A genetic variant of a receptor in the brain’s reward circuitry heightens the stimulating effects of early exposures to alcohol and increases alcohol consumption, according to a new study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Conducted in rhesus monkeys, the study extends previous research that suggests an important role for a similar brain receptor variant in the development of human alcohol use disorders. A report of the findings is published in the March, 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. “Although the pathway to alcoholism is influenced by many factors, our findings affirm that individuals who possess this receptor variant may experience enhanced pleasurable effects from alcohol that could increase their risk for developing alcohol abuse and dependence,” notes Markus Heilig, M.D., Ph.D., NIAAA Clinical Director and the study’s senior author. Molecules known as opioid peptides bind to opioid receptors in the brain to signal experiences of reward and reinforcement, as well as the euphoria and other positive subjective effects produced by alcohol. Previous studies have shown that, among the brain’s various subtypes of opioid receptors, the mu-subtype is most likely responsible for transmitting alcohol’s positive effects. “We also know that there are several genetic variants of the human mu-opioid receptor,” notes first author Christina Barr, V.M.D., Ph.D. “One of these, designated 118G, has a greatly enhanced ability to bind opioid peptides. People who have this variant of the receptor have reported increased euphoria following alcohol consumption.”

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10045 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi A high-fat diet can desensitise the brain to appetite-suppressing hormones, effectively leaving the brain unaware of obesity, a study in mice has found. The research shows why the brain cells of obese mice stop responding to one such hormone, called leptin. According to scientists, drugs that help the brain to respond to leptin might one day treat obesity in humans by decreasing appetite. In both humans and mice, fat cells throughout the body release leptin. The hormone travels to a part of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which regulates sensations such as appetite and thirst. In theory, when fat increases in the body so do levels of leptin, causing a decrease in appetite. But scientists have found that administering leptin does not reliably work to treat obesity. The new study by Michael Cowley at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, US, and colleagues suggests that failure is because the brain has become insensitive to leptin. In their experiment, researchers fed a group of genetically identical mice either a high-calorie diet rich in fats or a low-calorie diet. All of the mice on the low-calorie diet remained lean. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10044 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi The female wasp spider dwarfs her male counterpart (Image: Sebastian Funke)Some male spiders up-and-leave right after sex for good reason – they risk being eaten by their female partners if they linger too long. In the process of making a swift exit, many leave part of their genitalia inside their mates. Now a new study reveals that detaching part of the genital organ is not a means to help the male escape a murderous attack. Instead, the abandoned genitals act as "chastity belts" and block the entry of sperm from competitors into the female. Gabriele Uhl at the University of Bonn, Germany, and colleagues watched wasp spiders (Argiope bruennichi) mate. During the act, a male must insert one of its two sperm-carrying organs, known as pedipalps, into the female’s genital openings. After delivering the sperm, the tip of the pedipalp becomes stuck inside the female, forming a plug in her reproductive tract. To find out if leaving behind part of the pedipalp helped the males escape death, researchers compared the damage to this organ during first-time sexual encounters with damage sustained in subsequent encounters. The experienced males monitored in the experiment had mated once before and only had a single remaining pedipalp intact. These males would enjoy no evolutionary benefit from surviving after mating a second time because they have generally lost both of their pedipalps at this point, and can therefore no longer inseminate females. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 10043 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A US study appears to back previous research suggesting underweight babies are at a greater risk of depression. Researchers found girls who had been born weighing under 2.5kg (5.5lb) were more prone to depression aged 13 to 16 than those born at a normal weight. The Archives of General Psychiatry study, led by Duke University, examined data on more than 1,400 children, aged nine to 16. They said further investigation was needed to pin down possible reasons. Previous studies have said a potential for depression may lie dormant in small babies, before emerging later under stressful conditions. The Duke University study found that among girls, 5.7% were born weighing less than 2.5kg, and of these 38% experienced depression at least once between the ages of 13 and 16. This compared with 8.4% of those born at a normal weight. On average, 23.5% of teenage girls with a low birth weight were depressed each year, compared with 3.4% of those born at a normal weight. Regardless of their birth weight, no more than 4.9% of the boys experienced depression. Low birth weight was not linked to an increased risk of any other psychiatric condition, including anxiety disorders, in either boys or girls. The researchers' favoured theory for the link to depression is that the changes a foetus has to make to compensate for a harsh environment in the womb may in some way leave it poorly prepared for the conditions it will encounter in later life. It is also possible that low birth weight is indicative of harsh living conditions, such as poverty, which may make a child experiencing them more likely to be depressed. Alternatively, a depressed mother may be more likely to produce a child who is prone to depression - and to have a low birth weight baby because they may be more likely to smoke and drink during pregnancy. However, the latest study found no evidence to support these later two ideas. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10042 - Posted: 03.06.2007

By Dennis Drabelle The insomniac as hero -- that's how I think of W.C. Fields. When chronic lack of sleep wore the comedian down during a film shoot, he would repair to his trailer for a few winks (supplemented, no doubt, by a few swigs from the bottle). For Fields, who wrote his own scripts, sleep was the Great Eluder, and his struggles to catch up with it inspired an unforgettable scene in his best movie, "It's a Gift" (1934). One night, Harold Bissonette (Fields) sneaks out on his nagging wife and beds down on the porch swing outside their apartment. In the next dozen minutes, he becomes a nocturnal Job, beleaguered by animate and inanimate forces: The swing collapses; the grocer's boy delivers clinking bottles of milk; a coconut bounces down the stairs; a salesman comes looking for a Carl La Fong, whose name he spells out repeatedly and loudly. The cacophony goes on, and poor Bissonette never does get to sleep. The film's title can be puzzling unless taken ironically, as a comment on Bissonette's ability to slough off irritations by the score -- all contributing to the scourge of sleeplessness -- without losing his temper. Yet there's another possible reading. Whether a habitually sound sleeper could have thought up that series of anti-sleep roadblocks is dubious. Working as a creative artist, Fields might be hinting that a condition most of us would regard as a curse can actually be a help. © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 10041 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARIA CHENG BERLIN (AP) - At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a donut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press. They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds _ using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action. In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity _ in this case, adding versus subtracting. While still in its initial stages, the techniques may eventually have wide-ranging implications for everything from criminal interrogations to airline security checks. And that alarms some ethicists who fear the technology could one day be abused by authorities, marketers, or employers. Tanja Steinbach, a 21-year-old student in Leipzig who participated in the experiment, found it a bit spooky but wasn't overly concerned about the civil liberties implications. "It's really weird," she said. "But since I know they're only able to do this if they have certain machines, I'm not worried that everybody else on the street can read my mind." Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Attention
Link ID: 10040 - Posted: 03.06.2007

Rachel Nowak Tooth brushing can induce seizures in people with epilepsy, a new case study of three people with the condition has found. “Brushing your teeth is very rhythmic. Our idea is that it causes a rhythmic over-activity in the brain, which feeds back on itself – similar to the effect of strobe lighting on people with photosensitive epilepsy,” says neurologist Wendyl D’Souza of St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, one of the team reporting the cases. Epilepsy occurs when nerve cells in an area of the brain fire more rapidly than usual and in synchrony with one another. This causes seizures that range from “grand mal” seizures – the old term for extreme convulsions and loss of consciousness – to short bouts of staring that may wrongly be blamed on lack of concentration. Seizures bought on by a benign stimulus such as tooth brushing, reading or strobe lighting – called “reflex” seizures – are rare, D’Souza notes. Each of the patients in the new study had been diagnosed with epilepsy, and had suffered full-blown convulsive seizures. The tooth-brushing seizures were smaller and included jerking of the mouth, eyes, and face; tongue cramping; and excessive salivation, lasting for up to 90 seconds. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 10039 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN There are patterns everywhere in nature, but sometimes they are hard to find. A group of researchers at Cornell, for example, had to look through the transparent tissues of a larval zebra fish as neurons in its spinal cord fired away. But the pattern they found is remarkable and offers insight into how developing nervous systems are organized. Neurons on the cord’s ventral side — near the bottom when the cord is viewed in cross-section — fire when the fish swims slowly, while those on the dorsal side, or top, fire when it swims fast. It’s “a very simple pattern that no one had seen before,” said Joseph R. Fetcho, in whose laboratory the initial discovery was made, by another researcher, David L. McLean. They are among the authors of a paper describing the finding in Nature. Zebra fish larvae make excellent subjects for studying neurons as the basis of behavior. By making the neurons fluoresce when they fire, either through injection of chemicals or by genetically modifying the fish to produce a fluorescent protein, researchers can link individual neurons to specific behaviors. The Cornell researchers were able to see which neurons fired when the fish were engaged in slow-swimming movements (activating muscles in the tail only) or fast-swimming movements (involving muscles that make the whole body bend). Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10038 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andy Coghlan Marlon Brando eat your heart out. Around the world, parasitic birds such as cuckoos and cowbirds are displaying the same mixture of guile, ruthlessness and brutality as any self-respecting Godfather. Using a delicate mixture of intimidation and retribution, they "persuade" other birds to accept their eggs and raise their chicks. Ten years ago, Anders Pape Møller at Copenhagen University in Denmark and colleagues discovered that great spotted cuckoos (Clamator glandarius) run a mafia-style protection racket against magpies living in Andalucia, Spain. If a magpie rejects a cuckoo egg laid in its nests, the cuckoo promptly returns to destroy the magpie's own eggs or kill its chicks. Not to be outdone, American cowbirds, which are not related to cuckoos, employ an even more forceful racket against warblers. "The cowbird has much more sophisticated predatory behaviours than we thought," says James Hoover at the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, US, who has been monitoring brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) for four years in the swamps of the Cache River in southern Illinois. Wild warblers are very compliant with cowbirds, and are not known to recognise and eject cowbird eggs. But Hoover and Robinson wanted to find out what would happen if they did. To mimic this situation, they provided artificial nests for 180 pairs of prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea), waited for the cowbirds to cuckold them, then selectively removed the cowbird eggs. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 10037 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford The long-term mental anguish caused by psychological torture and humiliating treatment is comparable to that caused by physical torture, a new study indicates. The results, say the study's authors, support the prohibition of psychological torture by international law. The findings are particularly important given recent debate over how the United States defines torture. The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines it as "severe suffering, whether physical or mental". But the US Department of Defense has argued for a definition of torture that does not include many acts of psychological abuse, including humiliating treatment, isolation, or deprivation of sleep, food, or medical care. The implication is that these psychological acts aren't as serious, says Metin Basoglu of King's College University in London, lead author of the new study. To investigate this point, Basoglu and his colleagues studied the effects of psychological abuse in 279 survivors of torture during the war in former Yugoslavia. Nearly all of the participants had been beaten, humiliated and threatened with death. Participants were asked to rank the distress caused by different assaults on a scale of zero to four. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 10036 - Posted: 06.24.2010

High levels of stress may physically scar a child's brain, a study suggests. US scientists discovered a brain structure involved with memory and emotion had shrunk in children with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A withered hippocampus may make a child less able to deal with stress and raise anxiety, Pediatrics journal reports. The children in the study also had higher blood levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, which has been shown to kill hippocampal cells in animals. This could set up a vicious cycle, where high cortisol causes more hippocampal damage, which in turn raises the anxiety. The Stanford University Medical Center scientists speculate that the ensuing damage could prolong the stress symptoms and also interfere with therapy. Lead researcher Victor Carrion explained: "One common treatment for PTSD is to help a sufferer develop a narrative of the traumatic experience. But if the stress of the event is affecting areas of the brain responsible for processing information and incorporating it into a story, that treatment may not be as effective." He said stress had to be extreme to cause the damage. "We are not talking about the stress of doing your homework or fighting with your dad," Dr Carrion said. The 15 children he and his team studied all had PTSD as a result of physical, emotional or sexual abuse, witnessing violence or experiencing lasting separation and loss. Dr Carrion said it would now be important to understand why some children appear to be more resilient to stress than others, and what the long-term effects of extreme stress are. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 10035 - Posted: 03.06.2007

Physical differences in the brain may increase the chances of a person choosing to take drugs, say Cambridge University scientists. A study of rats showed variations in brain structure pre-dated their first exposure to narcotics, and made them more likely to opt for cocaine. Writing in Science, the team say genes may affect these differences in humans. Treatments to reduce their effect may be found - but a test of vulnerability to drugs is unlikely, they add. Up to 500,000 people are currently addicted to Class A drugs such as cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, according to government figures. One of the most important questions in the science of addiction surrounds the origin of differences noticed in the brains of human drug users. While these differences are thought to be important in the way humans respond to drugs, it is difficult to prove whether they are a part of the natural brain chemistry of that individual, or have developed as a result of taking the drugs themselves. To unravel this problem, the Cambridge researchers scanned the brains of rats, and found similar differences in 'neurotransmitter receptors' in certain parts of the brain. Some of the animals had far fewer 'dopamine receptors' - the brain structures onto which drugs such as cocaine and heroin latch to produce their effect. The scientists used a game in which the rats had to wait to press a button and receive a reward, coupled with detailed brain scans, to see if those with the fewest dopamine receptors were impulsive, a type of behaviour often linked with drug use in humans. This was the case - even in rats which had no contact with drugs. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; ADHD
Link ID: 10034 - Posted: 03.03.2007

By William J. Kole VIENNA, Austria - Abuse of prescription drugs is about to exceed the use of illicit street drugs worldwide, and the shift has spawned a lethal new trade in counterfeit painkillers, sedatives, and other medicines potent enough to kill, a global watchdog warned yesterday. Prescription drug abuse already has outstripped traditional illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy in parts of Europe, Africa and South Asia, the U.N.-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board said. In the United States, the abuse of painkillers, stimulants, tranquilizers, and other prescription medications has gone beyond "practically all illicit drugs with the exception of cannabis," with users increasingly turning to them first, the Vienna-based group said in its annual report. Unregulated markets in many countries make it easy for traffickers to peddle a wide variety of counterfeit drugs using courier services, the mail and the Internet. "Gains over the past years in international drug control may be seriously undermined by this ominous development if it remains unchecked," Narcotics Control Board president Philip O. Emafo said.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10033 - Posted: 03.03.2007

By Michael Balter In the classic 1969 buddy movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Kid gets the girl, but Butch still does some courting, especially when he takes Etta on a bicycle ride while the soundtrack plays "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." It's that way too with lance-tailed manakins, a bird found in South America. Two males team up to woo the female, but the alpha male is the only one who scores. A new study suggests that the beta male benefits from this supporting role, although the payoff can take a long time. The evolutionary advantage of cooperative behavior is often a mystery, especially when there is no immediate perk to being someone's buddy. To see why beta males might lend a helping wing to their alpha pals, behavioral ecologist Emily DuVal, now at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, spent several years studying lance-tailed manakins on a small island off the coast of Panama. The males of this species team up in pairs and perform elaborate duets and dances to attract females, including leapfrogging over each other and showing off with short, swooping flights. Between 1999-2004, DuVal captured 457 birds, banded them for identification, and took blood samples from their wing veins for DNA analysis. DuVal wanted to test three hypotheses for why the beta male would help the alpha even though he never gets to mate with the female: The beta's own immediate reproductive chances could increase; the beta male could be a close relative of the alpha, thus helping to pass on related genes; or the beta male might be increasing his own chances of reproducing sometime down the line. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10032 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Amy Norton NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Group therapy using a technique based on the theory of "cognitive dissonance" may help young women at risk of eating disorders, new research suggests. The study included 93 college women who responded to a call for women who were not satisfied with their bodies. Both interventions lasted about 6 weeks. The researchers found that group therapy, once-weekly for 6 weeks, relieved some of the students' body dissatisfaction, unhealthy eating habits and symptoms of anxiety. The other approach that was used -- yoga -- failed to spur any improvements, according to findings published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. However, the researchers note that 6 weeks was a relatively short period to learn yoga, and previous studies that found a relationship between yoga and a reduction in eating disorder symptoms included women who practiced yoga for about six years. The problem of "disordered eating" is common among college women. Though they fall short of an official eating disorder diagnosis, these women suffer from body dissatisfaction and fear of gaining weight, and often use unhealthy weight control measures like fasting, vomiting and laxative and diuretic abuse. Many go through cycles of binge-eating. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 10031 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When you bite into a meal, you're not just feeding yourself. Washington University microbiologist Jeff Gordon reminds us that the friendly bacteria in our intestines that help us extract energy from food, outnumber our own cells ten to one. "We never dine alone," says Gordon. "We have a vast community of microbes that benefit us and one of the ways they coexist and collaborate with us is by sharing nutrients." Microbes' help in harvesting and storing energy from food might have been beneficial in our early evolution. But in the modern era of large portions of high-calorie foods, that friendly assistance may not be so helpful. Now he and his team have evidence that our microbial partners play a role in obesity. "Part of the pathology of obesity is that our gut microbes in an obese state may have increased capacity to harvest energy," he says. The researchers discovered that obese mice have more of a certain type of bacteria, called Firmicutes, while lean mice had more of another type, Bacteroidetes. They also checked a small number of people and found a similar result. As they reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, when they engineered mice to lack any microbes, then fed them the equivalent of a fast-food diet, the animals didn't gain body fat. "Mice raised in the absence of any microbes, so-called germ-free mice are resistant to the obesity produced by a high fat, high sugar diet," Gordon says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10030 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower For the first time, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees making and using tools for hunting. What's more, it's mostly the female chimps and juveniles that adopt this style of attack, which occasionally nabs a small mammal that the chimp then eats. The discovery that tool-assisted hunting among chimps includes females and youngsters challenges the traditional idea that such behavior in people and their ancestors evolved as a solely male pursuit, say anthropologists Jill D. Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames and Paco Bertolani of the University of Cambridge in England. Pruetz and Bertolani studied 35 chimps living at Fongoli, a savanna site in southeastern Senegal. Between March 2005 and July 2006, the researchers recorded 22 instances of tool-aided hunting. In these cases, individual chimps made spearlike tools out of tree branches and then thrust the implements into cavities in hollow tree trunks and branches where bush babies sleep during the day. Although most of the observed hunting attempts failed to snare the palm-size mammals, the investigators recorded one instance of a female chimp immobilizing a bush baby by jabbing it with a sharpened branch, pulling the animal out of its nest, and eating it. ©2007 Science Service

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 10029 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two new studies from the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials for Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) provide more insights into comparing treatment options, and to what extent antipsychotic medications help people with schizophrenia learn social, interpersonal and community living skills. The new studies are published in the March 2007 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. CATIE, a $42.6 million, multi-site study, was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Comparing Newer Antipsychotic Medications After Older One Fails Quetiapine, and to some extent olanzapine, may be more effective than risperidone among patients who were originally taking, but had to discontinue, perphenazine — an older, first generation antipsychotic medication. However, patient responses varied considerably. “CATIE continues to fine-tune our understanding of how our arsenal of antipsychotic medications work in real-world settings, but it also is revealing to us what questions we still must address,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. Of the 257 patients who were initially randomized to perphenazine in the CATIE study, 192 discontinued the medication for various reasons, including ineffectiveness and intolerable side effects. Among those who discontinued, 114 agreed to be re-randomized to one of three newer antipsychotic medications — olanzapine, quetiapine or risperidone.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 10028 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have developed a fruitfly model that replicates the genetic instability seen in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) and Huntington's disease. The fly model carries the same genetic mutation that affects humans who have SCA3, a disorder that causes them to lose motor coordination. The researchers believe their model will provide insight into more than 30 additional human diseases, including fragile X syndrome, that are caused by similar genetic mutations. They have already used it to better understand drugs that are now being evaluated for the treatment of these diseases. In an article published March 1, 2007, in Science Express, the advanced online publication of the journal Science, the researchers say their findings suggest those drugs may confer a therapeutic “double whammy”—alleviating two effects of the toxic protein that causes neurodegeneration. The research team was led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher Nancy Bonini and colleague Joonil Jung, who are both at the University of Pennsylvania. SCA3 and Huntington's disease arise when mutations in their respective genes cause the production of an abnormally long number of repeats of three nucleotides, also known as triplet repeats. The length of the “genetic stutter” of nucleotides can vary in each disease. For this set of diseases, the repeated nucleotide triplet encodes an amino acid called glutamine, and thus leads to a protein with an abnormally long glutamine string. The malformed protein is toxic to cells and causes neurological degeneration. © 2007 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Huntingtons; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 10027 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Using a state-of-the-art technique to map neurons in the spinal cord of a larval zebrafish, Cornell University scientists have found a surprising pattern of activity that regulates the speed of the fish’s movement. The research may have long-term implications for treating injured human spinal cords and Parkinson’s disease, where movements slow down and become erratic. The study, "A Topographic Map of Recruitment in Spinal Cord," published in the March 1 issue of the journal Nature, maps how neurons in the bottom of the fish’s spinal cord become active during slow movements, while cells further up the spinal cord activate as movements speed up. By removing specific neurons in the lower spinal cord with laser beams, the researchers rendered the fish incapable of slow movements. By removing nerves further up the backbone, the fish had difficulty moving fast. "No one had any idea that organization like this existed in a spinal cord," said Joseph Fetcho, a Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior and an author of the study. "Now that we know the pattern, we can begin to ask how that changes in disease states." David McLean, Cornell postdoctoral researcher in Fetcho’s laboratory, was the first person to discover the pattern of neural activation and how it was associated with speed of movement. He is the lead author on the study.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Parkinsons
Link ID: 10026 - Posted: 06.24.2010