Neurochemicals might someday improve life for people with memory problems

Meeting a friend you haven’t seen in years brings on a sudden surge of pleasant memories. You might even call it an avalanche.

Recent studies suggest that avalanches in your brain could actually help you to store memories. Last year, scientists at the National Institutes of Health placed slices of rat brain tissue on a microelectrode array and found that the brain cells activated each other i

Experiments on moss grown aboard two space shuttle Columbia missions showed that the plants didn’t behave as scientists expected them to in the near-absence of gravity.

The common roof moss (Ceratodon purpureus) grew in striking, clockwise spirals, according to Fred Sack, the study’s lead investigator and a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues noted this even in moss cultures grown aboard the second of the two

A UK based team of researchers has found that regular epidemics of syphilis in the USA are due to the intrinsic cyclical nature of the disease. They show that changes in the immunity of the population cause periodic syphilis outbreaks, rather than changes in sexual behaviour, as was previously thought.

According to research published today in Nature, the team from Imperial College London and funded by the Medical Research Council and the Royal Society suggest that syphilis outb

A Johns Hopkins-led study designed to evaluate the ability of etanercept to maintain disease remissions in a serious autoimmune disorder has failed to show any benefit. Etanercept, also called Enbrel, is a common treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other types of joint inflammation.

“We had hoped that this approach to the treatment of Wegener’s granulomatosis would be useful in preventing disease relapses,” says John H. Stone, M.D., associate professor of medicine, dire

Research published in the current issue of Science magazine reinforces the belief that aerobic capacity is an important determinant in the continuum between health and disease.

“Our data clearly show that the some of the major health problems of today, namely obesity, hypertension, and insulin resistance, are strongly influenced by our genes,” said Steven Swoap, associate professor of biology at Williams Colleges, a member of the research team. “Coupled with our current enviro

A gene passed on by fathers that plays a vital role in helping fertilised eggs to develop into adults has helped scientists overturn the idea that essential genes have always been part of the genetic makeup of a species.

The research, published in the journal Current Biology tomorrow (26 January 2005), shows that an essential ‘paternal effect’ gene was created only recently in the evolutionary history of the fruit fly, Drosophila. This finding is remarkable because it shows that

Scientists have found the brain regions that decide where we look, and where to direct our eyes when we’re faced with a difficult choice, such as looking someone straight in the eye or looking away.

According to research published today in Current Biology, the team from Imperial College London and University College London, have found that different areas of the brain are active when we freely select where to look, and when we change our mind and look elsewhere.

Using ma

New results show that land-living crabs, descended from marine ancestors, have re-invented key aspects of the insect nose through evolution in order to solve the problem of olfaction in their air-filled terrestrial environment.

The robber crab, Birgus latro, is the world’s largest land-dwelling arthropod, with a weight reaching 4 kg and a length of more than half a meter. Robber crabs are perhaps most famous for their ability to climb tall palm trees in search of coconuts, which

By looking for genes necessary for sexual reproduction, researchers have uncovered evidence that eukaryotic cells have been capable of sex for a very long time. Recent evolutionary analyses of the genome of Giardia intestinalis, a unicellular protist parasite that represents an ancient, early-branching lineage of eukaryotes, has revealed the presence of numerous genes implicated in meiosis, the cellular division process that results in gametes.

Most eukaryotes are known to exhibit se

In a finding that broadens our insight into the cause of certain kinds of UV-induced skin cancer, researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) have employed an evolutionarily ancient enzyme-repair system to identify the principal type of DNA damage responsible for the onset of skin-tumor development. The researchers’ findings also suggest that this enzyme system may be useful in developing preventative therapies against skin cancer.

Ultraviole

Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Tolerance for inequity increases with social closeness in chimpanzees by Dr SF Brosnan, Dr HC Schiff and Dr FBM de Waal. The evolution of the sense of fairness may have involved the strength of social connections, according to researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal observed variability in chimpanzees’ responses to inequity depending on the strength of their so

University of Pittsburgh researcher reports results of randomized trial of new approach at Society for Thoracic Surgery meeting

Patients with severe congestive heart failure who had exhausted all other treatment options showed markedly improved heart function following a procedure in which their own stem cells were deployed directly into the heart by way of four tiny incisions in the chest, according to results of a trial presented today at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society

Duke University Medical Center cell biologists have defined a signaling system between stem cells and the specialized “niche cells” that harbor and regulate them. The findings provide better understanding of the signals that stimulate stem cells to either create more copies of themselves or to differentiate into another cell type, said the researchers.

Germline stem cells are immature cells in the reproductive system that can proliferate and mature into sperm and eggs. While it

Using the common fruit fly, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that an intricate set of signals released by stem cells’ surroundings governs their maintenance.

These findings, available online and in today’s issue of Current Biology, will aid stem cell researchers in understanding and potentially manipulating the delicate environments that promote adult stem cell formation, said Dr. Dennis McKearin, associate professor of molecular biology a

The evolution of the sense of fairness may have involved the quality of relationships according to behavioral researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta.

By observing variability in chimpanzees’ responses to inequity, Sarah Brosnan, PhD, and Frans de Waal, PhD, both researchers in Yerkes’ Division of Psychobiology and the Yerkes-based Living Links Center, determined the chimpanzees’ responses depended upon the strength of their social conne

University of Iowa researchers have uncovered evidence of sexual reproduction in a single-celled organism long thought to reproduce asexually, according to a paper published in the January 26, 2005 issue of the journal Current Biology.

The finding by John M. Logsdon, Jr., assistant professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Biological Sciences and the Roy J. Carver Center for Comparative Genomics, and colleagues from the UI and Roanoke College (Virgin