As the popularity of soccer grows among children, doctors and researchers say the dangers of concussions need to be taken more seriously in the sport. When researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto reviewed the evidence on concussions and heading in soccer this winter, they found a higher incidence of concussions among females than males playing the world's most popular sport. Doctors warn that heading — purposely using the head to control and hit the ball — is a unique aspect of the beautiful game that needs more attention. Heading the ball isn’t necessarily going to cause an overt concussion with symptoms, but the accumulation of those impacts over time could cause difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory, said study author Monica Maher, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, and a former soccer goalkeeper. Maher doesn't want people to stop playing soccer or stop heading the ball. She does suggest limits on head exposure in younger children and padding on goal posts to prevent injury to the youngest players. ​Dr. David Robinson, a sports medicine physician at McMaster University in Hamilton, sees 10 to 15 concussions a week, including many related to soccer. "It's not a stretch to think that these chronic subconcussive blows may be softening the brain, injuring the brain over time," Robinson said. He calls it a step forward that balls are becoming lighter for young people. He reminds parents and coaches that if a concussion is suspected, it's best to remove an athlete from play. As for the differences in injury rates between males and females, Maher pointed to a few potential explanations: © CBC 2014

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19736 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By MARIA KONNIKOVA THE absurdity of having had to ask for an extension to write this article isn’t lost on me: It is, after all, a piece on time and poverty, or, rather, time poverty — about what happens when we find ourselves working against the clock to finish something. In the case of someone who isn’t otherwise poor, poverty of time is an unpleasant inconvenience. But for someone whose lack of time is just one of many pressing concerns, the effects compound quickly. We make a mistake when we look at poverty as simply a question of financial constraint. Take what happened with my request for an extension. It was granted, and the immediate time pressure was relieved. But even though I met the new deadline (barely), I’m still struggling to dig myself out from the rest of the work that accumulated in the meantime. New deadlines that are about to whoosh by, a growing list of ignored errands, a rent check and insurance payment that I just realized I haven’t mailed. And no sign of that promised light at the end of the tunnel. My experience is the time equivalent of a high-interest loan cycle, except instead of money, I borrow time. But this kind of borrowing comes with an interest rate of its own: By focusing on one immediate deadline, I neglect not only future deadlines but the mundane tasks of daily life that would normally take up next to no time or mental energy. It’s the same type of problem poor people encounter every day, multiple times: The demands of the moment override the demands of the future, making that future harder to reach. When we think of poverty, we tend to think about money in isolation: How much does she earn? Is that above or below the poverty line? But the financial part of the equation may not be the single most important factor. “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity,” Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard who is a co-author of the book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” tells me, “is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Stress
Link ID: 19735 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By Brian Palmer Maureen Dowd, a 62-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the New York Times, had a bad marijuana trip earlier this year. As part of her research into the legalization of recreational cannabis in Colorado, she ate a few too many bites of a pot-infused candy bar, entered a “hallucinatory state,” and spent eight paranoid hours curled up on her hotel room bed. Dowd used the experience as a jumping-off point to discuss the risks of overdosing on edible marijuana, which has become a major issue in pot-friendly states. It’s also possible, however, that Dowd just doesn’t handle cannabis very well. While pot mellows most people out, everyone has heard of someone who barricaded himself or herself in a dorm room after a few bongs hits in college. (Or maybe that someone is you.) Why do people react so differently to the same drug? The question itself may be something of a fallacy. Cannabis is not a single drug—it contains dozens of compounds, and they appear to have varying, and sometimes opposing, effects on the brain. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, and cannabidiol, or CBD, have been the subject of some intriguing research. In 2010, researchers showed that pretreating people with a dose of CBD can protect against the less pleasant effects of THC, such as paranoia. In a similar 2012 study, participants took pills that contained only one of the two chemicals, rather than the combination that you receive in cannabis. The subjects who took THC pills were more likely to suffer paranoia and delusion than those who took CBD. The researchers went one step further to investigate which specific cognitive effects of THC are likely to lead to paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis. After taking either THC or CBD, participants watched a series of arrows appear on a screen and responded by indicating which direction the arrows were pointing. Most of the arrows pointed directly left or right, but occasionally a tilted arrow appeared. (Researchers called the tilted arrows “oddballs.”) Subjects who took the CBD had a heightened brain activity response to the oddballs. That’s the way a nondrugged person typically reacts—repetitions of the same stimulus don’t interest us, but a sudden change grabs our attention. The THC-takers had an abnormal response: They found the left and right arrows, which constituted the overwhelming majority of the images, more noteworthy than the oddballs. © 2014 The Slate Group LLC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Attention
Link ID: 19734 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By JAMES GORMAN Crazed commuters, fretful parents and overwrought executives are not the only ones to suffer from anxiety — or to benefit from medication for it. The simple crayfish has officially entered the age of anxiety, too. This presumably was already clear to crayfish, which have been around for more than 200 million years and, what with predatory fish — and more recently, étouffée — have long had reasons to worry. But now scientists from France have documented behavior in crayfish that fits the pattern of a certain type of anxiety in human beings and other animals. Although the internal life of crayfish is still unknown, the findings, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, suggest that the external hallmarks of anxiety have been around for a very long time — and far down the food chain. Beyond that, a precursor of Valium changed the behavior back to normal. That does not mean that the crayfish are ready for the therapist’s couch, but it does reinforce the sometimes surprising connections humans have with other living things. Humans share genes with yeast as well as apes, the brains of flies can yield insights into the brains of humans, and even a tiny roundworm has mating behaviors that depend on a molecule very similar to a human hormone. The response to a threat or danger that the scientists found in crayfish had been documented before in other animals, like mice, but not in invertebrates like insects and crustaceans. Researchers including Pascal Fossat and Daniel Cattaert at the University of Bordeaux reported that after crayfish were exposed to electric shocks, they would not venture out of comfortable dark areas in an elaborate aquarium into scarier (for a crayfish) brightly lit areas. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 19733 - Posted: 06.14.2014

Jennifer Couzin-Frankel What if you could trick your body into thinking you were racing on a treadmill—and burning off calories at a rapid clip—while simply walking down the street? Changing our rate of energy expenditure is still far into the future, but work in mice explores how this might happen. Two teams of scientists suggest that activating immune cells in fat can convert the tissue from a type of fat that stores energy to one that burns it, opening up potential new therapies for obesity and diabetes. There are two types of fat in humans: white adipose tissue, which makes up nearly all the fat in adults, and brown adipose tissue, which is found in babies but disappears as they age. Brown fat protects against the cold (it’s also common in animals that hibernate), and researchers have found that mice exposed to cold show a temporary “browning” of some of their white fat. The same effect occurred in preliminary studies of people, where the browning—which creates a tissue known as beige fat—helps generate heat and burn calories. But cold is “the only stimulus we know that can increase beige fat mass or brown fat mass,” says Ajay Chawla, a physiologist at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. He wanted to better understand how cold caused this change in the tissue and whether there was a way to mimic cold and induce browning some other way. A few years ago, Chawla’s group had reported that cold exposure activated macrophages, a type of immune cell, in white adipose tissue. To further untangle what was going on, Chawla, his postdoc Yifu Qiu, and their colleagues used mice that lacked interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interleukin-13, proteins that help activate macrophages. When they exposed these mice to the cold, the animals developed far fewer beige fat cells than did normal animals, suggesting that macrophages were key to browning of white fat. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 19732 - Posted: 06.14.2014

by Clare Wilson People who begin antidepressant treatment must face a gruelling wait of several weeks before they find out whether or not the drug will work for them. A new take on the causes of depression could lead to a blood test predicting who will be helped by medication – taking the guess work out of prescribing. "A test would be a major advance as at the moment millions of people are treated with antidepressants that won't have any effect," says Gustavo Turecki of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who led the study. The research centres on miRNAs, small molecules that have an important role in turning genes on and off in different parts of the body. MiRNAs have already been implicated in several brain disorders. In the latest study, Turecki and his colleagues measured the levels of about 1000 miRNAs in the brains of people who had committed suicide. These were compared to levels in brains of people who had died from other causes. A molecule called miRNA-1202 was the most altered, being present at significantly lower levels in the brains of people who died from suicide. Crucially, this molecule seems to damp down the activity of a gene involved in glutamate signalling in the brain. That's significant because recent research has highlighted the importance of glutamate signalling in depression. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 19731 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN PHILADELPHIA — Clambering upward in dim violet light, stepping from one glass platform to another, you trigger flashes of light and polyps of sound. You climb through protective tubes of metallic mesh as you make your way through a maze of pathways. You are an electrical signal coursing through a neural network. You are immersed in the human brain. Well, almost. Here at the Franklin Institute, you’re at least supposed to get that impression. You pass through this realm (the climbing is optional) as part of “Your Brain” — the largest permanent exhibition at this venerable institution, and one of its best. That show, along with two other exhibitions, opens on Saturday in the new $41 million, 53,000-square-foot Nicholas and Athena Karabots Pavilion. This annex — designed by Saylor Gregg Architects, with an outer facade draped in a “shimmer wall” of hinged aluminum panels created by the artist Ned Kahn — expands the institution’s display space, educational facilities and convention possibilities. It also completes a transformation that began decades ago, turning one of the oldest hands-on science museums in the United States (as the Franklin puts it) into a contemporary science center, which typically combines aspects of a school, community center, amusement park, emporium, theater, international museum and interactive science lab — while also combining, as do many such institutions, those elements’ strengths and weaknesses. That brain immersion gallery gives a sense of this genre’s approach. It is designed more for amusement, effect and social interaction (cherished science center goals) than understanding. So I climb, but I’m not convinced. I hardly feel like part of a network of dendrites and axons as I weave through these pathways. I try, though, to imagine these tubes of psychedelically illuminated mesh filled with dozens of chattering children leaping around. That might offer a better inkling of the unpredictable, raucous complexity of the human brain. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 19730 - Posted: 06.14.2014

In a new study, scientists at the National Institutes of Health took a molecular-level journey into microtubules, the hollow cylinders inside brain cells that act as skeletons and internal highways. They watched how a protein called tubulin acetyltransferase (TAT) labels the inside of microtubules. The results, published in Cell, answer long-standing questions about how TAT tagging works and offer clues as to why it is important for brain health. Microtubules are constantly tagged by proteins in the cell to designate them for specialized functions, in the same way that roads are labeled for fast or slow traffic or for maintenance. TAT coats specific locations inside the microtubules with a chemical called an acetyl group. How the various labels are added to the cellular microtubule network remains a mystery. Recent findings suggested that problems with tagging microtubules may lead to some forms of cancer and nervous system disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, and have been linked to a rare blinding disorder and Joubert Syndrome, an uncommon brain development disorder. “This is the first time anyone has been able to peer inside microtubules and catch TAT in action,” said Antonina Roll-Mecak, Ph.D., an investigator at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Bethesda, Maryland, and the leader of the study. Microtubules are found in all of the body’s cells. They are assembled like building blocks, using a protein called tubulin. Microtubules are constructed first by aligning tubulin building blocks into long strings. Then the strings align themselves side by side to form a sheet. Eventually the sheet grows wide enough that it closes up into a cylinder. TAT then bonds an acetyl group to alpha tubulin, a subunit of the tubulin protein.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 19729 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS Amid the weeknight bustle of a Walmart parking lot in Centereach, N.Y., a young woman in a pickup truck had lost consciousness and was turning blue. Her companion called 911. Possible drug overdose; come fast. A Suffolk County police officer, Matthew Siesto, who had been patrolling the lot, was the first to arrive. Needles were visible in the center console; the woman was breathing irregularly, and her pupils had narrowed to pinpoints. It seemed clear, Officer Siesto recalled of the October 2012 episode, that the woman had overdosed on heroin. He went back to his squad car and retrieved a small kit of naloxone, an anti-overdose medication he had only recently been trained to use in such circumstances. He prepared the dose, placed the atomizer in her nostril and sprayed. “Within a minute,” the officer said, “she came back.” Once the exclusive purview of paramedics and emergency room doctors, administering lifesaving medication to drug users in the throes of an overdose is quickly becoming an everyday part of police work amid a national epidemic of heroin and opioid pill abuse. On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo committed state money to get naloxone into the hands of emergency medical workers across New York, saying the heroin epidemic in the state was worse than that seen in the 1970s, and the problem is growing. Last month, the New York police commissioner, William J. Bratton, announced that the city’s entire patrol force would soon be trained and equipped with naloxone. “Officers like it because it puts them in a lifesaving opportunity,” Mr. Bratton said, suggesting that beat officers would carry it on their belts. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19728 - Posted: 06.14.2014

—By Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney We've all been mesmerized by them—those beautiful brain scan images that make us feel like we're on the cutting edge of scientifically decoding how we think. But as soon as one neuroscience study purports to show which brain region lights up when we are enjoying Coca-Cola, or looking at cute puppies, or thinking we have souls, some other expert claims that "it's just a correlation," and you wonder whether researchers will ever get it right. Sam Kean But there's another approach to understanding how our minds work. In his new book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean tells the story of a handful of patients whose unique brains—rendered that way by surgical procedures, rare diseases, and unfortunate, freak accidents—taught us much more than any set of colorful scans. Kean recounts some of their unforgettable stories on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. "As I was reading these [case studies] I said, 'That's baloney! There's no way that can possibly be true,'" Kean remembers, referring to one particularly surprising case in which a woman's brain injury left her unable to recognize and distinguish between different kinds of animals. "But then I looked into it, and I realized that, not only is it true, it actually reveals some important things about how the brain works." Here are five patients, from Kean's book, whose stories transformed neuroscience: 1. The man who could not imagine the future: Kent Cochrane (KC), pictured below, was a '70s wild child, playing in a rock band, getting into bar fights, and zooming around Toronto on his motorcycle. But in 1981, a motorcycle accident left him without two critical brain structures. Both of his hippocampi, the parts of the brain that allow us to form new long-term memories for facts and events in our lives, were lost. That's quite different from other amnesiacs, whose damage is either restricted to only one brain hemisphere, or includes large portions of regions outside of the hippocampus. Copyright ©2014 Mother Jones

Keyword: Attention; Language
Link ID: 19727 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS Dozens of Whole Foods stores in the Northeast and a restaurant in New York received beef over an eight-month period that may not have been properly slaughtered to reduce the threat of mad cow disease, federal officials said on Thursday. The producer of the beef, Fruitland American Meat, in Jackson, Mo., recalled thousands of pounds of bone-in grass-fed rib eyes, and two quartered beef carcasses, after federal officials reviewing slaughtering logs found that certain precautions had not been followed. The beef in question was processed between Sept. 5 and April 25, and the meat has the number 2316 inside the Agriculture Department inspection mark. The federal government said the beef posed only a “remote” health hazard, and the cows themselves had shown no evidence of the disease. Fruitland American denied on Thursday that the meat had been improperly handled. The company said the government’s finding was based on a clerical error, in which the age of the cattle had been documented as 30 months or more, when rules on mad cow must be followed, because older cows are believed to be at greater risk. But birth records showed that the cows were in fact no more than 28 months old, a spokesman said. A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, Alexandra Tarrant, said the agency was looking into the chance that a clerical error had occurred. The meat was shipped to 34 Whole Foods stores in northern Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Michael Sinatra, a spokesman for the company, said none of the meat was currently in the stores. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 19726 - Posted: 06.14.2014

​Nathan Greenslit A recent neuroscience study from Harvard Medical School claims to have discovered brain differences between people who smoke marijuana and people who do not. Such well-intentioned and seemingly objective science is actually a new chapter in a politicized and bigoted history of drug science in the United States. The study in question compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 20 “young adult recreational marijuana users” (defined as individuals 18 to 25 who smoke at least once a week but who are not “dependent”), to 20 “non-using controls” (age-matched individuals who have smoked marijuana less than five times in their lives). The researchers reported differences in density, volume, and shape between the nucleus accumbens and amygdala regions of the two groups’ brains—areas hypothesized to affect a wide range of emotions from happiness to fear, which could influence basic decision-making. Researchers did not make any claims about how marijuana affected actual emotions, cognition, or behavior in these groups; instead; the study merely tried to establish that the aggregated brain scans of the two groups look different. So, who cares? Different-looking brains tell us literally nothing about who these people are, what their lives are like, why they do or do not use marijuana, or what effects marijuana has had on them. Neither can we use such brain scans to predict who these people will become, or what their lives will be like in the future. Nonetheless the study invented two new categories of person: the “young casual marijuana user” and the young non-marijuana user. This is the latest example of turning to brain imaging to make something seem objective. Establishing brain differences among certain groups highlights the uniquely ignoble political history surrounding the criminalization of a plant. © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19725 - Posted: 06.14.2014

Carmen Fishwick Do you have difficulty getting enough sleep? Sleep problems affect one in three of us at any one time, and about 10% of the population on a chronic basis. Of Guardian readers who responded to a recent poll, 23% reported that they sleep between four and six hours a night. With continued lack of sufficient sleep, the part of the brain that controls language and memory is severely impaired, and 17 hours of sustained wakefulness is equivalent to performing on a blood alcohol level of 0.05% – the UK's legal drink driving limit. In 2002, American researchers analysed data from more than one million people, and found that getting less than six hours' sleep a night was associated with an early demise – as was getting over eight hours. Studies have found that blood pressure is more than three times greater among those who sleep for less than six hours a night, and women who have less than four hours of sleep are twice as likely to die from heart disease. Other research suggests that a lack of sleep is also related to the onset of diabetes, obesity, and cancer. Are you worried about how much sleep you get? Professor Russell Foster, chair of circadian neuroscience and head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, and professor Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford and lead researcher on the Great British Sleep Survey, answered reader questions. © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 19724 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By EVAN FLEISCHER In two labs some 50 miles apart in Israel, computer scientists and engineers are refining devices that employ tiny cameras as translators of sorts. For both teams, the goal is to give blind people a form of sight — or at least an experience analogous to sight. At Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, where Zeev Zalevsky is head of the electro-optics program, these efforts have taken shape in the form of a smart contact lens. The device begins with a camera mounted on a pair of glasses, and the contact lens, Dr. Zalevsky explained, is embedded with an electrode that will produce an image of what is before the camera directly on the cornea. The image would be experienced in one of two ways: If an apple is placed before the camera, it could be “seen” either as the contour of an apple or as a Braille-like shape that a trained user would recognize as a representation of an apple. Continue reading the main story Contact lens could open new vistas for the blind. Video by Reuters Yevgeny Beiderman, a graduate student who worked with Dr. Zalevsky in testing the prototype, said: “The first time, the usage of the glasses feels strange. It takes at least a few attempts to start using it.” The image captured by Dr. Zalevsky’s device is 110 by 110 pixels — hardly photograph-quality resolution, but Dr. Zalevsky said by email that the camera captures several images in time, and the compressed and encoded result “is enough to allow functionality to the blind person (for example: Braille contains only six points and is enough for reading.)” Dr. Zalevsky is awaiting permission from a hospital to test the electrode lens on people, so in the meantime he has conducted preliminary trials using lenses that apply air pressure to the cornea instead. He has also conducted tests in which participants identified various shapes based on electrical stimulation of the tongue, after the same sort of training that would let someone wearing his lens “see” an apple as a Braille-like pattern. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 19723 - Posted: 06.12.2014

The financial crisis has been linked to a 4.5 per cent increase in Canada’s suicide rate, according to a study that estimates at least 10,000 extra suicides could be connected to economic hardship in EU countries and North America. Researchers compared suicide data from the World Health Organization before and after the onset of the recession in 2007. "A crucial question for policy and psychiatric practice is whether these suicide rises are inevitable," Aaron Reeves of Oxford University’s sociology department and his co-authors said in Wednesday’s issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. Given that the rise in suicides exceeded what would be expected and the large variations in suicide rates across countries, the researchers suspect some of the suicides were "potentially avoidable." In Canada, the suicides rose by 4.5 per cent or about 240 suicides more than expected between 2007 and 2010. In the U.S.A, the rate increased by 4.8 per cent over the same period. Before 2007 in Europe, suicide rates had been falling, but the trend reversed, rising by 6.5 per cent by 2009 and staying elevated through 2011. Two countries, Sweden and Finland, bucked the trend in the early 1990s. Job loss, home repossession and debt are the main risk factors leading to suicide during economic downturns, previous studies suggest. © CBC 2014

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 19722 - Posted: 06.12.2014

Virginia Morell Teaching isn’t often seen in animals other than humans—and it’s even more difficult to demonstrate in animals living in the wild rather than in a laboratory setting. But researchers studying the Australian superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) in the wild think the small songbirds (a male is shown in the photo above) practice the behavior. They regard a female fairy-wren sitting on her nest and incubating her eggs as the teacher, and her embryonic chicks as her pupils. She must teach her unhatched chicks a password—a call they will use after emerging to solicit food from their parents; the better they learn the password, the more they will be fed. Since 1992, there’s been a well-accepted definition of teaching that consists of three criteria. First, the teacher must modify his or her behavior in the presence of a naive individual—which the birds do; the mothers increase their teaching (that is, the rate at which they make the call) when their chicks are in a late stage of incubation. Second, there must be a benefit to the pupil, which there clearly is. Scientists reported online yesterday in Behavioral Ecology that the fairy-wrens also pass the third criteria: There must be a cost to the teacher. And for the small birds, there can be a hefty price to pay. The more often a female repeats the password, the more likely she is to attract a parasitical cuckoo, which will sneak in and lay its eggs in her nest. From careful field observations, the scientists discovered that at nests that were parasitized, the females had recited their password 20 times an hour. But at nests that were not parasitized, the females had called only 10 times per hour. Superb fairy-wrens thus join a short but growing list of animal-teachers, such as rock ants, meerkats, and pied babblers. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 19721 - Posted: 06.12.2014

THE star of the World Cup may not be able to bend it like Beckham, but they might be able to kick a ball using the power of their mind. If all goes to plan, a paralysed young adult will use an exoskeleton controlled by their thoughtsMovie Camera to take the first kick of the football tournament in Thursday's opening ceremony in São Paulo, Brazil. The exoskeleton belongs to the Walk Again Project, an international collaboration using technology to overcome paralysis. Since December, the project has been training eight paralysed people to use the suit, which supports the lower body and is controlled by brain activity detected by a cap of electrodes placed over the head. The brain signals are sent to a computer, which converts them into movement. Lead robotic engineer Gordon Cheng, at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, says that there is a phenomenal amount of technology within the exoskeleton, including sensors that feed information about pressure and temperature back to the arms of the user, which still have sensation. The team hopes this will replicate to some extent the feeling of kicking a ball. The exoskeleton isn't the only technology on show in Brazil. FIFA has announced that fans will decide who is man of the match by voting for their favourite player on Twitter during the second half of each game using #ManOfTheMatch. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 19720 - Posted: 06.12.2014

by Lauren Hitchings Being cold can burn calories but no one wants to freeze just to sculpt their muffin-top. Soon we may not have to. Researchers have identified immune molecules triggered by cold temperatures that make obese mice lose weight – without the need for the mercury to drop. Humans and other mammals respond to cold in two ways. On the surface, we shiver to burn energy and produce a quick burst of heat. On a deeper level, as Ajay Chawla at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues recently discovered, cold temperatures send signals to immune molecules called macrophages. They, in turn, release other molecules that convert energy-storing white fat into another type that burns energy. Babies and some hibernating animals have lots of these energy-burning cells – known as brown fat – but it almost all disappears as people age. We now know that cold temperatures can trigger a "browning" of white fat in adults – converting some of their white fat into an intermediate form called beige fat. It may seem counterintuitive for our bodies to use up fat stores when we get cold, but think of the white fat as the wooden walls of a log cabin – having them there is a good way to keep warm generally, but when the cold sets in, you're going to want firewood – brown or beige fat, to burn. Now Chawla's team have identified interleukin-4 and interleukin-13 as the signalling molecules that kick-start the transition of white fat to its darker counterpart. What's more, by injecting mice with interleukin-4 four times over a period of eight days, the team was able to bypass the physical cold stimulus and activate the pathway biochemically. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 19719 - Posted: 06.10.2014

by Bethany Brookshire Human vocal chords can produce an astonishing array of sounds: shrill and fearful, low and sultry, light and breathy, loud and firm. The slabs of muscle in our throat make the commanding sound of a powerful bass and a baby’s delightful, gurgling laugh. There are voices that must be taken seriously, voices that play and voices that seduce. And then there’s vocal fry. Bringing to mind celebrity voices like Kim Kardashian or Zooey Deschanel, vocal fry is a result of pushing the end of words and sentences into the lowest vocal register. When forcing the voice low, the vocal folds in the throat vibrate irregularly, allowing air to slip through. The result is a low, sizzling rattle underneath the tone. Recent studies have documented growing popularity of vocal fry among young women in the United States. But popular sizzle in women’s speech might be frying their job prospects, a new study reports. The findings suggest that people with this vocal affectation might want to hold the fry on the job market — and that people on the hiring side of the table might want to examine their biases. Vocal fry has been recognized since the 1970s, but now it’s thought of as a fad. Study coauthor Casey Klofstad, a political scientist at the University of Miami in Goral Gables, Fla., says that the media attention surrounding vocal fry generated a lot of speculation. “It is a good thing? Is it bad? It gave us a clear question we could test,” he says. Specifically, they wanted to study whether vocal fry had positive or negative effects on how people who used the technique were perceived. Led by Rindy Anderson from Duke University, the researchers recorded seven young men and seven young women speaking the phrase “Thank you for considering me for this opportunity.” Each person spoke the phrase twice, once with vocal fry and once without. Then the authors played the recordings to 800 participants ages 18 to 65, asking them to make judgments about the candidates based on voice alone. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 19718 - Posted: 06.10.2014

Associated Press In one of the most ambitious attempts yet to thwart Alzheimer's disease, a major study got under way Monday to see if an experimental drug can protect healthy seniors whose brains harbor silent signs that they're at risk. Scientists plan to eventually scan the brains of thousands of older volunteers in the U.S., Canada and Australia to find those with a sticky build-up believed to play a key role in development of Alzheimer's - the first time so many people without memory problems get the chance to learn the potentially troubling news. Having lots of that gunky protein called beta-amyloid doesn't guarantee someone will get sick. But the big question: Could intervening so early make a difference for those who do? "We have to get them at the stage when we can save their brains," said Dr. Reisa Sperling of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who is leading the huge effort to find out. Researchers are just beginning to recruit volunteers, and on Monday, a Rhode Island man was hooked up for an IV infusion at Butler Hospital in Providence, the first treated. Peter Bristol, 70, of Wakefield, R.I., figured he was at risk because his mother died of Alzheimer's and his brother has it. "I felt I needed to be proactive in seeking whatever therapies might be available for myself in the coming years," said Bristol, who said he was prepared when a PET scan of his brain showed he harbored enough amyloid to qualify for the research. "Just because I have it doesn't mean I'm going to get Alzheimer's," he stressed. But Bristol and his wife are "going into the situation with our eyes wide open." He won't know until the end of what is called the A4 Study - it stands for Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's - whether he received monthly infusions of the experimental medicine, Eli Lilly & Co.'s solanezumab, or a dummy drug. © 2014 Hearst Communications, Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 19717 - Posted: 06.10.2014