As college campuses start filling up with students, you can expect students to start filling up with beer. With more than 40 percent of U.S. college students binge drinking, this nationwide problem resurfaces yearly when students get ready to hit the books. Looking for a possible remedy, Harvard Medical School psychopharmacologist Scott Lukas turned to a binger of the plant world — kudzu — an invasive species that grows so aggressively that "it's been called 'the vine that ate the South,'" Lukas says. The legume kudzu (Pueraria montana), a native plant of Asia, was introduced to the U.S. in the 1800's. It is favored for its large leaves and sweetly fragrant blossoms, and was also used as a method for controlling soil erosion and animal forage. But like many non-native species it began to get out of control — engulfing farms and buildings — and became despised in southeastern states for its aggressive growth. Kudzu was eventually declared a weed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Unfortunately it doesn't really have any natural enemies in this country, so it grows rather vigorously throughout the South," says Lukas. Ancient Chinese lore has suggested that kudzu might be used in treating a variety of alcohol related problems. And previous studies showed that this pesky vine — which contains a total of seven isoflavones, or plant hormones — curbed alcohol intake in animals. So Lukas tried it in a small pilot study on heavy drinking college students. "These are individuals who would drink multiple times during the week and oftentimes would drink four and five drinks at one sitting," he says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7860 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Durham, N.C. -– Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that the naturally occurring marine toxin domoic acid can cause subtle but lasting cognitive damage in rats exposed to the chemical before birth. Humans can become poisoned by the potentially lethal, algal toxin after eating contaminated shellfish. The researchers saw behavioral effects of the toxin in animals after prenatal exposure to domoic acid levels below those generally deemed safe for adults, said Edward Levin, Ph.D. Those effects –- including an increased susceptibility to disruptions of memory -- persisted into adulthood, he said. The findings in rats, therefore, imply that the toxin might negatively affect unborn children at levels that do not cause symptoms in expectant mothers, said Levin. While the researchers note that eating seafood offers significant health benefits, they said their findings suggest that the current threshold of toxin at which affected fisheries are closed should perhaps be lowered. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) set the current limit based on levels safe for adults, Levin said. "A single administration of domoic acid to pregnant rats had a lasting affect on the performance of their offspring as adults," Levin said. "The consequences are life-long. "The findings suggest we may need to re-evaluate monitoring of waters, shellfish and fish to make sure that the most sensitive parts of the human population are protected from toxic exposure to domoic acid," he continued. © 2001-2005 Duke University Medical Center

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7859 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Four sugar-coated faces made by stem cells as they differentiate into brain cells during development have been identified by scientists. These unique expressions of sugar on the cell surface may one day enable stem cell therapy to repair brain injury or disease by helping stem cells navigate the relative “jungle” of the adult brain, says Dr. Robert K. Yu, director of the Institute of Neuroscience and the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia. “These glycoconjugate markers are like specific addresses that characterize the cell at that particular moment. We call them stage-specific embryonic antigens,” says Dr. Yu of recognition molecules that assist in the unbelievably rapid assemblage of 100 billion to 200 billion cells into a brain in nine months. The four compounds – two glycolipids, GD3 and O-acetylated GD3, and two glycoproteins, Stage-specific Embryonic Antigen-1 and Human Natural Killer Cell Antigen 1 – were known, but their role in helping cells migrate where and when needed was unknown. Copyright 2005 Medical College of Georgia

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 7858 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By experimentally relocating migratory white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii) from their breeding area in the Canadian Northwest Territories to regions at and around the magnetic North Pole, researchers have gained new insight into how birds navigate in the high Arctic. In particular, the findings aid our understanding of how birds might determine longitudinal information--a challenging task, especially at the earth's poles. The work is reported in Current Biology by Susanne Åkesson and colleagues at Lund University in Sweden. Migratory birds navigating over long distances can determine their latitude on the basis of geomagnetic and celestial information, but longitudinal position is much more difficult to determine. In the new work, researchers investigated whether birds can define their longitude after physical displacements in the high Arctic, where the geomagnetic field lines are steep and the midnight sun makes star navigation impossible for much of the summer. White-crowned sparrows are nocturnally migrating birds that breed in northern Canada and perform long migrations covering a few thousand kilometers to winter in the southern United States. In the study, young and adult white-crowned sparrows were captured with mistnets near Inuvik, NW Territories, Canada, during mid-July to mid-August--the end of the breeding period and shortly before migration--and transported by a Canadian icebreaker along a northeasterly route to nine sites on the tundra, among them the magnetic North Pole (located on Ellef Ringnes Island). The researchers then recorded the birds' directional orientation in cage experiments.

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 7857 - Posted: 09.07.2005

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE CLAIM Need a reason to tear yourself from that sleek new MP3 player you can't put down? While most people covet the hours of nonstop music and the snug earpieces, those features, and others, are also the reasons the players may hurt your hearing. Really? The component that can have the greatest impact is the headphone. In a study published last year in the journal Ear and Hearing, Dr. Brian Fligor of Harvard Medical School looked at a variety of headphones and found that, on average, the smaller they were the higher their output levels at any given volume control setting. Compared with larger headphones that cover the entire ear, some insertable headphones, like the white ones sold with iPods, increased sound levels by up to nine decibels. That may not seem like much, but because decibels are measured in logarithmic units, it can mean the difference between the noise output of an alarm clock (about 80 decibels) and that of a lawnmower (about 90 decibels). The other problem, a second study found, is that insertable headphones are not as efficient at blocking background noise as some larger ones that cover the ear, so there is more incentive to turn up the volume. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 7856 - Posted: 09.07.2005

By RICHARD SALTUS On the Fourth of July, a 63-year-old man was taken by wheelchair into the emergency room of a suburban Virginia hospital, overwhelmed with dizziness and nausea and gripped by sweat-inducing anxiety. John Farquhar suffered a severe bout of dizziness after lifting his dog high in the air. "I felt dim and lightheaded, like I was just going to fade out," said John Farquhar, a semiretired consultant in Washington. "I said, 'I'm going to die.' " His wife, Lou, a nurse, had driven him to the hospital, taking big curves gingerly because the motion of a sweeping turn "made me feel like I was pulling 30 G's like a fighter pilot," said Mr. Farquhar, who otherwise was healthy and fit. The attacks had begun the previous day, out of the blue, while he was playing with the couple's dog, Sascha. Lifting her high in the air, "I snapped my head back, and suddenly it seemed that my body was turning, and the room was spinning around," Mr. Farquhar recounted. "I felt profoundly dizzy and nauseated." The episode passed, but the queasiness returned not long afterward, set off by the on-screen action on a DVD. When Mr. Farquhar got out of bed the next day, the world was spinning so violently that he crumpled to his knees, and he could barely make his way to the bathroom, where he vomited, leading to the trip to the E.R. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7855 - Posted: 09.06.2005

Notebook by Mick Hume NONE OF MY best friends are chimpanzees or gorillas. I have never had a problem seeing “our closest cousins” as suitable subjects for scientific research that could improve the human lot. Better to be thought a “speciesist” than be a specious sentimentalist. Now scientists have mapped the genetic blueprint of the chimpanzee, establishing that we share almost 99 per cent of functional genes and 96 per cent of our wider DNA. Arguments about our genetic closeness were used to ban experiments on great apes in the UK in 1986. But look at things from the perspective of human liberation for a change, and we could draw the opposite conclusion. Surely it is our genetic similarity to these great apes that could make it medically useful to experiment on them. And it is the yawning difference between us and them that should make it morally acceptable. “The philosophical goal is that we all want to know what makes us human,” says one of the international research team that sequenced the chimp genome. “The pragmatic goal is that it will help us understand diseases and conditions that are unique to humans.” No doubt genetic research will bring many benefits. However, studying the genetic make-up of great apes, or indeed of Homo sapiens, will never tell the full story of “what makes us human”. Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 7854 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Using brain scanning techniques, researchers have located a specific part of the brain that causes people with asthma to wheeze and gasp for breath when under emotional stress. Their report, released on Aug. 29, will appear in the Sept. 13 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Asthma sufferers often note that anxiety and emotional turmoil make the symptoms of an attack much worse, and in some cases, emotion alone can precipitate an attack. Previous research has shown, for example, that college students with asthma have greater airway inflammation when they are exposed to an allergen during exam week than when the exposure occurs at a less stressful time. Though these psychological exacerbations of asthma were well known, the physical connection between the brain and the immune system had not been described. Richard J. Davidson, the senior author of the paper and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, said the work showed that when people with asthma are exposed to their allergen, "you find certain centers in the brain that we know are intimately involved in emotions that get activated." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Stress
Link ID: 7853 - Posted: 09.06.2005

By NICHOLAS WADE Only in science fiction do people's minds get possessed by alien beings. For grasshoppers, zombification is an everyday hazard, and it obliges them to end their lives in a bizarre manner. Biologists have discovered and hope to decipher a deadly cross talk between the genomes of a grasshopper and a parasitic worm that infects it. The interaction occurs as the worm induces the grasshopper to seek out a large body of water and then leap into it. The parasite, known as a hairworm, lives and breeds in fresh water. But it spends the early part of its life cycle eating away the innards of the grasshoppers and crickets it infects. When it is fully grown, it faces a difficult problem, that of returning to water. So it has evolved a clever way of influencing its host to deliver just one further service - the stricken grasshopper looks for water and dives in. The suicidal behavior of the infected grasshoppers has been studied by a team of biologists from the French National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier, France, led by Frédéric Thomas and David Biron. They did their fieldwork around a swimming pool on the border of a forest near Avène les Bains in southern France. Hordes of infected grasshoppers - more than 100 a night - arrive at the pool during summer nights at the behest of the parasites. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7852 - Posted: 09.06.2005

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., – Folic acid fortification of grain foods has produced a one-third decline in serious birth defects of the brain and spine, but the March of Dimes urged federal officials to help spare a greater number of babies from these devastating conditions by requiring higher levels of the B vitamin. The March of Dimes restated its longtime position in response to two articles published today in Pediatrics. "It's so rare that we get the opportunity to save thousands of babies from being born with a disabling or fatal birth defect with such a simple, low-tech means as folic acid fortification," says Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the March of Dimes. "Studies have shown that adequate daily folic acid intake beginning before pregnancy can reduce the incidence of these tragic birth defects by up to 70 percent, and we should not settle for anything less than maximum prevention." Since 1996, the March of Dimes has recommended that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration set the level of folic acid required in enriched grain foods at 350 micrograms per 100 grams of grain to prevent as many neural tube defects (NTDs) as possible, said Dr. Howse.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7851 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – Patients with multiple sclerosis showed significant improvement in their depression during 16 weeks of telephone-administered psychotherapy treatment, according to an article in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Although two-thirds of depressed patients prefer psychotherapy over antidepressants, only 10 to 45 percent ever make a first appointment and nearly half will drop out before the end of treatment, background information in the article states. Barriers to receiving psychotherapy include physical impairments, transportation problems, proximity of services and lack of time or financial resources. In the 1990s, the use of telephone psychotherapy increased in part due to the advent of 1-900 number counseling services and the increased use of telephone support services by insurance and medical groups. David C. Mohr, Ph.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues tested the efficacy of telephone-administered psychotherapy for depression in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). One hundred twenty-seven patients were randomized into one of two 16-week psychotherapies: telephone-administered cognitive-behavioral therapy (T-CBT) or telephone-administered supportive emotion-focused therapy (T-SEFT). The two therapies differ in that the goal of T-CBT is to "teach skills that help participants manage cognitions and behaviors that contribute to depression and improve skills in managing stressful life events and interpersonal difficulties," while T-SEFT has the goal of "increasing participants' level of experience of their internal world." All patients spoke with a psychologist on the phone for 50 minutes each week and were followed-up for 12 months.

Keyword: Depression; Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 7850 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – Women who have had a certain type of anorexia nervosa show an alteration of the activity of a chemical in their brain that is widely associated with anxiety and other affective disorders more than one year after recovery, according to a study in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Anorexia nervosa, a disorder characterized by the relentless pursuit of thinness and obsessive fear of being fat, has two subtypes, a group that restricts their eating (restricting-type AN) and a group that alternates restrictive eating with bulimic symptoms such as episodes of purging and/or binge eating (bulimia-type AN), according to background information in the article. Previous evidence has suggested that alterations in the activity of serotonin (a brain chemical involved in communication between nerve cells) may contribute to the appetite alteration in anorexia nervosa as well as playing a role in anxious, obsessional behaviors and extremes of impulse control. Ursula F. Bailer, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, and colleagues compared the activity of serotonin in women who had recovered from each of the two types of anorexia nervosa and a control group of healthy women using positron emission tomography (PET). The researchers injected a molecule that can bind to a serotonin receptor in much the same way that serotonin does into specific areas of the women's brains and used PET scans to measure the extent of the molecule-receptor binding. This molecule-receptor binding served as a marker for alterations of serotonin neuronal activity. Thirteen women recovered from restricting-type AN, 12 women with bulimia-type AN and 18 healthy control women were included in the study.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 7849 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Psychiatrists at Rush University Medical Center are the first in Chicago to use a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), an implantable, pacemaker-like device, as a therapy to treat long-term, treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in adults. Dr. John Zajecka led the VNS therapy clinical trial at Rush. The procedure to place the device, which is usually performed under general anesthesia on an outpatient basis, takes about an hour. Two small incisions are required: one on the upper chest area for the pulse generator and one on the left neck for the thin, flexible wires that connect the pulse generator to the vagus nerve. The incisions heal in one to two weeks, and the scars fade over time. The neck scar is usually located within a natural crease of the neck and is therefore not very visible. "The pulse generator, which is like a pacemaker, is implanted in the chest area and sends mild pulses to the brain via the vagus nerve in the neck. A thin, thread-like wire attached to the generator, runs under the skin to the left vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, one of the 12 cranial nerves, serves as the body's 'information highway' connecting the brain to many major organs," said Zajecka. ©2004 Rush University Medical Center,

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7848 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children as young as 2 years old may be influenced by their parents’ tobacco habits, many years before they even consider using cigarettes themselves, a novel study has shown. Young children’s attitudes to smoking and alcohol have been difficult to assess due to their limited language skills, so information on social influences has focused on teenagers – the group most likely to take up smoking or drinking. But a new study offers insight into the effect early exposure can have on the behaviour of very young children. Researchers from Dartmouth Medical College in New Hampshire, US, used dolls in a role-playing game with children from 2 to 6 years of age. The child was told to take the doll shopping as there was no food in the dollhouse. When the doll entered the doll grocery store, which had 73 products on display, the researchers noted which products were “purchased”. Children were nearly four times as likely to buy cigarettes if their parents smoked, and three times as likely to choose wine or beer if their parents drank alcohol at least once a month. Children who viewed PG-13 or R-rated movies were five times as likely to choose alcohol, they found. “Several children were also highly aware of cigarette brands, as illustrated by the 6-year-old boy who was able to identify the brand of cigarettes he was buying as Marlboros, but could not identify the brand of his favourite cereal as Lucky Charms,” says paediatrician Madeline Dalton, who led the study. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7847 - Posted: 06.24.2010

KILLER whales and chimpanzees both pass on "traditions" to other members of their group, according to two separate studies of feeding behaviour. The findings add to evidence that cultural learning is widespread among animals. One study involved killer whales at Marineland in Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. An inventive male devised a brand new way to catch birds, and passed the strategy on to his tank-mates. The 4-year-old orca lures gulls into his tank by spitting regurgitated fish onto the water's surface. He waits below for a gull to grab the fish, then lunges at it with open jaws. "They are in a way setting a trap," says animal behaviourist Michael Noonan of Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, who made the discovery, "They catch three or four gulls this way some days." “The orca lures gulls into his tank by spitting regurgitated fish into the water. He waits for a bird to grab the fish and then lunges”Noonan had never seen the behaviour before, despite three years of observations for separate experiments. But a few months after the enterprising male started doing it, Noonan spied the whale's younger half-brother doing the same thing. Soon the brothers' mothers were enjoying feathered snacks, as were a 6-month-old calf and an older male. Noonan presented the research this month at the US Animal Behavior Society meeting in Snowbird, Utah. Wild dolphins off the west coast of Australia were the first marine mammals in which cultural learning was observed. They apparently learn from group-mates how to use sponges to protect their snouts while scavenging (New Scientist, 11 June, p 12). But the evidence from killer whales is much more conclusive because the process was observed from start to finish. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7846 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New classes of blood pressure-lowering drugs could save lives by preventing strokes and heart attacks even more effectively, a major trial says. Experts believe prescribing practices should change immediately based on the Ascot study's conclusions. New drugs not only lower blood pressure to a greater extent than older ones, but also attack cholesterol, halving the stroke and heart attack risk. The trial was stopped early because the results were so staggering. The outstanding cholesterol-lowering findings were discovered back in 2002 - five years after the planned 10-year trial began in 1997. The researchers continued to compare the blood pressure effects, but terminated this part of the study early as well last December after it became clear that the newer antihypertensive drugs were also better at lowering blood pressure. The latest report in the Lancet is the first time that the researchers have pulled together all of their results. Patients with high blood pressure taking a relatively new type of cholesterol-lowering medication called a statin benefited from a 36% reduction in heart attacks and a 27% reduction in strokes compared to those not prescribed that specific medication. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7845 - Posted: 09.05.2005

EVIDENCE continues to pile up that hormone-disrupting chemicals can gender-bend human babies. Earlier this year it was reported that the sons of women exposed to phthalates during pregnancy tend to have smaller penises (New Scientist, 4 June, p 11). This was the first direct evidence that such chemicals can feminise fetuses in the womb. Now nearly twice as many girls as boys are being born in the Aamjiwnaang community, who live next door to the Sarnia-Lambton Chemical Valley complex in Ontario, Canada. And though no chemical has yet been shown to be to blame, high levels of hexachlorobenzene (HCB), which also has hormone-disrupting properties, have been found in the local soil, and phthalates are being emitted from part of the complex. The proportion of male births began falling around 1993, says Constanze Mackenzie of the University of Ottawa. And the ratio has become more skewed since then. Between 1999 and 2003, the community saw just 46 boys born compared to 86 girls (Environmental Health Perspectives, DOI: 10.1289/ehp.8479). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7844 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An education professor has cast doubt on the scientific validity of the term 'dyslexia', saying experts cannot agree on what it is or how to treat it. Writing in the Times Educational Supplement, Julian Elliott said it was largely an "emotional construct". The Durham University professor questions the scientific validity of the term 'dyslexia', saying diagnosis does not lead to particular treatment. The British Dyslexia Association says the claims are inflammatory. Professor Elliott, a psychologist, said his argument was based on "an exhaustive review of the research literature". After 30 years in the field, he said, he had little confidence in his ability to diagnose dyslexia. Professor Elliott told the BBC News website: "There is no consensus as to what it is and how to diagnose it. People describe all sorts of symptoms as dyslexia. And if you do diagnose it, it does not point to any intervention in particular. "It's one of those terms that is like the Cheshire Cat - if it does exist, we don't know what to do about it." He said, contrary to talk of 'miracle cures', there was no sound, widely-accepted body of scientific work that had shown that any particular teaching approach was more appropriate for 'dyslexic' children than for other poor readers". Dyslexia is defined by BBC health expert Dr Rob Hicks as "a congenital and developmental condition that causes neurological anomalies in the brain. (C)BBC

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 7843 - Posted: 09.03.2005

Bruce Bower Despite sharing much of their genetic identity with people, chimpanzees exhibit previously unappreciated DNA distinctions, according to the first rigorous comparisons of the two species' complete genetic sequences. The new research "dramatically narrows the search for the key biological differences between the species," says geneticist Robert Waterston of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Waterston led an international consortium that analyzed the genetic sequence of a male common chimp and compared it with DNA data from people (SN: 4/19/03, p. 245: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030419/fob6.asp). Initial results from their study, and from four related studies, appear in an upcoming Science and the Sept. 1 Nature. Waterston's group found that the roughly 3 billion base pairs in the genomes of the two species have the same sequence 96 percent of the time. Even so, as many as 3 million base pairs, or DNA building blocks, residing within protein-encoding and other functional areas of the genome differ between chimps and humans. The new cross-species comparison identified six DNA segments in people that appear to have been strongly shaped by natural selection over just the past 250,000 years. Gene functions in these regions are largely unknown. Copyright ©2005 Science Service

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7842 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Christen Brownlee It was 1990, and Neal, a 55-year-old salesman from Silver Spring, Md., was hitting rock bottom. For years, he had soothed the stress of his chaotic life with an evening bowl of vanilla ice cream. But in time, that just wasn't enough. Neal started adding a second bowl, then a third. Even after he'd moved on to wolfing down an entire gallon in a single sitting, he soon needed yet a bigger fix. He added doughnuts—one, two, then an entire box. Neal's not-so-sweet nightly habit eventually blew his weight up to 350 pounds. What he gained in size, he lost in other parts of his life: His marriage fell apart, he lost his job, and he spent his nights wondering whether his persistent chest pain meant that he'd die before morning. As his life spiraled downward, he spoke to a friend who was a recovering alcoholic. "When he was telling me the story about what he was doing with alcohol, I could see that's what I was doing with food, how I was using it," Neal says. At the time, he says, food seemed like an innocuous fix—it was hard for him to imagine overdosing on ice cream and doughnuts. "But if it wasn't food," he adds, "then it would have been cocaine, heroin, alcohol, or something else for me." Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Obesity
Link ID: 7841 - Posted: 06.24.2010