Changes in the brain’s white matter, a common occurrence among the elderly, increase a person’s risk of having multiple strokes, according to a report in today’s rapid access issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
White matter is the inner part of the brain, through which most of the brain’s nerve connections pass. Leukoaraiosis – the scattered loss of white matter in the brain – is particularly associated with strokes caused by blockages in small arteries deep i
A group of nuclear-envelope-associated proteins have been found in a plant for the very first time by a team of researchers at Ohio State University. Led by Professor Iris Meier, this new finding show that these proteins (Plant RanGAP and MAF) have in common a nuclear envelope-targeting domain which is unique to plants and distinctly different from sequences found in known animal nuclear envelope proteins.
This finding is significant because it implies that a funadamentally different nuclea
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, claim researchers in this week’s BMJ.
The authors identified 15 studies published between 1996 and October 2002 that examined the role of NSAID use in preventing Alzheimer’’s disease. They carried out three separate analyses to quantify the risk of Alzheimer’’s disease in NSAID users and in aspirin users and to determine any influence on duration of use.
Their results show that N
Using a tool kit of lasers, tiny beads and a Lego set, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have made the first measurement of the torsional, or twisting, elasticity of a single molecule of DNA.
The measurements reveal that DNA is significantly stiffer than previously thought and, when wound, may in fact provide enough power to be used as a sort of molecular, rubberband motor to propel nanomachines. Although that type of application may be well in the future, the studies are si
Using the powerful trick of gravitational lensing, a European and American team of astronomers have constructed an extensive ‘mass map’ of one of the most massive structures in our Universe. They believe that it will lead to a better understanding of how such systems assembled and the key role of dark matter.
Clusters of galaxies are the largest stable systems in the Universe. They are like laboratories for studying the relationship between the distributions of dark and visible matter. In 1
ESA PR 44-2003. A unique view of our home planet and its natural satellite – the Moon – is one of the first data sets coming from ESA’’s Mars Express.
“It is very good news for the mission,” says ESA’’s Mars Express Project Scientist, Agustin Chicarro. These and other data, such as those recording the major constituents of Earth as seen from space, are the actual proof that the instruments on board Mars Express, launched 2 June 2003, are working perfectly.
The routine check-outs
Oxford scientists have found the first sign that many patients with type 2 diabetes have something wrong with their hearts which has previously been undetected.
More than 90 per cent of all diabetics have type 2 diabetes, and researchers studying a group of type 2 diabetics with no apparent heart problems discovered that their hearts were actually working significantly less efficiently than non-diabetic individuals.
Professor Kieran Clarke led the study at Oxford. “We used
Researchers at Purdue University are creating interactive software that artists could use to make realistic animations of cloud formations, explosions, smoke, steam, fog and other gaseous phenomena for movies and video games.
The same software might also be used by meteorologists to create accurate representations of quickly developing weather conditions. Because the software is interactive, it shows results immediately, whereas conventional programs might take hours to complete such anim
Microscopes are not the only tools available to study disease. A new ESA project employs satellites to predict and help combat epidemic outbreaks, as well as join the hunt for the origin of the deadly Ebola virus.
Ebola haemorrhagic fever kills many people in Central Africa each year. It can cause runaway internal and external bleeding in humans and also apes. What remains unidentified is the jungle-based organism serving as the virus’s host.
To assist search efforts, from next y
In the fishbowl of life, when hordes of well-fed predators drive their prey to the brink of extinction, sometimes evolution takes the fast track to help the hunted survive — and then thrive to outnumber their predators.
This rapid evolution, predicted by Cornell University biologists in computer models and demonstrated with Pac-Man-like creatures and their algae food in laboratory habitats called chemostats, could play an important role in the ecological dynamics of many predator-
In a 17-year experiment on Vermont’s Camel’s Hump, three Dartmouth researchers find that lead moves very slowly though the soil. Using the highly accurate technique of isotopic analysis for the first time at this field site, the researchers traced several varieties of lead with different atomic weights.
Their study was published online on July 12 on the Environmental Science & Technology Web site, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
“This definitively supports a few
Abnormally high calcium levels spurred on by a mutated gene may lead to the death of neurons associated with Huntington’s disease, an inherited genetic disorder, characterized by mental and physical deterioration, for which there is no known cure.
This discovery by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, published in the current issue of Neuron, sheds new light on the process that causes the selective death of neurons in the region of the brain called the striatu
A UCSF-led team has demonstrated that the cerebral cortex, the site of higher cognitive functions, not only perceives pain, but plays a role in regulating pain, and that it does so in part through the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA, suggesting a possible target for therapy.
The finding, published in the July 17 issue of Nature, provides some of the first neuroanatomical evidence that the cerebral cortex not only receives pain signals from nerve cells in lower regions of the brain,
New insight is important step forward in personalized cancer care
A new Canadian-led study in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that a simple genetic test can determine if chemotherapy will be effective in treating a patient’s colon cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in North America.
The study, led by doctors and researchers from Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital, examined 570 tissue samples from colon cance
Discovery may lead to targeted therapies to interrupt cancer development
(Philadelphia, PA) – Researchers at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania have determined that a key enzyme, Pim-2, is responsible for the survival of cancer cells. The finding – which will appear in the August 1 edition of the journal Genes & Development – represents an important advance in understanding why cancer cells survive in the body (working against the body’
Bigger and brighter isn’t better, at least not when trying to view moving objects.
That is the counter-intuitive result of a study performed by a team of Vanderbilt psychologists which sheds new light on one of the most sophisticated processes performed by the brain: identifying and tracking moving objects.
“The bigger an object, the easier it is to see. But it is actually harder for people to determine the motion of objects larger than a tennis ball held at arms length than
Feedback
