Health & WellnessS


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Where Am I? How Our Brain Works As A GPS Device


PhysOrg
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:58 UTC
We've all experienced the feeling of not knowing where we are. Being disoriented is not pleasant, and it can even be scary, but luckily for most of us, this sensation is temporary. The brain employs a number of tricks to reorient us, keeping our confusion to a minimum and quickly pointing us in the right direction. Research has suggested that animals and young children mainly rely on geometric cues (e.g. lengths, distances, angles) to help them get reoriented.

Human adults, however, can also make use of feature cues (e.g. color, texture, landmarks) in their surrounding area. But which method do we use more often? Psychologists Kristin R. Ratliff from the University of Chicago and Nora S. Newcombe from Temple University conducted a set of experiments investigating if human adults have a preference for using geometric or feature cues to become reoriented.
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Health

Dust Mites: Major Allergens For Asthma Patients


Emax Health
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:13 UTC
The American Asthma Foundation announced a research breakthrough that explains why tiny, household pests called dust mites are a major source of airborne allergens for patients with allergic asthma.

Dean Smith, Executive Director of the American Asthma Foundation, explains that "although dust mites are known to trigger asthma attacks, until now we did not know why the allergic response to the mites was so strong." The mystery was solved as a result of research funded by the American Asthma Foundation's Strategic Program for Asthma Research (SPAR).
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Health

Australia: Perth researchers unravel genetic secrets of rare disease

Michael Hopkin
The West Australian
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:01 UTC
A University of Western Australia scientist has begun to unravel the genetic secrets of Kawasaki disease, a mysterious and potentially deadly childhood condition.

The rare disease was thrown into the spotlight this week by the sudden death of John Travolta's 16-year-old son Jett, who suffered a bout of the illness as a young child.

Researchers led by UWA scientist David Burgner have discovered five genes that make children more susceptible to the disease, which damages blood vessels and could raise the risk of heart attacks in later life.
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Too Much Of A Good Thing: Excessive DNA Repair Can Lead To Retinal Degeneration


PhysOrg
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:21 UTC
toomuchofago
© Samson LaboratoryMIT researchers found that mice with normal DNA repair systems had more retinal degeneration upon exposure to environmental toxic agents than mice lacking a certain DNA repair system. At right, the cross section of the retina from a mouse lacking the repair system is normal. At left, mice with too much DNA repair have greatly reduced numbers of cells in the OPL (outer plexiform layer) and ONL (outer nuclear layer).
A naturally occurring DNA repair system that normally protects cells from damage can cause retinal degeneration and blindness when overstimulated, according to a new study by MIT researchers.

The research team found that relatively low-level exposure to an environmental toxic agent provoked very active DNA repair that led to surprisingly high rates of retinal degeneration in mice -- much higher than in mice lacking the same DNA repair pathway. The work raises the possibility of developing treatments for retinal degeneration by blocking a particular DNA repair pathway.

"Under some circumstances, too much DNA repair is not a good thing and could actually be a bad thing," said Leona Samson, co-director of MIT's Center for Environmental Health Sciences, professor of biology and biological engineering, and senior author of a paper on the work appearing online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
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Butterfly

They Left the Corporate Cocoon to Blossom

John Blake
CNN
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:11 UTC
Big company. Big salary. Big sendoff.

That's the formula millions of American workers used for years to map their career trajectory. Conventional wisdom advised workers to land a job with a big company and retire with generous benefits.

But there's a new breed of worker who is making that formula seem as quaint as a VHS tape. They are the ultimate risk-takers -- they leave large, successful companies to pursue their own dreams even though the economy is reeling.
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Cheeseburger

Brain circuit abnormalities may underlie bulimia nervosa in women


Science Daily
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:07 UTC
Women with bulimia nervosa appear to respond more impulsively during psychological testing than those without eating disorders, and brain scans show differences in areas responsible for regulating behavior, according to a new report.

Bulimia nervosa often begins in the adolescent or young adult years, according to background information in the article. "Primarily affecting girls and women, it is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting or another compensatory behavior to avoid weight gain," the authors write. "These episodes of binge eating are associated with a severe sense of loss of control."
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Alarm Clock

Birth of first British baby to be genetically screened for breast cancer

Lewis Smith
The Times Online
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:02 UTC
The first baby in Britain to be screened for a deadly breast cancer gene while still an embryo has been born safely in London.

Her parents, who wish to remain anonymous, opted for screening because three generations of women in the father's family had suffered the disease.

Had the baby been born with the BRCA1 gene she would have had an 80 per cent chance of developing breast cancer as a direct result and a 60 per cent chance of ovarian cancer.
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A Good Night's Sleep Protects Against Parasites


PhysOrg
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:03 UTC
Animal species that sleep for longer do not suffer as much from parasite infestation and have a greater concentration of immune cells in their blood according to a study published in the open-access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The question of why we sleep has long puzzled scientists. Brian Preston from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led an international team of researchers who tested the theory that sleep improves immune function. He says, "Sleep is a biological enigma. Despite occupying much of an animal's life, and having been scrutinized by numerous experimental studies, there is still no consensus on its function. Similarly, nobody has yet explained why species have evolved such marked variation in their sleep requirements (from 3 to 20 hours a day in mammals). Our research provides new evidence that sleep plays an important role in protecting animals from parasitic infection."
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Attention

FDA scientists complain to Obama of 'corruption'


Associated Press
Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:56 UTC
Washington - In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration.

"The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the scientific review process for medical devices at the FDA has been corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk," said the letter, dated Wednesday and written on the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health letterhead.
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Since nanomaterials are now in everything, it's time to see how much damage they cause


Medicine Hat News
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:39 UTC
Edmonton - The tiny critters had seemed so content, swimming around under the microscope.

Scientist Shirley Tang was studying how living organisms might be affected by nanomaterials. These minute particles assembled from just a few molecules offer great promise but also pose a lot of questions - and can cause surprising and unpredictable harmful effects.

In an effort to understand those effects, Tang had just exposed some protozoa to nanoparticles. The one-celled animals promptly absorbed them, ejected them, and then carried on.

"They seemed happy," says Tang, a chemistry professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

"They would eat bacteria as normal. We didn't see any mortality to the protozoa."

But a closer look showed they weren't happy at all. Sure, they'd eat bacteria, but instead of absorbing their prey, they'd simply excrete it.

"Now they can only digest 40 per cent, 20 per cent, 10 per cent of their food."
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