Susan Milius Anybody who's ever mused that the world would be better if men got pregnant needs to talk to Nico Michiels. And so does anybody who's asked—or sung—"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Michiels has seen that world, or at least a version of it, and he's even got pictures to show. It's not pretty, he says. Many snails, slugs, and worms are so-called internally fertilizing, simultaneous hermaphrodites. In any encounter, such creatures can deliver sperm, receive it for fertilizing eggs internally, or do both. Michiels, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, offers the striking example of hermaphroditic polyclad flatworms called Pseudobiceros bedfordi. When two of these small, speckled sea worms meet to mate, there's no taking turns. Each worm, 2 to 6 centimeters long, wields its pair of side-by-side penises like a weapon. One worm tries to fertilize the other by ejaculating anywhere on its partner's body, splashing it with sperm in a cocktail that dissolves flesh. After the brew eats a hole through the skin, the sperm work their way through various tissues until they reach the eggs. In many P. bedfordi encounters, only one member of the pair gets its sperm to the other's eggs. The recipient of the sperm eventually deposits clutches of hundreds of eggs on some suitable surface and glides away. The holes and wrinkly streaks on many worms' bodies are ejaculate burns, says Michiels. ©2006 Science Service

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9346 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PAUL SCOTT FOR a runner, Alex DeVinny wasn’t all that skinny on the day that she won a state track title in 2003. At 17, she was 5-foot-8 and weighed 125 pounds. Few people watching her run the 3,200 meters in 10 minutes 53 seconds would have guessed that she had had symptoms of an eating disorder since age 9 and that she had yet to start menstruating. Her coach didn’t know. The college recruiters certainly did not know. She was never going to run for those colleges. The summer after she won the title, Ms. DeVinny, from Racine, Wis., began to run even harder and eat even less. When she came out for cross-country in the fall, she looked frail and underweight. Her coach was concerned enough to prevent her from competing in several meets, but he allowed her to do two-thirds of her training. He never asked about her menstrual periods and did not know about her anorexia. Ms. DeVinny sneaked in extra workouts, but her dazzling window of athleticism had already begun to close. “Her body kind of broke down during her senior year,” said her sister Gabby Fekete, 27. “She had lived on adrenaline.” Last March, Ms. DeVinny died from cardiac arrest related to her starvation. She was 20 and weighed roughly 70 pounds. Looking back, her coach, Dan Jarrett, questions himself. “I did not understand how someone with anorexia would be capable of making decisions that weren’t in their best interest,” he said. “I totally failed to grasp what it meant.” He is so troubled by her death that he has since quit coaching girls. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 9345 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD An international team of scientists thinks it has solved the ultimate mystery of the Neanderthals: where and when they made their last stand before extinction. It was at Gibraltar 28,000 years ago, the scientists say, about 2,000 years more recently than previously thought. The archaeologists and paleontologists reported yesterday finding several hundred stone tools in Gorham’s Cave, on the rugged Mediterranean coast near the Rock of Gibraltar. They were made in the Mousterian stoneworking style, usually associated with Neanderthals. So far, no fossil bones of the cave occupants have been uncovered. The researchers said, however, that the tools established the survival of a population of Neanderthals, a people closely related to human ancestors, in the southernmost point of Western Europe long after they disappeared elsewhere. These were, they concluded, the last Neanderthals “currently recorded anywhere.” The scientists, led by Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, announced the discovery at a news conference at the museum. Their report was simultaneously published on the Web site of the journal Nature, www.nature.com. It will appear in the journal at a later date. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 9344 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Psychologists have launched a study to find out why some people who hear voices in their head consider it a positive experience while others find it distressing. The University of Manchester investigation - announced on World Hearing Voices Day (Thursday, 14 September) - comes after Dutch researchers found that many healthy members of the population there regularly hear voices. Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as 'abnormal' and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it is more widespread than previously thought, estimating that about 4% of the population hear voices. That would be equivalent to 100,000 people in Greater Manchester. Researcher Aylish Campbell said: "We know that many members of the general population hear voices but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don't seek psychiatric help than those who do. "In fact, many of those affected describe their voices as being a positive influence in their lives, comforting or inspiring them as they go about their daily business. We're now keen to investigate why some people respond in this way while others are distressed and seek outside help." Although the voices heard by psychiatric patients and members of the general population seem to be of the same volume and frequency, the former group tend to interpret the voices as more distressing and negative.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 9343 - Posted: 09.15.2006

By Tom Avril For the millions of Americans who take drugs to treat mental illness, about the only way psychiatrists can tell whether the medications are working is through observation and asking patients how they feel. And even when doctors do find the right drugs, they can't explain exactly why the meds are effective. It's the glaring void at the heart of mental health treatment. No one, from the scientists developing drugs to those who prescribe them, is able to examine the diseased tissue: the cells of the human brain. Enter Nancy Rawson, a cell biologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. She does it through the nose. Working with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University, Rawson takes advantage of a scientific curiosity: The sensory cells in the nose, unlike those elsewhere in the body, are very similar to neurons in the brain, Rawson says. And they can be easily plucked out for study, a few hundred at a time, because they grow back. In recent years, researchers have developed several methods to probe the mind, from analysis of spinal fluid to imaging methods such as MRIs and PET scans. But looking at olfactory neurons - located high in the nose, directly connected to the brain through a porous plate in the skull - is the only way to examine living neurons short of surgery.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9342 - Posted: 09.15.2006

By Robert Sanders BERKELEY – While it is widely accepted that the output of nerve cells carries information between regions of the brain, it's a big mystery how widely separated regions of the cortex involving billions of cells are linked together to coordinate complex activity. A new study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and neurosurgeons and neurologists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) is beginning to answer that question. UCSF neurosurgeons place 64-electrode grids on the surface of the brain's temporal and frontal lobes to locate regions where epileptic seizures originate. These grids allowed UC Berkeley neuroscientists to study the interaction of brain waves during simple tasks, such as word recognition or hand movements. (Images courtesy the Knight Lab) "One of the most important questions in neuroscience is: How do areas of the brain communicate?" said Dr. Robert Knight, professor of psychology, Evan Rauch Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. "A simple activity like responding to a question involves areas all over the brain that hear the sound, analyze it, extract the relevant information, formulate a response, and then coordinate your lips and mouth to speak. We have no idea how information moves between these areas." Copyright UC Regents

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 9341 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Arran Frood We need to study the effect of powerful hallucinogens such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and psilocybin, the active ingredient in 'magic' mushrooms, on debilitating cluster headaches, researchers say. Their study, which points towards the effectiveness of these drugs, is published in the journal Neurology1. It is the first formal look at reports of LSD's therapeutic benefits in nearly 40 years, says Andrew Sewell of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. LSD was used extensively in psychiatric research in the 1960s, but as mainstream attitudes swung against 'acid', prohibitive measures made researching the beneficial effects of hallucinogens extremely difficult. Cluster headaches are characterized by excruciating pain that lasts from fifteen minutes to up to three hours if left untreated. In the chronic form, attacks can happen up to eight times a day, with no period of remission lasting longer than a month. The condition is not fatal, but for some sufferers it is so horrific they commit suicide. There is no cure, but sufferers are often given supplemental oxygen to ease an attack. Some are prescribed migraine drugs, but these may not work and the side effects are often extreme. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 9340 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Marijuana can improve the effectiveness of drug therapy for hepatitis C, a potentially deadly viral infection that affects more than 3 million Americans, a study has found. The work adds to a growing literature supporting the notion that in some circumstances pot can offer medical benefits. Treatment for hepatitis C involves months of therapy with two powerful drugs, interferon and ribavirin, that have severe side effects, including extreme fatigue, nausea, muscle aches, loss of appetite and depression. Because of those side effects, many patients do not finish treatment and the virus ends up destroying their livers. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and at an Oakland substance abuse center tracked the progress of 71 hepatitis C patients taking the difficult therapy. Tests and interviews indicated that 22 smoked marijuana every day or two during the treatment period while 49 rarely or never did. At the end of the six-month treatment, 19 (86 percent) of those who used marijuana had successfully completed the therapy -- meaning they took at least 80 percent of their doses over at least 80 percent of the period. Only 29 (59 percent) of the nonsmokers achieved that goal. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 9339 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR THE FACTS If the stress of a pink slip or the strain of physical exertion can set off a heart attack, then why not the emotion associated with birthdays? Although typically a time of celebration, birthdays for some can be filled with intense pressure and even anguish, a day of silent despair or expectations unfulfilled. That, scientists say, is particularly true with the elderly, who are more likely on birthdays to begin to think of their lives in terms of how much time is left, rather than how much time has passed. One extensive examination of the claim was conducted by Canadian researchers and published in the journal Neurology this year. In the study, the researchers tracked more than 50,000 patients, with an average age about 70, who were treated for heart failure at hospitals in Ontario in a two-year period. What they found was a strong relationship between birthdays and the onset of so-called vascular events. Strokes, acute myocardial infarctions and transient ischemic attacks were 27 percent more likely to occur on birthdays than on other days of the year. Still, there was no corresponding increase for other types of illness, like appendicitis, head trauma or symptoms of asthma, suggesting that heart attacks were unique. The scientists attributed the phenomenon largely to anxiety and other “psychosocial stressors,” but other factors may be involved. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 9338 - Posted: 06.24.2010

One of the memorable moments in the film "Meet the Parents" was Ben Stiller's profusely sweating brow as he sat strapped into a polygraph http://www.polygraph.org/faq.htm during his soon-to-be father-in-law's invasive questioning. Sweating, along with blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate are all physiologic conditions measured by polygraphs, with the idea being that they might reveal deception-induced anxiety. Now, rather than focusing on the potential end-result of lying, Temple University scientists Scott Faro and Feroze Mohamed are developing a way to detect deception by looking directly at people's brain activity using MRI brain scanners. "We are going to the source, we are going to the region of the brain which is actually formulating a response," says Mohamed, the MRI physicist on the team. As Faro and Mohamed point out, because polygraphs only measure end-result changes in the sympathetic nervous system, tricking a polygraph might be achieved by simple relaxation. On the flipside, just being anxious about the test can generate a false positive. In fact, say the researchers, false positives are common. "About 25 percent of the time, if you're innocent, the polygraph is going to say that you're either guilty or it's indeterminate," says Faro, professor and vice-chairman of radiology at Temple. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 9337 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center, working with mice, have shown how the body's own natural stress hormone can help lastingly decrease the fearful response associated with reliving a traumatic memory. Days after experiencing a traumatic event – a mild electrical shock – mice in the study still showed a fearful response when re-exposed to the place where it happened, a condition that could be a model for post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. But mice receiving the hormone corticosterone at the time they "relived" the event experienced a significant drop in that fear. "Corticosterone appears to enhance new memories that compete with the fearful memory thereby decreasing its negative emotional significance," said Dr. Craig Powell, senior author and assistant professor of neurology and psychiatry at UT Southwestern. "When an animal or human is exposed to or relives an aversive scenario, a process called extinction creates a competing memory." "We're not erasing memories," said Dr. Robert Greene, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and another author of the study. "What the steroid does is attenuate the fear memory by helping the mice to learn that these contexts should no longer be perceived as dangerous." The study is being published online and in the Sept. 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9336 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DURHAM, N.C. -- Nicotine may improve the symptoms of depression in people who do not smoke, Duke University Medical Center scientists have discovered. The finding does not mean that people with depression should smoke or even start using a nicotine patch, the researchers caution. They say that smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disability in the United States, and that the addictive hazards of tobacco far outweigh the potential benefits of nicotine in depression. But the finding suggests that it may be possible to manipulate nicotine's effects to safely reap its potential medical benefits, according to the researchers. As an example of the drug's potential, they said, pharmaceutical companies already are developing compounds for treating other brain disorders by mimicking the beneficial properties of nicotine while avoiding its addictive nature. "The hope is that our research on nicotine will spur the development of new treatments for depression, which is a huge public health problem," said lead study investigator Joseph McClernon, Ph.D., an assistant research professor of medical psychiatry and researcher at the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research. "Our study also provides evidence that smokers may indeed smoke, in part, to improve their mood -- a notion that has been quite controversial in the field," he said. © 2001-2006 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9335 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rowan Hooper A drug currently used to treat Alzheimer’s disease has shown promise in clinical trials as a treatment for patients with traumatic brain injuries. The drug, rivastigmine, works by boosting the levels of a chemical messenger in the brain involved in memory and learning. Jonathan Silver at New York University School of Medicine, US, and colleagues recruited 134 patients with brain injuries at 19 centres around the country and divided them into a treatment group and a placebo group. Patients in the treatment group took a minimum dose of 1.5 milligrams of rivastigmine per day, which was increased to 6 milligrams per day if patients could tolerate it – side effects included nausea, cold symptoms and headaches. After 12 weeks, researchers assessed learning, memory, recognition, attention, problem solving and long-term recall. Severely or moderately impaired patients taking rivastigmine showed significantly improved scores compared to those on placebo. In practical terms, this meant that patients felt that things were "clearer" and they were less forgetful. They also said that the drug made them feel less bothered by many things going on around them at once. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 9334 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON, DC – Limited access to services for children and adolescents with behavioral problems or mental illness often leads to inadequate care and treatment based on insufficient scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness, concludes a report by the American Psychological Association (APA) released today. According to the report, a product of the APA Working Group on Psychotropic Medications for Children and Adolescents, gaps in the scientific knowledge concerning which treatments work best for specific diagnoses and patients, a dearth of clinicians specifically trained to work with children, cuts in Medicaid funding, and poor reimbursement for mental health services leads to many children being treated with medication despite limited efficacy and safety for their use particularly with children. Research published earlier this year showed a five-fold increase in the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat behavioral and emotional problems in children and adolescents from 1993 to 2002. "This entire state of affairs is in part related to our health care system's failure to provide sufficiently for children, particularly in the area of pediatric mental health care," states Ronald T. Brown, PhD, chair of the APA Working Group and Professor of Public Health and Dean at Temple University. "As a result, much of the care provided to children for mental health issues has been limited to medication even though many psychosocial treatments have been found to be effective and some with better risk profiles. Psychosocial treatments, however, can be more labor intensive and more expensive." © 2006 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9333 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have pinpointed a unlikely potential weapon in the war against obesity - seaweed. They found rats given fucoxanthin - a pigment in brown kelp - lost up to 10% of their body weight, mainly from around the gut. They hope fucoxanthin can be developed into a slimming supplement or a drug that targets harmful fat. The Hokkaido University research was presented to an American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco. Brown kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, is a key ingredient of Japanese miso soup. But the researchers said drinking large quantities of the soup in an effort to lose weight would have little effect. Fucoxanthin is tightly bound to proteins in the seaweed and not easily absorbed in its natural form. The researchers, led by Dr Kazuo Miyashita, said it might take another three to five years before a slimming pill based on fucoxanthin was available to the public. The compound is found at high levels in several different types of brown seaweed. But it is absent from green and red seaweeds, which are also used in Asian cooking. Dr Miyashita's team studied the effects of fucoxanthin on more than 200 rats and mice. They found it fought flab on two fronts. In obese animals, the compound appeared to stimulate a protein called UCP1 which causes fat to be broken down. The protein is found in a type of fat called white adipose tissue, which is responsible for the thickening of the girth dubbed "middle-age spread". (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 9332 - Posted: 09.12.2006

By Ranit Mishori The sales pitch for the See Clearly Method (SCM) is ubiquitous: An optometrist-created system of eye exercises is so effective at improving vision, according to promotions on local radio stations and across the Internet, that you may be able to throw away your glasses for good. In fact, the ads claim, regular eyeglasses may actually be making your eyesight worse . The SCM kit costs $350. Iowa's attorney general, Tom Miller, is not buying it. His office filed a consumer fraud lawsuit last summer against Vision Improvement Technologies (VIT), the Iowa company that developed and markets the See Clearly Method. Among other things, the suit says assertions that SCM users can "quickly and easily free themselves of having to wear glasses or contact lenses" are false and misleading. In addition, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for northeastern Indiana has put SCM on its watch list. A year ago, Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection issued a warning to consumers after finding that of the more than 1,850 Wisconsin customers who bought the kit, half attempted to return it for a refund. Also last year, VIT agreed to make a minor modification to its advertising, according to the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program. This BBB-affiliated review group found that almost all the the company's promotional claims had been presented legitimately as opinion. However, it also concluded that one statement -- that the See Clearly Method could "eliminate . . . poor vision due to aging" -- "was not entirely consistent with the opinions espoused by the authors and should be modified accordingly." © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 9331 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDREW POLLACK As a child who stuttered badly, Gerald Maguire learned the tricks of coping. When called upon in class, he would sometimes answer in the voice of Elmer Fudd or Donald Duck because he didn’t stutter when imitating someone. He found easier-to-say synonyms for words that stymied him. And he almost never made phone calls because he stumbled over a phrase for which there was no substitute: his own name. Now Dr. Maguire, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Irvine, wants to cure the ailment that afflicts him and an estimated three million Americans. He is searching for a drug to treat stuttering, organizing clinical trials and even testing treatments on himself. He could be getting closer. In May, Indevus Pharmaceuticals announced what it called encouraging results from the largest clinical trial ever of a drug for stuttering. Even larger trials are still needed, which could take two or three years. But if they succeed, the drug, pagoclone, could become the first medical treatment approved for stuttering. That is just part of a transformation of stuttering — in the medical view — from what was once widely considered a nervous or emotional condition to a neurological one that is at least partly genetic. Using brain scans, DNA studies and other modern techniques, scientists — many of whom stutter themselves — are slowly shedding light on a condition that has flustered its victims as far back as Moses, who some scholars believe was a stutterer because he told the Lord that he was “slow of speech and of a slow tongue” and had his brother Aaron speak for him. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 9330 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sherry Seethaler A study led by University of California, San Diego biologists suggests that, contrary to the prevailing view, the process in early development that partitions the nervous system in fruit flies and vertebrates, like humans, evolved from a common ancestor. In the September 12 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology, the researchers report that in both fruit fly and chick embryos proteins called BMPs play similar roles in telling cells in the early embryo to switch certain genes on and off, specifying the identity of the cells making up the three primary subdivisions of the central nervous system. The findings suggest a unified model of early neural development in which at least part of the mechanism for creating neural patterning has been preserved from a shared ancestral organism that lived over 500 million years ago. “We have provided the first evidence for a common role of BMPs in establishing the pattern of gene expression along the dorsal-ventral axis of the nervous system of vertebrates and invertebrates,” said Ethan Bier, a professor of biology at UCSD and senior author on the study. “Our results suggest that this process has been conserved from a common ancestor rather than evolving separately as had been previously believed.” ©2001 Regents of the University of California

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 9329 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rhitu Chatterjee Parasites are renowned for their deceptive dealings with their hosts, but the blister beetle takes its subterfuge to a carnal extreme. According to a new study, the beetle's larvae attract the males of a solitary desert bee using chemicals that mimic a female's pheromones. The ruse allows the parasites to hitch a ride on the males and ultimately reach a treasure-trove of pollen and nectar that surrounds the female bee's egg. The blister beetle (Meloe franciscanus) lays its egg at the base of the Borrego milkvetch plant. Once the larvae hatch, thousands clamber to the tips of branches. The reasons behind these swarms were unknown until 2000, when ecologists John Hafernik and Leslie Saul-Gershenz of the Center for Ecosystem Survival in San Francisco, California, noticed that the aggregation of larvae resembled a female bee. When male bees approached, the tiny larvae grabbed onto their bellies. Hafernik and Saul-Gershenz hypothesized that chemical cues from the larvae could play a role in the males' initial attraction. Indeed, these chemicals do the trick. In the current study, Saul-Gershenz and Jocelyn Millar, a chemist at the University of California, Riverside, show that mimicking a female bee's appearance is not enough to lure the males: Models of female bees, made of painted aluminum foil, failed to get the guys' attention unless they were smothered with extracts from either the beetle larvae or female bee heads. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9328 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN – Traumatic brain injury patients with moderate to severe memory loss improved their memories while taking the drug rivastigmine, according to a study published in the September 12, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers, who examined 134 men and women with traumatic brain injury at 19 centers across the United States, found attention and verbal memory test scores significantly improved among severely impaired patients who took rivastigmine for 12 weeks compared to placebo-treated patients. In one test, 30-percent of patients taking rivastigmine remembered five or more additional words, compared to 10-percent in the group receiving placebo. Rivastigmine is thought to enhance the function of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and learning. “With an estimated 1.5 million people suffering from traumatic brain injury each year in the United States, rivastigmine shows promising results for these patients with moderate to severe memory loss,” said the study’s lead author Jonathan M. Silver, MD, with the New York School of Medicine in New York. While rivastigmine improved memory loss for patients with moderate to severe memory impairment, the study found the drug wasn’t as helpful for patients with less severe memory loss. “The beneficial effect of rivastigmine may not become apparent unless there is significant depletion of cholinergic activity in relevant brain regions causing a more profound impairment in memory or attention,” said Silver.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 9327 - Posted: 06.24.2010