Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory engineers are developing a microelectrode array for a multi-laboratory DOE project to construct an artificial retina or "epiretinal prosthesis." The three-year DOE project brings together national labs, universities and a private company, with Oak Ridge serving as the lead laboratory. An epiretinal prosthesis could restore vision to millions of people suffering from eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration or those who are legally blind due to the loss of photoreceptor function. In many cases, the neural cells to which the photoreceptors are connected remain functional.

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 3119 - Posted: 12.06.2002

(SACRAMENTO, CALIF.) -- UC Davis researchers are ready to launch the first-ever major epidemiological case-control study of up to 2,000 California children to examine genetic and environmental factors that may affect the development of autism, mental retardation and developmental delay in children. Parents of children who recently have become eligible to receive services from California's Regional Centers will receive information on how their child can join the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) study of children between 2 and 5 years of age. Recruitment will continue over the next three years as newly diagnosed children enter the Regional Center system, which coordinates services to developmentally disabled children and adults for the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS). This study is one of three projects within the UC Davis Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention, that was created last fall with grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the M.I.N.D. Institute at UC Davis.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 3118 - Posted: 12.06.2002

The genetic make-up of the mouse has been published for the first time in a scientific journal. The mouse "book of life" reveals that humans and mice share at least 80% of their genes, with only 300 unique to either organism. About 1,200 new human genes have been discovered while mining the mouse genome. Many are involved in cancer and other human diseases and will help the search for new medical treatments. The mouse data have been produced by a number of US and UK institutions, funded by the National Institutes of Health in America and the Wellcome Trust in Britain. A private US company has already read the mouse genome but its research is not freely available to scientists - they must pay for access. (C) BBC

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 3117 - Posted: 12.05.2002

Good vibrations aid the amphibian mating game. TOM CLARKE A Bornean frog tunes its high-pitched call to exploit the acoustics of its tree-hole home and boost its chances of attracting females1. "The frogs sample the acoustic properties of their holes," says Björn Lardner of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. When they hit a certain note, the call becomes twice as loud, find Lardner and his colleague Maklarin bin Lakim of the Sabah Parks Research and Education Division in Malaysia. The two-centimetre-long frog Metaphrynella sundana can be heard up to 50 metres away in dense forest. Singing in a hole should dampen the mating call. To investigate, Lardner and Lakim put a male frog into a plastic cylinder containing water. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 3116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

One of the most common genetic abnormalities is Down syndrome, which occurs when a person inherits three copies of chromosome 21 instead of the normal complement of two. Although the association has long been known, no one understands how the extra genetic material produces the syndrome, which is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation. Now, new research is helping to provide an answer to this medical mystery. Researchers at NYU School of Medicine and colleagues in France and Germany, have taken a genetic tour of chromosome 21. They have identified where the chromosomes' switched-on genes are found in the brain, a significant accomplishment that may lead to the identification of the genes that contribute to Down syndrome. "Our study provides a road map with clear signposts to the culprits of Down syndrome," says Ariel Ruiz i Altaba, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Cell Biology at NYU School of Medicine's Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, and one of the lead authors of the study. "There are now clearly defined candidate genes in the brain, heart and elsewhere that we can look at," says Dr. Ruiz i Altaba, whose laboratory is devoted to understanding brain development. "

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3115 - Posted: 12.05.2002

By Chantal Pfenniger Zurich (Bloomberg) -- The electromagnetic field created during a half hour of mobile phone use is enough to produce changes in brain activity, a Swiss study showed. Blood flow increased in areas of the brain on the side nearest the phone. The increase in blood flow lasted for more than half an hour after exposure, and the affected part of the brain remained active throughout the following night's sleep, Peter Achermann from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology said in a release on the Web site of the University of Zurich. Scientists are trying to determine whether mobile phones are a health hazard. Achermann said the data has to be analyzed carefully to determine the consequences on health. ©2002 Bloomberg L.P.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 3114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Thousands of people with schizophrenia are being denied modern medicines on the NHS, according to campaigners. A survey by the charity Rethink suggests many are still being given cheaper and unsuitable drugs. This is despite a ruling by a government watchdog three months ago that so-called 'atypical' medicines should be available to all patients with the disease. It comes as the watchdog, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), publishes guidelines aimed at stamping out variations in the medical care of these patients. The Rethink survey suggests that one in five primary care trusts in England has yet to make these modern drugs available to patients. (C) BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3113 - Posted: 12.04.2002

Professor shows how visual cues can deceive Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer UC Berkeley doesn't look quite the same after a stroll around campus with Marty Banks. An expert on the visual system, Banks, with his colleagues, has collected about a dozen examples of optical illusions within easy walking distance of his laboratory in Minor Hall, headquarters of the UC Berkeley School of Optometry. Banks, a professor of optometry and vision science, has devoted much of his career to experiments teasing out just how the eyes and brain put together the puzzle of the visual world. The latest example was detailed in the Nov. 22 issue of Science, showing how the brain is able to juggle two senses at once. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 3112 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NAT IVES HEALTH advocates and lawyers are increasingly trying to blame food companies for the country's growing obesity problem, borrowing tactics that anti-smoking advocates have used successfully against tobacco companies and their addictive products. While marketers and others may scoff at lawsuits like the one two New York teenagers filed against McDonald's , accusing it of failing to provide necessary information about health risks associated with its meals, some analysts and brand experts assert that food companies have ignored the developments at their peril. "It is very possible that tighter advertising restrictions will eventually follow from the gathering pace of concern surrounding the spread of the obesity epidemic," a report from UBS Warburg, the investment bank, said last week . "There will probably be more lawsuits and pressure from consumer groups to change practices." Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 3111 - Posted: 12.04.2002

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, American Indian mothers who drank alcohol while pregnant increased the risk their babies would die of sudden infant death syndrome, but that risk declined when the mothers were visited by public health nurses, a study has found. A National Institutes of Health study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, evaluated data from infants who died of the syndrome, or SIDS, in the Indian Health Service region covering North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa. Indians in that area had the highest rate of the syndrome in the health service's 12 regions, at 3.5 deaths for every 1,000 live births from 1996 to 1998. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3110 - Posted: 12.04.2002

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. A small but groundbreaking study of infants who received vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative has found that the levels of mercury in their blood were well within federal safety limits. The study, reported on Saturday in the British medical journal The Lancet, also found that infants excrete the mercury much faster than expected, suggesting that it does not build up from one vaccination to the next. The preservative, thimerosal, is no longer used in American vaccines for infants under 6 months old, but the issue is important to parents of children who did receive thimerosal-containing vaccines as infants and are now autistic. Thousands of those parents have filed damage claims or lawsuits against thimerosal's maker, Eli Lilly & Company , although a clause protecting Lilly from such suits was mysteriously slipped into the domestic security bill signed into law by President Bush on Nov. 25. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 3109 - Posted: 12.04.2002

A new first-aid method of treating carbon monoxide poisoning could prevent brain damage in patients by delivering more oxygen to the brain than the standard treatment, according to a study by physicians at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network (UHN). The study is published in the December issue of the U.S. based and peer-reviewed journal Annals of Emergency Medicine. The researchers, led by Dr. Josh Rucker, a Toronto General Hospital research fellow and resident in the Anesthesiology training program at the University of Toronto, studied 14 subjects who were exposed to low levels of carbon monoxide (resulting in blood levels about equal to those in heavy smokers) on two occasions in order to simulate conditions during carbon monoxide poisoning.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 3108 - Posted: 12.04.2002

Can a change in diet improve our moods - or even help treat the symptoms of mental illness? Eliza Johnston, who suffers from bipolar disorder, is sure it can, reports Charlotte Cripps For 10 years Eliza Johnston, 38, has suffered from bipolar affective disorder. For most of that time her mental illness has been so severe that she had no friends, no work – little human contact at all, in fact, except with her GP. "My life consisted of 12 hours watching television a day, then 12 hours sleeping," Johnston says. "I was barely able to string two sentences together. My typical year was three months mania, nine months depression. It is an intolerable way to live." Like most people with bipolar affective disorder (a disruptive brain disorder that used to be more commonly known as manic depression), Johnston was prescribed a cocktail of medications to control her depression, mania and anxiety. Some of these had unwelcome side effects. Occasionally, Johnston felt that medication made her condition worse, not better. Sometimes it was hard to tell which symptoms were caused by the illness and which by the medication. Then, 20 months ago, realising that she was getting no better, Johnston decided to come off drugs and persuaded her GP to refer her to a homeopath. Together they set about making some radical changes to her diet, cutting out sugar, dairy and wheat. Today, she is still drug-free and feels she has broken the cycle. She believes that her new diet has helped to bring about this radical change.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 3107 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heroin is to be available on the NHS to all those with a clinical need for it, as part of the government's new drugs strategy. About 400 heroin users already get the drug legally on NHS prescription but access nationwide is patchy. The new drugs plan centres on a "treatment strategy" aimed at those using hard drugs like heroin and crack cocaine. It was published amid criticism from the government's former drugs policy co-ordinator that ministers' stance on cannabis was now a "dog's breakfast". Heroin users would be given prescribed supplies of the drug in safe, medically supervised areas, using clean needles. The rapid rise of crack cocaine use is another target of the government plan, which updates the 1998 strategy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3106 - Posted: 12.03.2002

By DAVID CORCORAN It was an exciting moment for me — and, I imagine, for other parents of children with the baffling neurological disorder called Asperger syndrome — when The New York Times Magazine published Lawrence Osborne's "Little Professor Syndrome" in June 2000. The title may have been condescending, but the article itself was terrific, perhaps the best yet about Asperger's in a mainstream publication: a 4,500-word exploration, in remarkably vivid and sympathetic language, of a world that few readers had visited. So it was doubly exciting when Mr. Osborne, a widely published health and science journalist, expanded the article into a book, "American Normal," published last month. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 3105 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARY DUFFY It was the first type of antidepressant, and for many people the monamine oxidase, or MAO, inhibitor remains the best hope for relief from major depression. The trouble is that the side effects can be so serious that MAO inhibitors are rarely prescribed. When taken with certain foods, for example, they may bring on sudden and severe hypertension. The problems, however, may soon be resolved. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 3104 - Posted: 12.03.2002

By BEN DAITZ ALBUQUERQUE — We sit around a large table in the conference room of the First Choice Community Health Center here. A purple paisley sheet, hung with duct tape, covers the window fronting the parking lot. In a corner is a wheeled cart stacked with hospital gowns, gauze pads, syringes and a hydroculator unit, a metal tank containing hot packs in a water bath. There are nine of us, including Magda P., who sits at the head of the table, and all of us are munching grapes and Hershey Kisses from the communal snacks on the table. It is the Thursday afternoon chronic pain clinic and Magda is telling us her story. Magda is in her early 50's, a slim woman whose blonde hair is lightly touched with gray and tied back in a ponytail. She is a desk clerk in a motel. She used to be a successful trial lawyer who practiced martial arts in her spare time — until she was kicked in the head, a misplaced tae kwon do blow that momentarily knocked her unconscious. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In this world of new occupations, David Ropeik, a former television reporter, is the director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. As a professional "risk communicator" for a research group, Mr. Ropeik writes essays, books and opinion articles about reasons for people's fears, using the tools of statistics, psychology and evolutionary biology. With terrorist alerts, threats of war with Iraq and outbreaks of West Nile fever, Americans seem eager to hear someone who can explain why they are afraid and, perhaps more important, whether their fears have reasonable grounds. Mr. Ropeik (pronounced roh-PEEK) writes essays on risk and reads them on "Morning Edition," on National Public Radio. A book by Mr. Ropeik and George Gray, "Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You," was recently published. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 3102 - Posted: 06.24.2010

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Researchers at Ohio State University have identified three genes that are involved in the seasonal clock that determines when hamsters reproduce. While researchers have learned a lot about reproductive clocks in some animals, this study is unique in helping uncover at least part of the genetic basis for determining how the reproductive system shuts off in the fall and restarts in time for spring. “This study offers some of the first insights into how changes in gene expression are associated with a seasonal clock,” said Brian Prendergast, co-author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at Ohio State University.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3101 - Posted: 06.24.2010

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researchers have identified 10 key factors to recovery from schizophrenia. The findings open opportunities to develop new treatment and rehabilitation programs and to reshape the negative expectations of many doctors, patients and their families. Based on analyses of the professional literature and the cases of 23 schizophrenia patients who successfully returned to work or school with their symptoms under control, the findings appear in the November 2002 edition of the International Review of Psychiatry. Factors detailed in the study that influenced recovery included 1) family relationships, 2) substance abuse, 3) duration of untreated psychosis, 4) initial response to medication, 5) adherence to treatment, 6) supportive therapeutic relationships, 7) cognitive abilities, 8) social skills, 9) personal history and 10) access to care.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3100 - Posted: 12.03.2002