Brain

How to get a college roommate you can live with

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Anxious college freshmen can relax. No matter who will be sharing their dorm room, they have the power to make the relationship better, University of Michigan research suggests.

The research, published in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, was conducted by psychologists Jennifer Crocker and Amy Canevello at the U-M Institute for Social Research.

Animals adapt their vocal signals to social situations

WASHINGTON — A special August issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, presents a host of studies that investigate the way that animals adapt their calls, chirps, barks and whistles to their social situation.

The special issue, Acoustic Interaction in Animal Groups: Signaling in Noisy and Social Contexts, reports on findings from the natural world such as:

New hope for stroke patients

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- If a stroke patient doesn't get treatment within approximately the first three hours of symptoms, there's not much doctors can do to limit damage to the brain.

But now researchers report a technique that potentially could restore functions to patients weeks or even months after a stroke. The technique involves jumpstarting the growth of nerve fibers to compensate for brain cells destroyed by the stroke.

Alcohol consumption can cause too much cell death, fetal abnormalities

The initial signs of fetal alcohol syndrome are slight but classic: facial malformations such as a flat and high upper lip, small eye openings and a short nose.

Researchers want to know if those facial clues can help them figure out how much alcohol it takes during what point in development to cause these and other lifelong problems.

UC Davis researchers define characteristics, treatment options for XXYY syndrome

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Researchers at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute and The Children's Hospital in Denver have conducted the largest study to date describing the medical and psychological characteristics of a rare genetic disorder in which males have two "X" and two "Y" chromosomes, rather than the normal one of each. The study, published in the June 15, 2008, issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, also offers treatment recommendations for men and boys with the disorder.

September Geology and GSA Today media highlights

Boulder, CO, USA - GEOLOGY topics reach deep into Earth and far into space—from magma and plate tectonics to cosmic dust and asteroids—and touch on the intricate details of our planet, including a 1200-year record of corals and coral reef health and the wealth of climate change information found in both bat guano and Chinese loess. The GSA TODAY article studies the end-Permian mass extinction in the marine realm, examining long-term environmental stress and recovery.

Ups and downs of the Mississippi Delta

MIT zeroes in on Alzheimer's structures

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT engineers report a new approach to identifying protein structures key to Alzheimer's disease, an important step toward the development of new drugs that could prevent such structures from forming.

In the Aug. 22 issue of PLoS Computational Biology, the researchers describe one such structure uncovered using a new computer-based technique.

Relearning process not always a 'free lunch'

Researchers at Sheffield University and the University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom, have helped determine why relearning a few pieces of information may or may not easily cause a recollection of other associated, previously learned information. The key, they find, is in the way in which the learned information is forgotten. Details are published August 22nd in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.

Drugs to inhibit blood vessel growth show promise in rat model of deadly brain tumor

In a landmark study, Medical College of Wisconsin researchers in Milwaukee report that drugs used to inhibit a specific fatty acid in rat brains with glioblastoma-like tumors not only reduced new blood vessel growth and tumor size dramatically, but also prolonged survival. The study is the featured cover story of the August, 2008 Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism.

Measuring the auditory dynamics of selective attention

(Boston) -- Call it the cocktail party effect: how an individual can participate in a one-on-one conversation within a cluster of people, switch to another, pick up important comments while tuning out others, change topics and return to the first conversation.

This selective switching of attention which relies on disengaging and re-engaging attention to different voices on a time scale of a tenth of a second, can pose challenges for anyone with normal hearing.

'Can you see me now?' Sign language over cell phones comes to United States

A group at the University of Washington has developed software that for the first time enables deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans to use sign language over a mobile phone. UW engineers got the phones working together this spring, and recently received a National Science Foundation grant for a 20-person field project that will begin next year in Seattle.

Research shows pollsters how the undecided will vote

As the American Presidential election approaches, pollsters are scrambling to predict who will win. A study by a team of researchers at The University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the University of Padova, Italy, may give pollsters a new way to determine how the undecided will vote, even before the voters know themselves.

"Automatic Mental Associations Predict Future Choices of Undecided Decision Makers," was published in the August 22nd issue of the journal Science.

Virginia Tech researcher converts biodiesel byproduct into omega-3 fatty acids

Blacksburg, Va. – The typical American diet often lacks omega-3 fatty acids despite clinical research that shows their potential human health benefits. Zhiyou Wen, assistant professor of biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, found a way to grow these compounds using a byproduct of the emerging biodiesel industry. He presented his findings at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Philadelphia, Pa., on August 21.

Cocaine: How addiction develops

Permanent drug seeking and relapse after renewed drug administration are typical behavioral patterns of addiction. Molecular changes at the connection points in the brain's reward center are directly responsible for this. This finding was published by a research team from the Institute of Mental Health (ZI) in Mannheim, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in the latest issue of Neuron. The results provide researchers with new approaches in the medical treatment of drug addiction.

U of M scholar and colleagues link tobacco industry's marketing to youth smoking

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) released a report today, co-edited by University of Minnesota professor Barbara Loken, that reaches the government's strongest conclusion to date that tobacco marketing and depictions of smoking in movies promote youth smoking. "There is now incontrovertible evidence that marketing of tobacco, and the depiction of smoking in the movies, promote youth smoking and can cause young people to begin smoking," said Loken, professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management and one of the report's five scientific editors.