By CHARLES MCGRATH Anyone who has watched much nature television knows that orangutans are by far the handsomest and smartest-looking of the great apes. They're literal highbrows, with wide, soulful eyes and broad expressive foreheads. They're covered not with bathmat fur, like so many apes, but with what amounts to a couture pelt -- red hair so long and fine it seems blow-dried. It's true that orangutans drag their knuckles when they walk, but how else are you going to get around if your arms are longer than your legs? For creatures so large, they are uncommonly graceful, not to mention sweet-natured, so it's gratifying to learn that a team of scientists, writing in the journal Science, has recently certified them as ''cultured'' as well. Metaphorically at least, the news makes you want to extend a cheerful hand to your fellow primate and pump him by his auburn, hirsute paw (it would feel sort of like angora, I'm guessing). Culture in this sense is not exactly a museum or concert-hall accomplishment. It's behavior that's not genetically determined but, rather, learned by watching others; certain styles of tool use, for example, or systems of social signaling. The theory is that if animals in one place do something a certain way, for no particular reason, and the same animals someplace else do not, then chances are that behavior is cultural, not instinctive. In the wild, orangutans tend to be loners, and therefore it was believed that they lacked a ''system of socially transmitted behavior.'' But after studying various orangutan populations in Borneo and Sumatra, the authors of the Science article concluded that some of them did indeed show signs of having taught each other stuff. They had learned how to masturbate with sticks, for example -- male and female alike -- and to make ritual ''raspberry'' noises at bedtime before scaling into their nests. They had also mastered the art of creating funny sounds by blowing into leaves, and of catching rides in Robert Frost fashion, by swinging on bent-over tree snags. This is all it takes -- a few useless but highly amusing tricks -- to promote you into the highest rank of primates: the elite group that also includes chimpanzees, most likely bonobos and gorillas and of course us -- the naked apes, to use Desmond Morris's label. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Animal Communication
Link ID: 3319 - Posted: 01.19.2003

By Linda Marsa HEALTH CORRESPONDENT A nasal spray derived from pheromones, the airborne chemicals emitted by animals when trying to attract a mate, could soon be used to relieve premenstrual syndrome. Rather than making users attractive to the opposite sex though, early tests indicate that the spray, called PH80, banishes the blues and eases irritability, anxiety and physical symptoms such as bloating and breast pain. If planned studies go well, PH80 could be in pharmacies within the next few years, making it the first pheromone-based prescription medication. "If this works, it would be very exciting and beneficial," says Ellen W. Freeman, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who has tested PH80. Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 3318 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAMES GORMAN The behavior of chukar partridge chicks, which can run straight up the side of a hay bale or a tree while flapping their wings, may offer a new window on the origin of flight in birds. Feathered dinosaurs may have done something similar, Dr. Kenneth P. Dial of the University of Montana suggests in today's issue of Science. He suggests that they too flapped their primitive wings to help them climb, which brought them off the ground and closer to discovering the aerial possibilities of their wings. Even incompletely feathered proto-wings, Dr. Dial says, would have been useful in running up inclines. One of Dr. Dial's findings, which has surprised other scientists who study the evolution of flight, is that the chukar chicks did not use their wings to raise them off the ground. The wing beats served the same purpose as spoilers on race cars. The force generated by flapping pressed the chicks into the surface on which they were running for better traction. As Dr. Dial said of his finding, "It's not intuitive." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Biomechanics
Link ID: 3317 - Posted: 01.18.2003

By IVER PETERSON PRINCETON, N.J., — An odd teaming of animal rights advocates and sports hunters have at least temporarily derailed Princeton Township's ambitious program to thin its deer population by using professional sharpshooters. On Thursday, the state's Fish and Game Council, a majority of whose voting members represent hunting interests, narrowly voted to stop the five-year program after its second year because they were offended by some of the methods used by White Buffalo Inc., the professional hunters, and because they wanted Princeton to open its public lands to sports hunting instead. "They were concerned that the town and the White Buffalo group were killing deer that hunters should be able to kill," the council chairman, W. Scott Ellis, said today. Mr. Ellis said he had been surprised by the 5-4 vote, with one member abstaining and Mr. Ellis, as chairman, not voting. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 3316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY JIM RITTER HEALTH REPORTER Researchers have made great progress against sudden infant death syndrome by identifying behaviors that increase the risk, such as smoking by caregivers and placing babies to sleep on the stomach. Now it seems a baby's genes also might play a role. A study released Friday found that babies who died of SIDS were more likely to have certain variants of a gene called 5-HTT. "This is the first piece to get people to wake up that there has to be a genetic component," said lead researcher Dr. Debra Weese-Mayer, a pediatrician at Rush- Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. The study will appear in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. Copyright 2003, Digital Chicago Inc.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Sleep
Link ID: 3315 - Posted: 01.18.2003

Orexin - the key to narcolepsy The discovery of a brain chemical could lead to a cure for the debilitating sleep disorder narcolepsy. Scientists believe it could even help people without the condition stay awake for longer periods to meet the demands of a 24/7 society. Narcoleptics fall asleep without warning, and can include nightmarish hallucinations and paralysing fits that can strike when they laugh, cry or have sex. Gary Beattie, who suffers from narcolepsy, once worked on a building site. "It was extremely dangerous working on a building site because there have been a few instances where I fell asleep 20 feet up a ladder," he said. "I just put my back against the ladder, and fell asleep for about 15 minutes." (C) BBC

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 3314 - Posted: 01.17.2003

by Kenneth J. Bender, Pharm.D., M.A. Psychiatric Times January 2003 Vol. XX Issue 1 In a study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and published in JAMA, St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum ) was found to be no more effective than placebo for treating depression but to be no worse than an antidepressant comparator (Hypericum Depression Trial Study Group [HDTSG], 2002). Critics of the study attributed these results to insufficient assay sensitivity; while those critical of antidepressant pharmacotherapy found the results supported their view that medication contributes little more than side effects to depression treatment. The study, co-sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, followed another U.S. trial that had equated the efficacy of hypericum with that of placebo (Shelton et al., 2001). That head-to-head comparison of herb and placebo was funded in part by Pfizer Inc., manufacturer of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor sertraline (Zoloft) that was also used as the antidepressant comparator in the NIMH study. © 2003 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 3313 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What you believe is what you will become By Eric Haseltine Touch a pencil with all five fingertips of one hand, close your eyes, and ponder: If each fingertip forms a distinct tactile "image" of the pencil, why do you perceive a single pencil instead of five unconnected pencil fragments? The answer is that your brain has special circuits that help you build complete pictures from fragmented sensory information. In effect, these gap-filling circuits induce your brain to perceive what it expects to see, instead of what it actually sees. When these expectations accurately reflect the objective world around you, your perceptions will be on target. Sometimes, however, what your brain expects to see is far from an accurate representation of reality. © Copyright 2003 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3312 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ERIC NAGOURNEY Deaf children who need cochlear implants should get them before they turn 3 1/2, a new study reports. Writing in the journal Ear and Hearing, researchers said that tests comparing brain activity had demonstrated that deaf children who received the implants when they they were very young had neurological development closer to that of hearing children. "The message to parents has to be: you have to get that child implanted as early as you can," said one of the researchers, Dr. Michael F. Dorman of Arizona State University. The other authors were Dr. Anthony J. Spahr of Arizona State and Dr. Anu Sharma of the University of Texas at Dallas. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3311 - Posted: 01.17.2003

STANFORD, Calif. - A persistent, long-lasting headache or an endlessly painful back may indicate something more serious than a bad week at the office. A new study finds that people who have major depression are more than twice as likely to have chronic pain when compared to people who have no symptoms of depression. This study could change how depression is diagnosed and treated, say Stanford School of Medicine researchers. "This is potentially a really important finding," said Alan Schatzberg, MD, the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, who participated in the study published in the January issue of the journal Archive of General Psychiatry. "This will change how we view pain and depression." Schatzberg said previously published research hinted that people with depression may be more likely to experience chronic pain and that depressed people with chronic pain may respond better to a class of drugs that treats both symptoms. If the relationship exists, then pain may be a symptom that guides doctors to the drugs they prescribe for depressed patients.

Keyword: Depression; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3310 - Posted: 01.17.2003

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition The lowly stick insect has forced a rethink of one of the key rules of evolution - that complex anatomical features do not disappear and reappear over the course of time. Researchers have discovered that on a number of occasions in the past 300 million years, stick insects have lost their wings, then re-evolved them. Entomologists have described the revelation as "revolutionary". Michael Whiting, an evolutionary biologist from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and his team stumbled upon the finding while examining the DNA of 37 different phasmids, the stick and leaf insects famous for camouflaging themselves against plants, in a bid to work out their family tree. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 3309 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Biologists have laid a new basis for studying human obesity by identifying almost all the genes that regulate fat storage and metabolism in a small animal, the laboratory roundworm. The finding should provide leads to the many unknown genes that regulate fat storage in people and to the defects in the genes that underlie many obesity cases. It is also a landmark in studying genomes, because this is apparently the first time that almost all of an animal's genes have been inactivated in a single experiment. The technique for creating "knockout" mice, strains missing a single gene, is invaluable in biomedical research, but it takes months to generate each strain. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3308 - Posted: 01.16.2003

Northwestern University has received a five-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify the gene mutations that cause sex reversal, a condition in which individuals have the chromosomes of one sex but the physical attributes of the other, resulting in XY females or XX males. Heading the gene study at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University are J. Larry Jameson, M.D., Irving S. Cutter Professor and chair of medicine, and Jeffrey Weiss, research associate professor of medicine. The study is one of four collaborative projects funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to identify mutations in mice that cause developmental and fertility defects and to characterize the mutations responsible for these defects. The research projects are part of the NIH's initiative to determine the function of mammalian genes.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3307 - Posted: 01.16.2003

Advanced Technology Lets Scientists Watch By Ned Potter [ABCNEWS.com] A L B U Q U E R Q U E, N.M., Jan. 14 — The machine looks like a giant hair dryer, or perhaps something the Bride of Frankenstein might fancy. It is one of the most powerful brain-imaging devices in the world. Scientists call it M.E.G. — short for Magnetoencephalography — a scanner capable, unlike any before it, of showing activity in the brain as it happens. "If the brain is trying to do something with information from the outside world, and all the different parts are working a little bit out of synchronization, then the whole picture won't emerge in a coherent kind of way," said Claudia Tesche, a psychologist who helped design the scanner. "We need to know how the brain is processing information on a moment-to-moment basis." Copyright © 2003 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 3306 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Tubers, scavenging, and women — this might have been the winning combination that spurred human evolution about 2 millions years ago, according to a provocative hypothesis by American anthropologists. Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, University of Utah anthropologist James O'Connell and colleagues challenge the conventional wisdom that meat, brought home by man the hunter and shared out, fueled the rise of early humans. "Meat consumption cannot account for the significant changes in life history now seen to distinguish early humans from ancestral australopiths. Our argument relies on a combination of life history theory, data on modern humans and primates, and the archaeological record," O'Connell told Discovery News. Copyright © 2002 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 3305 - Posted: 06.24.2010

As many as 100 lives a year could be saved in the UK by the wider use of a drug to treat schizophrenia, researchers claim. The half a million people with the condition have a 50 times higher risk of attempting suicide than the general population. But experts say treating schizophrenia with the drug clozapine, an atypical antipsychotic, could reduce the number of suicide attempts, and therefore deaths. They have fewer side-effects than older drugs, but are significantly more expensive. The government is committed to reducing suicides by 20% by 2010. (C) BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3304 - Posted: 01.14.2003

By ERICA GOODE The number of children and adolescents who take a wide variety of psychiatric drugs more than doubled from 1987 to 1996, researchers are reporting today. Stimulants like Ritalin, prescribed for attention deficit disorder, and antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed drugs, according to the study, which experts said was the most comprehensive on the topic. The investigators, led by Dr. Julie Magno Zito, an associate professor of pharmacy and medicine at the University of Maryland, also found precipitous growth in the use of antipsychotics, so-called mood stabilizers prescribed for mania or aggression, and other classes of potent psychoactive medications. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; ADHD
Link ID: 3303 - Posted: 01.14.2003

By GINA KOLATA The clinical signs of Alzheimer's disease are all too familiar — the erosion of memory for recent, then distant events, the declining ability to reason or to think. Eventually, there is the blank look, a sort of Alzheimer's stare, and a failure to recognize a husband, a wife, a child. But the real question has been, What is going on in the brain, and why do patients suffer the terrible forgetfulness? For years, the prevailing notion was that Alzheimer's was a disease of brain-cell death. Pathologists could see that progressively, relentlessly, brain cells died, leaving behind piles of debris that they detected in autopsies and that are the hallmarks of the disease. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 3302 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAMES GORMAN When red deer stand up and honeybees dance, they are not simply stretching their legs or indicating where the nectar is, according to a new study. As bizarre as it may seem, they are voting on whether to move to greener pastures or richer flowers. The process is unconscious, the researchers say. No deer counts votes or checks ballots; bees do not know the difference between a dimple and a chad. But no one deer or bee or buffalo decides when the group moves. If democracy means that actions are taken based not on a ruler's preference, but the preferences of a majority, then animals have democracy. Not surprisingly, decisions based on majority preferences tend to fit in with what most individuals in the group want. But, the researchers say, this is not a mere tautology. An analysis based on some hefty mathematical models that they developed shows that democracy in groups of animals can have a tangible survival edge over despotism. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 3301 - Posted: 01.14.2003

University of Washington (UW) researchers have found a genetic mutation underlying one of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorders. Their results appear in the Jan. 14 edition of Neurology, a journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorders are characterized by nerve degeneration in the hands and lower arms and in the feet and lower legs. The nerve damage leads to muscle weakness and loss of sensation in these parts of the body. Affecting about 1 in 2,000 people, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorders are the most common inherited neurological diseases. Different forms of the disease appear as the result of different genetic abnormalities. Charcot-Marie-Tooth-related abnormalities have been located on a number of human chromosomes.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3300 - Posted: 01.14.2003