By Nathan Seppa Rogers Hornsby, one of the best hitters ever to swing a baseball bat, had a reputation for being standoffish. Teammates complained that he didn’t socialize, even balking at attending movies — prime entertainment during the 1920s. Sitting in a dark theater watching a bright screen made it difficult to hit a baseball, Hornsby used to say. Hard to argue with a guy who reportedly had terrific eyesight and who finished three seasons with a batting average better than .400. Hornsby might have been onto something that scientists are only now coming to embrace: Too much time spent indoors may contribute to nearsightedness, also called myopia. Nearsightedness has increased steadily in North America and Europe in recent decades, with one-third of adults in the United States now nearsighted. That figure alone is cause for concern. But the rise of myopia in East Asia is downright alarming. Recent studies of young men in Seoul and college students in Shanghai find that more than 95 percent are nearsighted. Increases also have shown up across other urban centers in the Far East. Studies first uncovered a link between myopia and limited outdoor time during childhood just a few years ago. At the time, many researchers were taken aback. The notion that child’s play might promote normal eye growth seemed almost magical. “Certainly, before five years ago, I don’t think anybody had taken much notice of how much time people spent outdoors,” says Jeremy Guggenheim, an optometrist who has researched myopia in Wales and is currently at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He believes the findings offer a “new and exciting direction” for research. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17719 - Posted: 01.28.2013

by Andy Coghlan For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm, allowing the effect to be passed down to the next generation. The finding, obtained from detailed DNA scans in developing mouse eggs and sperm, backs up mounting indirect evidence from statistical studies that the genetic impacts of environmental factors such as smoking, diet, stressed childhoods, famine and psychiatric disease can be passed down to future generations through a process called epigenetic inheritance. Many geneticists had considered this an impossibility. Genes can be switched off by altering DNA through a chemical process called methylation, in which enzymes respond to environmental factors by marking genes with methyl groups that prevent them from working. But the idea that genes carrying these epigenetic markings could be inherited is controversial. Previous studies had shown that as sperm and eggs develop, any markings added to genes during life are erased to provide a genetic "blank slate" from which the next generation develops. Any remaining marks were also thought to be erased when an egg is fertilised. Now a team led by Jamie Hackett at the University of Cambridge has challenged this picture. The researchers extracted the DNA from mouse primordial germ cells – the precursors to sperm and eggs – at various stages of their development and used markers to spot any methylated genes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress; Epigenetics
Link ID: 17718 - Posted: 01.28.2013

Doctors should resist the temptation to use an inexpensive tool that probes the brain's electrical activity when evaluating vegetative patients who can't communicate. Drs. Adrian Owen and Damian Cruse of the Centre for Brain and Mind in London, Ont., promoted the use of electroencephalography or EEG that can be used at a patient's bedside to determine if there's neurological activity in people in a vegetative state — those who are unresponsive in traditional tests of awareness. In a letter published in Thursday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet, Dr. Jonathan Victor of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and his co-authors reanalyzed data shared from Owen's 2011 paper in the same journal. "I think we'd be very, very cautious about using this technology as it stands now," said Victor. Both groups agree the use of EEG technology remains promising to evaluate patients. The challenge, Victor said, is researchers can't be certain about their interpretations when faced with families trying to communicate with their loved ones, including for end-of-life discussions. The critique casts doubt on the original statistical approach and assumptions, which didn't hold when analyzed with a different model. In a rebuttal, Owen's team defended its approach as the only way to draw valid conclusions from vegetative patients and account for their variations. "There are few 'known truths' when attempting to detect covert awareness," Owen's team wrote. "Some are likely to be truly vegetative, while others may appear to be vegetative behaviorally, but are in fact, covertly aware." © CBC 2013

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 17717 - Posted: 01.26.2013

by Sarah C. P. Williams You might not be able to pick your fingerprint out of an inky lineup, but your brain knows what you smell like. For the first time, scientists have shown that people recognize their own scent based on their particular combination of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins, molecules similar to those used by animals to choose their mates. The discovery suggests that humans can also exploit the molecules to differentiate between people. "This is definitely new and exciting," says Frank Zufall, a neurobiologist at Saarland University's School of Medicine in Homburg, Germany, who was not involved in the work. "This type of experiment had never been done on humans before." MHC peptides are found on the surface of almost all cells in the human body, helping inform the immune system that the cells are ours. Because a given combination of MHC peptides—called an MHC type—is unique to a person, they can help the body recognize invading pathogens and foreign cells. Over the past 2 decades, scientists have discovered that the molecules also foster communication between animals, including mice and fish. Stickleback fish, for example, choose mates with different MHC types than their own. Then, in 1995, researchers conducted the now famous "sweaty T-shirt study," which concluded that women prefer the smell of men who have different MHC genes than themselves. But no studies had shown a clear-cut physiological response to MHC proteins. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 17716 - Posted: 01.26.2013

by Sara Reardon In the Arctic winter, it is not even worth getting up in the morning. It's freezing cold and the sun never rises, making it impossible to tell night from day. So each autumn, when the Arctic ground squirrel (Spermophilus parryii) heads underground to hibernate for eight months, it doesn't even bother setting its circadian clock. During hibernation, the squirrel goes into a state akin to suspended animation. It cuts itself off from the world and allows its body temperature to drop to -3 °C while it sleeps – the lowest ever body temperature recorded in a mammal. Once it wakes up for the summer, however, the squirrel can switch its daily clock back on. The squirrels' sub-zero tolerance was first discovered almost 25 years ago. Curious how the animals manage to survive the frigid Arctic winter where temperatures regularly drop to -30 °C, Brian Barnes of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks implanted radio transmitters into the stomachs of captive squirrels, which transmitted information on their body temperature, before letting them build burrows for the winter. Once the squirrels went into their deep sleep, Barnes found that their core body temperature dropped from about 36 °C to -3 °C. To prevent their blood from freezing, the squirrels cleanse it of any particles that water molecules could form ice crystals around. This allows the blood to remain liquid below zero, a phenomenon known as supercooling. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 17715 - Posted: 01.26.2013

by Gretchen Cuda Kroen A day in the life of a male dung beetle goes something like this: Fly to a heap of dung, sculpt a clump of it into a large ball, then roll the ball away from the pile as fast as possible. However, it turns out that the beetles, who work at night, need some sort of compass to prevent them from rolling around in circles. New research in Current Biology suggests that the insects use starlight to guide their way. Birds, seals, and humans also use starlight to navigate, but this is the first time it's been shown in an insect. The whole point of rolling dung is to impress the female beetle with provisions—i.e., excrement—for her future progeny and entice her to mate. She then lays an egg in the ball and buries it in a network of tunnels more than a meter deep, where it serves as food for the developing larvae inside. But rolling dung balls in a straight line is also key to the male dung beetle's reproductive success. Rival males have been known to overtake a slower moving insect and claim the hard-earned treasure as their own. Competition is fiercest near the dung heap, so making a quick and efficient getaway is crucial for mating success. The discovery that dung beetles use starlight "was an accident more than anything," explains study author Eric Warrant, professor of zoology at the Lund University in Sweden. His research group was studying how the beetles used the polarized light patterns of the moon to stay on their paths, when one moonless night they made a surprising observation—the beetles maintained straight trajectories. "Even without the moon—just with the stars—they were still able to navigate," Warrant says. "We were just flabbergasted." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Migration; Evolution
Link ID: 17714 - Posted: 01.26.2013

by Tracy Staedter In this sweet video, a wild bottlenose dolphin slowly approaches a diver, who is with a group that’s watching manta rays near Kona, Hawaii. The dolphin rolls to one side, apparently showing the diver, named Keller Laros, that it’s tangled in fishing net and has a hook stuck in its fin. According to Yahoo News, the dolphin surfaced once for a breath air during the procedure and then returned to the diver, who finished the job of cutting away the net and removing the hook. Once the dolphin was free, it swam away. © 2013 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Animal Communication; Stress
Link ID: 17713 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Nathan Seppa Digestive enzymes that escape from the intestines into adjacent tissues and the bloodstream may be a key player in triggering shock, the dangerous condition that sometimes occurs after major medical trauma. A new study finds that giving enzyme inhibitors to rats in the throes of shock can alleviate the potentially lethal condition. The findings could shed some much needed light on shock, which typically shows up as the end result of some other medical problem such as hemorrhage, sepsis, a heart attack or a systemic allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. In all cases, blood pressure plummets, sabotaging circulation and threatening tissue viability. The new study, in the Jan. 23 Science Translational Medicine, suggests that digestive enzymes play a role in this crisis. The enzymes normally help break down food, but they need to be confined to the ducts in the pancreas, where they are made, or the small intestine, where they digest food. If not, the enzymes can digest a person’s own tissue. A mucosal lining in the intestines keeps the enzymes from escaping the gastrointestinal tract and from damaging the intestines themselves. But hemorrhage, sepsis and other conditions disrupt blood flow to the intestinal wall and hinder maintenance of this barrier, says Geert Schmid-Schönbein, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. If digestive enzymes stray into the rest of the body, he hypothesizes, they could damage vital organs and trigger massive inflammation. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 17712 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Jason G. Goldman Among animal welfare professionals, those who work at zoos might have the toughest jobs. Keepers and curators at zoo must alternately serve as biologists, psychologists, trainers, chefs, janitors, and educators. Often, those hardworking individuals take on multiple roles at once. Another important job that keepers and curators perform at the zoo is that of gerontologist. Gerontology, or the study of aging, is a field that has only been formally defined for forty years, and is becoming a more important consideration for the welfare of captive animals. With the exception of animals raised in a specific breeding program who are destined for reintroduction, animals that are born in zoos will typically live out their lives, and ultimately die, in zoos. Zoos need to therefore adequately prepare to deliver proper care – both physical and psychological – for their aging residents. Providing that sort of proper veterinary care might involve making adjustments to an animal’s environment, routine, or social groupings. Those changes, while made in the service of an animal’s welfare, could nonetheless result in psychological distress. Like any health care provider, a zoo’s animal care staff has to balance the medical health requirements of their charges with their psychological well-being. Human doctors can simply ask their patients how they feel; veterinarians do not have this option. Instead, zoo researchers conduct detailed observations of their animals to determine what consequences might follow any major change in management procedures. Tigers are typically thought of as solitary creatures. In the wild, according to common knowledge, if you see two or more tigers together (and it isn’t mating season), you can bet its a mother and her cubs. However, the social systems of big cats may be more malleable than once thought. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 17711 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Stephen Ornes New babies eat, sleep, cry, poop — and listen. But their eavesdropping begins before birth and may include language lessons, says a new study. Scientists believe such early learning may help babies quickly understand their parents. Christine Moon is a psychologist at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. She led the new study, to be published in February. “It seems that there is some prenatal learning of speech sounds, but we do not yet know how much,” she told Science News. A prenatal event happens before birth. Scientists have known that about 10 weeks before birth, a fetus can hear sounds outside the womb. Those sounds include the volume and rhythm of a person’s voice. But Moon found evidence that fetuses may also be starting to learn language itself. Moon and her coworkers tested whether newborns could detect differences in vowel sounds. These sounds are the loudest in human speech. Her team reports that newborns responded one way when they heard sounds like those from their parents’ language. And the newborns responded another way when they heard sounds like those from a foreign language. This was true among U.S. and Swedish babies who listened to sounds similar to English vowels and Swedish vowels. These responses show that shortly after birth, babies can group together familiar speech sounds, Moon told Science News. © 2013 Copyright Science News for Kids

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17710 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Stephen Ornes Newborns with a certain version of a gene are more likely to have a smaller medial temporal lobe (blue spots). This brain region is also smaller in adults with Alzheimer’s disease. People with the gene version are three times more likely to develop the disorder, which affects memory. Credit: R. Knickmeyer et al Illnesses like the memory disorder known as Alzheimer’s disease are linked to particular changes in the brain. This disease typically doesn’t show up until late in adulthood. But telltale hints that it may be coming can appear much, much earlier. Like at birth. A new study found brain differences linked to Alzheimer’s disease in newborns. These differences appear in a region called the medial temporal lobe. Basically, this part of the brain is smaller in people with Alzheimer’s than in those without the disease. That’s important because this region plays a role in making and keeping memories. The new study scanned the brains of 272 infants. Some of their brains had smaller medial temporal lobes too. Until now, researchers didn’t know when the size differences first show up. Now it’s clear that the key region of the brain can be smaller at birth, reports Rebecca Knickmeyer. She’s a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her team’s new study was published in January. © 2013 Copyright Science News for Kids

Keyword: Alzheimers; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17709 - Posted: 01.26.2013

Maternal inflammation during early pregnancy may be related to an increased risk of autism in children, according to new findings supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. Researchers found this in children of mothers with elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), a well-established marker of systemic inflammation. The risk of autism among children in the study was increased by 43 percent among mothers with CRP levels in the top 20th percentile, and by 80 percent for maternal CRP in the top 10th percentile. The findings appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry and add to mounting evidence that an overactive immune response can alter the development of the central nervous system in the fetus. “Elevated CRP is a signal that the body is undergoing a response to inflammation from, for example, a viral or bacterial infection,” said lead scientist on the study, Alan Brown, M.D., professor of clinical psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Mailman School of Public Health. “The higher the level of CRP in the mother, the greater the risk of autism in the child.” Brown cautioned that the results should be viewed in perspective since the prevalence of inflammation during pregnancy is substantially higher than the prevalence of autism. “The vast majority of mothers with increased CRP levels will not give birth to children with autism,” Brown said. “We don’t know enough yet to suggest routine testing of pregnant mothers for CRP for this reason alone; however, exercising precautionary measures to prevent infections during pregnancy may be of considerable value.”

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17708 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Laura Sanders Electrodes implanted deep in the brain of a boy with severe autism have enabled him to live a more normal life. The treatment reduced his destructive behavior and allowed the formerly nonverbal boy to speak a few words, scientists report online January 21 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The results are the first to use brain stimulation to alleviate symptoms of autism. Scientists caution that interpreting the results broadly is impossible without larger, systematic studies, but even so neurosurgeon Ali Rezai of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus calls the boys’ gains “intriguing and promising.” Researchers have become increasingly interested in deep brain stimulation, a technique in which surgically implanted electrodes act as brain pacemakers. For the last two decades, deep brain stimulation has found use treating movement disorders such as the tremors that accompany Parkinson’s disease (SN: 4/11/09, p.11). More recently, scientists have begun experimenting with the technique to treat behavioral and mental problems, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe anxiety. The boy in the study, who was 13 at the time of his experimental surgery, suffered from severe autism symptoms: He couldn’t talk or make eye contact, woke up screaming repeatedly during the night, and habitually injured himself so badly that His parents restrained him almost constantly to protect him. Multiple rounds of psychiatric drugs failed to stave off his worsening symptoms. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 17707 - Posted: 01.26.2013

By Linda Carroll In just 10 years the number of children diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, rose dramatically, a large new study suggests. Overall, about 5 percent of nearly 843,000 kids ages 5 to 11 were diagnosed between 2001 and 2010 with the condition that can cause impulsive behavior and trouble concentrating. But during that time, rates of new ADHD diagnoses skyrocketed 24 percent – jumping from 2.5 percent in 2001 to 3.1 percent in 2010. That’s according to a comprehensive review of medical records for children who were covered by the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health plan. Rates rose most among minority kids during the study period, climbing nearly 70 percent overall in black children, and 60 percent among Hispanic youngsters, according the study published in JAMA Pediatrics. Among black girls, ADHD rates jumped 90 percent. Rates remained highest in white children, climbing from 4.7 percent to 5.6 percent during the study period. The biggest factor driving this increase may be the heightened awareness of ADHD among parents, teachers, and pediatricians, says the study’s lead author Dr. Darios Getahun, a scientist with Kaiser Permanente. For kids who need help, that’s a good thing, Getahun says. “The earlier a diagnosis is made, the earlier we can initiate treatment which leads to a better outcome for the child,” he says. © 2013 NBCNews.com

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 17706 - Posted: 01.22.2013

The number of seizure patients in a northern Japanese fishing community devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami spiked in the weeks following the disaster, according to a Japanese study. The study, published in the journal Epilepsia, looked at 440 patient records from Kesennuma City Hospital, in a city that was devastated by the massive tsunami touched off by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Thirteen patients were admitted with seizures in the eight weeks after the disaster, but only one had been admitted in the two months before March 11. Previous research has linked stressful life-threatening disasters with an increased risk of seizures, but most case reports lacked clinical data with multiple patients. "We suggest that stress associated with life-threatening situations may enhance seizure generation," wrote lead author Ichiyo Shibahara, a staff neurosurgeon at Sendai Medical Center in northern Japan. But he added that stress itself is not a universal risk factor for seizures. "Most of the seizure patients had some sort of neurological disease before the earthquake," he said. His team examined medical records from patients admitted to the neurosurgery ward in the eight weeks before and after the March 11 disaster and compared them to the same time period each year between 2008 and 2010. In 2008, there were 11 seizure patients admitted between January 14 and May 15. In 2009, there were seven and in 2010, just four. © 2013 NBCNews.com

Keyword: Epilepsy; Stress
Link ID: 17705 - Posted: 01.22.2013

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News People who regularly take aspirin for many years, such as those with heart problems, are more likely to develop a form of blindness, researchers say. A study on 2,389 people, in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, showed aspirin takers had twice the risk of "wet" age-related macular degeneration. The disease damages the 'sweet spot' in the retina, obscuring details in the centre of a patient's field of vision. The researchers said there was not yet enough evidence to change aspirin use. Taking low doses of aspirin every day does reduce the risk of a stroke or heart attack in patients with cardiovascular disease. There are even suggestions it could prevent cancer. One in 10 people in the study, conducted at the University of Sydney, were taking aspirin at least once a week. On average the participants were in their mid-60s. Eye tests were performed after five, 10 and 15 years. By the end of the study, the researchers showed that 9.3% of patients taking aspirin developed wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) compared with 3.7% of patients who did not take aspirin. Their report said: "The increased risk of [wet] AMD was detected only after 10 or 15 years, suggesting that cumulative dosing is important. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 17704 - Posted: 01.22.2013

By GINA KOLATA It has been one of the toughest problems in genetics. How do investigators figure out not just what genes are involved in causing a disease, but what turns those genes on or off? What makes one person with the genes get the disease and another not? Now, in a pathbreaking paper, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden report a way to evaluate one gene-regulation system: chemical tags that tell genes to be active or not. Their test case was of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling autoimmune disease that affects 1.5 million Americans. It was an investigation of epigenetics, a popular area of molecular biology that looks for modifications of genes that can help determine disease risk. “This is one of the first studies that looks for an epigenetic disease association in a really rigorous fashion,” said Dr. Bradley Bernstein of Harvard, who was not associated with the study. Kun Zhang of the University of California, San Diego, made a similar observation. “I am quite impressed with their level of rigor and sophistication,” he said. In previous genomic studies, researchers with papers in leading journals “have made major claims, but after a few months or a year they were retracted,” he said. Those investigators, Dr. Zhang added, “did not treat their data very carefully.” In the new study, researchers compared 354 newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis patients and 337 healthy people who served as controls. The goal was to review both groups’ white blood cells, examining their DNA for chemical tags — methyl groups — that could attach themselves to genes and turn them on or off. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epigenetics; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 17703 - Posted: 01.22.2013

By Laura Sanders People with damage to a specific part of the brain entrusted unexpectedly large amounts of money to complete strangers. In an investment game played in the lab, three women with damage to a small part of the brain called the basolateral amygdala handed over nearly twice as much money as healthy people. These women didn’t expect to make a bunch of money back, an international team of researchers reports online the week of January 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nor did they think the person they invested with was particularly trustworthy. When asked why they would invest so generously, the volunteers couldn’t provide an answer. The results suggest that normally, the basolateral amygdala enables selfishness — putting the squeeze on generosity. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 17702 - Posted: 01.22.2013

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA Learning becomes more difficult as we age not because we have trouble absorbing new information, but because we fail to forget the old stuff, researchers say. Mice whose brains were genetically modified to resemble those of adult humans showed no decrease in the ability to make the strong synaptic connections that enable learning — a surprise to neuroscientists at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University, whose findings appear in the journal Scientific Reports. Yet as the modified mice entered adulthood, they were less capable of weakening connections that already existed, and that made it hard for them to form robust new long-term memories. Think of it as writing on a blank piece of white paper versus a newspaper page, said the lead author, Joe Z. Tsien. “The difference is not how dark the pen is,” he said, “but that the newspaper already has writing on it.” The researchers focused on two proteins — NR2A and NR2B — long known to play a role in the forging of new connections in the brain. Before puberty, the brain produces more NR2B than NR2A; in adulthood, the ratio reverses. By prodding mice to produce more NR2A than NR2B, effectively mimicking the postpubescent brain, scientists expected the subjects to have trouble forming strong connections. Instead, the mice showed no trouble creating new short-term memories, but brain scans showed that they struggled to weaken the connections that had formed older long-term memories. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 17701 - Posted: 01.22.2013

Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Jorge Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 17700 - Posted: 01.22.2013