Culture
Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) used a new technique to show how electrical impulses are traveling with high speed in the brain. It appears that myelin, the sheath around neurons, creates a coaxial cable producing multiple waves of electrical potentials traveling in a more complicated manner than was envisioned earlier. These findings allow us to create better theories and tools to understand demyelinating diseases, including the most common neurological disorder, multiple sclerosis.
Finnish research team maps neural activity in response to watching horror movies. A study conducted by the University of Turku shows the top horror movies of the past 100 years, and how they manipulate brain activity.
Humans are fascinated by what scares us, be it sky-diving, roller-coasters, or true-crime documentaries - provided these threats are kept at a safe distance. Horror movies are no different.
Like animals and humans, plants possess a kind of immune system. It can e.g. recognize pathogenic fungi by the chitin in their cell walls, triggering disease resistance. Some fungi hide from the immune system by modifying some of the chitin building blocks, converting chitin into chitosan. Researchers of the University of Münster now found that plants can react to a certain pattern in this chitosan, stimulating their immune system. They are already developing a chitosan-based plant immune-stimulant in order to reduce the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture.
Particularly in the case of accelerated drug approvals and drugs for rare diseases (orphan drugs), the evidence available at the time of market access is often insufficient for the early benefit assessment of drugs. Often, the studies are too short or no data on patient-relevant outcomes were collected. Comparisons with the German standard of care are also often lacking. In order to close such evidence gaps, in future, routine practice data are also to be included in early benefit assessments of drugs.
Fentanyl use by people who use drugs has doubled since 2015, and two-thirds of people are aware they've taken it, finds new research out of British Columbia, the Canadian province that has experienced the highest number of illicit drug toxicity deaths as a result of the opioid crisis.
Arlington, Va. - New research funded by the Frozen Food Foundation evaluates current environmental monitoring practices being implemented across the frozen food industry to prevent and control Listeria monocytogenes (Lm). The findings were published in the January 24, 2020, Journal of Food Protection®.
STRASBURG, PA- A new study analyzes 30 years of patient data and details the clinical course of 184 individuals with genetically diverse forms of Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD), which is among the most volatile and dangerous inherited metabolic disorders. Researchers collected data on survival, hospitalization rates, metabolic crises, liver transplantation, and cognitive outcome. This represents the largest systematic study of MSUD, with regard to both cohort size and the duration of clinical follow up.
A psychiatrist specialising in sexual dysfunction caused by antidepressants is calling for greater recognition of the problems that can endure after treatment stops. Professor David Healy, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, said problems may begin after only a few doses and leave someone affected for life, or a relatively mild dysfunction can worsen dramatically when the person stops treatment.
There were some weight loss and health benefits for overweight adults who followed the Mediterranean, Intermittent Fasting and Paleo diets, though adherence to the diets dropped off considerably during the one-year study, new University of Otago research shows.
Intermittent fasting - whereby participants limit their energy intake to about 25 per cent of their usual diet (500kcal for women and 600kcal for men) on two self-selected days per week, led to slightly more weight loss than the other diets. The Mediterranean diet also improved blood sugar levels.
We've all heard, and seen, how a picture paints a thousand words. Now, in a scientific twist on that saying, researchers at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab), are creating pictures that paint thousands of molecules.
Where does the water in the Grand Canyon come from?
We all know the Colorado River, but it's not the most mysterious water resource in the Grand Canyon; we know it moves through at a rate of about 12,000 cubic feet per second as it travels from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California. But Roaring Springs, Grand Canyon National Park's only water source, is a bigger mystery--one NAU researcher Natalie Jones hopes to have a hand in solving.
Children as young as 6 years old who underwent fetal surgery to repair a common birth defect of the spine are more likely to walk independently and have fewer follow-up surgeries, compared to those who had traditional corrective surgery after birth, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Their study appears in Pediatrics.
Jan. 24, 2020--Changes in the lung microbiome may help predict how well critically ill patients will respond to care, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
A new study published on 24 January 2020 in the journal Toxics provides important insight into the recent lung intoxication epidemic referred to as "e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury" (EVALI). The study presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of products used by EVALI patients. Vitamin E acetate was the main finding in cannabinoid liquids. No compound that could be linked to EVALI was found in the two nicotine products tested.
A sustained state of vigilance will generate a different type of memory than a momentary startle, and these differences are linked to distinct signaling molecules in the brains of mice. Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) have visualized these dynamics in the living mouse brain for the first time, observing fast and slow molecular pathways that support memory function. These processes take place in brain cells called astrocytes, revealing another important way in which these cells help neurons.