Brain

A rise in carbon emissions is not the only threat to the planet. Changes to the nitrogen cycle, caused in large part by the widespread use of fertilizers, are also damaging both water quality and aquatic life. These concerns are highlighted by Professor Grace Brush, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, in her historical review (1) of landscape changes around Chesapeake Bay, a large estuary on the Atlantic coast of the USA. Her findings are published online this week in Springer's journal Estuaries and Coasts.

Berkeley -- While a poverty-alleviation program launched by the Mexican government that has been modeled in the United States and around the world has led to improved health and cognition outcomes in children, a new study by University of California, Berkeley, researchers says that the cash component of the program has a downside for adults.

A neuroscientist at UQ's Queensland Brain Institute has found a way to combat a debilitating illness that affects an estimated 50,000 people a year in tropical regions.

Ciguatera poisoning – which often results in acute nausea, vomiting and painful gastrointestinal episodes – is caused by eating fish that have fed on a micro algae that are toxic to mammals and often associated with large algal blooms known as red tides.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disease characterized by disorganized behavior, delusions and hallucinations. Sadly, there is no clear understanding of its cause.

Now, in a collaborative study, UCLA and Dutch researchers have identified three new candidate genes for schizophrenia that may contribute to a better understanding of how the disease evolves.

Yale researchers have described how dueling brain systems may explain why you forget to drop off the dry cleaning and may point to ways that substance abusers and people with obsessive compulsive disorder can overcome bad habits.

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Christopher J. Pittenger, M.D., and colleagues describe a sort of competition between areas of the brain involved in learning that results in what Pittenger calls the "dry cleaning effect."

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People with more education and more mentally demanding occupations may have protection against the memory loss that precedes Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the October 21, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Many of us are bad at remembering names but we are very quick to point out that at least we never forget a face. Never mind recognizing a familiar face- how is it that we recognize faces at all? Facial recognition is so automatic that we do not think about how our brain actually perceives a face. Previous studies have indicated that during face recognition, we look most often at the eyes, nose and mouth. Now, a new study has pinpointed exactly where our eyes land when we see a face.

From partisans at a political rally to fans at a football game, groups that engage in pompous displays of collective pride may be trying to mask insecurity and a low social status, suggests new research led by University of California, Davis, psychologists.

The research will be presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology in Sacramento. Hosted this year by the UC Davis Department of Psychology, the three-day meeting will bring together about 250 research psychologists from around the world. The meeting is open to the media.

October 20, 2008 -- Medical highlights of papers from among the 1,300 talks at the AVS 55th International Symposium next month in Boston are described below. Overall, the meeting showcases advances in technology, materials research, nanotechnology, alternative energy, and medicine.

Information for journalists, such as registration instructions and the scientists' emails can be found at the end of this release. Cool images are available to journalists for designated stories, and they may be obtained by emailing jbardi@aip.org.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Heavy advertising by both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates may actually make voters in battleground states more confused about which candidate to vote for, a new study suggests.

A nationwide study found that voters in heavily contested states like Florida and Ohio become more ambivalent when they are exposed to a lot of opposing messages from the two candidates.

NJIT's Bruce Bukiet, a mathematician who has applied mathematical modeling techniques to elucidate the dynamics of scoring in baseball, has computed the probability of the Rays and Phillies winning the World Series now that the Rays have defeated the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. He recently released the names of those most deserving of Major League Baseball's prestigious 2008 Most Valuable Player (MVP) and Cy Young awards.

WASHINGTON, October 20, 2008—The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Academy of Education (NAEd) announce a ground-breaking study in the field of education research. Undertaken jointly by these two scholarly and scientific organizations, a first-time-ever assessment will examine education research doctorate programs in graduate schools and colleges of education in the United States. The National Science Foundation (NSF) through its competitive award process has made a three-year continuing award effective September 15, 2008 to support this project.

Amyloid precursor protein (APP), whose cleavage product, amyloid-b (Ab), builds up into fibrous plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients, jumps from one specialized membrane microdomain to another to be cleaved, report Sakurai et al.

Although there is no definitive evidence that Ab plaques are the direct cause of Alzheimer's disease, there is much circumstantial evidence to support this. And working on this hypothesis, scientists are investigating just how the plaques form and what might be done to stop or reverse their formation.

Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) and the University of California have found that complete or partial removal of an enzyme that regulates fatty acid levels improves cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Their findings, which will be published in today's issue of Nature Neuroscience, identified specific fatty acids that may contribute to the disease as well as a novel therapeutic strategy.

HOUSTON, TX, OCT. 17, 2008 – Mothers are casting their votes for healthy babies and asking all Americans to join them in signing the March of Dimes 2008 Petition for Preemies. They're putting public officials – and all Americans – on notice that it's time to focus on the growing problem of premature birth, the leading cause of newborn death.