science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Παρασκευή 7 Μαρτίου 2014

Science News SciGuru.com

Pre-term babies at higher risk of childhood asthma
Epigenetic changes could explain type 2 diabetes
Resetting Our Clocks: New Details About How the Body Tells Time
Some People Really Just Don't Like Music
'Seeing' Bodies through Sound Translation

Pre-term babies at higher risk of childhood asthma

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 07:01 AM PST

A new study has found that lower gestational age in infants and higher infant weight gain are significantly associated with both pre-school wheezing and with diagnosis of asthma in childhood. Importantly, the study brings some clarity to a field in which there was inconsistency in reports on association of low birth weight and risk of asthma.

Epigenetic changes could explain type 2 diabetes

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 06:41 AM PST

People with type 2 diabetes have epigenetic changes on their DNA that healthy individuals do not have. This has been shown in a major study by researchers at Lund University. The researchers also found epigenetic changes in a large number of genes that contribute to reduced insulin production.

"This shows that the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is not only genetic, but also epigenetic", said Charlotte Ling, who led the study.

Resetting Our Clocks: New Details About How the Body Tells Time

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 06:36 AM PST

Springing clocks forward by an hour this Sunday, traveling across time zones, staring at a computer screen late at night or working the third shift are just a few examples of activities that can disrupt our daily, or circadian, rhythms. These roughly 24-hour cycles influence our physiology and behavior, and they're driven by our body's network of tiny timekeepers. If our daily routines fall out of sync with our body clocks, sleep, metabolic and other disorders can result.

Some People Really Just Don't Like Music

Posted: 06 Mar 2014 09:11 AM PST

It is often said that music is a universal language. However, a new report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 6 finds that music doesn't speak to everyone. There are people who are perfectly able to experience pleasure in other ways who simply don't get music in the way the rest of us do.

The researchers refer to this newly described condition as specific musical anhedonia—in other words, the specific inability to experience pleasure from music.

'Seeing' Bodies through Sound Translation

Posted: 06 Mar 2014 09:07 AM PST

People born unable to see are readily capable of learning to perceive the shape of the human body through soundscapes that translate images into sound, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 6. With a little training, soundscapes representing the outlines and silhouettes of bodies cause the brain's visual cortex—and specifically an area dedicated in normally sighted people to processing body shapes—to light up with activity.