Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago used functional brain imaging to establish a link between emotional impairment and poor cognition in children with bipolar disorder.

“This study is very exciting because it shows that negative emotions affect cognition differently than positive emotions in these kids,” said Dr. Mani Pavuluri, associate professor of psychiatry at UIC’s Institute for Juvenile Research and the Center for Cognitive Medicine, and lead author

Bacteria found in soil around Tokyo are not indigenous to the area. A study published in the open access journal Saline Systems reveals a large proportion of salt-loving bacteria in non-saline soil around Tokyo. The researchers suggest that dust storms may have carried the bacteria from their natural habitats in China.

Akinobu Echigo and colleagues, from Toyo University and the Noda Institute for Scientific Research in Japan, analysed bacteria found in non-saline soil collected in garden

We often make unwise choices although we should know better. Thunderstorm clouds ominously darken the horizon. We nonetheless go out without an umbrella because we are distracted and forget. But do we? Neurobiologists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies carried out experiments that prove for the first time that the brain remembers, even if we don’t and the umbrella stays behind. They report their findings in the Oct. 20th issue of Neuron.

“For the first time, we can

Genetic material derisively called “junk” DNA because it does not contain the instructions for protein-coding genes and appears to have little or no function is actually critically important to an organism’s evolutionary survival, according to a study conducted by a biologist at UCSD.

In the October 20 issue of Nature, Peter Andolfatto, an assistant professor of biology at UCSD, shows that these non-coding regions play an important role in maintaining an organism’s genetic integr

Nine-year-old boy from northern Alberta tested and found to have genetic abnormality; first time it’s been identified by researchers

Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T), Capital Health’s Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and their international collaborators have discovered a genetic abnormality that causes a type of language impairment in children – a discovery that could lead to isolating genes important

A new study suggests that a substance made by immune cells plays a key role in the progression of a disease in animals that closely mimics multiple sclerosis (MS). The findings further suggest that blocking the molecule, known as macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) might prevent the progression of the disease.

Researchers at The Ohio State University Medical Center conducted the study using mice that develop a disease that mimics MS. They compared these animals to similar

Entomologists have isolated three key genes that determine when female mosquitoes feed on blood and when they decide to switch to an all-sugar diet to fatten up for the winter.

David Denlinger, professor of entomology at Ohio State University, hopes this discovery will lead scientists to other genes that help the mosquitoes survive cold weather – in particular, those genes related to how insects handle the West Nile Virus when they enter a kind of hibernation.

Denl

Biotech cotton has beaten back pink bollworm eight years running, reports a team of scientists from The University of Arizona in Tucson.

The surprising finding is good news for the environment. Arizona farmers who plant the biotech cotton known as Bt cotton use substantially less chemical insecticides than in the past.

Insect pests sometimes evolve resistance to such chemicals in just a few years, a fate that was predicted for biotech crops genetically altered to produc

UCR-led research team shows that organisms use their biochemical characteristics to overcome limitations arising from their body size

Life scientists have long maintained that, based on body size, small organisms are more metabolically active than large organisms. But a new study led by Bai-Lian Li, professor of ecology at UC Riverside, shows that this is true only for organisms that are closely related evolutionarily and have body masses differing by no more than 6-7 orders of mag

Alcohol, like any other substance that reinforces behaviour, such as another drug of abuse or even food, has a certain capacity to enhance social memory, that is, the ability to remember other individuals. If a mouse is administered alcohol immediately after being introduced to another animal of its own kind, the former will recognise the latter sooner. This phenomenon, which has significant implications when it comes to understanding the process underlying alcohol addiction, does not have a d

Yale researchers have reported a method to count the absolute number of individual protein molecules inside a living cell, and to measure accurately where they are located, two basic hurdles for studying biology quantitatively.

“The method makes possible accurate measurements of proteins inside cells using microscopic methods usually used just to show where proteins are located,” said senior author Thomas D. Pollard, M.D., Chair and Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular &

“There should be a Nobel prize for the doctor who can eliminate hot flushes” – cancer specialist

A study by UK researchers of over 200 breast cancer patients receiving hormone treatments such as tamoxifen has found that nearly two-thirds would prefer to take a tablet daily and around a quarter would prefer a monthly injection, given that both treatments would be equally effective and have similar side-effects.

However, when presented with a hypothetical situation tha

In a major research initiative funded by The Terry Fox Foundation, Claude Perreault, Canada Chair in Immunobiology at the Institute of Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal, has succeeded in developing a new approach to eradicate malignant melanoma tumours in mice. The findings of Dr. Perreault and his research team are reported in an article just published in the online edition of Nature Medicine, and soon to be published in the print edition of the publicatio

Children who have been treated with steroids and are exposed to chicken pox tend to have a more severe case of the virus, according to pediatric oncologists at Brenner Children’s Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

New research published in the October issue of Pediatrics, says that children who are undergoing steroid treatments for diseases like childhood leukemia are at increased risk of contracting a more severe form of chicken pox, which may

Correcting the timing of heart contractions through cardiac resynchronization therapy can be a lifesaver for people with advanced heart failure. But the procedure, as it is done today, fails in about 15 percent of patients.

Using a minimally invasive approach that may startle heart specialists, a medical-student researcher developed a technique that—at least in pigs—overcomes the procedure’s main shortcomings. Steven Mickelsen, a third-year medical student at the Univers

Some patients with head and neck cancer can be safely spared the risk and expense of surgery by undergoing a CT scan to predict whether the disease is in check after radiation therapy, according to study findings University of Florida doctors released today (Oct. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Researchers with the UF Shands Cancer Center have identified criteria doctors can use to evaluate CT scans four weeks after patients