PHILADELPHIA--For years, researchers have struggled to learn exactly why moderate drinkers are less prone to heart disease than those who abstain or hardly drink at all. Is it the alcohol itself, or something else in their drinks? Now, a genetic study may tip the scales in favor of alcohol. But the finding, announced here 6 October at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, also shows that the protective effects of a drink depend on your genes. Since the early 1980s, studies have shown that moderate drinkers live longer and are less likely to suffer a heart attack than teetotalers. Several compounds have been touted as responsible for this benefit. Most recently, a study pointed to resveratrol, an antioxidant found in red wine (ScienceNOW, 10 July). But Lisa Hines and her colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston believe that ethanol--the scientific word for the alcohol in your drink--deserves the credit. ..... --JOHN S. MacNEIL Copyright © 2000 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 57 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Mysteries of Sex Remain Why does sex exist? After all, plenty of organisms, from dividing microbes to plants that grow from cuttings, do perfectly well without it. Although researchers can't say decisively what sex is for, they have now ruled out one common explanation: It's not for weeding out mutations. Sexual reproduction is extremely inefficient compared to asexual cloning, because half of a population doesn't produce any offspring. Puzzling over why organisms bother, some scientists have claimed that sex helps rid a population of harmful mutations. Because sexual reproduction mixes and reshuffles genomes, some offspring might escape with few or none of the genetic errors that burden their parents. This idea, launched in the 1960s by geneticist Hermann Muller, has remained among evolutionary biologists' pet theories ever since.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 56 - Posted: 10.20.2001

It's official: thin is in when beauty is in question. Jessa Netting reports. 18 October 2000 JESSA NETTING Healthy women are almost as bad as anorexics and bulimics when it comes to having distorted perceptions of others' bodies, psychologists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B1. Martin Tovée, Joanne Emery and Esther Cohen-Tovée of the University of Newcastle and St. George's Hospital in Northumberland draw this conclusion from their interviews with 204 women. One sixth of their sample were anorexic, another sixth bulimic and the remainder were judged not to have an eating disorder.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 55 - Posted: 10.20.2001

The 'yuck' factor When you screw up your face in disgust, it disgusts those looking at you, warns Jessa Netting. 16 October 2000 JESSA NETTING When you see someone frown, wrinkle their nose and curl their lip into the distinctive expression of disgust, it triggers the same neural systems that feel disgust, essentially recreating the emotion in your own brain, researchers announce in the latest Nature Neuroscience1. To find out more about the anatomy of disgust, Andrew Calder of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and colleagues enlisted the help of a man, 'NK', with physical brain damage mirroring that experienced by Huntington's patients. As in Huntington's disease, NK's brain damage has apparently obliterated those areas essential to distinguishing disgust on the faces of other people.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 54 - Posted: 10.20.2001

How the Body Knows When to Gain or Lose By GINA KOLATA When Dr. Jeffrey Flier decided to specialize in diabetes, he knew that most of his patients would be fat. Obesity is a leading cause of the disease. And weight loss is the best way for most fat diabetic patients to get their disease under control. But after years of seeing patient after patient, fat and frantic to lose weight, Dr. Flier retreated to the lab. Although he still treats people with diabetes, he no longer treats obesity. He has rebuffed all suggestions by his hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston, that he run a weight loss clinic.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 53 - Posted: 10.20.2001

A Theorist With Personal Experience of the Divide Between the Sexes By CAROL KAESUK YOON AN FRANCISCO - Speaking to a standing room only crowd at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Snowbird, Utah, Dr. Joan Roughgarden, one of the world's most influential theoretical ecologists, is methodically taking apart the way that biologists think about sex. Providing details that make some titter and shift nervously in their seats, she is re-thinking orgasms and the architecture of female genitals, making arguments for the existence of more than two genders and presenting evidence for widespread homosexual copulation in the wild.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 52 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Some teens show signs of future depression Bruce Bower Certain characteristics typify teens who suffer recurrences of depression as young adults, raising researchers' hopes for devising improved depression treatments, a new study finds. But, the current outlook for depressed teens isn't bright. The results indicate that by their early 20's, about half of these young people have again experienced depression's trademark blend of melancholy, despair, and apathy.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 51 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Scientists Say Aging May Result From Brain's Hormonal Signals By NICHOLAS WADE Could it be that aging, like puberty and menopause, is a programmed life-cycle event set off by hormonal signals from the brain? A new study suggests that in the laboratory roundworm, and maybe people too, youthfulness is maintained by hormonal signals from the brain. When the neurons that transmit the signal suffer damage from the wear and tear of normal metabolism, the youthfulness signal fails, and the body's tissues all lapse into senescence at about the same time.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 50 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Close encounters Bellowing 'get off my land' at a trespassing ant will do no good at all. You'd do better to get right up close and whisper, Philip Ball finds. 13 October 2000 PHILIP BALL Ants sense each other's whispers with their antennae, researchers propose in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America1. This insight into ant 'hearing' could help scientists use sound to protect crops against ant infestations.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 48 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Scientists Learn to Program Human Dreams Research Adds to Links Between Dreams and Learning, Creativity Boston--October 12, 2000--A team of Harvard Medical School scientists has achieved what researchers since Freud's day have sought: a way to control -- at least in part -- the content of a person's dreams. They are using their dream-provoking method to explore age-old questions, such as: Where do dreams come from? What do they mean? What is their role in memory, learning, and creativity? What is their link to the unconscious? For years, scientists have been stymied in their quest to understand these associations because dreams are unique events that cannot be replicated. Until now. Robert Stickgold, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues report in the Oct.13 Sciencethat they were able to get 17 different people to see the same dream images as they drifted off to sleep.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 47 - Posted: 11.06.2001

Robert L. Sack, M.D., Richard W. Brandes, B.S., Adam R. Kendall, B.S., and Alfred J. Lewy, M.D., Ph.D. ABSTRACT Background Most totally blind people have circadian rhythms that are "free-running" (i.e., that are not synchronized to environmental time cues and that oscillate on a cycle slightly longer than 24 hours). This condition causes recurrent insomnia and daytime sleepiness when the rhythms drift out of phase with the normal 24-hour cycle. We investigated whether a daily dose of melatonin could entrain their circadian rhythms to a normal 24-hour cycle.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 46 - Posted: 11.06.2001

Beetle sex mania 11 October 2000 DAVID ADAM Pity the agony aunts of the weevil world, where sexual confusion reigns. Female beetles impersonate males, both sexes look alike and neither seems fussy about the real or intended gender of their partners. Researchers in Florida have now separated out these sexual spaghetti strands to explain what turns a weevil on.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 45 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Peace and quiet for the fish in your life Henry Gee eavesdrops in on the echo-free fish tank which will allow researchers to hear what fish are thinking. 11 October 2000 HENRY GEE What do you buy for the Person Who Has Everything? You could always get electric curtains that rustle ominously when played the theme tune to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And there isn't a stylish swinger who'd ever turn down another fondue set or lava lamp. Still stumped? Think laterally, then. Why not something for the Pet of the Person Who Has Everything? Allen F. Mensinger of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota and Max Deffenbaugh of the Exxon Production Research Company in Houston, Texas, have the very thing: an echo-free fish tank1. Give the fish in their life some peace and quiet!

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 44 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Tom Abate
Monday, October 9, 2000
The new economy has quietly given birth to what is likely to become the next industrial giant -- a hybrid blend of high tech and biotech. This symbiosis was the unsung hero of the race to unravel the human genome. Now it promises to accelerate the pace of medicine. New instruments will help turn genetic discoveries into diagnostic tests and cures for everything from pneumonia to inherited diseases.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 43 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Mapping Our Emotions Brain-imaging technology helps researchers find the root of human feelings Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer Monday, October 9, 2000 Scientists using sophisticated brain imaging technology are learning what goes on inside the brain when we experience emotion -- a subject once dismissed as too abstract for serious research. In the latest foray, neurologist Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa College of Medicine showed how feelings of anger, sadness, happiness and fear are linked to distinct patterns in specific regions of the brain.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 42 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Valium and related drugs are among the world's most popular treatments for anxiety, despite numerous side effects. Now researchers have identified a receptor in the brain that's responsible for just the drug's antianxiety powers--opening up the possibility that a drug targeted to that receptor could ease anxiety without causing drowsiness, clumsiness, and memory loss. The chemical compounds known as benzodiazepines, such as Valium, calm the brain by discouraging neurons from firing. The drugs boost the efficiency of a chemical messenger called GABA, which flips the brain's main "off switch."

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 41 - Posted: 10.20.2001

A Clue for Designing Safer Anxiety Drugs By REUTERS ASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (Reuters) - Researchers said today that they had found a possible way to design drugs that work as well as popular anxiety medications, but without side effects. Anxiety drugs like Valium work well, but they produce side effects that include drowsiness, forgetfulness and clumsiness and, when taken over time, they can lead to dependence.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 40 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Make Heat, Not Fat Jealous of those skinny people who eat constantly but seem to just burn it off? Now scientists have discovered a way to mimic their metabolism. By introducing a protein that turns fat to heat, they kept well-fed mice slim. Mice keep warm by converting fat from deposits called brown adipose tissue into heat. A protein called Ucp stokes this biochemical furnace--inspiring researchers to wonder whether Ucp could help obese people burn off extra calories instead of storing them as fat.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 39 - Posted: 10.20.2001

Teaching old brains new tricks A faulty circuit, not missing brain cells, could be to blame for those lost keys, Jessa Netting finds. 3 October 2000 JESSA NETTING Increasing forgetfulness with age is often chalked up to decreasing numbers of brain cells. But it may have more to do with a faulty brain circuit than missing grey matter, a report in the Journal of Neuroscience1 now suggests. Repairing such circuits may prove a much easier route to cognitive enhancement than replacing missing cells.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 38 - Posted: 10.20.2001

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
A new breed of animal, dubbed the "sand mouse," has been added to the annals of biological science, and it has become the subject of a scientific challenge. Last week Dr. John J. Hopfield, a Princeton professor known for seminal discoveries in computer science, biology and physics, posed an unusual test to his fellow scientists.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 37 - Posted: 10.20.2001