Science News SciGuru.com

---

• DNA tags key to brain changes in mental disorders
• Mechanism Behind Capacitor’s High-Speed Energy Storage Discovered
• New theory shows that neither birth nor death stops a flock
• Characteristics of fathers with depressive symptoms
• Natural method for clearing cellular debris provides new targets for lupus treatment
• New knowledge on the pharmacology of dopamine stabilisers ACR16 and (-)-OSU6162
• Novel method to make nanomaterials discovered
• Neurotoxins In Shark Fins: A Human Health Concern
• Preschools Get Disadvantaged Children Ready for the Rigors of Kindergarten
• Lineage Trees Reveal Cells’ Histories
• A Biodiversity Discovery That Was Waiting in the Wings--Wasp Wings, That Is
• Hepatitis C, a Leading Killer, Is Frequently Undiagnosed But Often Curable
• Naked Mole-Rats Bear Lifesaving Clues
• Study shows significant state-by-state differences in black, white life expectancy
• Earliest Horses Show Past Global Warming Affected Body Size of Mammal
• Blue Light Culprit in Red Tide Blooms
• For fish, fear smells like sugar
• Woodchucks and sudden cardiac death
• Scripps Florida Scientists Uncover Inflammatory Circuit That Triggers Breast Cancer
• Less is more: Study of tiny droplets could have big applications

DNA tags key to brain changes in mental disorders Posted: 24 Feb 2012 07:07 AM PST Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London have found a relationship between molecular tags on our DNA and the weight of a particular region of the human brain called the cerebellum. The findings may provide important clues for understanding the causes of schizophrenia and autism.    read more

Mechanism Behind Capacitor’s High-Speed Energy Storage Discovered Posted: 24 Feb 2012 07:01 AM PST Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered the means by which a polymer known as PVDF enables capacitors to store and release large amounts of energy quickly. Their findings could lead to much more powerful and efficient electric cars. read more

New theory shows that neither birth nor death stops a flock Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:37 AM PST Neither births nor deaths stop the flocking of organisms. They just keep moving, says theoretical physicist John J. Toner of the University of Oregon. The notion, he says, has implications in biology and eventually could point to new cancer therapies. read more

Characteristics of fathers with depressive symptoms Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:37 AM PST Voluminous research literature attests to the multiple negative consequences of maternal depression and depressive symptoms for the health and development of children. In contrast, there is a profound paucity of information about depressive symptoms in fathers according to a follow up study by NYU School of Medicine researchers in the February 23rd online edition of Maternal and Child Health Journal. read more

Natural method for clearing cellular debris provides new targets for lupus treatment Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:31 AM PST Cells that die naturally generate a lot of internal debris that can trigger the immune system to attack the body, leading to diseases such as lupus. Now Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report that an enzyme known to help keep a woman’s immune system from attacking a fetus also helps block development of these autoimmune diseases that target healthy tissues, such as DNA or joints. read more

New knowledge on the pharmacology of dopamine stabilisers ACR16 and (-)-OSU6162 Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:24 AM PST  A study from Karolinska Institutet shows that a new drug for Huntington's disease - pridopidine or dopamine stabiliser ACR16 - might operate via previously unknown mechanisms of action. Researchers have found that at very low concentrations, ACR16 binds to the sigma-1 receptor, a protein in the brain important to neuronal function and survival. This new knowledge can be used to develop future treatments for schizophrenia, involuntary Parkinsonian tremors and neurodegenerative diseases. read more

Novel method to make nanomaterials discovered Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:17 AM PST Researchers at the NanoScience Center of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at Harvard University, US, have discovered a novel way to make nanomaterials. Using computer simulations, the researchers have been able to predict that long and narrow graphene nanoribbons can be rolled into carbon nanotubes by means of twisting. The research has received funding from the Academy of Finland.  read more

Neurotoxins In Shark Fins: A Human Health Concern Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:58 PM PST Sharks are among the most threatened of marine species worldwide due to unsustainable overfishing. They are primarily killed for their fins to fuel the growing demand for shark fin soup, which is an Asia delicacy. A new study by University of Miami (UM) scientists in the journal Marine Drugs has discovered high concentrations of BMAA in shark fins, a neurotoxin linked to neurodegenerative diseases in humans including Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig Disease (ALS). read more

Preschools Get Disadvantaged Children Ready for the Rigors of Kindergarten Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:36 PM PST Preschools help children prepare for the rigors of grade school—especially children who come from a minority family, a poor family, or whose parents don’t provide high-quality interactions. The results of a new study of over 1,000 identical and fraternal twins, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, confirm that preschool programs are a good idea. read more

Lineage Trees Reveal Cells’ Histories Posted: 23 Feb 2012 01:00 PM PST  In recent years, a number of controversial claims have been made about the female mammal’s egg supply – that it is renewed over her adult lifetime (as opposed to the conventional understanding that she is born with all of her eggs), and that the source of these eggs is stem cells that originate in the bone marrow. Now, Weizmann Institute scientists have disproved one of those claims and pointed in new directions toward resolving the other. read more

A Biodiversity Discovery That Was Waiting in the Wings--Wasp Wings, That Is Posted: 23 Feb 2012 12:28 PM PST From spaghetti-like sea anemones to blobby jellyfish to filigreed oak trees, each species in nature is characterized by a unique size and shape. But the evolutionary changes that produce the seemingly limitless diversity of shapes and sizes of organisms on Earth largely remains a mystery. Nevertheless, a better understanding of how cells grow and enable organisms to assume their characteristic sizes and shapes could shed light on diseases that involve cell growth, including cancer and diabetes. read more

Hepatitis C, a Leading Killer, Is Frequently Undiagnosed But Often Curable Posted: 23 Feb 2012 12:19 PM PST Hepatitis C virus – not AIDS-causing HIV – is the leading chronic virus infection leading to death in the United States, and its victims most often are baby boomers. More than half who are infected do not know it. Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found in a study published in the February 21 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine that hepatitis C had overtaken HIV as a cause of death in the United States by 2007. read more

Naked Mole-Rats Bear Lifesaving Clues Posted: 23 Feb 2012 12:14 PM PST Could blind, buck-toothed, finger-sized naked mole-rats harbor in their brain cells a survival secret that might lead to better heart attack or stroke treatments? University of Illinois at Chicago biologist Thomas Park and colleagues at UIC and the University of Texas Heath Science Center at San Antonio think the subterranean lifestyle of the pasty-looking rodents may indeed hold clues to keeping brain cells alive and functioning when oxygen is scarce. The key may lie in how brain cells regulate their intake of calcium. read more

Study shows significant state-by-state differences in black, white life expectancy Posted: 23 Feb 2012 12:07 PM PST A UCLA-led group of researchers tracing disparities in life expectancy between blacks and whites in the U.S. has found that white males live about seven years longer on average than African American men and that white women live more than five years longer than their black counterparts. But when comparing life expectancy on a state-by-state basis, the researchers made a surprising discovery: In those states in which the disparities were smallest, the differences often were not the result of African Americans living longer but of whites dying younger than the national average. read more

Earliest Horses Show Past Global Warming Affected Body Size of Mammal Posted: 23 Feb 2012 11:49 AM PST When Sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds--and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia. Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. read more

Blue Light Culprit in Red Tide Blooms Posted: 23 Feb 2012 10:50 AM PST Each year, phytoplankton blooms known as “red tides” kill millions of fish and other marine organisms and blanket vast areas of coastal water around the world. Though the precise causes of red tides remain a mystery, a team of researchers in the United States and Spain has solved one of the main riddles about these ecological disasters by uncovering the specific mechanism that triggers phytoplankton to release their powerful toxins into the environment. read more

For fish, fear smells like sugar Posted: 23 Feb 2012 10:47 AM PST When one fish gets injured, the rest of the school takes off in fear, tipped off by a mysterious substance known as "Schreckstoff" (meaning "scary stuff" in German). Now, researchers reporting online on February 23 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology have figured out what that scary stuff is really made of. Within that chemical brew is a special type of sugar found in abundance in fish skin. When a fish is wounded, fragments of the sugar known as chondroitin sulfate alarm other fish nearby. read more

Woodchucks and sudden cardiac death Posted: 23 Feb 2012 10:35 AM PST How much calcium could a hibernating woodchuck’s heart cells sequester, if a hibernating woodchuck’s heart cells could sequester calcium? More than enough, it turns out, to protect the animals from cardiac arrhythmias – abnormal heart rhythms such as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation that can lead to sudden cardiac death – according to a new study of the hibernating animals that may provide insight into arrhythmia therapies. read more

Scripps Florida Scientists Uncover Inflammatory Circuit That Triggers Breast Cancer Posted: 23 Feb 2012 09:59 AM PST Although it’s widely accepted that inflammation is a critical underlying factor in a range of diseases, including the progression of cancer, little is known about its role when normal cells become tumor cells. Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shed new light on exactly how the activation of a pair of inflammatory signaling pathways leads to the transformation of normal breast cells to cancer cells. read more

Less is more: Study of tiny droplets could have big applications Posted: 23 Feb 2012 09:50 AM PST Under a microscope, a tiny droplet slides between two fine hairs like a roller coaster on a set of rails until — poof — it suddenly spreads along them, a droplet no more. read more

You are subscribed to email updates from Science News from SciGuru.com To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610