By GINA KOLATA The failure of a promising Alzheimer’s drug in clinical trials highlights the gap between diagnosis — where real progress has recently been made — and treatment of the disease. It was not just that the drug, made by Eli Lilly, did not work — maybe that could be explained by saying the patients’ illness was too far advanced when they received it. It was that the drug actually made them worse, the company said. And the larger the dose they took, the worse were patients’ symptoms of memory loss and inability to care for themselves. Not only that, the drug also increased the risk of skin cancer. So when Lilly announced on Tuesday that it was ending its large clinical trials of that drug, semagacestat, researchers were dismayed. “Obviously, this is disappointing news, to say the least,” said Dr. Steven Paul, an Alzheimer’s researcher and a recently retired executive vice president at Lilly. Beyond the setback for Lilly, the study raises questions about a leading hypothesis of the cause of Alzheimer’s and how to treat it. The idea, known as the amyloid hypothesis, says the disease occurs when a toxic protein, beta amyloid, accumulates in the brain. The idea is that if beta amyloid levels are reduced, the disease might be slowed, halted or even prevented if treatment starts early enough. The Lilly drug, like most of the more than 100 Alzheimer’s drugs under development, blocks an enzyme, gamma secretase, needed to make beta amyloid. It was among the first shown to breach the blood-brain barrier and reduce levels of beta amyloid in the brain. And, company studies showed, it did reduce amyloid production. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14382 - Posted: 08.20.2010

By HELEN EPSTEIN For the fortunate, pain is temporary and finite, with a clear beginning, middle and end. But for more than 70 million Americans, including Melanie Thernstrom, pain is chronic, and the primary reason that they seek medical care. The medical profession has been slow to recognize this development. There is currently one board-certified pain specialist in the United States for every 25,000 patients, she writes in her new book, “The Pain Chronicles.” That number, however, is likely to grow as pain is redefined not as a symptom but as a disease that “can eventually rewrite the central nervous system, causing pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, and ... greater pain.” There have been hundreds of books published in the last decades on pain and its management, but none that combine memoir, scholarly research and journalistic reportage in the way Ms. Thernstrom, the author of two previous books, does. A stellar example of literary nonfiction (parts of which first appeared in The New York Times Magazine), the book recounts the author’s own years with chronic pain and the preconceptions she brought to it (including the idea of pain as the price for romantic love); summarizes its social, cultural and medical history; and gives us a reporter’s view of state-of-the-art treatment. The book has a patchwork quilt structure: more than one hundred small captioned patches (or dispatches), organized into five parts and threaded with personal narrative. This invites differently motivated readers to skip or skim. You can chuckle over the aperçus of poets and philosophers like Aristotle, Coleridge, Dickinson, Sontag, and Foucault in the section entitled “Pain as Metaphor.” You can become absorbed, as I was, in the fascinating struggle over the use of anesthesia (and, later, opiates) in “Pain as History,” or play voyeur during absorbing clinical vignettes of “Pain as Disease.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 14381 - Posted: 08.20.2010

By David Biello Ketamine—a powerful anesthetic for humans and animals that lists hallucinations among its side effects and therefore is often abused under the name Special K—delivers rapid relief to chronically depressed patients, and researchers may now have discovered why. In fact, the latest evidence reinforces the idea that the psychedelic drug could be the first new drug in decades to lift the fog of depression. "We were trying to figure out what ketamine was doing to produce this rapid response," which can take as little as two hours to begin to act, says neuroscientist Ron Duman of the Yale University School of Medicine. So Duman and his colleagues gave a small amount of ketamine (10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight) to rats and watched the drug literally transform the animals' brains. "Ketamine… can induce a rapid increase in connections in the brain, the synapses by which neurons interact and communicate with each other, " Duman says. "You can visually see this response that occurs in response to ketamine." More specifically, as the researchers report in the August 20 issue of Science, ketamine seems to stimulate a biochemical pathway in the brain (known as mTOR) to strengthen synapses in a rat's prefrontal cortex—the region of the brain associated with thinking and personality in humans. And the ketamine helped rats cope with the depression analog experience brought on by forcing the rodents to swim or exposing them to inescapable stress. "Preclinical and clinical studies show that repeated stress or depression can cause a decrease in connections and an atrophy of connections in the same region of the brain," Duman explains, noting that magnetic resonance imaging shows that some depressed patients have a smaller prefrontal cortex as a result. "Ketamine has the opposite effect and can oppose or reverse the effects of depression" for roughly seven days per dose. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 14380 - Posted: 08.20.2010

By Kay Lazar New research suggests that athletes who have had multiple head injuries, and possibly others such as military veterans exposed to repetitive brain traumas, may be prone to developing a disabling neurological disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. A team of researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford said yesterday they have pinpointed evidence of a new disease that mimics ALS in the brains of two former National Football League players previously thought to have died of ALS. They also found the new disease in the brain of a deceased professional boxer who was a military veteran. In most cases, ALS strikes people — many in the prime of life — with no apparent rhyme or reason. The progressive nerve disorder, which affects an estimated 30,000 Americans, slowly paralyzes patients while leaving their mind intact. But if this early research is borne out by autopsies of additional athletes and veterans, it would support the idea that an ALS-type illness can be triggered by the traumas of sports and war. “We believe that these three cases are the tip of the iceberg,’’ said neurosurgeon Robert Cantu, who is a codirector of the BU Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. “We don’t know whether this is linked to the increased incidence of ALS in the military, who are subject to blasts and other head injuries, but we are concerned that it may be.’’ The findings, the authors speculated, could mean that athletes and some others previously diagnosed with ALS actually had the related syndrome — perhaps even Gehrig himself, the New York Yankees star who is the iconic ALS sufferer. It’s a mystery that will never be solved, however, because Gehrig’s body was cremated. © 2010 NY Times Co

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 14379 - Posted: 08.20.2010

by Michael Balter Why cooperate when you can be selfish? Many animal behaviors are self-centered and apparently evolved to pass on an individual's genes to future generations. Yet cooperative breeding, in which some members of a group help others to raise their young, has evolved independently many times, especially in birds and insects. A new study of birds concludes that parents get more help when they are sexually faithful to each other. Cooperation has been called an evolutionary paradox, and cooperative breeding is relatively rare, with members of only 3% to 10% of bird species helping to raise one another's young. Among the apes, only humans are cooperative breeders, although monkeys such as marmosets and tamarins do it, too. In the 1960s, British biologist William Hamilton proposed that natural selection could favor cooperation if individuals pass on their own genes by helping relatives raise offspring. But Hamilton argued that cooperation can arise only if such helpers are closely related to recipients and if the benefits outweigh the costs. Over the past few years, Jacobus Boomsma, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen, has argued that strict monogamous behavior, such as an ant queen mating for life, spurred the evolution of cooperative breeding in some social insects. Monogamy helps fulfill Hamilton's conditions, because all siblings are equally related to each other and to each parent. Promiscuity, on the other hand, leads to many half-siblings and lowers the relatedness of individuals in a group. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 14378 - Posted: 08.20.2010

By Nathan Seppa The prevalence of hearing loss in teenagers rose by nearly one-third in recent years compared with the rate in the 1980s and 1990s, a new study shows. The findings come as a surprise to the study’s authors, who had expected overall hearing to improve thanks to publicity about the risks of exposure to loud music and the advent of childhood vaccines against meningitis and pneumonia that can prevent many ear infections. But in the August 18 Journal of the American Medical Association, the scientists report that the portion of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 with any hearing loss rose from 14.9 percent during the 1988 to 1995 period to 19.5 percent in 2005 and 2006. Researchers based the analysis on information gathered from nearly 3,000 kids in the earlier time frame and more than 1,700 in the later sampling. The findings suggest that as many as 6.5 million teens in the United States now have some hearing loss. The surveys used largely similar questionnaires and standard hearing tests in which “any hearing loss” was defined as a loss of 15 decibels in at least one ear. That is, a person was determined to have some hearing loss if a tone had to be increased by 15 dB or more beyond the standard detection level to be heard at least half the time. Hearing loss of 25 dB or greater is less common, particularly in children. But it also rose, from 3.5 to 5.3 percent, between the study time frames. The rate of hearing loss increased in high — but not low — frequencies, the researchers found. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 14377 - Posted: 08.20.2010

by Jon Cohen Thirty-five years ago, researchers studying chimpanzees in the wild noticed that neighboring communities had distinct grooming behaviors that could not be explained by differences in their environments. They contended that these behavioral idiosyncrasies were learned, or "cultural," and other scientists soon began noting group-specific tool uses and courting behaviors that also didn't appear to be environmental. But in a new study, researchers say some of these behaviors may be genetic after all. Before that 1975 revelation, few researchers had observed different communities of wild chimpanzees, and no one had even recognized that these behavioral differences existed. Investigators have been arguing about whether chimps truly have culture ever since. Proponents of culture published a landmark Nature paper in 1999 documenting 39 behaviors that were frequently observed in some communities and never seen in others. In the article's wake, a flood of reports began to appear about culture in other species, and the debates roiled on, with endless discussions about the meaning of the word itself. The new study, published online tomorrow in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, examines partial sequences of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from wild chimpanzees in nine different groups. This DNA is handy because it's inherited only from mothers, and only chimp females typically move to new communities. Team members examined the links between the groups and 38 of the 39 supposed cultural variants documented in the earlier report. The study does not link behaviors to specific genes or even conclude that there is a genetic explanation. Rather, it assesses whether genetic differences can be excluded as an explanation for each behavior; it finds that they cannot more than half the time. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14376 - Posted: 08.20.2010

Scientists are closer to understanding what triggers muscle damage in one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy, called facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). FSHD affects about 1 in 20,000 people, and is named for progressive weakness and wasting of muscles in the face, shoulders and upper arms. Although not life-threatening, the disease is disabling. The facial weakness in FSHD, for example, often leads to problems with chewing and speaking. The new research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and appears in the journal Science. Until now, there were few clues to the mechanism of FSHD and essentially no leads for potential therapies, beyond symptomatic treatments, said John Porter, Ph.D., a program director at NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). "This study presents a model of the disease that ties together many complex findings, and will allow researchers to test new theories and potential new treatments," Dr. Porter said. In the early 1990s, researchers found that FSHD is associated with a shortened DNA sequence located on chromosome 4. Experts predicted that discovery of one or more FSHD genes was imminent, but while a handful of candidate genes gradually emerged, none of them were found to have a key role in the disease. The mysteries surrounding FSHD deepened in 2002 when researchers, led by Silvere van der Maarel, Ph.D., at Leiden University in the Netherlands, found that the shortened DNA sequence on chromosome 4 is not enough to cause FSHD. They discovered that the disease occurs only among people who have the shortened DNA sequence plus other sequence variations on chromosome 4. That work was funded in part by NIH, the FSH Society and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 14375 - Posted: 08.20.2010

By Emily Sohn When a woman is ovulating, her behavior changes in a startling number of ways from the way she walks, talks and dresses to the men she flirts with, according to new research. The findings might offer some practical tips for women to boost their online dating prospects; for scientists to develop new kinds of ovulation detection kits; or for marketers to target sales of clothes and jewelry. The work also suggests that going on or off the birth control pill might influence a woman's choice in men. Why does ovulation change women's behavior in such subtle yet fundamental ways? Experts propose that it's an innate and subtle strategy to both attract the most desirable guys and convince them to stick around for the long haul. "The idea is that women turn up everything that has to do with femininity" at ovulation, said Greg Bryant, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "This is showing that there are all sorts of phenomena that happen in our behavior that we're not actually aware of." For a long time, scientists assumed that the hormonal shifts of ovulation happened without measurable changes in how women behaved. That's because women have a strong motivation to hide the fact that they're fertile, unlike other members of the animal kingdom. While a female baboon's swollen red rump encourages males to mate and go, for example, a female human's ability to keep a man guessing should up the chances of him mating and then staying to help take care of their children. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 14374 - Posted: 08.20.2010

by Carl Zimmer Every spring the National Football League conducts that most cherished of American rituals, the college draft. A couple of months before the event, prospective players show off their abilities in an athletic audition known as the combine. Last winter’s combine was different from that of previous years, though. Along with the traditional 40-yard dashes and bench presses, the latest crop of aspirants also had to log time in front of a computer, trying to solve a series of brainteasers. In one test, Xs and Os were sprinkled across the computer screen as the athletes took a test that measured how well they could remember the position of each letter. In another, words like red and blue appeared on the screen in different colors. The football players had to press a key as quickly as possible if the word matched its color. These teasers are not intended to help coaches make their draft picks. They are for the benefit of the players themselves—or, to be more precise, for the benefit of the players’ gray matter. Under pressure from Congress, the N.F.L. is taking steps to do a better job of protecting its players from brain damage. The little computer challenges that the draft candidates had to solve measure some of the brain’s most crucial functions, such as its ability to hold several pieces of information at once. Given the nature of football, it is extremely likely that a number of this year’s draft picks will someday suffer a head injury on the field. After that happens, N.F.L. doctors will give them the same tests again. By comparing the new results with the baseline scores recorded just before the draft, the doctors will get a clearer sense of how badly the football players have damaged their brains and what degree of caution to take during recovery.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 14373 - Posted: 08.20.2010

Melissa Dahl In Michelle Philpots' world, Bill Clinton is still president, everyone keeps telling each other that "life is like a box of chocolates" and no one can get Ace of Base's "The Sign"out of their heads. That's because Philpots is stuck in 1994. That year, Philpots suffered traumatic brain injuries in two car crashes. Since then, she's been unable to form new memories; every morning, her husband has to convince her that they're married, using a photo album as proof -- a real-life version of the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore movie "50 First Dates." She can remember everything that happened to her until 1994, but nothing after that -- not even her 1997 marriage. (She started dating her husband before her injury, but doesn't remember marrying the guy.) Philpots, 47, who lives in Spalding, England, has an extreme case of anterograde amnesia, a condition that inhibits the brain's ability to record any new memories. Other amnesiacs can't recall older memories, a condition called called retrograde amnesia. Amnesia is a handy plot device in pop culture, and memory experts say real-life "Memento" cases are rare, but they do exist. No case of amnesia is exactly alike, says Dr. Ronald Petersen, a Mayo Clinic neurologist and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. Some forget faces, some forget their native language, some "forget" their entire personality. But each case is caused by a head injury, a neurological disease or, in some cases, years of drug or alcohol abuse. Petersen, who did not treat Philpots, explains that the type of memory loss depends on what region of the brain is impacted; for example, retrograde amnesia generally happens when damage is done to the brain's temporal lobes, and both retrograde and anterograde amnesia, like Philpots has, can happen when the hippocampus is injured. But it's still not understood what makes someone's memory "reset" every 30 seconds or, in Philpots' case, every day. © 2010 msnbc.com

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14372 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By John von Radowitz, Mid-life stress can increase the risk of women developing Alzheimer's disease, a study has shown. Women who reported repeated episodes of stress and anxiety in middle age were up to twice as likely to develop dementia than those who did not, a team of Swedish scientists found. The majority of those affected were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia. Researchers followed the progress of 1,415 women between 1968 and 2000. Three surveys in 1968, 1974 and 1980 were carried out to assess levels of psychological stress experienced by the women, who were aged between 38 and 60 at the start of the study. Stress was defined as a "sense of irritation, tension, nervousness, anxiety, fear or sleeping problems" lasting a month or more. During the course of the study, 161 of the women taking part developed dementia, mainly in the form of Alzheimer's disease. Dementia risk was 65% higher in women who suffered frequent stress in middle age. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Stress; Alzheimers
Link ID: 14371 - Posted: 08.17.2010

by Bijal Trivedi CLAIRE CHESKIN used to live in a murky world of grey, her damaged eyes only seeing large objects if they were right next to her. She could detect the outlines of people but not their expressions, and could just about make out the silhouettes of buildings, but no details. Looking into the distance? Forget it. Nowadays things are looking distinctly brighter for Cheskin. Using a device called vOICe, which translates visual images into "soundscapes", she has trained her brain to "see through her ears". When travelling, the device helps her identify points of interest; at home she uses it to find things she has put down, like coffee cups. "I've sailed across the English Channel and across the North Sea, sometimes using the vOICe to spot landmarks," she says. "The lights on the land were faint but the vOICe could pick them up." As if the signposting of objects wasn't impressive and useful enough, some long-term users of the device like Cheskin eventually report complete images somewhat akin to normal sight, thanks to a long-term rewiring of their brains. Sometimes these changes are so profound that it alters their perceptions even when they aren't using the device. As such, the vOICe (the "OIC" standing for "Oh, I See") is now proving invaluable as a research tool, providing insights into the brain's mind-boggling capacity for adaptation. The idea of hijacking another sense to replace lost vision has a long history. One of the first "sensory substitution" devices was developed in 1969 by neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita. He rigged up a television camera to a dentist's chair, on which was a 20-by-20 array of stimulators that translated images into tactile signals by vibrating against the participant's back. Despite the crudeness of the set-up, it allowed blind participants to detect the presence of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, while skilled users could even associate the physical sensations with faces and common objects. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Hearing
Link ID: 14370 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Pumping up is easier for people who have been buff before, and now scientists think they know why — muscles retain a memory of their former fitness even as they wither from lack of use. That memory is stored as DNA-containing nuclei, which proliferate when a muscle is exercised. Contrary to previous thinking, those nuclei aren’t lost when muscles atrophy, researchers report online August 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The extra nuclei form a type of muscle memory that allows the muscle to bounce back quickly when retrained. The findings suggest that exercise early in life could help fend off frailness in the elderly, and also raise questions about how long doping athletes should be banned from competition, says study leader Kristian Gundersen, a physiologist at the University of Oslo in Norway. Muscle cells are huge, Gundersen says. And because the cells are so big, more than one nucleus is needed to supply the DNA templates for making large amounts of the proteins that give muscle its strength. Previous research has demonstrated that with exercise, muscle cells get even bigger by merging with stem cells called satellite cells, which are nestled between muscle fiber cells. Researchers had previously thought that when muscles atrophy, the extra nuclei are killed by a cell death program called apoptosis. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 14369 - Posted: 08.17.2010

People who are aggressive may be at higher risk for heart attack or stroke, a new study suggests. The study of 5,614 Italians in Sardinia found that those who scored high for antagonistic traits like competitiveness and aggression on a standard personality test had more thickening of their neck arteries compared with those who were more agreeable. The thickness of this carotid artery is considered a risk factor for heart attack and stroke, researchers said in Monday's online issue of the journal Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. "People who tend to be competitive and more willing to fight for their own self-interest have thicker arterial walls, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease," Angelina Sutin, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow with the U.S. National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Md., said in a news release. "Agreeable people tend to be trusting, straightforward and show concern for others while people who score high on antagonism tend to be distrustful, skeptical and at the extreme, cynical, manipulative, self-centered, arrogant and quick to express anger," she added. When researchers followed up with study participants three years after the initial tests, they found they found the link between artery thickening and antagonism had persisted. © CBC 2010

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 14368 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By Brian Mossop Last May, I took a trip to San Diego for my brother-in-law’s graduation from college, and to meet his 4-month old son, Landon, for the first time. Throughout the weekend, I couldn’t suppress my inner science nerd, and often found myself probing my nephew’s foot reflexes. Pressured from my wife’s disapproving looks and the blank stares I received from her family as I explained why his toes curled this way or that, I dropped the shop-talk in favor of baby-talk. Having spent my postdoctoral career in neuroscience, brain development is particularly fascinating to me. But on this family visit, more striking than the baby’s neurodevelopment was the re-development of my 26-year-old brother-in-law. In just a few months’ time, Jack went from my wife’s little brother to a hands-on, first-time father. When I first met Jack, he was a tall, lanky, wet-behind-the-ears nineteen-year-old kid, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy right after graduating high school. As a two-tour Iraq war veteran, Jack saw more of the world in six years than most of us ever will, and had a large repertoire of crazy sailor stories to boot. Still, raising Landon will no doubt be the biggest challenge Jack’s ever faced. Whether he knows it or not, and whether he likes it or not, things are about to drastically change for him. By the end of the weekend trip, I saw glimpses that Jack had come to terms (well, sort of) with the fact that his life will never be the same: After struggling with securing Landon’s car seat in the back of his souped-up Mazda RX-8 for several weeks, Jack finally broke down and traded it in for a more sensible car that will make it easier to transport the little guy. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 14367 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By Jordan Lite Despite kids’ protests, enforcing early bedtimes may be good for their mental health. Teens who are allowed to go to bed later are more likely to suffer from depression—probably for the simple reason that they are not getting enough sleep, a recent study suggests. Columbia University scientists found that depression was 24 percent more common in teens whose parents let them go to bed at midnight or later than in kids whose moms and dads required them to hit the pillow by 10 p.m. The night owls were also 20 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts. Teens with bedtimes of midnight or later got an average of seven and a half hours of sleep, whereas those with a lights-out of 10 p.m. or earlier got an average of eight hours and 10 minutes. Although the association between later bedtimes and depression was greater before controlling for parents’ marital status and poverty level, it remained statistically significant after taking those things into ac­count—as well as teens’ perceptions of how much their parents cared about them. The researchers looked at parent-enforced bedtimes—as opposed to simply logging hours slept—to rule out the possi­bility that depression was causing some kids to sleep less, rather than the other way around. Earlier work supports the idea that too little sleep may lead to depression. Research at the University of London showed that children who suffer from insomnia are at increased risk of developing depression in their tweens and teens. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep; Depression
Link ID: 14366 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By CHARLES Q. CHOI The infants and toddlers resemble cyborgs as they waddle and crawl around the playroom with backpacks carrying wireless transmitters and cameras strapped to their heads. Each has one camera aimed at the right eye and another at the field of view, and both send video to monitors nearby. When the video feeds are combined, the result is a recording in which red cross hairs mark the target of a child’s gaze. Scientists are using the eye-tracking setup to learn how children look at the world as they figure out how to interact with it. In the lab, children 5 months and older crawl and walk up, down and over an obstacle course of adjustable wooden slopes, cliffs, gaps and steps. And to add to the challenge, the subjects are sometimes outfitted with Teflon-coated shoes or lead-weighted vests. It may seem like the set for a new reality television show, but there are no prizes, except perhaps for the researchers. They hope to understand what prompts one child to respond to another, how infants coordinate their gaze with their hands and feet to navigate around obstructions or handle objects, and how these very young children adapt to changes, like those brought on by slippery footwear. The findings provided by these eye-trackers so far (the first light enough for children to wear) suggest that infants may be more capable of understanding and acting on what they see than had been thought. “Quick gazes at obstacles in front of them or at their mothers’ faces may be all they need to get the information they want. They seem to be surprisingly efficient,” said John Franchak, a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at New York University. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Vision
Link ID: 14365 - Posted: 08.17.2010

By ELIZABETH SIMPSON NORFOLK, Va. — Mary Writesel wrestled with obesity for a couple of decades, but it wasn't until she was diagnosed with diabetes that she considered a drastic solution: Weight-reduction surgery. Even before she left the hospital after the surgery last August, her blood sugar levels had fallen so much she no longer needed medication for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. A year later and 60 pounds lighter, "I'm considered diabetes free," the 55-year-old Portsmouth resident said. "I can't tell you what a relief it is." That by no means happens to all diabetics who go through weight-reduction surgery, but it happens enough that researchers are taking note. Writesel agreed to donate a sample of fat removed during her surgery for a study being conducted by researchers at Norfolk's Eastern Virginia Medical School. "I told them they could have as much of that as they wanted." The local medical school study is one of many exploring why diabetes sometimes goes away after weight-reduction surgery. At first, the phenomenon was chalked up to weight loss, but some patients were shedding the disease before losing a pound or even leaving the hospital. Researchers at the EVMS Strelitz Diabetes Center decided to study different types of body fat to see whether certain aspects are more likely to result in problems such as diabetes and heart problems. © 2010 msnbc.com

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 14364 - Posted: 08.16.2010

By Jason Palmer Research has shown that bacteria - among the simplest life forms on Earth - have a sense of smell. Scientists from Newcastle University in the UK have demonstrated that a bacterium commonly found in soil can sniff and react to ammonia in the air. It was previously thought that this "olfaction" was limited to more complex forms of life known as eukaryotes. The finding, published in Biotechnology Journal, means that bacteria have four of the five senses that humans enjoy. The discovery also has implications in the understanding and control of biofilms - the chemical coatings that bacteria can form on, for example, medical implants. Bacteria have already demonstrated the ability to react to light, in analogy to sight, and to change the genes that they express when confronted with certain materials, in analogy to touch. However, there is a distinction between an organism reacting to a chemical that it encounters directly (in analogy to the sense of taste) and a reaction to a chemical that is floating around in the air, says Reindert Nijland, lead author of the study. "The difference is both in the mechanism that does the sensing, as well as in the compounds that are sensed," Dr Nijland, now at University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands, told BBC News. "The compounds detected by olfactory organs are generally much more volatile than things you can taste like 'sweet' or 'salt', and therefore can provide information about things that can be much further away; you can smell a barbecue from a few blocks away whereas you have to physically touch and eat the steak to be able to actually taste it." (C)BBC

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Evolution
Link ID: 14363 - Posted: 08.16.2010