Brain

With rising unemployment and fewer job vacancies, the current financial crisis has seen renewed policy emphasis in both Europe and the UK on volunteering as a route to employment, according to a new report from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC.)

DALLAS – Dec. 14, 2009 – Only about one in 2,000 people in the United States get a sinus tumor, but Johnnie Wilcox was one of the unfortunate few.

Ms. Wilcox's tumor was a classic case. She had few symptoms early on, and even those problems were mistaken for blocked sinuses.

"For several months, I could not breathe through the right side of my nose," recalled the resident of Goldthwaite, a town of less than 2,000 in the heart of Texas' Hill Country. "I felt a fullness, but I didn't take that as something terrible. I never believed it would be a malignant tumor."

At least a dozen Alberta high-school calculus classrooms were exposed to the West Nile virus recently.

Luckily, however, it wasn't literally the illness. University of Alberta education professor Stephen Norris and mathematics professor Gerda de Vries used the virus as a theoretical tool when they designed materials for use in an advanced high-school math course. The materials allow students to use mathematical concepts learned in their curriculum to determine the disease's reproductive number, which determines the likelihood of a disease spreading.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that the brains of individuals with autism are less active when engaged in self-reflective thought. The study published today in the journal Brain provides new evidence for the neural correlates of self-awareness and a new window into understanding social difficulties in autism spectrum conditions.

Scientists have resolved a question about how a popular class of drugs used to treat schizophrenia works using biosensors that reveal previously hidden components of chemical communication in the brain.

Although delusions and hallucinations characterize the illness, people with schizophrenia also struggle to sustain attention or recall information in a particular order, difficulties that interfere with their ability to hold a job or function well, said Lee Schroeder, a student in the medical scientist training program at the University of California, San Diego.

SAN ANTONIO - Circulating metastatic breast cancer cells can lose their epithelial receptors, a process that enables them to travel through the bloodstream undetected, according to research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The findings were presented today at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A new study may explain why the England soccer team keeps losing in penalty shootouts – and could help the team address the problem in time for the World Cup 2010. Research by the University of Exeter shows for the first time the effect of anxiety on a footballer's eye movements while taking a penalty.

The recent shootings at the Ft. Hood, Texas army base, allegedly by an army psychiatrist, have placed much-needed focus on mental health care in the army. In an article published in the December issue of the journal CNS Spectrum, renowned psychopharmacology expert Stephen M. Stahl, MD, PhD, calls for increased mental health staffing at Fort Hood and other army bases.

It is common knowledge that smoking is a health risk but why do teens become addicted to smoking more easily than adults? In an evaluation for Faculty of 1000 Biology, Neil Grunberg looks into why adolescents are more prone to substance abuse.

Grunberg describes the study, published by Natividad et al. in Synapse journal, as "fascinating" and suggests it "may have implications to help understand why adolescents are particularly prone to drug abuse".

Following up on their previous work showing the rescue of dopamine neurons by chemicals that interact with the retinoid X receptor (RXR), researchers have now investigated the potential of these chemicals, known as RXR ligands, for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience the scientists describe the use of two cellular models of Parkinsonian damage to explore the neuroprotective function of the two RXR ligands LG268 and XCT.

A never-approved drug developed to prevent the death of nerve cells after a stroke can efficiently kill cancer cells while keeping normal cells healthy and intact, an international team led by a Tel Aviv University researcher is reporting in the journal Breast Cancer Research.

Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine found that the stroke drug –– a member of a family of phenanthridine derivatives developed by an American drug company –– worked to kill cancer in mice which had been implanted with human breast cancer cells.

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (December 10, 2009) People paid by the hour exhibit a stronger relationship between income and happiness, according to a study published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), the official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

LA JOLLA, CA—Aging is the single greatest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. In their latest study, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that simply slowing the aging process in mice prone to develop Alzheimer's disease prevented their brains from turning into a neuronal wasteland.

Therapies that can keep us younger longer might also push back the clock on Alzheimer's disease, suggests a new study of mice in the December 11th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

"There's something about being youthful that protects us from Alzheimer's disease," said Andrew Dillin of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. "People say that if you live long enough, you get Alzheimer's. But if that were true, mice that live longer should get the disease at the same rate. That's not what we found."

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - College students who pore over their notes again and again as they prep for finals could use their studying time more wisely, according to new learning research from Purdue University.