At the TEDx conference in Detroit last week, RoboRoach #12 scuttled across the exhibition floor, pursued not by an exterminator but by a gaggle of fascinated onlookers. Wearing a tiny backpack of microelectronics on its shell, the cockroach—a member of the Blaptica dubia species—zigzagged along the corridor in a twitchy fashion, its direction controlled by the brush of a finger against an iPhone touch screen (as seen in video above). RoboRoach #12 and its brethren are billed as a do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own “cyborg” insects. The roach was the main feature of the TEDx talk by Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo, co-founders of an educational company called Backyard Brains. After a summer Kickstarter campaign raised enough money to let them hone their insect creation, the pair used the Detroit presentation to show it off and announce that starting in November, the company will, for $99, begin shipping live cockroaches across the nation, accompanied by a microelectronic hardware and surgical kits geared toward students as young as 10 years old. That news, however, hasn’t been greeted warmly by everyone. Gage and Marzullo, both trained as neuroscientists and engineers, say that the purpose of the project is to spur a “neuro-revolution” by inspiring more kids to join the fields when they grow up, but some critics say the project is sending the wrong message. "They encourage amateurs to operate invasively on living organisms" and "encourage thinking of complex living organisms as mere machines or tools," says Michael Allen Fox, a professor of philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 18755 - Posted: 10.08.2013

by Linda Geddes They are identical in almost every way, except one twin is fat and the other is thin. Now a study of this rare group is shedding light on a medical mystery: how some people can be obese and perfectly healthy. Obesity usually goes hand in hand with metabolic syndrome – high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes – but a minority of obese people escape this fate. To probe the fit fat phenomenon, Jussi Naukkarinen at the University of Helsinki in Finland and his colleagues turned to a registry of identical twins, picking 16 pairs whose body weight differed by 17 kilograms on average. They are a perfect model for studying such differences because they are genetically identical and have usually been raised in very similar environments. Naukkarinen's team started by looking at the siblings' body fat distribution and quickly saw that the fat twins fell into two groups: those that tended to accumulate fat within their livers, and those whose liver fat resembled that of their thin twin. Suppressed activity Next, they looked at other markers of ill-health, including insulin resistance, cholesterol, inflammation and blood pressure. These measures also divided the group. "Basically all the hallmarks of the metabolic syndrome were lacking in the group where there was no liver fat," Naukkarinen says. Researchers also compared samples of the twins' abdominal fat, or adipose tissue. In unhealthy obese twins, genes involved in inflammation were activated – genes that were not activated in their thin twin. The activity of cellular powerhouses called mitochondria seemed to be suppressed as well. But in healthy obese twins, gene expression was similar to that of the thin twin. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18754 - Posted: 10.07.2013

By John Horgan Last spring, I kicked up a kerfuffle by proposing that research on race and intelligence, given its potential for exacerbating discrimination, should be banned. Now Nature has expanded this debate with “Taboo Genetics.” The article “looks at four controversial areas of behavioral genetics”—intelligence, race, violence and sexuality—”to find out why each field has been a flashpoint, and whether there are sound scientific reasons for pursuing such studies.” Behavioral genetics has failed to produce robust evidence linking complex traits and disorders to specific genes. The essay provides a solid overview, including input from both defenders of behavioral genetics and critics. The author, Erika Check Hayden, quotes me saying that research on race and intelligence too often bolsters “racist ideas about the inferiority of certain groups, which plays into racist policies.” I only wish that Hayden had repeated my broader complaint against behavioral genetics, which attempts to explain human behavior in genetic terms. The field, which I’ve been following since the late 1980s, has a horrendous track record. My concerns about the potential for abuse of behavioral genetics are directly related to its history of widely publicized, erroneous claims. I like to call behavioral genetics “gene whiz science,” because “advances” so often conform to the same pattern. Researchers, or gene-whizzers, announce: There’s a gene that makes you gay! That makes you super-smart! That makes you believe in God! That makes you vote for Barney Frank! The media and the public collectively exclaim, “Gee whiz!” © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Intelligence; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18753 - Posted: 10.07.2013

By Matthew D. Lieberman The popular conception of human nature emerging from psychology over the last century suggests that we are something of a hybrid, combining reptilian, instinct-driven motivational tendencies with superior higher-level analytic powers. Our motivational tendencies evolved from our reptilian brains eons ago and focus on the four Fs: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fooling around. In contrast, our intellectual capacities are relatively recent advances. They are what makes us special. One of the things that distinguishes primates from other animals, and humans from other primates, is the size of our brains—in particular, the size of our prefrontal cortex, that is, the front part of the brain sitting right behind the eyes. Our big brains allow us to engage in all sorts of intelligent activities. But that doesn’t mean our brains evolved to do those particular things. Humans are the only animals that can learn to play chess, but no one would argue that the prefrontal cortex evolved specifically so that we could play the game of kings. Rather, the prefrontal cortex is often thought of as an all-purpose computer; we can load it up with almost any software (that is, teach it things). Thus, the prefrontal cortex seems to have evolved for solving novel hard problems, with chess being just one of an endless string of problems it can solve. From this perspective there might not be anything special at all about our ability and tendency to think about the social world. Other people can be thought of as a series of hard problems to be solved because they stand between us and our reptilian desires. Just as our prefrontal cortex can allow us to master the game of chess, the same reasoning suggests that our all-purpose prefrontal cortex can learn to master the social game of chess—that is, the moves that are permissible and advantageous in social life. From this perspective, intelligence is intelligence whether it’s being applied to social life, chess, or studying for a final exam. The creator of one of the most widely used intelligence tests espoused this view, arguing that social intelligence is just “general intelligence applied to social situations.” This view implies social intelligence isn’t special and our interest in the social world is just an accident—a consequence of the particular problems we are confronted with. © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 18752 - Posted: 10.07.2013

Alice Roberts It's the rutting season. From Richmond Park to the Isle of Rum, red deer hinds will be gathering, and the stags that have spent the past 10 months minding their own business in bachelor groups are back in town, with one thing on their minds. A mature male that has netted himself a harem is very dedicated. He practically stops eating, focusing instead on keeping his hinds near and his competitors at bay. If you're a red deer stag, one of the ways you make sure that your adversaries know you mean business – and that you're big – is roaring. And you don't let up. You can keep roaring all day, and through the night too, twice a minute, if necessary. While female red deer prefer the deeper roars of larger stags, roaring also appears to be part of how stags size one another up, before deciding whether or not to get engaged in a full-on physical fight. Most confrontations are settled without locking antlers. In male red and fallow deer, the voicebox or larynx is very low in the throat – and gets even lower when they roar. Strap-like muscles that attach to the larynx contract to drag it down towards the breastbone – lengthening the vocal tract and deepening the stag's roar. Deepening the voice exaggerates body size. Over generations, stags with deeper roars presumably had more reproductive success, so the position of the larynx moved lower and lower in the neck. When a red deer stag roars his larynx is pulled down so far that it contacts the front of his breastbone – it couldn't get any lower. In human evolution, much is made of the low position of the larynx in the neck. So much, in fact, that it has been considered to be a uniquely human trait, and intrinsically linked to that other uniquely human trait: spoken language. But if red and fallow deer also have low larynges, that means, first, that we're not as unusual as we like to think we are, and second, that there could be other reasons – that are nothing to do with speaking – for having a descended larynx. © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 18751 - Posted: 10.07.2013

Smart, successful, and well-connected: a good description of Albert Einstein … and his brain. The father of relativity theory didn’t live to see modern brain imaging techniques, but after his death his brain was sliced into sections and photographed. Now, scientists have used those cross-sectional photos to reveal a larger-than-average corpus callosum—the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the brain’s two hemispheres. Researchers measured the thickness of the famous noggin’s corpus callosum (the lighter-colored, downward-curving region at the center of each hemisphere, above) at various points along its length, and compared it to MRIs from 15 elderly men and 52 young, healthy ones. The thickness of Einstein’s corpus callosum was greater than the average for both the elderly and the young subjects, the team reported online last week in the journal Brain. The authors posit that in Einstein’s brain, more nerve fibers connected key regions such as the two sides of the prefrontal cortex, which are responsible for complex thought and decision-making. Combined with previous evidence that parts of the physicist’s brain were unusually large and intricately folded, the researchers suggest that this feature helps account for his extraordinary gifts. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Intelligence; Laterality
Link ID: 18750 - Posted: 10.07.2013

By EILEEN POLLACK Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. If they did hire the woman, they set her salary, on average, nearly $4,000 lower than the man’s. Surprisingly, female scientists were as biased as their male counterparts. The new study goes a long way toward providing hard evidence of a continuing bias against women in the sciences. Only one-fifth of physics Ph.D.’s in this country are awarded to women, and only about half of those women are American; of all the physics professors in the United States, only 14 percent are women. The numbers of black and Hispanic scientists are even lower; in a typical year, 13 African-Americans and 20 Latinos of either sex receive Ph.D.’s in physics. The reasons for those shortages are hardly mysterious — many minority students attend secondary schools that leave them too far behind to catch up in science, and the effects of prejudice at every stage of their education are well documented. But what could still be keeping women out of the STEM fields (“STEM” being the current shorthand for “science, technology, engineering and mathematics”), which offer so much in the way of job prospects, prestige, intellectual stimulation and income? As one of the first two women to earn a bachelor of science degree in physics from Yale — I graduated in 1978 — this question concerns me deeply. I attended a rural public school whose few accelerated courses in physics and calculus I wasn’t allowed to take because, as my principal put it, “girls never go on in science and math.” Angry and bored, I began reading about space and time and teaching myself calculus from a book. When I arrived at Yale, I was woefully unprepared. The boys in my introductory physics class, who had taken far more rigorous math and science classes in high school, yawned as our professor sped through the material, while I grew panicked at how little I understood. The only woman in the room, I debated whether to raise my hand and expose myself to ridicule, thereby losing track of the lecture and falling further behind. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18749 - Posted: 10.05.2013

The discovery of "missing" genes could help scientists understand how autism develops, a study suggests. US researchers looked at the genetic profiles of more than 431 people with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and 379 without. They found those with an ASD were more likely to have just one copy of certain genes, when they should have had two. UK experts said genetic factors were one promising area of research into the causes of autism. About 1% of the population has an ASD. They can run in families - but scientists have not identified a cause. Gene deletions or additions happen in everyone - it is why people are different. It is which genes are affected that determines what the effect is. 'Mis-wiring' There were far more gene deletions in the ASD group, and they were more likely to have multiple deletions. Writing in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the team from Mount Sinai suggests this "mis-wiring" could alter the activity of nerve cells in the brain. Prof Joseph Buxbaum, who led the research team, said: "This is the first finding that small deletions impacting one or two genes appear to be common in autism, and that these deletions contribute to risk of development of this disorder." BBC © 2013

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18748 - Posted: 10.05.2013

By Gary Stix Psychological depression is more than an emotional state. Good evidence for that comes from emerging new uses for a technology already widely prescribed for Parkinson’s patients. The more neurologists and surgeons learn about the aptly named deep brain stimulation, the more they are convinced that the currents from the technology’s implanted electrodes can literally reboot brain circuits involved with the mood disorder. Thomas Schlaepfer, a psychiatrist from the University of Bonn Hospital and a leading expert in researching deep brain stimulation, describes in the interview that follows the workings of the technique and why it may help the severely depressed. Can you explain what deep brain stimulation is and what it is currently used for? Deep brain stimulation refers to the implantation of very small electrodes in both hemispheres of the brain, which are connected to a neurostimulator, usually placed under the skin on the right chest. This device is in size and function very similar to a heart pacemaker. It allows stimulations of different pulse width and frequency. Depending on the chosen stimulation parameters the electrodes in the brain are able to “neuromodulate” – to reversibly alter the function – of the surrounding brain tissue. Deep brain stimulation has gained widespread acceptance as a successful treatment for tremor associated with Parkinson’s disease. More than 80,000 patients worldwide have been treated with this method. Some see deep brain stimulation as a much less invasive and fully reversibly alternative to historical neurosurgical interventions, which require tiny amounts of brain tissue to be destroyed in order to have clinical effects. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 18747 - Posted: 10.05.2013

by Laura Sanders When I started to get out and about with Baby V, I occasionally experienced a strange phenomenon. Women would approach and coo some pleasant little noises. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, these strangers would lean in close and ask to smell my baby. I’m the first to admit that this sounds creepy. Truth be told, it is a little creepy. But now I completely get it. The joy from a single whiff of newborn far outweighs any trifling social conventions about personal space and body odors. So when women approach looking for a little hit of eau de bebe, I get sharey. By all means, ladies, lean in and smell away. Tiny babies smell very, very good. So good that I’m getting a little high from just thinking about how good babies smell. So good that people attempt to bottle and sell this scent (like this baby-head-scented spray— pleasant, but pales in comparison). So good that scientists really want to know why some women find this smell irresistible. Scientists recently studied the brains of women as they sniffed new baby scent. Two-day-old babies delivered the good stuff by wearing the same pajamas for two nights. Women then sniffed the odor extracted from the outfit while brain scans assessed neural activity. Overall, the 30 women in the study (who weren’t told what they were sniffing, by the way) rated the scent as mildly pleasant. As the intoxicating scent of newborn wafted into their brains, neural activity increased in areas of the brain linked to good feelings, called neostriate areas. In the brains of the 15 women who also happened to be mothers, the brain activity seemed stronger. (No word yet on what new baby smell does to dads’ brains.) © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18746 - Posted: 10.05.2013

by Ed Yong I’ve just arrived home from 14 hours of flying. The clocks on my phone and laptop have been ticking away the whole time, and it takes a few seconds to reset them to British time. The clocks in my body are more difficult. We run on a daily 24-hour body clock, which controls everything from our blood pressure to our temperature to how hungry we feel. It runs on proteins rather than gears. Once they’re built, these proteins stop their own manufacture after a slight delay, meaning that their levels rise and fall with a regular rhythm. These timers tick away inside almost all of our cells, and they’re synchronised by a tiny collection of 10,000 neurons at the bottom of our brain. It’s called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). It’s the master clock. It’s the conductor that keeps the orchestra in sync. The SCN is also sensitive to light. It gets signals from our eyes, which allows it to synchronise its ticking with the 24-hour cycle of day and night outside. The SCN is what connects the rhythms of our bodies with those of the planet. But when we travel far and fast, and suddenly land in a new time zone, the SCN becomes misaligned with the environment. It takes time to re-adjust, typically one day for every time zone crossed. In the meantime, our sleep is disrupted and our physiology goes weird. In other words: jet lag. But at Kyoto University, Yoshiaki Yamaguchi and Toru Suzuki have engineered mice that break this rule. They are, with apologies for the awful word, unjetlaggable. If you change the light in their cages to mimic an 8-hour time difference, they readjust almost immediately. Put them on a red-eye flight from San Francisco to London and they’d be fine.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 18745 - Posted: 10.05.2013

Answer by Paul King, computational neuroscientist: The emerging view in neuroscience is that dreams are related to memory consolidation happening in the brain during sleep. This may include reorganizing and recoding memories in relation to emotional drives as well as transferring memories between brain regions. During the day, episodic memories (memories for events) are stored in the hippocampus, a region of the brain specialized for long-term memory that learns particularly quickly. At night, memories from this region appear to be transferred to the cerebral cortex, the region specialized for information processing, cognition, and knowledge. Studies in animals have found that during sleep, the neural activity of the hippocampus "replays" the events of the day. This replay happens faster than real-time, and sometimes happens in reverse. The activity replay is correlated with neural activity patterns in both the visual cortex (responsible for visual experience) and the prefrontal cortex (responsible for strategy, goals, and planning). The memory replay occurs during REM sleep and dreaming. Philosopher Daniel Dennett proposes the Dream Weaving party game: One person, the Dream Guesser is asked to leave the room, and while away, someone will share a dream with the group. When the Dream Guesser returns, their job will be to ask yes/no questions of random people in the group to attempt to reconstruct the plot of the dream. © 2013 The Slate Group, LLC.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 18744 - Posted: 10.05.2013

By R. Douglas Fields Human beings are utterly dependent on a complex social structure for their survival. Since all behavior is controlled by the brain, human beings may have evolved specialized neural circuits that are responsible for compliance with society’s rules. A new study has identified such a region in the human brain, and researchers can increase or decrease a person’s good behavior by electrodes on the scalp that stimulate or inhibit this brain circuit. Individuals must adhere to rules of society, which are ultimately enforced by punishments ranging from peer criticism to severe legal sanctions. “Our findings suggest a neural mechanism that is specialized for social norm compliance,” says Christian Ruff, one of the researchers in this new study published in the October 4, 2013 edition of the journal Science. In addition to illuminating the neurobiological basis for the evolution of social structure in humans, this new finding suggests new therapeutic treatments for people who have problems complying with normal social behavior. “That this mechanism can be upregulated by brain stimulation indeed suggests that targeted influences on these neural processes (by brain stimulation or pharmacology) may help to ameliorate problems with social norm compliance in medical and forensic contexts,” he says. It was already known from fMRI studies that neural activity increased in a specific part of the human cerebral cortex when participants comply with social norms. This region is located in the prefrontal region of the right cerebral hemisphere, called the right lateral prefrontal cortex (rLPFC). However, a correlation between brain activity and behavior does not prove that this neural circuit causes people to comply with social norms. Such proof would require manipulating electrical activity in this brain region to see if people altered their behavior in terms of complying with social expectations. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 18743 - Posted: 10.05.2013

By PAM BELLUCK Say you are getting ready for a blind date or a job interview. What should you do? Besides shower and shave, of course, it turns out you should read — but not just anything. Something by Chekhov or Alice Munro will help you navigate new social territory better than a potboiler by Danielle Steel. That is the conclusion of a study published Thursday in the journal Science. It found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence — skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking. The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity. “This is why I love science,” Louise Erdrich, whose novel “The Round House” was used in one of the experiments, wrote in an e-mail. The researchers, she said, “found a way to prove true the intangible benefits of literary fiction.” “Thank God the research didn’t find that novels increased tooth decay or blocked up your arteries,” she added. The researchers, social psychologists at the New School for Social Research in New York City, recruited their subjects through that über-purveyor of reading material, Amazon.com. To find a broader pool of participants than the usual college students, they used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, where people sign up to earn money for completing small jobs. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 18742 - Posted: 10.05.2013

by Colin Barras SHAKEN, scorched and boiled in its own juices, this 4000-year-old human brain has been through a lot. It may look like nothing more than a bit of burnt log, but it is one of the oldest brains ever found. Its discovery, and the story now being pieced together of its owner's last hours, offers the tantalising prospect that archaeological remains could harbour more ancient brain specimens than thought. If that's the case, it potentially opens the way to studying the health of the brain in prehistoric times. Brain tissue is rich in enzymes that cause cells to break down rapidly after death, but this process can be halted if conditions are right. For instance, brain tissue has been found in the perfectly preserved body of an Inca child sacrificed 500 years ago. In this case, death occurred at the top of an Andean mountain where the body swiftly froze, preserving the brain. However, Seyitömer Höyük – the Bronze Age settlement in western Turkey where this brain was found – is not in the mountains. So how did brain tissue survive in four skeletons dug up there between 2006 and 2011? Meriç Altinoz at Haliç University in Istanbul, Turkey, who together with colleagues has been analysing the find, says the clues are in the ground. The skeletons were found burnt in a layer of sediment that also contained charred wooden objects. Given that the region is tectonically active, Altinoz speculates that an earthquake flattened the settlement and buried the people before fire spread through the rubble. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 18741 - Posted: 10.05.2013

Figuring out the next 99,999,999,900 neurons “We have a hundred billion neurons in each human brain,” said Nicholas Spitzer, a neurobiologist and co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at the University of California-San Diego (which is partnering with The Atlantic on this event). “Right now, the best we can do is to record the electrical activity of maybe a few hundred of those neurons. Gee, that’s not very impressive.” Spitzer and his team are trying to figure out what’s going on in the rest of those neurons, or brain cells – specifically, what "jobs" they have in the body. But first, a bit of Neuroscience 101: “As your readers may know, the nerve cells or neurons in the brain communicate with each other through the release of chemicals, called neurotransmitters,” Spitzer said. “This allows a motor neuron that makes a muscle contract signal to the muscle to say, ‘time to contract.’ It seems like kind of a clumsy way to organize a signaling system.” But sometimes, those neurons change "jobs" – a motor neuron might start signaling another function in the body, for example. "These issues have their origins in the Greek and Roman and Chinese philosophers." “We thought for a long time that the wiring of the brain was a little bit like the wiring of some sort of electronic device in that the connection of the wires in the ‘device,’ the brain, are fairly fixed. What we’re finding is that the wires can remain in place, but the function of the circuit and the connection of the wires can change,” Spitzer said. “This is something of a heresy.” © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Consciousness
Link ID: 18740 - Posted: 10.03.2013

Intelligence tests were first devised in the early twentieth century as a way to identify children who needed extra help in school. It was only later that the growing eugenics movement began to promote use of the tests to weed out the less intelligent and eliminate them from society, sparking a debate over the appropriateness of the study of intelligence that carries on to this day. But it was not the research that was problematic: it was the intended use of the results. As the News Feature on page 26 details, this history is never far from the minds of scientists who work in the most fraught areas of behavioural genetics. Although the ability to investigate the genetic factors that underlie the heritability of traits such as intelligence, violent behaviour, race and sexual orientation is new, arguments and attitudes about the significance of these traits are not. Scientists have a responsibility to do what they can to prevent abuses of their work, including the way it is communicated. Here are some pointers. First: be patient. Do not speculate about the possibility of finding certain results, or about the implications of those results, before your data have even been analysed. The BGI Cognitive Genomics group in Shenzhen, China, is studying thousands of people to find genes that underlie intelligence, but group members sparked a furore by predicting that studies such as theirs could one day let parents select embryos with genetic predispositions to high intelligence. Many other geneticists are sceptical that the project will even find genes linked to this trait. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 18739 - Posted: 10.03.2013

Sarah C. P. Williams A person might be caught off-guard without an umbrella in a sudden downpour, but rain doesn’t catch insects by surprise. Moths, beetles, and aphids predict storms by sensing changes in air pressure and then alter their behavior, researchers have discovered. In particular, the new study finds that insects change their mating behaviors when the air pressure drops, which often precedes rain, or when the air pressure rises, which can signal strong winds. “People have observed before that birds, bats, and even fish respond to changes in [air] pressure,” says entomologist Maria Fernanda Peñaflor of the University of São Paulo in Brazil, a co-author of the new study. “This is the first time such behavior has been studied in insects.” Peñaflor and her colleagues knew that insect behavior was mediated by temperature, wind, and rainfall and wondered whether air pressure played a role as well. They first correlated air pressure data from a local meteorology station with the behavior of male cucurbit beetles (Diabrotica speciosa), green and yellow beetles about 6 millimeters long that feed on cucurbit vegetables, such as cucumbers, pumpkins, and squashes, in South America. They discovered that on days when the pressure was falling—indicating impending rain—the male beetles were less likely to walk in the direction of female pheromones, which they normally follow to pursue mates. To find out more, Peñaflor’s group collaborated with researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada who had a controlled pressure chamber in which they could perform experiments. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18738 - Posted: 10.03.2013

by Colin Barras It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Researchers have reached inside the brain of a rat and pulled out neural stem cells – without harming the animal. Since the technique uses nanoparticles already approved for use in humans, it is hoped that it could be used to extract neural stem cells (NSCs) from people to treat conditions like Parkinson's, Huntington's and multiple sclerosis. Extracting NSCs from the person who needs them would avoid immune rejection – but they are difficult to remove safely. So Edman Tsang at the University of Oxford and his colleagues have developed a technique to safely fish out NSCs that originate in cavities in the brain called ventricles. Tsang's team coated magnetic nanoparticles with antibodies that bond tightly to a protein found on the surface of NSCs. They then injected the nanoparticles into the lateral ventricles of rats' brains. Six hours later, after the nanoparticles had bonded to the NSCs, the researchers used a magnetic field around the rats' heads to pull the stem cells together. They could then be sucked out of the brain with a syringe. After freeing the stem cells from the nanoparticles, the team found they could grow them in a dish, suggesting they were undamaged by the process. The rats, meanwhile, were back on their feet within hours of the surgery, showing no ill effects. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 18737 - Posted: 10.03.2013

By Lenny Bernstein, Joanna Leigh describes her life in black and white, before and after. Before the Boston Marathon bombing, she says, she had “just embarked on a really beautiful future” with a new doctoral degree in international development and a career as a consultant. Today, she says, she can’t work or drive and often gets lost, sometimes on her own block. Her vision is blurry, her hearing is diminished and her ears ring constantly. She struggles to cook dinner, do her laundry, fill out a form. Mostly, she sleeps. The cause of her difficulties, according to the physician who examined her, was a traumatic brain injury on April 15. But because Leigh, 39, walked home that day after she was knocked unconscious by the second bomb and never went to a hospital, she received just $8,000 from the One Fund charity for survivors. She said her medical and other expenses have reached $70,000. She is applying for disability payments and food stamps. One Fund payouts to everyone except 16 amputees and the families of the four people who were killed were based on the number of nights spent in the hospital. A single night was worth $125,000; 32 nights qualified victims for $948,000. The 143 people who were treated as outpatients received $8,000 each. In coming days, Leigh and four other attack survivors will petition the One Fund to develop a new plan for distributing the millions of dollars in donations the charity has received since the first payout. They are seeking a formula that takes into account injuries that were slow to reveal themselves. © 1996-2013 The Washington Post

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 18736 - Posted: 10.03.2013