By JAMES GORMAN A five-and-a-half-inch deep-sea squid that lives a solitary life up to half a mile down in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean is the latest addition to the hundreds of species that are known to engage in same-sex sex. Over the years, scientists have added one creature after another to the list, making it clear that although nature may abhor a vacuum, it seems to be fine with just about everything else. Male squid, for example, pay no attention to the sex of other squid. Understandably so. They live alone in the dark, males and females are hard to tell apart, and only occasionally do squids pass in the night. Far better to risk wasting a few million sperm than to miss out on a chance to reproduce. This is only one among many sorts of same-sex sexual behavior. In some insect species, males engage in traumatic insemination, which is just what it sounds like, of other males and females alike. Among mammals, bottlenose dolphins and bonobos engage in lots of different kinds of sex. Male dolphins pursue sex with males and females equally, but the females show a preference for males. Bonobos pair off in all the combinations, often. Laysan albatrosses form long-term female/female pair bonds, but for them the point is raising chicks, not sex. If one female can arrange a quick liaison with a male from another pair, the two females will tend the young. Noah might well have had two female albatrosses on the ark. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15827 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Laura Sanders The high-pitched ringing, squealing, hissing, clicking, roaring, buzzing or whistling in the ears that can drive tinnitus sufferers crazy may be a by-product of the brain turning up the volume to cope with subtle hearing loss, a new study suggests. The results, published in the Sept. 21 Journal of Neuroscience, may help scientists understand how the condition arises. Tinnitus is clearly a disorder of the brain, not the ear, says study coauthor Roland Schaette of the University College London Ear Institute. One convincing piece of evidence: Past attempts to cure the condition by severing the auditory nerve in desperate patients left people completely deaf to the outside world — but didn’t silence the ringing. How the brain creates the maddeningly persistent phantom noise remains a mystery. Usually, tinnitus is tied to some degree of measurable hearing loss, but not always. “We’ve known for a long time that there are people who report tinnitus whose audiograms are normal,” says auditory neuroscientist Larry Roberts of McMaster University in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “It has been a puzzle to figure out these exceptions to the rule.” Schaette and coauthor David McAlpine, also of the UCL Ear Institute, suggest that these exceptions may actually be due to “hidden hearing loss” that shirks detection in standard hearing tests. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15826 - Posted: 09.22.2011

Heidi Ledford A widely touted — but controversial — molecular fountain of youth has come under fire yet again, with the publication of new data challenging the link between proteins called sirtuins and longer lifespan. In a paper published today in Nature1, researchers report that overexpressing a sirtuin gene in two model organisms — the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster — does not boost longevity as had been previously reported. Instead, the authors argue that the longer lifespan originally seen was the result of unrelated mutations lurking in the background of the experimental strains. Some see the results as clearing the air, and freeing the field to focus on other effects of sirtuins, such as regulating metabolism and responding to environmental stress. "The field has been overfocused on overhyped claims of longevity," says Johan Auwerx, a researcher at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, who has worked with the proteins but was not involved with the new study. "I don't think that's the main function of the sirtuins." “It's like discovering a landmine. If you walk by, a lot of other people will get blown up.” But Leonard Guarente, a sirtuin researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who published the original C. elegans work in 20012, argues that the longevity link is real and that the new paper is just "a bump in the road". "Our data are rock solid," he says. "I stand by them, and they have been replicated in other labs." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15825 - Posted: 09.22.2011

by Greg Miller Two groups of scientists working independently of each other have discovered a gene mutation that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Both teams found that mutations to the same gene can also cause a common type of dementia called frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The findings add to growing evidence that these two devastating disorders have more in common than meets the eye. ALS robs patients of the ability to control their bodies. The first symptoms can be subtle—a twitch, some muscle stiffness, or occasionally slurred speech—but then paralysis spreads across the body. Most patients die of respiratory failure within 5 years. FTD is a very different beast. The most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's disease, it triggers strange and inappropriate behavior, especially in social situations, as well as difficulty with decision-making, language, and other cognitive functions. Despite these differences, there are signs of overlap. Clinicians have noticed that people with one disorder sometimes have symptoms of the other, and some families seem to have more than their share of both. In 2006, researchers linked a region of chromosome 9 to both ALS and FTD. The findings suggested that a mutated gene in this region was responsible for many cases of both conditions, but scientists did not pinpoint a specific gene. The ensuing race to find the gene was "very intense," says Rosa Rademakers, a neurogeneticist at the Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville, who led one of several teams that joined the pursuit. "Within the ALS and FTD fields, this was a result that everyone was waiting for." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 15824 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, and a press release marking the occasion announced that one in eight 65-year-olds already has the disease, which causes profound memory loss over time, has no effective treatment, and is ultimately fatal. The release, from the nonprofit research advocacy group US Against Alzheimer’s , flashed a set of eight photos of famous 65-year-olds -- Diane Keaton, Stephen Spielberg, Cher, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dolly Parton, Reggie Jackson, and Danny Glover-- and said statistically speaking, one of them has the devastating illness. Okay, none of them does (we hope), but it definitely grabs the attention. And we shouldn’t forget those younger than 65 -- like 59-year-old basketball coach Pat Summitt -- who have already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, nor the millions of Americans in their 70s, 80s, or beyond. While advancing age, family history, and genes play a major role in determining Alzheimer’s risk, there are steps you can take to lower your chances of developing the disease. The following measures all help reduce inflammation in the body and maintain healthy blood flow in the arteries, both vital for healthy brain aging. -- Take steps to avoid diabetes. A Japanese study published this week in the journal Neurology found that 27 percent of those over age 60 who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes developed dementia within 15 years, compared with 20 percent of those with normal blood sugar levels. Those with higher than normal blood sugar levels, or prediabetes, also had a higher risk. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15823 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Leila Battison Science reporter Electrically stimulating the brain can help to speed up the process of learning, scientists have shown. Applying a small current to specific parts of the brain can increase its activity, making learning easier. Researchers from the University of Oxford have studied the changing structure of the brain in stroke patients and in healthy adults. Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg presented their findings at the British Science Festival in Bradford. The team at Oxford has been conducting research into how the structure of the brain changes in adulthood, and in particular what changes occur after a stroke. They have used an approach called functional MRI to monitor activity in the brain as stroke patients re-learn motor skills that were lost as a result of their illness. One of the major findings is that the brain is very flexible and can restructure itself, growing new connections and reassigning tasks to different areas, when damage occurs or a specific task is practised. As part of this research, they investigated the possibility of using non-invasive electric brain stimulation to improve the recovery of these motor skills; the short-term improvement in stroke patients had already been noted. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15822 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Catherine de Lange I TRY to forget about potential onlookers as I crawl around a central London park, blindfolded and on all fours. With a bit of luck, the casual passer-by might not notice the blindfold and think I'm just looking for a contact lens. In fact, I'm putting my sense of smell to the test, and attempting to emulate the sensory skills of a sniffer dog. Just as a beagle can swiftly hunt down a pheasant using only its nasal organ, I am using mine to follow a 10-metre trail of cinnamon oil. Such a challenge might sound doomed to failure. After all, dog noses are renowned for their sensitivity to smells, while human noses are poor by comparison. Yet that might be a misconception. According to a spate of recent studies, our noses are in fact exquisitely sensitive instruments that guide our everyday life to a surprising extent. Subtle smells can change your mood, behaviour and the choices you make, often without you even realising it. Our own scents, meanwhile, flag up emotional states such as fear or sadness to those around us. The big mystery is why we aren't aware of our nasal activity for more of the time. Noses have certainly never been at the forefront of sensory research, and were pushed aside until recently in favour of the seemingly more vital senses of vision and hearing. "There has been a lot of prejudice that people are not that influenced by olfactory stimuli, especially compared to other mammals," says Lilianne Mujica-Parodi, who studies the neurobiology of human stress at Stony Brook University in New York. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 15821 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Lisa Grossman The key to pleasant music may be that it pleases our neurons. A new model suggests that harmonious musical intervals trigger a rhythmically consistent firing pattern in certain auditory neurons, and that sweet sounds carry more information than harsh ones. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we have known that two tones whose frequencies were related by a simple ratio like 2:1 (an octave) or 3:2 (a perfect fifth) produce the most pleasing, or consonant, musical intervals. This effect doesn't depend on musical training – infants and even monkeys can hear the difference. But it was unclear whether consonant chords are easier on the ears because of the way the sound waves combine in the air, or the way our brains convert them to electrical impulses. A new mathematical model presents a strong case for the brain. "We have found that the reason for this difference is somewhere at the level of neurons," says Yuriy Ushakov at the N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhniy Novgorod in Russia. Ushakov and colleagues considered a simple mathematical model of the way sound travels from the ear to the brain. In their model, two sensory neurons react to different tones. Each sends an electrical signal to a third neuron, called an interneuron, which sends a final signal to the brain. The model's interneuron fires when it receives input from either or both sensory neurons. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Emotions
Link ID: 15820 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Marianne English Though research has shown that women are more likely than men to remember the emotional details of an event, there may be another dividing factor when it comes to memory: birth control. Scientists know people's hormones shape how their memories form. For instance, our fight-or-flight hormones influence how the brain encodes a specific memory, with traumatic events making more of an impact than everyday activities. A portion of the brain called the amygdala works on the receiving end of these hormones and is thought to play a central role in making and storing new memories. Birth control works by reducing the amount of estrogen and progesterone in a woman's body to limit ovulation, but it's unclear whether these hormones affect how a person recalls an event. In one study, researchers looked at whether women taking oral contraceptives remembered events from an experiment differently than women with normal menstrual cycles not on birth control. Seventy-two female subjects were recruited for the study, half on the pill and half not. Each group watched variations of a slide show story that involved a young boy being hit by a car. Before and throughout the slide show, researchers collected saliva samples to measure alpha-amylase -- a chemical that signifies a drop or rise in the fight-or-flight hormone norepinephrine, which increases a person's heart rate during emergencies or stressful situations. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15819 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By Janet Raloff In obese people, even when the brain knows the body isn’t hungry, it responds to food as if it were, new brain-scan data show. That means that when obese people try to shed weight, they may find themselves on the losing side of a battle with neural centers that unconsciously encourage them to eat. For instance, in normal-weight people a neural reward system that reinforces positive feelings associated with food turns off when levels of the blood sugar glucose return to normal after a meal — a signal that the body’s need for calories has been sated. But in obese people, that reward center in the central brain turns on at the sight of high-calorie food even when their blood sugar levels are normal. The new findings show that “the regulatory role of glucose was missing in the obese,” says Elissa Epel of the University of California, San Francisco, an obesity researcher not involved with the new study. She says the data might “explain the drive to eat that some obese people feel despite how much they’ve eaten.” For the study, nine lean and five obese adult volunteers viewed pictures of foods such as ice cream, french fries, cauliflower or a salad while undergoing brain scans. Throughout the procedure, researchers asked the recruits to rate their hunger and how much they wanted a particular item. Volunteers arrived for their brain scans several hours after eating, and the researchers used insulin pumps to establish volunteers’ blood sugar levels at either normal background values (roughly 90 milligrams per deciliter), or at the “mild” end of low (around 70 milligrams per deciliter). That low value can occur briefly in some people during the day, especially in people with diabetes or metabolic conditions that precede diabetes, notes endocrinologist Robert Sherwin of Yale University, coauthor of the new study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15818 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN “Can I draw something for you — what should I draw?” Lonni Sue Johnson asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She drew a squiggly line that became a curly halo of hair around the cheerful face of a seated man stretching one leg upward, balancing a large bird on his foot. Within minutes, she had added a cat wearing a necklace, stars and a tiny, grinning airplane. “I like this part, because you want people to be happy,” she said, beaming. “Every sheet of paper is a treat.” Ms. Johnson, 61, is an artist and illustrator whose playful, bright-hued and often complex work has appeared in a wide array of publications, from the cover of The New Yorker to children’s books to murder mysteries to The New York Times — even a physics textbook. All that changed in December 2007, when she was stricken with viral encephalitis, a life-threatening disease that did severe damage to parts of her brain — including the hippocampus, where new memories are formed. She survived, but remembered little about her life before the illness. Yet she is still able to make art, though it is simpler and more childlike than her professional work. Her case is rare, experts say, because few accomplished artists continue to create after sustaining severe brain damage. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15817 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By ERIK OLSEN OFF THE BAHAMAS — In a remote patch of turquoise sea, Denise L. Herzing splashes into the water with a pod of 15 Atlantic spotted dolphins. For the next 45 minutes, she engages the curious creatures in a game of keep-away, using a piece of Sargassum seaweed like a dog’s chew toy. Dr. Herzing is no tourist cavorting with marine mammals. As the world’s leading authority on the species, she has been studying the dolphins for 25 years as part of the Wild Dolphin Project, the longest-running underwater study of its kind. “I’m kind of an old-school naturalist,” she said. “I really believe in immersing yourself in the environment of the animal.” Immerse herself she has. Based in Jupiter, Fla., she has tracked three generations of dolphins in this area. She knows every animal by name, along with individual personalities and life histories. She has captured much of their lives on video, which she is using to build a growing database. And next year Dr. Herzing plans to begin a new phase of her research, something she says has been a lifetime goal: real-time two-way communication, in which dolphins take the initiative to interact with humans. Up to now, dolphins have shown themselves to be adept at responding to human prompts, with food as a reward for performing a task. “It’s rare that we ask dolphins to seek something from us,” Dr. Herzing said. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Evolution
Link ID: 15816 - Posted: 09.20.2011

People with schizophrenia are six times more likely to develop epilepsy, says a study which finds a strong relationship between the two diseases. Writing in Epilepsia, researchers in Taiwan say this could be due to genetic, neurobiological or environmental factors. The study followed around 16,000 patients with epilepsy and schizophrenia between 1999 and 2008. An epilepsy expert says it is an interesting and convincing study. The study used data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database and was led by researchers from the China Medical University Hospital in Taichung. They identified 5,195 patients with schizophrenia and 11,527 patients with epilepsy who were diagnosed during the nine years period. These groups of patients were compared to groups of the same sex and age who did not have either epilepsy or schizophrenia. The findings show that the incidence of epilepsy was 6.99 per 1,000 person-years in the schizophrenia patient group compared to 1.19 in the non-schizophrenia group. The incidence of schizophrenia was 3.53 per 1,000 person-years for patients with epilepsy compared to 0.46 in the non-epilepsy group. Previous studies had suggested a prevalence of psychosis among epilepsy patients. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Epilepsy
Link ID: 15815 - Posted: 09.19.2011

By AMY HARMON MONTCLAIR, N.J. — For weeks, Justin Canha, a high school student with autism, a love of cartoons and a gift for drawing, had rehearsed for the job interview at a local animation studio. As planned, he arrived that morning with a portfolio of his comic strips and charcoal sketches, some of which were sold through a Chelsea gallery. Kate Stanton-Paule, the teacher who had set up the meeting, accompanied him. But his first words upon entering the office were, like most things involving Justin, not in the script. “Hello, everybody,” he announced, loud enough to be heard behind the company president’s door. “This is going to be my new job, and you are going to be my new friends.” As the employees exchanged nervous glances that morning in January 2010, Ms. Stanton-Paule, the coordinator of a new kind of “transition to adulthood” program for special education students at Montclair High School, wondered if they were all in over their heads. Justin, who barely spoke until he was 10, falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum of social impairments that characterize autism, which affects nearly one in 100 American children. He talks to himself in public, has had occasional angry outbursts, avoids eye contact and rarely deviates from his favorite subject, animation. His unabashed expression of emotion and quirky sense of humor endear him to teachers, therapists and relatives. Yet at 20, he had never made a true friend. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15814 - Posted: 09.19.2011

by Carl Zimmer For 100 million people around the globe who suffer from macular degeneration and other diseases of the retina, life is a steady march from light into darkness. The intricate layers of neurons at the backs of their eyes gradually degrade and lose the ability to snatch photons and translate them into electric signals that are sent to the brain. Vision steadily blurs or narrows, and for some, the world fades to black. Until recently some types of retinal degeneration seemed as inevitable as the wrinkling of skin or the graying of hair—only far more terrifying and debilitating. But recent studies offer hope that eventually the darkness may be lifted. Some scientists are trying to inject signaling molecules into the eye to stimulate light-collecting photoreceptor cells to regrow. Others want to deliver working copies of broken genes into retinal cells, restoring their function. And a number of researchers are taking a fundamentally different, technology-driven approach to fighting blindness. They seek not to fix biology but to replace it, by plugging cameras into people’s eyes. Scientists have been trying to build visual prostheses since the 1970s. This past spring the effort reached a crucial milestone, when European regulators approved the first commercially available bionic eye. The Argus II, a device made by Second Sight, a company in California, includes a video camera housed in a special pair of glasses. It wirelessly transmits signals from the camera to a 6 pixel by 10 pixel grid of electrodes attached to the back of a subject’s eye. The electrodes stimulate the neurons in the retina, which send secondary signals down the optic nerve to the brain. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 15813 - Posted: 09.17.2011

by Ferris Jabr Slimy and often sluggish they may be, but some molluscs deserve credit for their brains – which, it now appears, they managed to evolve independently, four times. The mollusc family includes the most intelligent invertebrates on the planet: octopuses, squid and cuttlefishMovie Camera. Now, the latest and most sophisticated genetic analysis of their evolutionary history overturns our previous understanding of how they got so brainy. The new findings expand a growing body of evidence that in very different groups of animals – molluscs and mammals, for instance – central nervous systems evolved not once, but several times, in parallel. Kevin Kocot of Auburn University, Alabama, and his colleagues are responsible for the new evolutionary history of the mollusc family, which includes 100,000 living species in eight lineages. They analysed genetic sequences common to all molluscs and looked for differences that have accumulated over time: the more a shared sequence differs between two species, the less related they are. The findings, which rely on advanced statistical analyses, fundamentally rearrange branches on the mollusc family tree. In the traditional tree, snails and slugs (gastropods) are most closely related to octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses (cephalopods), which appears to make sense in terms of their nervous systems: both groups have highly centralised nervous systems compared with other molluscs and invertebrates. Snails and slugs have clusters of ganglia – bundles of nerve cells – which, in many species, are fused into a single organ; cephalopods have highly developed central nervous systems that enable them to navigate a maze, use tools, mimic other species, learn from each other and solve complex problems. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 15812 - Posted: 09.17.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV It looks like a house falling apart at the seams. But although the construction seems to have hinges that open and close, it actually has no bending or moving parts. Keep watching the video and its true form is revealed. The brain trick, reproduced in this video by illusion enthusiast Rex Young, was originally created by magician Jerry Andrus. We've previously shown you two similar illusions that exploit the same effect - can you remember what they were? The first person to post the two correct hyperlinks in the Comments section below will win a New Scientist goodie bag. You can also make you own collapsing house illusion by using this template. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15811 - Posted: 09.17.2011

by Michael Marshall People will do almost anything if they think it will help them cheat death. The futurist Ray Kurzweil has utterly transformed his lifestyle in a bid to live until 2050, by when he thinks technology will allow his consciousness to be uploaded into a computer, making him immortal. His anti-ageing regimen is based on established research that has identified ways to slow the process. Cutting your intake of calories and getting plenty of exercise both seem to help. One of Kurzweil's ploys is to get lots of sleep too. In this, he is unwittingly emulating the Djungarian hamster. These rodents use short hibernatory naps to reverse the ageing process. Djungarian hamsters suffer from a Chaucerian degree of uncertainty over how to spell their name. Because the word has been transliterated from Mongolian, they can be called "Djungarian", "Dzungarian" or "Dzhungarian", not to mention "Siberian" and "Russian winter white dwarf". Popular as pets, they're only distantly related to the golden hamsters most commonly kept. Each Djungarian hamster lives alone in an underground burrow. When conditions are good it seeks out seeds and insects, which it brings back to the nest in its cheek pouches. It only meets other hamsters to mate. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 15810 - Posted: 09.17.2011

Mo Costandi Research showing that action video games have a beneficial effect on cognitive function is seriously flawed, according to a review published this week in Frontiers in Psychology1. Numerous studies published over the past decade have found that training on fast-paced video games such as Medal of Honor and Grand Theft Auto that require a wide focus and quick responses has broad 'transfer effects' that enhance other cognitive functions, such as visual attention. Some of the studies have been highly cited and widely publicized: one, by cognitive scientists Daphne Bavelier and Shawn Green of the University of Rochester in New York, published in Nature in 20032, has been cited more than 650 times, and was widely reported by the media as showing that video games boost visual skills. But, say the authors of the review, that paper and the vast majority of other such studies contain basic methodological flaws and do not meet the gold standard of a properly conducted clinical trial. "Our main focus was recent work specifically examining the effects of modern action games on college-aged participants," says Walter Boot, a psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and lead author of the review. "To our knowledge, we've captured all of these papers in our review, and all of the literature suffers from the limitations we discuss." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Intelligence
Link ID: 15809 - Posted: 09.17.2011

By Bruce Bower For an instant identity crisis, just peruse some photographs of a stranger’s face. In many instances, people view different mug shots of an unfamiliar person as entirely different individuals, say psychologist Rob Jenkins of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and his colleagues. Yet photos of a celebrity or other recognizable person retain a uniform identity despite changes in lighting, facial expression and other factors across images, the scientists report in a paper published online September 3 in Cognition. To better understand issues such as eyewitness memory, and with an eye on creating reliable facial-recognition software, psychologists, vision researchers and computer scientists are studying how people recognize faces of individuals they’ve just seen and faces of those they’ve encountered over many years. These studies typically examine whether volunteers recognize an image of a person’s face and distinguish it from individual shots of other faces. Variability in photos of the same face has gone largely unexplored, but the issue could pose problems, researchers say. “A complete theory of face recognition should explain not only how we tell people apart, but also how we tell people together,” Jenkins’ team concludes. A strong tendency to see different people in different images of the same face raises questions about whether passports and other photo IDs provide reliable proof of identity, the researchers contend. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15808 - Posted: 09.17.2011