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Major cause of age-related memory loss discovered

Honor Whiteman
Medical News Today
Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:00 UTC
Memory Loss
© Medical News TodayResearchers have discovered that the RbAp48 gene is a cause of age-related memory loss, setting it apart from Alzheimer's disease.
Scientists say they have discovered a protein deficiency in the brain that is a major cause of age-related memory loss, according to a study published online in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The researchers, from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), say this discovery offers the "strongest causal evidence" that age-related memory loss and Alzheimer's disease are individual recognizable conditions.

The study, conducted on postmortem human brain cells and in mice, revealed that the hippocampus in the brain - a region that plays an important part in memory, lacks a protein called RbAp48 in those who experience age-related memory loss.

The finding suggests that a deficiency of this protein is a cause of memory loss, but more importantly, the researchers say this form of memory loss is reversible.

They began conducting this current study in order to seek direct evidence that Alzheimer's disease is a completely separate condition from age-related memory loss.

Previous research has suggested that Alzheimer's disease hinders a person's memory by affecting the entorhinal cortex (EC) in the brain. The EC is a region that provides important pathways to the hippocampus.

According to the study authors, it was thought that age-related memory loss was an early sign of Alzheimer's, but they add that recent evidence suggests age-related memory loss is a separate process that affects the dentate gyrus (DG). This is a subregion in the hippocampus that has direct input from the EC.
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Bulb

Learning how the brain takes out its trash may help decode neurological diseases

Laura Bailey
University of Michigan
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:36 UTC
Imagine that garbage haulers don't exist. Slowly, the trash accumulates in our offices, our homes, it clogs the streets and damages our cars, causes illness and renders normal life impossible.

Garbage in the brain, in the form of dead cells, must also be removed before it accumulates, because it can cause both rare and common neurological diseases, such as Parkinson's. Now, University of Michigan researchers are a leap closer to decoding the critical process of how the brain clears dead cells, said Haoxing Xu, associate professor in the U-M Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.

A new U-M study identified two critical components of this cell clearing process: an essential calcium channel protein, TRPML1, that helps the so-called garbage collecting cells, called microphages or microglia, to clear out the dead cells; and alipid molecule, which helps activate TRPML1 and the process that allows the microphages to remove these dead cells.

Moreover, the Xu lab identified a synthetic chemical compound that can activate TRPML1. Because this chemical compound ultimately helps activate this cell-clearing process, it provides a drug target that could help combat these neurological diseases.
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Info

'Grand Canyon' of Greenland discovered under ice sheet

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:00 UTC
Subglacial Canyon
© J. Bamber, University Bristol3D view of the subglacial canyon, looking northwest from central Greenland.
The age of discovery isn't over yet. A colossal canyon, the longest on Earth, has just been found under Greenland's ice sheet, scientists announced today (Aug. 29) in the journal Science.

"You think that everything that could be known about the land surface is known, but it's not," said Jonathan Bamber, lead study author and a geographer at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. "There's still so much to learn about the planet."

The great gorge meanders northward from Summit, the highest point in central Greenland, toward Petermann Glacier on the northwest coast, covering more than 460 miles (750 kilometers).

Researchers think the ravine could be even longer, but they don't yet have the data to prove where the canyon peters out deep under the interior ice sheet. "It may actually go farther south," Bamber told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. [See Photos of Mega-Canyon Under Greenland Ice Sheet]

The broad chasm is up to 2,600 feet (800 meters) deep and 6 miles (10 km) wide, similar to America's Grand Canyon in scale, the researchers said. The distinctive V-shaped walls and flat bottom suggests water carved the buried valley, not ice, Bamber said. Though it is not the world's deepest canyon, it's the longest, handily besting the 308-mile-long (496 km) Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in China.
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Info

Trojan asteroid found orbiting Uranus

Tammy Plotner
UniverseToday
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:10 UTC
Trojan Asteroid
© Universe TodayOne of three discovery images of 2011 QF99 taken from CFHT on 2011 October 24 (2011 QF99 is inside the green circle). This is the first of three images of the same patch of sky, taken one hour apart, that were then compared to find moving light-sources.
What's new in the outer reaches of our solar system? Try the discovery of a Trojan asteroid orbiting Uranus. While a plethora of puns exist for this simple fact, the reality check is that this means there are far more of these objects out there than astronomers expected. The new Trojan even has a name - 2011 QF99!

A Trojan asteroid is a transient space rock which is temporarily captured by the gravity of a giant planet. It shares the planet's orbital path, locked into a specific position known as a Lagrange point. What makes 2011 QF99 unusual is its presence in the outer solar system. Researchers found the scenario a bit unlikely. Why? The answer is simply because of planet size. According to theory, the strong gravitational pull of the larger neighboring planets should have destabilized any captured asteroid's orbit and shot Uranian Trojans out of the neighborhood long ago.
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Mars

New evidence supports theory that life started on Mars

Christine Hsu
Counsel&Heal
Wed, 28 Aug 2013 17:31 UTC
Mars
© Pixabay
We may all be Martians, according to scientists who recently discovered more evidence that life on Earth may have started on Mars.

"In addition, recent studies show that these conditions, suitable for the origin of life, may still exist on Mars," Professor Steven Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the USA, said in at the annual Goldschmidt conference.

Benner explained that an oxidized mineral form of molybdenum, an element that may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth.

"It's only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed," Benner said.

"This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet," he explained.

At the conference, researchers presented two paradoxes that have made it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth.
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Info

Pavlov Poke: A 'shocking' way to overcome social media addiction


RedOrbit
Wed, 28 Aug 2013 22:06 UTC
Pavlov Poke
© Igor.Stevanovic/Shutterstock
Spending too much time "liking" what your friends have to say on Facebook? Addicted to retweeting? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a "shocking" solution to these kinds of problems.

Robert R. Morris and Dan McDuff, a pair of PhD candidates at MIT, have developed a device that administers a non-lethal shock when you overindulge in online distractions, according to John Biggs of TechCrunch.

They have dubbed the unit the "Pavlov Poke", and as Morris explained in a recent blog post, it features special code that monitors the websites that individuals visit using their browsers.

Should a specific site (for example, a popular social network) become visited too frequently, the device sends a shock through a peripheral device hooked up to the user's keyboard.

The Pavlov Poke is made of an Arduino board (a type of board that can be used to develop various applications), according to Victoria Woollaston of the Daily Mail. It is connected to the computer by a USB cable, and rests underneath the wrist of a user.

Once installed, the application's logging software tracks usage of various programs and websites, and issues a warning message if too much time is spent viewing or using the software or webpage. If use is not discontinued, the board will administer an electric shock.
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Jupiter

Electric universe: New surprises at the heliospheric boundary


YouTube
Tue, 20 Aug 2013 14:33 UTC
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Info

First human brain-to-brain interface


EarthSky Org
Wed, 28 Aug 2013 12:39 UTC

University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.

Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the University of Washington campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard.

While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have demonstrated it between a human and a rat, Rao and Stocco believe this is the first demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing.
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Hourglass

John Mainstone, 78-year-old custodian of world's longest running science experiment dies after 52 years on watch


The Raw Story
Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:33 UTC
John Mainstone
© Unknown
The science professor who oversaw the world's longest running laboratory test - the Pitch Drop Experiment - has died after more than half a century on its watch, his university said Monday.

John Mainstone, the former head of the Department of Physics at the University of Queensland, was in charge of the experiment which demonstrated the fluidity and viscosity of pitch, a tar derivative once used to waterproof boats.

The experiment, established in 1927 by Professor Thomas Parnell, was designed to show that pitch, although it feels solid and can be shattered by a hammer blow at room temperature, acts like a fluid and flows through a glass funnel over time.

It took three years for the pitch to settle and then the glass funnel holding the substance was cut to allow it to flow out.

In the 83 years since then, only eight drops of pitch have fallen and no one has seen one actually fall, the university said.
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Meteor

Chelyabinsk meteorite fragments reveal potential space collision

Catherin Griffin
Science World Report
Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:04 UTC
Image
© Victor SharyginWhen the Chelyabinsk meteorite streaked across the sky in February, it caused quite a bit of a stir in Russia. The resulting shockwave from its impact shattered glass, injuring over a thousand people. Now, scientists have found out a little bit more about this meteorite. Fragment of Chelyabinsk meteorite, showing the fusion crust -- the result of a previous collision or near miss with another planetary body or with the sun.
When the Chelyabinsk meteorite streaked across the sky in February, it caused quite a bit of a stir in Russia. The resulting shockwave from its impact shattered glass, injuring over a thousand people. Now, scientists have found out a little bit more about this meteorite.

The main body of the meteorite fell to the bottom of the Cherbarkul Lake near Celyabinsk. That's why in order to learn a little bit more about the meteorite, scientist examined fragments of the space rock. The fragments are composed of the same minerals as the main body of the meteorite, which means that the scientists could learn what they needed to know about the event.

So what did they find? It turned out that the meteorite had undergone an intensive melting process before being subjected to extremely high temperatures upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Based on the color and structure, the researchers were able to divide the fragments into three types: light, dark and intermediate. The lighter fragments were the ones that were most commonly found, but the dark fragments were found in increasing numbers along the meteorites trajectory, with the greatest number found close to where it hit Earth.
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