Upon hearing the blare of a siren, you would quickly home in on the source and direction of the sound and take the necessary action, or precaution, such as pulling your car over or foregoing crossing the street until the ambulance has cleared. Mammals rely on sound localization skills to communicate, escape threats, and forage, among many other tasks. All through development the adult brain retains the capacity to rewire the networks that underlie these skills but it’s not clear which tasks
A little clutter on the way to the refrigerator might mean taking a few extra seconds to navigate your way to a late night snack. For a bat flying around in the dark searching for a meal of insects, the “clutter” of things like leaves and trees could mean missing out on a tasty morsel of dinner altogether.
A bat finds its way around with sound rather than sight. Using a sensory process called echolocation, the bat emits ultrasonic pulses that hit objects like leaves, trees, and inse
A new study shows that tropical and subtropical countries suffer far more illness and death during flu outbreaks than previously imagined, with both hospital admissions and deaths rising considerably during a flu outbreak.
Most strains of influenza are successfully fought off by the vast majority of people, who are back to normal within a week or two. Nevertheless, flu can cause serious illness, and sometimes death, in the elderly and other vulnerable people. A flu outbreak al
Nerve growth factor makes end run around leptin, a brain hormone linked to appetite regulation
Working on genetically engineered obese mice with seriously thickened hearts, a condition call cardiac hypertrophy, scientists at Johns Hopkins have used a nerve protection and growth factor on the heart to mimic the activity of the brain hormone leptin, dramatically reducing the size of the heart muscle.
Leptin is a protein hormone made by fat cells that signals the brain to
Significant advance for understanding leading cause of blindness in elderly
A new study, led by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, pinpoints the role that two genes – Factor H and Factor B – play in the development of nearly three out of four cases of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a devastating eye disease that affects more than 10 million people in the United States.
Findings indicate that 74 percent of AMD patients carry certain variants in o
In a surprising finding, patients with coronary artery disease who take commonly used antidepressant drugs may be at significantly higher risk of death, Duke University Medical Center researchers have found.
Even after controlling for such factors as age, degree of heart disease and severity of depression, the researchers found that heart patients taking antidepressant medications had a 55 percent higher risk of dying. Previously, Duke researchers reported that the presence of
Cornell physicist Veit Elser has been engrossed recently in resolving a pivotal question in biological imaging. So he hasn’t had much time for brainteasers and number games.
But in discovering an algorithm critical for X-ray diffraction microscopy, Elser and colleagues solved two problems. First, they gave researchers a new tool for imaging the tiniest and most delicate of biological specimens. And second, they discovered that the same algorithm also solves the internati
A mouse immune cell that plays dual roles as both assassin and messenger, normally the job of two separate cells, has been discovered by an international team of researchers from the United States and France. The discovery has triggered a race among scientists to find a human equivalent of the multitasking cell, which could one day be a target for therapies that seek out and destroy cancer.
“In the same way that intelligence and law enforcement agencies can face deadly threats together i
By scanning the entire human genome in search of genetic variations that may signal recent evolution, University of Chicago researchers found more than 700 genetic variants that may be targets of recent natural positive selection during the past 10,000 years of human evolution.
In one of the first comprehensive genome scans for selection, the researchers found widespread evidence of evolution in all of the populations studied. Their results are published and freely available online in t
A survey has revealed that girls would miss their mobile phones most if they were denied them for 40 days while boys would not want to live without the Internet.
The poll, which was conducted by the University of Hertfordshire in the run up to the University’s 40th anniversary of the degree in Computer Science, asked students what technology they would miss most if they had to give it up for 40 days and which would they happily live without.
Respondents were asked to in
The Volvo Ocean Race yachts have safely rounded Cape Horn on the fourth leg of their round-the-world adventure thanks to the help of radar satellites steering them away from dangerous icebergs.
While all the legs of the race have their unique dangers, Volvo Ocean Race Meteorologist Chris Bedford said leg four is arguably the most dangerous. “The boats have to face 50-knot storms, massive seas and possible ice, and if something happens on the leg, help is many hours and, more li
Research financiers Vinnova in Sweden and Tekes in Finland have granted SEK 6 million to a Nordic research project in printed electronics and RFID, Radio Frequency Identification. Eventually RFID will replace bar codes on packaging, for example. With the help of radio technology, many items can then be identified at the same time, which is of great value in taking inventory, for instance. The research project was initiated by a research team in RFID technology at Mid Sweden University.
T
A Loughborough University research project has highlighted a lack of ‘joined-up thinking’ in emergency planning for the protection of the UK built environment.
The ongoing study is being led by a team of academics from the University’s Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre (IMCRC). Its aim is to assess how a safe, secure and sustainable built environment can be achieved by reducing the frequency and impact of natural and manmade disasters that result in damage
The dissociation in the visual system between two separate functions – one that enables us to identify objects and the other to interact with them – has been clearly demonstrated for the first time in healthy humans by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
These separate vision-related actions have been documented from the beginning of the 20th century in patients who suffered damage to the visual system as a result of illness or injuries in which one or the other func
The biotech companies Digna Biotech and Biotherapix have signed an agreement to jointly apply their patented products towards the development of a treatment for pulmonary fibrosis. Digna Biotech is the commercial entity responsible for developing the intellectual property (patents) generated by the CIMA of the University of Navarra in its preclinical, clinical and commercial research.
The focal points of this agreement are the M3 protein owned by Biotherapix and the p17 peptide from Dig
The wood shavings from sawmills can be used to produce an organic substrate for use in intensive crop growth in containers. Moreover, this substrate has the advantage that it can be recycled and is more economic than other, imported ones such as peat or coconut fibre.
These are the findings of researchers at the Public University of Navarre who, jointly with the Aralur company in Ziordia (Navarre), have developed this substrate material. The product has already been patented and marketed
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