Brain

BETHLEHEM, PA (October 31, 2008)—A new study published in the September/October issue of the journal Marketing Science reveals the world's most innovative countries, with Japan and the Nordic countries earning top spots and the United States finishing in sixth.

The study, which evaluates 31 countries based on the time it takes for new products to takeoff, is among the most comprehensive research of its kind. Wherever applicable, researchers analyzed 16 different product categories over a time span of 50 years.

Primary HCC is a major cancer related to HBV viral infection in Asian countries, including Japan. Recently, the primary liver cancers are successfully treated by surgical resection including liver transplantation and non-surgical locoregional therapy. Although not frequently, extrahepatic spread to the lung, so called lung metastasis from liver cancer is a dilemma, because it may be believed that diseases are very advanced and too late in being adequately treated. It is partly true that most of the patients with lung metastasis from liver cancer did not survive for more than 1 year.

You have a burning chest pain and a doctor looks at a squiggly-lined graph to determine the cause. That graph, an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), can help the doctor decide whether you're having a heart attack or an acid attack from last night's spaghetti. Correct interpretation may prompt life-saving, emergency measures; incorrect interpretation may delay care with life-threatening consequences. Currently, there is no uniform way to teach doctors in training how to interpret an ECG or assess their competence in the interpretation.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- First it was Hillary Clinton, and now Sarah Palin. Everyone is talking about the year the glass ceiling finally cracked, if not shattered, in U.S. politics.

According to new Northwestern University research, it is not at all surprising that everyone also is talking about the great looks of vice presidential hopeful Palin.

A study out today shows a dramatic fall in the number of people dying from malaria infection in coastal Kenya. The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), highlights the importance of the prevention and rapid treatment of malaria infection in preventing a potential resurgence of the disease.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A "living fossil" tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future.

The research appears in the November issue of the journal Evolution.

Personality researchers have long known that people who report they have certain personality traits are also more (or less) likely to be satisfied with their romantic partners. Someone who says she is often anxious or moody, for example, is more likely than her less neurotic counterpart to be dissatisfied with her significant other.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 -- Two groups of researchers, one in the United States and one in Australia, are announcing the development of new optical techniques for visualizing the invisible processes at work in several human diseases. The published results are the first to showcase the Optical Society's (OSA) Interactive Science Publishing (ISP) initiative, which allows authors to submit a manuscript that includes large three-dimensional data and gives researchers, scientists and engineers a way to evaluate new research results more thoroughly.

Sensory neurons have always put on a good show. But now, it turns out, they'll be sharing the credit. In groundbreaking research to appear in the October 31 issue of Science, Rockefeller University scientists show that while neurons play the lead role in detecting sensory information, a second type of cell, the glial cell, pulls the strings behind the scenes. The findings, point to a mechanism that may explain not only how glia are required for bringing sensory information into the brain but also how glia may influence connections between neurons deep within in it.

DURHAM, N.C. -- A major puzzle for neurobiologists is how the brain can modify one microscopic connection, or synapse, at a time in a brain cell and not affect the thousands of other connections nearby. Plasticity, the ability of the brain to precisely rearrange the connections between its nerve cells, is the framework for learning and forming memories.

Duke University Medical Center researchers have identified a missing-link molecule that helps to explain the process of plasticity and could lead to targeted therapies.

When it comes to the decision to wake up and grow, bacterial spores "listen in" to find out what their neighbors are doing and then they follow the crowd, according to a new report in the October 31st issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication. Although there is still a lot to learn about how this process works, the discovery could lead to a new kind of antimicrobial agent that works not by killing active bacteria, but by keeping dormant bacteria—which typically resist traditional antibiotics—inactive.

A new study in the October 31st issue of Cell, a Cell Press journal, has revealed the molecular and cellular underpinnings of one of the most common, single gene causes for learning disability in humans. The findings made in learning disabled mice offer new insight into what happens in the brain when we learn and remember.

Bumblebee colonies which are fast learners are also better able to fight off infection, according to scientists from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Leicester.

Dr Nigel Raine from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and Akram Alghamdi, Ezio Rosato and Eamonn Mallon from the University of Leicester tested the learning performance and immune responses of bumblebees from twelve colonies.

Although babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words. While studying language acquisition in infants can be a challenging endeavor, researchers have begun to make significant progress that changes previous views of what infants learn, according to a new report by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Daniel Swingley.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) results when the body's own defense system attacks nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord. Now scientists led by John Russell, Ph.D., at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that interferon-gamma plays a deciding role in whether immune cells attack and injure the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) in mice.