Brain
A new study investigated the association between short-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter and the risk of stroke and found that even low pollutant levels may increase that risk. The study is published in Annals of Neurology (www.interscience.wiley.com), the official journal of the American Neurological Association.
Boulder, CO, USA The June issue of GEOSPHERE, published by the Geological Society of America, is now available online. Topics of interest include common ground in the disagreement between mantle plume and lithospheric mantlelower crust delamination models; a USGS Great Basin Paleontological Database filled with 150 years of fossil data; laser rangefinders versus terrestrial laser scanners and digital cameras in three-dimensional modeling; and contaminant sources of northern Mexico's Rio Conchos, including the effects of human activities.
Major depressive disorder is a common and complex condition that impacts about 15% of the population of the United States, yet very little is known about the mechanisms behind the psychiatric disorder. What is known is that there are clinical parallels between depressive symptoms and the symptoms of certain inflammatory disorders.
Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of todays primates, including humans, did something novel. While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid spotted another juicy morsel in a nearby shrub and began shuffling toward it instead of dropping on all fours, crawling to the shrub and standing again.
A study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has transformed scientists' understanding of Rett syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes autistic behavior and other disabling symptoms. Until now, scientists thought that the gene behind Rett syndrome was an "off" switch, or repressor, for other genes. But the new study, published today in Science*, shows that it is an "on" switch for a startlingly large number of genes.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The ability to map numbers onto a line, a foundation of all mathematics, is universal, says a study published this week in the journal Science, but the form of this universal mapping is not linear but logarithmic. The findings illuminate both the nature and the limits of the human predisposition to measurement, a foundation for science, engineering, and much of our modern culture.
PITTSBURGH—Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have taken an important step toward understanding how the human brain codes the meanings of words by creating the first computational model that can predict the unique brain activation patterns associated with names for things that you can see, hear, feel, taste or smell.
In 1999, when Dr. Huda Zoghbi and her Baylor College of Medicine colleagues identified a mutation of the gene MeCP2 as the culprit in Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, the discovery was only the prelude to understanding a symphony of neurological missteps.
Unraveling the story of MeCP2 demonstrates the finicky nature of neurons that work best when the recipe for the proteins affecting them is followed exactly. Zoghbi and her collaborators describe the role MeCP2 plays in the brain in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Science.
Food may not be the major cause of hyperactivity in children. Genetics, brain function and parental actions such as smoking may be just as important.
A review of scientific evidence found only a minority of children were actually affected by what they eat. A combination of food, genetics and environmental toxins are more likely to be involved, with no single factor to blame.
Imagine blanking out of consciousness up to 200 times daily while youre learning in a classroom, playing baseball, taking ballet lessons or riding a bike. This is a common occurrence in the life of a child with childhood absence epilepsy (CAE). The condition is associated with frequent absent seizures where the patients consciousness is impaired leaving the child staring blankly ahead not aware or responsive for up to 10 seconds at a time.
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