Brain
The most recent supernova in our Galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of its remains. This result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA), has implications for understanding how often supernovas explode in the Milky Way galaxy.
The supernova explosion occurred about 140 years ago, making it the most recent supernova in the Milky Way as measured in Earth's time frame. Previously, the last known galactic supernova occurred around 1680, based on studying the expansion of its remnant Cassiopeia A.
Three-toed sloth (Photo Credit: Marcos Guerra, STRI)
In the first experiment to record the electrophysiology of sleep in a wild animal, three-toed sloths carrying miniature electroencephalogram recorders slept 9.63 hours per day—6 hours less than captive sloths did, reports an international team of researchers working on the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institutes Barro Colorado Island in Panama.
Troy, N.Y. — Paul Morrow, who will graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on May 17, has come a long way from his days as an elementary school student, pulling apart his mothers cassette player. The talented young physicist has developed two innovations that could vastly improve magnetic data storage and sense extremely low level magnetic fields in everything from ink on counterfeit currency to tissue in the human brain and heart.
Montreal, May 14, 2008 While 30 to 50 percent of people with Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome are also affected with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), both illnesses might have a distinct neurocognitive profile, according to a new study published in the journal Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Brain Psychiatry by researchers from the Université de Montréal and the Fernand-Seguin Research Centre of the Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital.
Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) neuroscientists at The University of Queensland have discovered a fundamental component of the process that regulates memory formation.
QBI Director Professor Perry Bartlett said the discovery explains, for the first time, how new nerve cells form in an area of the brain associated with learning and memory which is known to deteriorate in people with stroke and dementia.
Researchers from the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne have identified a factor that may contribute towards the development of heroin addiction by manipulating the adenosine A2A receptor, which plays a major role in the brains reward pathway.
A multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins doctors has fine-tuned the dosage and timing for administering clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to patients with strokes caused by bleeding within the brain. The treatment, as reported this week at the European Stroke Conference in Nice, France, has been shown to dramatically decrease death and disability in patients with this typically lethal subset of stroke.
CLEVELAND May 14, 2008 Using mathematics and a computer model of brain activity, Roberto Fernández Galán, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has shown a direct link between activity in the cortex and the microscopic structure of this neuronal network. The findings are published in PLoS ONE on May 14.
A pricy drug used to treat a rare but well-known genetic disorder may hold wider promise as a treatment for millions of Americans with potentially lethal enlarged hearts, due mainly to high blood pressure, a study from Johns Hopkins shows.
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