A probe of the upper echelons of the human brain's chain-of-command has found strong evidence that there are not one but two complementary commanders in charge of the brain, according to neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
It's as if Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard were both on the bridge and in command of the same starship Enterprise.
In a "2007 Hot Article" of the journal Biochemistry, University at Buffalo chemists report the discovery of a central mechanism responsible for the action of the powerful biological catalysts known as enzymes.
The UB research provides critical insight into why catalysis is so complex and may help pave the way for improving the design of synthetic catalysts.
All eyes are on where hurricanes make landfall, but the massive storms actually cause the most deaths inland, where severe flooding often surprises residents.
Now, researchers are learning how to predict where tropical storms and hurricanes will dump the most rain — even days after — and hundreds of miles away from — landfall.
Children and their teachers are already benefiting from online learning communities such as the Oracle Education Foundation's Think.com, but there is a real opportunity for richer learning with such systems that is yet to be tapped.
Elizabeth Hartnell-Young of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham and freelance statistician Karen Corneille of Victoria, Australia describe how they have taken Think.com as a case study and investigated how a free, password-protected online community can support children's learning.
Obese and very obese patients have a lower risk of dying after they have been treated for heart attacks than do normal weight patients, according to research published in the European Heart Journal today.
Researchers in Germany and Switzerland found that amongst patients who had received initial treatment for a specific type of heart attack, those that were obese or very obese were less than half as likely to die during the following three years as patients who had a normal body mass index (BMI).
Ancient records always referred to a vast powerful "Kingdom of Kush." Robert E. Howard had his barbarian hero, Conan, run into 'Kushites' a number of times. The New Testament referred to all of Nubia as Kush, because Kush was the name of one of the sons of Ham who settled northeast Africa.
As it turns out, not only has there been more evidence discovered about those ancient people in Sudan, there's even enough gold to make a Cimmerian warrior take notice.
Looking at fossils of long-dead creatures, it's easy to understand how anthropologists determine the way an animal looked. But how do they determine how one moved?
Alan Walker,Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State University, and a team of researchers studied 91 separate primate species, including all taxonomic families. The study also included 119 additional species, most of which are mammals ranging in size from mouse to elephant, that habitually move in diverse ways in varied environments.
University of Tennessee professor Alan Solomon, director of the Human Immunology and Cancer/Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyloid-Related Disorders Research Program, led a team that discovered a link between foie gras prepared from goose or duck liver and the type of amyloid found in rheumatoid arthritis or tuberculosis.
Their experimental data has provided the first evidence that a food product can hasten amyloid development.
A University College London researcher says stereotypes can be a good thing for autistic kids. Autistic children are unable to understand individuals and why they do things but are better with understanding groups. Stereotyping was able to help them learn, for example, if a woman were used as an example of someone who likes to bake/
Is it possible to scientifically measure someone’s sense of humor? Are there universally good or bad jokes that make people laugh no matter their gender, profession or cultural background?
A new Mayo Clinic study provides evidence that DNA variations largely explain why some persons get Parkinson’s disease while others don’t, and even predict with great accuracy at what age people might develop their first symptoms.
Yes, you secretly like giving your money to the government. University of Oregon scientists have found that doing things like donating money to charity or even paying your taxes can give you the same sort of satisfaction you derive from feeding your own hunger pangs.
Subjecting mice to repeated emotional stress, the kind we experience in everyday life, may contribute to the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. While aging is still the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, a number of studies have pointed to stress as a contributing factor.
Top left: In unstressed animals the hippocampus, which is involved in the formation of memories and learning, is free of phosphorylated tau.
The consumption of sweetened soft drinks by children has more than doubled between 1965 and 1996 but few studies have been able to investigate the link between diet and the body’s energy balance control systems in early life. Now scientists at Aberdeen’s Rowett Research Institute have been able to model how the young body responds to overeating.
The long supposed connection between mind and music has been further demonstrated by an international collaboration of physicists led by Simone Bianco and Paolo Grigolini at the Center for Nonlinear Science at the University of North Texas. A statistical analysis reveals a remarkable similarity between the distributions produced by music compositions and brain activity.