By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer The Navy won approval yesterday to deploy two ships that use controversial low-frequency sonar to detect faraway submarines, despite continuing questions about whether the system's loud blasts will injure whales and other ocean mammals. The ruling by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants the Navy an exemption from federal rules that guard marine mammals from incidental injury. The agency concluded that protective measures required of the Navy will ensure that the effects of the sonar will be "negligible" and will not undermine the long-term health of whales and other ocean mammals. However, the five-year authorization requires the Navy to investigate unanswered questions regarding how the low-frequency sonar affects whale behavior, and whether it can silence the songs of large whales in particular. It also forbids the Navy from using the system when ocean mammals are within 1.1 nautical miles, since the force of the noise can damage their hearing and disrupt their activities within that range. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Communication
Link ID: 2317 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bacterial infections can trigger high levels of a brain steroid that can make infants too drowsy to awaken when they encounter difficulty breathing, suggests new research on lambs. Although a link between infections and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been previously suspected, this is the first time a clear mechanism has been found that might explain such a link. SIDS usually occurs while an infant is sleeping at night. An emerging theory holds that the condition is caused by bacterial toxins, encountered by virtually all infants in the first year of life. Researchers have proposed several theories to explain how these toxins might kill infants, but so far there has been little experimental evidence to back them up. Now, physiologist Saraid Billiards of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has found that even a mild bacterial infection can cause brain steroid levels to rise dramatically, leading lambs to become extremely drowsy and difficult to wake. In a trial involving 12 lambs, a mild infection with Escherichia coli caused levels of the steroid allopregnanolone in the blood to rise by 50%. Results were even more dramatic in the brain, where levels of allopregnanolone, which is known to have sedative and anaesthetic properties, increased two- to threefold. If the same occurs in humans, even a mild infection could blunt infants' ability to awaken, Billiards says. "If they develop breathing problems while they're asleep that cause their blood oxygen to fall, they don't have the appropriate arousing response that allows them to wake." Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sleep
Link ID: 2316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service A theory portraying children as start-up companies and middle-aged adults as their investors has been proposed to explain why humans have such big brains and long life spans. Evolutionary biologists have puzzled for decades over why humans live twice as long as chimpanzees and gorillas and have brains three to four times larger than their closest living relatives. "We're thinking of the brain as an investment," says economist Arthur Robson, at the University of Western Ontario. Robson and anthropologist Hillard Kaplan, at the University of New Mexico, believe this investment is so substantial that it requires a longer human life span to give it the time to pay off. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 2315 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chillies keep elephants out of African farmers' fields. JOHN WHITFIELD Growing chilli peppers could keep elephants and crops apart, say researchers. Elephants avoid chilli plants, and burning the peppers keeps the animals away from other crops. Chillies are also a cash crop - one project is already selling 'elephant' chilli sauce. Crop raiding is a huge problem anywhere farmers and elephants come together. Entire fields can be destroyed overnight. Botswana, one of the few African countries to compensate farmers for elephant damage, pays out more than US$1 million each year. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 2314 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Gift will expand programs, sow seeds of national depression network ANN ARBOR, MI -- A new $750,000 gift to the University of Michigan Depression Center will accelerate new programs to help people with depression get the treatment they need, and sow the seeds for a potential future network of depression centers across the United States. The unrestricted, three-year gift from the Lilly Foundation is the largest ever given to a U-M program by the foundation, the nonprofit philanthropic arm of Eli Lilly and Company. "With this gift, we will be better able to reach out to patients and their families in primary care and community settings, find ways to help improve patients' adherence to treatment, and share the U-M Depression Center model with other institutions across the country," says John Greden, M.D., executive director of the U-M Depression Center and Rachel Upjohn Professor and chair of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School. "We're tremendously grateful to the foundation for sharing and supporting our vision of improving depression care for everyone."

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 2313 - Posted: 07.16.2002

BY TIM DAHLBERG Associated Press LAS VEGAS (AP) — Pedro Alcazar spent much of his last day alive like any other tourist. He watched pirates do battle on the Strip, had lunch atop the tallest building in town and fed some quarters into slot machines. The night before, he had taken a beating before being stopped in the sixth round of the biggest fight of his career. Yet now he was in remarkably good spirits, joking and laughing, posing for pictures and signing autographs for the occasional tourist. "I know I lost the title, but I didn't lose everything," he said. "I'm going to try to win a world championship for Panama and my family." © 2002 FOX Interactive Television, LLC. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 2312 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists believe they may have uncovered the reason why women live longer than men - they are better sleepers. A team from the US has found that women tend to sleep more soundly than men. They are also less affected by the effects of sleep deprivation. The researchers, from Pennsylvania State University, found that missing sleep can affect hormone levels and generate harmful chemicals in the body. Lead researcher Dr Alexandros Vgontzas believes women's sleeping habits may have evolved to help them cope with crying babies and disturbed nights. He thought it could help explain why women live, on average, several years longer than men. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 2311 - Posted: 07.15.2002

Attention problems found to last at least a month WASHINGTON — North Carolina neuropsychologists believe they have gathered reliable evidence linking cardiopulmonary bypass surgery to impaired memory and attention. Claims about this relationship have been made before, but the current team used statistical methods that they consider to be more sound, less biased and less likely to over-estimate occurrence than those used in previous research. The researchers also, for the first time, documented that the cognitive declines persist beyond the first couple of weeks. The study appears in the July issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery, notes Julian Keith, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and his co-authors, is performed in the United States on more than 500,000 people annually. The procedure -- like many major surgeries -- exposes patients' brains to a variety of abnormal physiological conditions, including inflammation, lack of oxygen, elevated blood sugar, lowered body temperature, showers of microscopic blood clots, and the presence of a lot of amnesia-causing drugs.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 2310 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The increased anger and irritability stroke sufferers often exhibit may be related to brain damage from the stroke rather than to distress about their condition, scientists in South Korea report. Moreover, that anger and irritability is more common in stroke victims than currently recognised, they add. In a study of 145 people who had suffered a stroke, researchers from the Asian Medical Centre in Seoul found a correlation between symptoms of anger and aggression and lesions on parts of the brain that are responsible for producing serotonin - a brain chemical that moderates behaviour. All Rights Reserved © Copyright 2000, 2001 Health24.co.za

Keyword: Stroke; Emotions
Link ID: 2309 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer © St. Petersburg Times TAMPA -- Elderly rats that eat certain fruits and vegetables stay smarter than rats that don't, according to two new University of South Florida studies. While the jury is still out on humans, the studies, to be published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, offer evidence that eating foods high in antioxidants may reverse the cognitive effects of aging. "Your mother was right," said Paula Bickford, the senior author of the studies, referring to the age-old admonition to eat your vegetables. "All we're doing now is using good scientific methods to prove it." © Copyright St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Intelligence; Alzheimers
Link ID: 2308 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By EMILY EAKIN Once an obscure ape dwelling in remotest Zaire, the bonobo surged to celebrity in the mid-1990's on a groundswell of liberal sentiment. Here was a primate tailor-made for the age of political correctness: vegetarian, peace-loving, female-dominant, with an outsize libido and an open-door policy when it came to sex. (Male, female, night, day -- almost anything would do.) Moreover, 98 percent of its genes were ours too, making the bonobo not a freak of nature but a next of kin -- like us, only better. ''The very model of a modern liberated woman,'' one scientist exulted. ''Every program in women's studies should include a little excursion into the world of the bonobo,'' urged another, comparing the apes' largely conflict-free lives to the ''make love, not war'' ethos of 1960's hippies. Conservatives were left to grumble that the bonobo society was too P.C. to be true, bearing a suspicious resemblance to -- as one disgruntled male commentator put it -- life on the campus of Brown University. He was onto something. As Marlene Zuk demonstrates in her fascinating and persuasive new book, ''Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex From Animals,'' the tendency to hold up animals as role models -- to see in their behavior inspiration or vindication for our own -- is as rampant in science as the common cold, and considerably more debilitating. ''The lens of our own self-interest not only frequently distorts what we see when we look at other animals,'' she writes. ''It also in important ways determines what we do not see, what we are blind to.'' Most of what we know about bonobos we've learned in the last 20 years, Zuk notes, ''after the feminist revolution in anthropology.'' Had we focused on them earlier, she speculates, they might have been seen as more violent and warlike, ''simply because the paradigm of the day emphasized male aggression, which the bonobos do possess.'' Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 2307 - Posted: 07.14.2002

by Dennis Meredith Steven Vogel was suffering sore muscles -- ironic for a biologist who had just published a widely praised book on the science and history of muscles, from flies to humans. Ensconced in his comfortable office, the sinewy, fit scientist-author of Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle (Norton, 2002) revealed that he had been persuaded to walk down the Eiffel Tower. Ever the scientist, Vogel precisely explained the basis of his discomfort. "You're exerting more force when you decelerate them when you accelerate, but the aerobic cost is so low you don't notice that you're doing much," said the James B. Duke Professor of Biology, wincing. "You don't notice it until afterwards." [Steven Vogel, a Duke biologist and author of Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle Photo: Les Todd/ Duke Photography] Indeed, the phenomenon of sore muscles is only one scientific morsel Vogel offers in a smorgasbord of topics covered in his book, including that facts that

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 2306 - Posted: 07.14.2002

Copyright © 2002 AP Online The Associated Press NEW ORLEANS - The hospitalization of three men with the potentially deadly West Nile virus - the first human cases reported this year - have experts alarmed at the infection's rapid spread since it first appeared in New York in 1999. The men, all living in towns east of Baton Rouge, were hospitalized with the mosquito-borne virus this week. A 78-year-old man was diagnosed Monday, and two more men, ages 62 and 53, were diagnosed Thursday. "We're seeing that it spread from an epicenter in the Northeast, and then there was an epicenter in Florida last year. Now it seems that we're seeing a lot of activity in Louisiana that might suggest it could become an epicenter," said Dr. Lois Levitan, program leader at the Environmental Risk Analysis Program at Cornell University. The center studies the development of West Nile in the United States. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2305 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lulling a baby to sleep with a song is an age-old part of child-care. But a Canadian researcher says even tiny babies respond to the lullabies because they recognise melodies. Professor Susan Trehub, from the department of psychology at the University of Toronto, found babies recognise tunes, even if they are sung in a different key or at a different speed. But if they detect wrong notes or rhythm changes, they do not respond as well to the music. (C) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hearing
Link ID: 2304 - Posted: 07.14.2002

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Nerve cells extracted from a patient's own nose could one day be used to cure paralysis. At least, that is the hope of neuroscientists in Australia who have announced the beginning of tests on people. The team, led by Alan Mackay-Sim of Griffith University in Brisbane, has recruited three people who have been paralysed from the waist down for between six months and three years, and plans to enlist another five. Half the patients will receive a spinal injection of the nasal cells. The cells, called olfactory ensheathing cells, connect the lining of the nose with the brain, giving us our sense of smell. Unlike most nerve cells, they continue to regenerate throughout life, a property that probably evolved because they can be destroyed by infections. "There's only a few microns of mucus between the air and the nerve endings," points out Mackay-Sim. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration; Glia
Link ID: 2303 - Posted: 06.24.2010

JOHN WHITFIELD Nineteenth-century farmers suffered very different fates, depending on which month they were born in, new research suggests. Women born in northern Quebec in June left on average seven more grandchildren than those born in April. "That's a huge effect," says ecologist Virpi Lummaa of the University of Cambridge, UK. The result suggests that the earliest stages of life affect future reproduction. Birthweight and early growth are known to have many affects on adult health, including the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and schizophrenia. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 2302 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HOW do you treat people blinded by light? With more light. Shining near-infrared radiation on damaged retinal cells can keep them alive and prevent permanent blindness. The US Defense Advance Research Projects Agency is funding research into the method and hopes to use it to treat people whose eyes are damaged by lasers. A number of US military personnel, including a helicopter pilot over Bosnia in 1998, have suffered laser eye injuries. If the infrared technique works in people, it could be used to treat a wide range of eye injuries and diseases. And it doesn't stop there. Other studies have shown that infrared light can help heal all sorts of injuries and sores, and it is already being used to treat severe mouth ulcers in children undergoing chemotherapy.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 2301 - Posted: 07.13.2002

— Researchers pursuing the cause of leptin’s ability to boost metabolism and shed fat have identified a metabolic switch that appears to tell the body to store or burn fat. In an article published in the July 12, 2002, issue of the journal Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Jeffrey M. Friedman and his colleagues reported that the hormone leptin represses a liver enzyme called stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD-1). SCD-1 catalyzes the production of monounsaturated fats from fatty acids in the liver and other tissues. Genetically obese (ob/ob) mice are overweight and show low levels of fat metabolism. In the absence of leptin, the level of SCD-1 rises and more fat is stored in the liver. Leptin is produced by fat tissue and secreted into the bloodstream, where it travels to the brain and other tissues, causing fat loss and decreased appetite. Friedman’s research team cloned the ob gene in 1994 and discovered leptin in 1995. Since then, much of Friedman’s research has focused on understanding how leptin exerts its effects on body weight, food intake and metabolism. ©2002 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Louis, — Though previous evidence points to the contrary, scientists have discovered that the protein known as fibroblast growth factor 14 (FGF14) may not actually behave like a growth factor. The research suggests that FGF14 is instead involved in transmitting signals from one nerve cell to another and may help regulate walking and other movements. The protein could, therefore, be linked to movement disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. "We believe we have found a new signaling pathway in the brain," says study leader David M. Ornitz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and pharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Once we learn what FGF14 does at the molecular level, I believe we may uncover a new mechanism for regulating nerve cell function." The work is published in the July 3 issue of the journal Neuron. It is the first study to examine the role of FGF14 in living animals and could provide new targets for testing future drugs designed to treat movement disorders and seizures, says Ornitz, who also leads the cancer and developmental biology program at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Huntingtons
Link ID: 2299 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Caloric Restriction Clinical Implications Advisory Group addresses scientific issues related to testing the effects of caloric restriction on human beings For more than 60 years scientists have known that restricting the caloric intake in several species of animals can extend life span and slow down the aging process. The prevalence of obesity in America has prompted scientists to consider caloric restriction (CR) research for humans as a way to get America in shape and living longer. Should scientists subject humans to research studies on CR to see whether it produces the same results in humans as in lab animals? What effect will CR have on psychosocial health and quality of life? Should CR replace other human weight-control strategies? Is CR even possible given the fact that humans have unrestricted access to food? To answer these and other questions, the National Institute on Aging in collaboration with the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases convened the Caloric Restriction Clinical Implications (CRCI) Advisory Group to consider opportunities of such research. The group, which included gerontologists, nutritionists, pharmacologists, physicians, and psychologists, published their findings and recommendations in a special issue of the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences (Special Issue I, March 2001, http://www.geron.org/journals/spcontents.html).

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2298 - Posted: 07.13.2002