscular dystrophy has uncovered an unexpected aspect of the disease. The trial, based on therapy designed by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, showed that some patients mount an immune response to the dystrophin protein even before they have received the gene therapy. The puzzling results, which came from trials at Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio, suggest that the immune systems of a number of patients -- once thought ...

Insecure Web browsers and the growing number of complex applets and browser plug-in applications are allowing malicious software to spread faster than ever on the Internet. Some websites are installing malicious code, such as spyware, on computers without the user's knowledge or consent. These so-called "drive-by downloads" signal a shift away from using spam and malicious e-mail attachments to infect computers. Approximately 560,000 websites -- and 5.5 million Web pages on those sites -- were infected with malware during the fourth quarter of 2009. A new tool that ...

It's an experience shared by everyone: You run into someone you know, but his or her name escapes you. Now, Temple psychologist Ingrid Olson has found a way to improve the recall of proper names. Olson dedicates her research to understanding human memory. In a recent study, she found that electric stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe of the brain improved the recall of proper names in young adults by 11 percent. Her study appears this month in the journal Neuropsychologia. "We know a lot about how to make people's memory worse, but we don't know very ...

Fish byproducts may be a new source of fish feed, thanks to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded scientists in Hawaii. Research scientist Dong-Fang Deng and her colleagues with the Oceanic Institute in Waimanalo, Hawaii, are collaborating with USDA food technologist Peter Bechtel to develop the new fish feeds. Bechtel is with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Subarctic Agricultural Research Unit in Kodiak, Alaska. ARS is the USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency. The scientists are taking fish parts that would normally ...

In order to track down pathogens and render them harmless, the immune system must be able to recognize myriad different foreign substances and react to them. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg have discovered how the immune system's B-cells can be activated by numerous substances from our environment. The receptor molecules on the surface of the B-cells are only activated when the receptor subunits separate following the binding of foreign substances. These findings ...

A $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to upgrade and expand a set of radio frequency antennas at Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA) http://www.ovsa.njit.edu/ has been awarded to NJIT. The new facility is expected to help scientists better understand the nature of solar flares which greatly interest government, industry and the military. "Space weather incidents such as coronal mass ejections and solar flares can cause problems with cell phone reception, GPS systems, power grids and other technologies," said NJIT Distinguished Professor Dale Gary, a world-renowned ...

Chevy Chase, MD— A new consensus statement published in the September, 2010, issue of The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) finds that the increasing recognition that beta-cell failure occurs much earlier and severely than commonly believed suggests that regular glycemia screening, early identification of patients at metabolic risk and prompt and aggressive intervention deserves greater emphasis. The consensus statement is based on the findings of a working group of basic researchers, clinical endocrinologists and primary care ...

BETHESDA, Md., Oct. 6, 2010 – Massachusetts General Hospital researchers say they have determined how iron contributes to the production of brain-destroying plaques found in Alzheimer's patients. The team, whose study results appear in this week's Journal of Biological Chemistry, report that there is a very close link between elevated levels of iron in the brain and the enhanced production of the amyloid precursor protein, which in Alzheimer's disease breaks down into a peptide that makes up the destructive plaques. Dr. Jack T. Rogers, the head of the hospital's neurochemistry ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — With bits of DNA extracted from century-old museum specimens, researchers have found a place for the extinct passenger pigeon in the family tree of pigeons and doves, identifying for the first time this unique bird's closest living avian relatives. The new analysis, which appears this month in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, reveals that the passenger pigeon was most closely related to other North and South American pigeons, and not to the mourning dove, as was once suspected. Naturalists have long lamented that one of North America's most ...

Despite progress in decoding the genome, scientists estimate that fully 95 percent of our DNA represents dark, unknown territory. In the October 1 issue of the journal Cell researchers at The Wistar Institute shed new light on the genetic unknown with the discovery of the ability of long non-coding RNA (ncRNA) to promote gene expression. The researchers believe these long ncRNA molecules may represent so-called gene enhancer elements—short regions of DNA that can increase gene transcription. While scientists have known about gene enhancers for decades, there has been no ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The trauma from hard combat can devastate veterans until old age, even as it influences others to be wiser, gentler and more accepting in their twilight years, a new University of Florida study finds. The findings are ominous with the exposure of today's men and women to heavy combat in the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars on terror at a rate that probably exceeds the length of time for U.S. veterans during World War II, said UF sociologist Monika Ardelt. "The study shows that we really need to take care of our veterans when they arrive home, because ...