Brain
Inaccessible valleys and ravines lead from the North East Indian Meghalaya plateau to the wide plains of Bangladesh. In the monsoon months the mountain streams in the forests swell into torrential rivers. In order to cross these rivers, the indigenous Khasi and Jaintia peoples have long built their bridges out of the living aerial roots of the Indian Rubber Tree, Ficus elastica.
Bottom Line: A poll suggests almost half of adults ages 50 to 64 believe they're likely to develop dementia. The survey included 1,019 respondents who were asked what risk they perceived and what potential risk-reducing measures they took. Of the participants, 48.5% said they were at least somewhat likely to develop dementia during their lifetime. Many participants reported strategies to try to maintain or improve memory that aren't evidence based. Only a few participants (5.2%) had discussed potential ways to reduce dementia risk with their physician.
Irvine, Calif. - November 14, 2019 - Researchers from the University of California, Irvine developed a breakthrough cell therapy to improve memory and prevent seizures in mice following traumatic brain injury. The study, titled "Transplanted interneurons improve memory precision after traumatic brain injury," was published today in Nature Communications.
Traumatic brain injuries affect 2 million Americans each year and cause cell death and inflammation in the brain. People who experience a head injury often suffer from lifelong memory loss and can develop epilepsy.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Michael Phelps was caught on camera glaring as he prepared for the men's 200-meter butterfly final. The look, popularly known as Phelps face, became an example of a concept that has long been familiar in sports: the game face.
But could putting on a serious face in preparation for competition actually impact performance? According to a new study published in Stress and Health by experimental psychology researchers at UT, there may be substance to game face.
In a world of novice photographers and videographers, capturing a deluge of content via their smartphones and handheld devices, there is a need for an intelligent, easy-to-use tool for automating the creation of movies and video montages. To date, many quality videos still rely on professional frame-based editing tools to manipulate raw footage and produce a coherent video with a captivating storyline.
Short-term increases in sugar consumption could increase the risk of inflammatory bowel disease and have a significant impact on our health, a new study out of the University of Alberta suggests.
In a study published in Scientific Reports, U of A researchers found that mice had an increased susceptibility to chemically induced colitis and more severe symptoms after only two days of a high-sugar diet compared with those eating a balanced diet.
A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that age plays a critical role in the well-being of people newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, with younger patients more susceptible to psychological distress resulting in worse health outcomes.
In a remote village, an aid worker pricks a sickly toddler's fingertip, and like most of the other children's blood samples, this one turns a test strip yellow. That's how an experimental malnutrition test made with bacterial innards could work one day to expose widespread zinc deficiencies blamed for roughly half a million deaths annually.
What species is better at fighting an infection, a mouse or an elephant? Body size is one of the most noticeable differences among species, but relationships between immune defenses and body size have largely been unstudied.
Scientists from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Science and Istituto FIRC di Oncologia Molecolare (IFOM), along with collaborators from Kyoto University, the Karolinska Institut, and DNAFORM, have developed a new technique, NET-CAGE, to elucidate the structure of a type of non-coding portion of the genome called enhancers, which function to activate specific genes.
Highlights
In an analysis of published studies, a healthy dietary pattern was associated with a 30% lower incidence of chronic kidney disease.
A healthy dietary pattern was also linked with a 23% lower incidence of albuminuria, an early indicator of kidney damage.
Washington, DC (September 24, 2019) -- Maintaining a healthy diet may help prevent kidney disease, according to an analysis of published studies. The findings appear in an upcoming issue of CJASN.
Astrophysicists Jon Hakkila of the College of Charleston and Robert Nemiroff of the Michigan Technological University have published research indicating that blasts that create gamma-ray bursts may actually exceed the speed of light in surrounding gas clouds, but do so without violating Einstein's theory of relativity. Hakkila and Nemiroff propose that such superluminal jets could create the time-reversibility seen in gamma-ray burst light curves.
Molluscan shells consist of a variety of complex mineral-organic composite ultrastructures. Surprisingly, in some cases, shells from distantly related species contain similar morphological motifs on many different length scales, from the nano- to the micro-scale. During the last few decades, significant progress has been made in understanding the key biochemical mechanisms responsible for biogenic mineral formation.
When exposed to stress and strain, materials can display a wide range of different properties. By using sound waves, scientists have begun to explore fundamental stress behaviors in a crystalline material that could form the basis for quantum information technologies. These technologies involve materials that can encode information in a number of states simultaneously, allowing for more efficient computation.
New Rochelle, NY, September 23, 2019-Damage to the meniscus is common, but there remains an unmet need for improved restorative therapies that can overcome poor healing in the avascular regions. Now, researchers have reported a new method that may help by growing meniscal cells on 3D electrospun nanofiber scaffolds. Their work is published in Tissue Engineering, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.