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• Researchers show how brain cell connections get cemented early in life
• Watching tumors burst through a blood vessel
• Online time can hobble brain’s important work
• High intensity training good for cardiac patients
• Alcohol throws off circadian clock to damage liver
• Could Dog Food Additive Prevent Disabling Chemotherapy Side Effect?
• Disarming HIV With a "Pop"
• Researchers Identify Biomarker for Smoker's Lung Cancer
• The coelacanth - living fossil leads a monogamous life
• Earthworms can survive and recover after three-week drought stress
• How nerve signals are suppressed inside the entorhinal cortex
• Bracing is effective in adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis
• Immune cells open window to breast cancer risk
• Study reveals interference with cellular recycling leads to cancer growth, chemotherapy resistance
• Discovery of a gene essential for memory extinction could lead to new PTSD treatments
• Dinosaur wind tunnel test provides new insight into the evolution of bird flight
• Need steroids? Maybe not for lower back pain
• Rare gene variant linked to macular degeneration
• Could Oxytocin Be Useful in Treating Psychiatric Disorders
• Why Kids Breathe Easier in Summer

Researchers show how brain cell connections get cemented early in life Posted: 20 Sep 2013 07:08 AM PDT When we’re born, our brains aren’t very organized. Every brain cell talks to lots of other nearby cells, sending and receiving signals across connections called synapses. Two neighboring brain cells "talk" to one another by sending signals across a gap called a synapse. The more active the synapse during development, U-M researchers found, the more a protein called SIRP is cut loose from one cell, travels to the other, and helps stabilize the synapse for the future. read more

Watching tumors burst through a blood vessel Posted: 20 Sep 2013 07:01 AM PDT Cancer cells metastasize in several stages — first by invading surrounding tissue, then by infiltrating and spreading via the circulatory system. Some circulating cells work their way out of the vascular network, eventually forming a secondary tumor. While the initial process by which cancer cells enter the bloodstream — called intravasation — is well characterized, how cells escape blood vessels to permeate other tissues and organs is less clear. This process, called extravasation, is a crucial step in cancer metastasis. read more

Online time can hobble brain’s important work Posted: 20 Sep 2013 06:50 AM PDT While you are browsing online, you could be squandering memories – or losing important information. Working memory enables us to filter out information and find what we need in the communication, says Erik Fransén, Professor in Computer Science at KTH. Contrary to common wisdom, an idle brain is in fact doing important work – and in the age of constant information overload, it’s a good idea to go offline on a regular basis, says one KTH researcher. read more

High intensity training good for cardiac patients Posted: 20 Sep 2013 06:45 AM PDT High-intensity exercise is shown to be protective against coronary heart disease (CHD) and is well known as a popular and time-saving approach to getting fit. But what about people who already have heart disease? Previously, these patients were told to exercise, but only at a moderate intensity to protect their hearts. More recently, however, researchers have found that high-intensity exercise is very beneficial for these patients. But how intense should these sessions actually be? read more

Alcohol throws off circadian clock to damage liver Posted: 20 Sep 2013 05:11 AM PDT Having evolved to keep time with our planet's rhythms – day and night, light and dark – we are wired at the genetic level to sleep at night and to wake and eat during the day. Research in recent years revealed that genetic and protein feedback loops – or clocks – operate in 24-hour cycles in every human cell. The clocks signal to thousands of genes, many of which speed up our ability to make and use energy from food during the day and turn it down at night. read more

Could Dog Food Additive Prevent Disabling Chemotherapy Side Effect? Posted: 19 Sep 2013 02:15 PM PDT Johns Hopkins researchers find, in mice, that common preservative may thwart pain and damage of peripheral neuropathy. Working with cells in test tubes and in mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that a chemical commonly used as a dog food preservative may prevent the kind of painful nerve damage found in the hands and feet of four out of five cancer patients taking the chemotherapy drug Taxol. read more

Disarming HIV With a "Pop" Posted: 19 Sep 2013 02:08 PM PDT Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they’ve created that can trick HIV into “popping” itself into oblivion. read more

Researchers Identify Biomarker for Smoker's Lung Cancer Posted: 19 Sep 2013 01:55 PM PDT Mayo Clinic researchers have shown that a specific protein pair may be a successful prognostic biomarker for identifying smoking-related lung cancers. The protein — ASCL1 — is associated with increased expression of the RET oncogene, a particular cancer-causing gene called RET. The findings appear in the online issue of the journal Oncogene. read more

The coelacanth - living fossil leads a monogamous life Posted: 19 Sep 2013 08:33 AM PDT Scientists have successfully analysed the genetic make-up of the offspring of pregnant coelacanth females for the first time. They found that the likelihood that the offspring is fathered by one single individual is very high – unlike with many other fish species. Dr Kathrin Lampert from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Prof Dr Manfred Schartl from the University of Würzburg, together with their colleagues, report about their findings in the journal “Nature Communications”. read more

Earthworms can survive and recover after three-week drought stress Posted: 19 Sep 2013 08:25 AM PDT Earthworms are a welcomed sight in many gardens and yards since they can improve soil structure and mixing. But they are hard to find in the drier soils of eastern Colorado where water and organic matter is limited. Adding earthworms to fields where they are not currently found could help enhance the health and productivity of the soil. In areas where droughts are common, though, can earthworms survive? A new study suggests that they can. read more

How nerve signals are suppressed inside the entorhinal cortex Posted: 19 Sep 2013 08:09 AM PDT Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) have managed to acquire new insights into the functioning of a region in the brain that normally is involved in spatial orientation, but is damaged by the Alzheimer’s disease. They investigated how nerve signals are suppressed inside the so-called entorhinal cortex. According to the researchers, this neuronal inhibition leads nerve cells to synchronize their activity. The results of this study are now published in Neuron. read more

Bracing is effective in adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis Posted: 19 Sep 2013 08:02 AM PDT A multi-center study led by University of Iowa researchers to determine whether wearing back braces would prevent the need for spinal correction surgery in children with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) was cut short when early results were overwhelmingly in favor of bracing. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine today (Sept. 19. 2013). read more

Immune cells open window to breast cancer risk Posted: 19 Sep 2013 07:51 AM PDT University of Adelaide researchers have made a major discovery that highlights the important role played by immune cells in the risk of developing breast cancer. Researchers have focused their efforts on immune cells known as macrophages in the breast, and how the role of these cells changes because of fluctuations in hormones during different times of the month. read more

Study reveals interference with cellular recycling leads to cancer growth, chemotherapy resistance Posted: 18 Sep 2013 09:30 AM PDT Overactivity of a protein that normally cues cells to divide sabotages the body’s natural cellular recycling process, leading to heightened cancer growth and chemotherapy resistance, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found. read more

Discovery of a gene essential for memory extinction could lead to new PTSD treatments Posted: 18 Sep 2013 09:26 AM PDT If you got beat up by a bully on your walk home from school every day, you would probably become very afraid of the spot where you usually met him. However, if the bully moved out of town, you would gradually cease to fear that area. Neuroscientists call this phenomenon “memory extinction”: Conditioned responses fade away as older memories are replaced with new experiences. read more

Dinosaur wind tunnel test provides new insight into the evolution of bird flight Posted: 18 Sep 2013 05:55 AM PDT A study into the aerodynamic performance of feathered dinosaurs, by scientists from the University of Southampton, has provided new insight into the evolution of bird flight. In recent years, new fossil discoveries have changed our view of the early evolution of birds and, more critically, their powers of flight. We now know about a number of small-bodied dinosaurs that had feathers on their wings as well as on their legs and tails: completely unique in the fossil record. read more

Need steroids? Maybe not for lower back pain Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:19 AM PDT New research from Johns Hopkins suggests that it may not be the steroids in spinal shots that provide relief from lower back pain, but the mere introduction of any of a number of fluids, such as anesthetics and saline, to the space around the spinal cord. read more

Rare gene variant linked to macular degeneration Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:09 AM PDT An international team of researchers, led by scientists at The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor, has identified a gene mutation linked to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in Americans over age 50. read more

Could Oxytocin Be Useful in Treating Psychiatric Disorders Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:01 AM PDT The hormone oxytocin could play a role in treating psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a review article in the September Harvard Review of Psychiatry.  The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.   read more

Why Kids Breathe Easier in Summer Posted: 18 Sep 2013 03:52 AM PDT A good night's sleep is important to our children's development. But with the first day of school just passed, many children are at increased risk for sleep breathing disorders that can impair their mental and physical development and hurt their academic performance. A study conducted in North America in 2011 showed that the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing increases in the winter and spring. Until now, researchers believed asthma, allergies, and viral respiratory infections like the flu contributed to disorders that affect children's breathing during sleep. read more

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