Mark Peplow Animal rights activists who disrupt UK medical research could face up to five years in jail, if a legal amendment proposed by the British government becomes law. The new law would make it a criminal offence to cause "economic damage" to businesses connected with animal research, either by intimidating individuals or by interfering with commercial activities. "Animal rights extremism is out of control," says Simon Festing, head of the Research Defence Society, London, which lobbies for the use of animals in research. "It's time something was done about these zealots." Current legislation focuses on physical damage caused by protestors. But activists are increasingly trying to undermine animal-testing laboratories by targeting the companies that supply them, even threatening courier services who make deliveries to the high-security sites. "This new law would not affect the important right to peaceful protest, while cracking down hard on those extremists committing crimes, and some horrific acts, against innocent people involved in the supply chain," says the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who announced the amendment on 31 January. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 6787 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin New languages can develop consistent rules of grammar within a single generation of their birth, a study of an Israeli sign language has shown. The Al-Sayyid Bedouins, who live in Israel's Negev region, have a high rate of congenital deafness. In a population of about 3,500, roughly 150 people are deaf. The community, which was founded about 200 years ago, has developed its own sign language over the past 70 years, with no apparent outside influences. This is the first documented example of a language evolving from scratch in such isolation. Sentences in Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign language have a word order of 'subject, object, verb' (SOV), as in the phrase 'I apple give'. Israel's spoken languages, Arabic and Hebrew, use 'subject, verb, object' (SVO). The same goes for English, as in 'I give apple'. "We didn't expect to see word order so quickly, and didn't expect to see this particular word order," says Carol Padden of the University of California, San Diego, who led the study. The discovery suggests that grammar appears early in the development of face-to-face languages. Written language can take centuries to develop consistent grammar. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 6786 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Amanda Gardner (HealthDayNews) -- It took 29 internationally renowned scientists to get the ball rolling, but the term "birdbrain" could be on its way out, at least in its pejorative sense. "Birdbrain comes with two ideas: a small brain and also stupidity," said Erich Jarvis, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Duke University Medical Center, and one of the ringleaders of the group. "It just has to change." Perhaps more relevant to the scientific community, Jarvis and the 28 other scientists have renamed the terminology for avian brain structures to reflect recent scientific discoveries. Those discoveries show that birds are actually closer to mammals when it comes to brainpower. Their arguments are detailed in a paper appearing in the February issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience. "The classic view is totally wrong," said Jarvis, who is also lead author of the paper. "I realized I couldn't publish papers with names that have wrong meanings attached to them. It is against my scientific conscience, and it is poor for scientific advance." © 2005 Forbes.com Inc.™

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Language
Link ID: 6785 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JIM YARDLEY NXI, China - For farming families in the lush mountains of coastal Fujian Province, the famous crop is oolong tea and the favorite source of labor is sons. The leafy bushes of tea fill the hillsides the same way young boys fill the village streets. There is such a glut of boys here - roughly 134 are born for every 100 girls - that the imbalance has forced an unlikely response from the Chinese government. To persuade more families to have girls, it has decided in some cases to pay families that already have daughters. The Communist Party is often vilified for its so-called one-child policy. The government credits the policy for sharply slowing China's population growth, but critics say it is a major reason many families now use prenatal scans and selective abortions to make certain that their child is a boy. Today, China has one of the world's worst cases of "missing" girls. Until recent years, the government largely ignored or denied the problem. Last March, President Hu Jintao declared it must be solved by 2010. Government officials now have declared that selective sex abortions will become a criminal offense. Such abortions were already banned, but doctors often accepted bribes from parents who wanted to guarantee a boy. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6784 - Posted: 01.31.2005

The government says it will review all academic and clinical studies linking cannabis use to mental health problems. The Department of Health says it is now generally agreed among doctors that cannabis is an "important causal factor" in mental illness. It follows a mental health group's call for the government to investigate "the link between cannabis and psychosis". Rethink said its reclassification from a Class B to Class C drug sent a "confusing message" to young people. The charity wants the Commons Health Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the effect cannabis has on users. Its call was also backed by health campaign group Sane which wants the classification of cannabis to be reversed. A Department of Health spokesman said it was already commissioning a review. "We have no objection to the health select committee looking into this," he said. "However we are in the process of commissioning an expert review of all the academic and clinical evidence of the link between cannabis use and mental health, particularly schizophrenia. "There is medical clinical evidence now that there is an important causal factor between cannabis use and schizophrenia - not the only factor, but an important causal factor. That is the common consensus among the medical fraternity." Cannabis was reclassified last year so that police could target hard drugs. Home Office figures released on Friday showed that arrests for possession of cannabis fell by a third in the first year of its reclassification. However, Rethink said there had been a 60% increase in people who smoked drugs and had mental health problems in the last five years. Most medical experts agree that smoking cannabis in itself does not cause mental illness, but that people who are predisposed to psychosis are much more likely to develop symptoms if they use the drug regularly. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6783 - Posted: 01.31.2005

Multiple genes - and not just the sex chromosomes - are important in sexual orientation, say US scientists. A University of Illinois team, which has screened the entire human genome, say there is no one 'gay' gene. Writing in the journal Human Genetics, they said environmental factors are also likely to be involved. The findings add to the debate over whether sexual orientation is a matter of choice. Campaigners say equality is the more important issue. Much of the past genetic research into male homosexuality had focused solely on the X chromosome, passed down to boys by their mother, according to lead researcher Dr Brian Mustanski. His team looked at all 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes of 456 individuals from 146 families with two or more gay brothers. They found several identical stretches of DNA that were shared among gay siblings on chromosomes other than the female X. About 60% of these brothers shared identical DNA on three chromosomes - chromosome 7, 8 and 10. If it were down to chance, only 50% of these stretches would be shared, said the authors. The region found on chromosome 10 correlated with sexual orientation only when it was inherited from the mother. Dr Mustanski said the next step would be to see if the findings could be confirmed by further studies, and to identify the particular genes within the newly discovered sequences that are linked to sexual orientation. "Our study helps to establish that genes play an important role in determining whether a man is gay or heterosexual," he said, but added that other factors were also important. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6782 - Posted: 01.31.2005

A popular painkiller is being withdrawn from the UK market over concerns about links with suicide. Co-proxamol accounts for up to 400 deaths by accidental and intentional overdoses each year, it is estimated. The drug, used by thousands for conditions such as back pain, will be phased out over the next year or two. People do not need to come off the drug yet, and should discuss their treatment with their GP, said the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. A spokeswoman said their doctor would be able to discuss alternative treatments with them . Letters are being sent to GPs informing them of the decision. Data shows fatal overdoses due to co-proxamol are the second most frequent means of suicide with prescribed drugs in England and Wales. The risk of death associated with co-proxamol overdose seems to be higher than for either tricyclic antidepressants or paracetamol. The drug is a combination analgesic containing paracetamol and the opioid dextropropoxyphene. But co-proxamol is no better than full strength paracetamol at relieving pain and is known to be very toxic in overdose. For this reason, the Committee on Safety of Medicines, an independent expert body that advises the government on medicines, was asked to look at the risks and benefits of co-proxamol. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 6781 - Posted: 01.31.2005

MADISON - After years of trial and error, scientists have coaxed human embryonic stem cells to become spinal motor neurons, critical nervous system pathways that relay messages from the brain to the rest of the body. The new findings, reported online today (Jan. 30, 2005) in the journal Nature Biotechnology by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are important because they provide critical guideposts for scientists trying to repair damaged or diseased nervous systems. Motor neurons transmit messages from the brain and spinal cord, dictating almost every movement in the body from the wiggling of a toe to the rolling of an eyeball. The new development could one day help victims of spinal-cord injuries, or pave the way for novel treatments of degenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. With healthy cells grown in the lab, scientists could, in theory, replace dying motor neurons to restore function and alleviate the symptoms of disease or injury. Much sooner in the future, the advance will allow researchers to create motor neuron modeling systems to screen new drugs, says study leader Su-Chun Zhang, an assistant professor of anatomy and neurology in the Stem Cell Research Program at the Waisman Center at UW-Madison.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Stem Cells
Link ID: 6780 - Posted: 01.31.2005

People who cannot sit still for more than a few minutes provide a clue to keeping slim and trim, a US study says. The Mayo Clinic team says some people have a biological need to fidget and, as a result, burn more calories. They used technology embedded in pants to log even the smallest movements of 10 obese and 10 lean volunteers. The team told Science Magazine that the calories people burned in everyday life were more important in determining weight than previously thought. While fidgeters burn off the calories, couch potatoes can pile on the pounds, they said. The technology was based on that used in fighter-jet control panels, and allowed the scientists to monitor body postures and movements every half-second, continuously for 10 days, from the volunteers' undergarments. The study participants were asked to go about their normal daily routines while wearing the undergarments for the first 10 days of the study. The Mayo team entered this data into a computer, along with the subjects' weights. For the second part of their experiment they asked 10 volunteers who were overweight and 10 who were lean to eat special diets. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6779 - Posted: 01.29.2005

By R. Douglas Fields In the movie thriller Memento, the principal character, Leonard, can remember everything that happened before his head injury on the night his wife was attacked, but anyone he meets or anything he has done since that fateful night simply vanishes. He has lost the ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. Leonard is driven to find his wife's killer and avenge her death, but trapped permanently in the present, he must resort to tattooing the clues of his investigation all over his body. That disturbing story was inspired by the real case history of a patient known in the medical literature only as "HM." When HM was nine years old, a head injury in a bicycle accident left him with debilitating epilepsy. To relieve his seizures that could not be controlled in any other way, surgeons removed parts of HM's hippocampus and adjoining brain regions. The operation succeeded in reducing the brain seizures but inadvertently severed the mysterious link between short-term and long-term memory. Information destined for what is known as declarative memory--people, places, events--must pass through the hippocampus before being recorded in the cerebral cortex. Thus, memories from long ago that were already stored in HM's brain remained clear, but all his experiences of the present soon faded into nothing. HM saw his doctor on a monthly basis, but at each visit it was as if the two had never met. © 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 6778 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Simply placing a cold cap on a baby's head may be enough to protect it from brain damage and possible death. So report researchers today in the first study to demonstrate an effective treatment for oxygen deprivation in newborns. Oxygen deprivation at birth is a serious matter. It can cause learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, or death in 0.1 to 0.2% of otherwise healthy full-term babies. To date, there has been no treatment available for this rare event, which results from abnormalities and complications during delivery. Pediatric and perinatal biologist Peter Gluckman, now at the Liggins Institute in Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues first began investigating the problem 20 years ago. The team discovered that oxygen-deprived brain cells don't die immediately. The brain produces compounds that stop cell death, but it takes 2-3 days for the cells to accumulate sufficient levels. So the researchers hit on the idea of cooling the brain for 2-3 days to slow down the process of cell death and buy the brain time to heal itself. After testing the idea on sheep fetuses, the researchers developed a cooling cap for newborn babies. Cooled water is pumped through the cap, which lowers the baby's body temperature by 2-3 degrees Celsius for 3 days following birth. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Apoptosis
Link ID: 6777 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Connecting brains to computers could circumvent disabilities Christen Brownlee At the University of Tübingen in Germany, neurobiologist Andrea Kübler works with a 49-year-old patient whom she identifies only as H.S. Like many of Kübler's patients, H.S. suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative disease that slowly breaks down the nerve cells necessary for motion. The disease has paralyzed H.S., stripping him of the motor functions that most people take for granted: sitting up, eating, and even breathing. H.S. was diagnosed with ALS 14 years ago, and a permanent ventilator has done his breathing for him since 1993. From then until recently, H.S. could converse with Kübler and his caregivers only by blinking his eyes. Many people paralyzed by a variety of causes—strokes, tumors, or traumatic brain injuries, to name a few examples—communicate rather well by using their remaining, although impoverished, muscle power. For example, French editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was paralyzed by a stroke, dictated a 132-page novel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 1997, Knopf) just by blinking his left eye. Similarly, decades after physicist Stephen Hawking was paralyzed by ALS, he continues to give world-renowned lectures by feeding words into a computer program with a flick of his finger. Eventually, H.S.'s paralysis might prevent him from even blinking his eyes to express himself. He'd then be in a state that doctors aptly refer to as "locked-in syndrome." Thousands of paralyzed people worldwide are in that socially closed-off state. Copyright ©2005 Science Service

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 6776 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Christen Brownlee While it hasn't yet been caught in the act, a single-celled parasite has been ready for sex for billions of years. A new research finding provides evidence that sexual reproduction started as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors. The parasite Giardia intestinalis is well known for causing a diarrheal disease that animals and people contract after drinking contaminated water. Many researchers consider this species to be one of the most ancient living members of the eukaryote, or true nucleus, lineage. However, unlike most eukaryotes, G. intestinalis and its relatives have been long considered to reproduce only asexually—by division into two identical cells. To determine when reproduction via sperm and eggs originated, John Logsdon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and his colleagues took a close look at G. intestinalis' mysterious reproductive life. They focused on the hallmark of sexual reproduction known as meiosis, the process that halves the number of an organism's chromosomes to make gametes such as sperm and eggs. Among available data on the G. intestinalis genome, the researchers searched for genes similar to those that control meiosis in other eukaryotes, including plants, animals, and fungi. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 6775 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have discovered the exact mechanism behind the death of brain cells following a stroke. The main culprit is an overload of charged calcium particles or ions, they told the journal Cell. As the brain is starved of oxygen by reduced blood flow, events occur that cause dangerously high levels of calcium ions within the brain cells. The Medical Research Council team believes correcting the calcium imbalance could help treat strokes. Scientists have suspected for some time that calcium was the culprit. But research had mainly concentrated on trying to block the entry of calcium ions into dying nerve cells. The latest study suggests that the main problem is actually a fault in the mechanism that removes calcium ions from the nerve cells. Professor Pierluigi Nicotera and colleagues at the MRC's toxicology unit in Leicester looked at what was happening in the brains of rats when these animals suffered a stroke. When the blood flow to the brain was abruptly stopped, as occurs with a stroke, the nerve cells deprived of oxygen released chemicals that they use to communicate with each other. One of these, called glutamate, causes more widespread damage by triggering a flood of calcium ions into the affected and neighbouring nerve cells. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 6774 - Posted: 01.28.2005

By Christina Larson In September, Fox Searchlight, a film studio known for such offbeat sleeper-hits as Thirteen and Bend It Like Beckham, arranged one of the first screenings of its upcoming movie, Kinsey, which stars a tweed-clad Liam Neeson as 1940s sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Movie previews are often glittering affairs, staged in posh Los Angeles or New York venues, attended by impeccably dressed actors, film critics, and publicists. But the Kinsey screening was different. It was held in a small theater in Washington D.C., and afterwards the guests—a motley crew of bloggers, political reporters, and think-tank denizens—hovered around the director, Bill Condon, lobbing high-minded questions about academic freedoms and rewiring societies. These are not the sort of people, that is, who can ensure a film's financial success. The event didn't make The Washington Post's gossip column the next morning, but its purpose was different: to win articulate friends. Both the studio and the director knew it needed them. Months earlier, conservative activists had launched an onslaught against the film. Radio host Laura Schlessinger and Judith Reisman, author of a book titled Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, tried to place ads in a Hollywood trade publication alleging Kinsey was a pervert and a pedophile. (Their ads were declined as obscene.) Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America, two social conservative organizations, later bombarded newspaper film critics with mailers impugning Kinsey's character and research. When Kinsey opened to the public, the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a network for chastity educators, organized foot soldiers to picket theaters and hand out pamphlets titled “Casualties of Kinsey.” The group's director, Leslee Unruh, explained that “Kinsey should be looked upon in the history books as Hitler, as Saddam Hussein.” Copyright © 2003 The Washington Monthly

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6773 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEW YORK, NY, – The causes of autism have long remained a mystery, but new research from Columbia University Medical Center has identified, for the first time, how a cellular defect may be involved in the often crippling neurological disorder. The research, which is published in today's issue of Science, examines how a defect in neuroligin genes may contribute to autism. Neuroligins are components of synapses, which connect individual neurons in the brain. The researchers found that the loss of neuroligins perturbs the formation of neuronal connections and results in an imbalance of neuronal function. This imbalance provides an explanation for the neurodevelopmental defects in autistic children. "Understanding the cellular defects that may underlie autism-spectrum disorders represents an important step towards the goal of providing therapies," said Peter Scheiffele, Ph.D., assistant professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center, and principal investigator on the study. A defect in the neuroligin genes had previously been observed in autistic patients, but its functional significance was not yet understood. Scheiffele's study showed that in rat neurons without any neuroligin, connections between neurons are altered in a way that is strikingly similar to those found in autistic children.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 6772 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In the first-ever study combing the entire human genome for genetic determinants of male sexual orientation, a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher has identified several areas that appear to influence whether a man is heterosexual or gay. The study, which is currently available online, will be published in the March issue of the biomedical journal Human Genetics. UIC's Brian Mustanski, working with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, found stretches of DNA that appeared to be linked to sexual orientation on three different chromosomes in the nucleus of cells of the human male. "There is no one 'gay' gene," said Mustanski, a psychologist in the UIC department of psychiatry and lead author of the study. "Sexual orientation is a complex trait, so it's not surprising that we found several DNA regions involved in its expression." "Our best guess is that multiple genes, potentially interacting with environmental influences, explain differences in sexual orientation." The genomes of 456 men from 146 families with two or more gay brothers were analyzed. While earlier studies had focused solely on the X chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes, the present study examined all 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes in addition to the X chromosome. The other sex chromosome, called Y, was not explored because it is not believed to contain many genes.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6771 - Posted: 01.28.2005

— A scent exuded by young women as a subconscious sex attractant has been synthesized for post-menopausal women, who are finding it is luring men in droves, the British weekly New Scientist reported. Forty-four women took part in an experiment to see whether the pheromone — an odor received by heterosexual men as a sign of mating availability — worked for females beyond child-bearing age. Half the group added a chemical copy of the pheromone to their perfume, while the other added a lookalike dummy compound. None of the participants knew whether they were getting the real ingredient or the fake. For the next six weeks, the women kept diaries. Among the pheromone users, 41 percent reported they experienced more petting, kissing and affection with partners, compared with 14 percent among the placebo group. Overall, 68 percent of the pheromone groups reported increases in at least four "intimate socio-sexual behaviors," such as sex and formal dates. In the placebo group, only 41 percent reported increases. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 6770 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Genes may be the key factor in determining how active a person naturally is, suggests a new study of "couch potatoes". But the research also suggests health authorities can tackle the growing obesity epidemic by promoting simple activities like standing up and walking. Previous research has shown that casual activities like shopping and even fidgeting can keep people trim. Now, James Levine, a physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, US, and colleagues have investigated what makes people prone to these behaviours, called "non-exercise activity thermogenesis" (NEAT). The team designed undergarments fitted with sensors to study the posture and movements of 20 self-proclaimed "couch potatoes" for 10 days. Half of the participants were lean, while the others were mildly obese. The team found that the obese people sat for about 2.5 hours longer per day than the lean people. That translates to an extra 350 calories for the same daily food intake and could mean that these "extreme" couch potatoes pack on an extra 15 kilograms per year. Levine says the results show "you don't have to join a gym or buy expensive equipment to lose weight - it's available to you right now." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6769 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi Thanks to the rod and cone cells in our eyes, our brains can use light to build images. Recent studies identified a third type of cell that responds to light and dark. Three research groups have now confirmed that melanopsin is the pigment that this cell-type uses, opening possible avenues for treating blind people. In the classic model, mammals have two types of light-detecting cells, called photoreceptors, in the retina at the back of their eye. Rod cells use the rhodopsin pigment to pick up dim light, and cone cells use related pigments to discriminate colour. But three years ago, scientists found a third type of light-sensitive cell. In such cells, a pigment called melanopsin is used to tell night from day. But apparently the visual parts of the brain do not use this information. Instead, these cells communicate with the neurons at the base of the brain that set the daily body cycle. For example, mice without working rods or cones cannot see images. But researchers showed that they can still use a small set of melanopsin-containing cells in the retina to adjust their biological clocks. Exactly how melanopsin worked, however, remained a mystery. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6768 - Posted: 06.24.2010