Patrick Barry In an advance that could solve many of the ethical and technical issues involved in stem cell research, two groups of scientists have independently converted human skin cells directly into stem cells without creating or destroying embryos. "We are now in a position to be able to generate patient- and disease-specific stem cells without using human eggs or embryos," Shinya Yamanaka, leader of one of the research teams at Kyoto University in Japan, said in an e-mail interview. Preliminary tests show that the newly created cells can develop into nerve cells, heart cells, or any other kind of cell in the body. Previously, only stem cells taken from early embryos had this kind of flexibility, called pluripotency. Scientists have suggested that such embryonic stem cells could be used for learning about genetic diseases, testing new drugs on cells grown in the lab, or growing healthy cells for therapeutic transplantation. Producing embryonic stem cells has become controversial, however, because the process destroys the embryo. "[Our] whole procedure doesn't involve any embryo," says Junying Yu, leader of the other research group, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "This approach is certainly going to get rid of this [ethical] problem." ©2007 Science Service.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 11002 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Helen Briggs At the age of six months, most babies have barely learnt to sit up, let alone crawl, walk or talk. But, according to new research, they can already assess someone's intentions towards them, deciding who is a likely friend or enemy. US scientists believe babies acquire the ability to make social evaluations in the first few months of life. It may provide the foundation for moral thoughts and actions in later years, they write in the journal Nature. "By six months, babies have learnt quite a lot and they are taking things in," said Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the research. We can't say that it is hard-wired (exists in a newborn baby) but we can say it is pre-linguistic and pre-explicit teaching," she told BBC News. "We don't think this says that babies have any morality but it does seem an essential piece of morality to feel positive about those who do good things and negative about those who do bad things - it seems like an important piece of a later more rational and moral system." Like all social creatures, humans are able to make rapid judgements of other people based on how they behave towards others. But the roots of this behaviour and when it develops are not well understood. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues at Yale University devised experiments to test whether babies aged six and 10 months were able to evaluate the behaviour of others. They used wooden toys of different shapes that were designed to appeal to babies. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Emotions
Link ID: 11001 - Posted: 11.23.2007

Toronto researchers are challenging a longstanding belief about the mind and, in the process, suggesting there is additional hope for people who have lost many of their personal memories after a devastating brain injury. The researchers have concluded that people with such memory loss can still read other people's feelings and intentions — they can still detect sarcasm or deception, for example — abilities necessary for social relationships. "It's encouraging to know that this ability may be more resilient and preserved in us than was first thought," neuropsychologist Shayna Rosenbaum of the Baycrest Centre's Rotman Research Institute said in a release Thursday. The scientists, from the Baycrest institute and York University, tested the assumption that humans rely on their personal recollections, called episodic memory, to make sense of other people's behaviour. This "theory of mind" is widely accepted in scientific circles. In the experiment, two individuals, known as K.C. and M.L., had lost their personal memories in motorcycle and cycling accidents. But when tested on detecting empathy, deception and sarcasm in others, they did as well as 14 healthy subjects. "We found that if you're trying to put yourself mentally in someone else's shoes, you don't need to put yourself in your own shoes first," Rosenbaum said. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 11000 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roger Highfield Can we measure creativity? One leading scientist, Professor Semir Zeki of University College London, certainly thinks so. And he's been given more than £1 million to prove it. Prof Zeki feels this area has been sorely neglected by neurobiologists. But now the Wellcome Trust, the country's biggest medical research charity, which recently opened Wellcome Collection, a £30 million cultural venue dedicated to medicine, life and art, is backing his research. With his colleague, Prof Ray Dolan, Prof Zeki will use the funding to establish a programme of research into "neuroaesthetics", turning a scientific spotlight on questions that writers, artists and philosophers have debated for millennia. This isn't as strange as it sounds: artists are, after all, closet neuroscientists who unconsciously understand what titillates the brain. Their ability to abstract the essentials of an image and discard the redundant information mirrors what the brain has evolved to do over millions of years. Brain cells that combine visual depth clues, such as texture and shading, with form and perspective, were unwittingly exploited by Paul Cézanne to summon form out of texture. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 10999 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Coco Ballantyne Let us give thanks on Thanksgiving for its cornucopia of foods: mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, creamed corn, cranberry sauce and, of course, turkey, among other delights. Every fourth Thursday of November, friends and family in the U.S. travel thousands of miles to gather and gorge in a celebration tracing back to 1621 when Plymouth Pilgrims and Native Americans spent three days breaking bread in gratitude for the year's plentiful harvest. Those early revelers were probably knocked out by their marathon feast, and most people today are familiar with the post-Thanksgiving food coma. But often the blame falls on the bird. Turkey allegedly causes drowsiness because it is packed with a nutrient called tryptophan. Tryptophan is one of 20 naturally occurring amino acids—the building blocks of proteins. Because the body is unable to manufacture tryptophan on its own, it must be obtained from food protein. Turkey is a great source of this essential acid, but it is not unique: many meats and other protein products pack comparable amounts. Tryptophan is used by the human body to make serotonin, a neurotransmitter. It has a somnolent effect on fruit flies, whose sleep is most likely equivalent to our slow-wave (non-REM) sleep, says neuroscientist Amita Sehgal of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Other studies show that one function of serotonin is the promotion of slow-wave sleep in nonhuman mammals, she adds, and it may do the same for humans. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Obesity
Link ID: 10998 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - A leafy suburb near Toronto seems an unlikely place to find one of the world's most famous amnesiacs. But Kent Cochrane, a man who could be described as a prisoner of the present, is indeed famous. Known as K.C. in the world of neuroscience and its medical literature, Cochrane, 56, is much like the lead character in the 2000 movie "Memento." A motorcycle accident he had when he was 30 left him with profound brain damage, in the process destroying his episodic memory. Cochrane can't recall events of his pre-accident days. He can't form memories of his current life. He can't picture the future. He lives in the now, and recently started to use a palm pilot to remind himself when to break for lunch from his part-time job at a local library and when to stop restacking books to catch his ride home. Without the device, Cochrane admits, he would get hungry but wouldn't remember to eat. "I wouldn't know what time to go for lunch," he says in an interview. Cochrane's misfortune has proved to be a boon for science, giving researchers who study the brain a unique living laboratory. From the beginning his parents, Irving and Ruth Cochrane, have understood the importance of what their son can teach scientists. © 2007 The Canadian Press.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 10997 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - Government scientists are investigating whether a Pfizer Inc. drug used to help smokers quit cigarettes also increases suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said it has received reports of mood disorders and erratic behavior among patients taking Chantix. The drug won regulatory approval last year to aid adults trying to quit smoking and sales totaled $101 million. FDA said it is still gathering information about the drug, but advised doctors to closely monitor patients taking Chantix for behavior changes. The agency said the changes have often been reported within days or weeks of people first taking the drug. Pfizer said Tuesday it added information about the reports to the product’s label, but stressed “there is no scientific evidence establishing a causal relationship between Chantix and these events.” Pfizer said in a statement there were no suicides in a 5,000-patient study of the drug. FDA said it is investigating at least one incident of a patient who died while reportedly taking the drug. © 2007 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10996 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Attractiveness is hereditary in the insect world, new findings from the United Kingdom suggest. In research published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology, a team of scientists from the University of Exeter found that attractive fruitfly fathers had attractive sons. The study did not look at particular attractive characteristics, but rather attractiveness to females as a whole. "That attractive males father attractive sons is assumed by many sexual selection models," the report said, citing benefits to females through their offspring and manipulation of females by sexy males, "but in general, there is a lack of evidence for this fundamental genetic association." The researchers searched for the hereditary sexy link by studying fruitfly Drosophila simulans and measuring the amount of time it took the flies, and then in turn their offspring, to mate. Mating time is a judge of attractiveness, the researchers explained in their study, because female fruitflies can thwart male sexual efforts by walking away, ignoring them and barring them access by refusing to open their vaginal plates. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 10995 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It takes a lot to convince Bill Klein of something so contrary to what he believed. For 30 years the Northwestern University neuroscientist, like many of his colleagues, did not believe that Alzheimer's disease had anything to do with diabetes. "I told students who were saying that there might be a connection between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease that it just wasn't the case," recalls Klein. But a collaboration with his colleague, Wei-Qin Zhao, showing that the brains of Alzheimer's patients are insulin resistant, began to change his mind. Zhao "is one of the leaders in showing that insulin receptors in the brain are really important in learning and memory," says Klein. In normal brains, brain cells process insulin, allowing memories to form. Klein explains that in people with Alzheimer's disease "what's happening is insulin is there but it's not effective — the receptors have become insensitive." That's similar to type 2 diabetes, "where insulin is being made at least at the beginning but the body doesn't respond well to it and that's throughout the body," explains Klein. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Obesity
Link ID: 10994 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The brains of migraine sufferers are thicker in an area that helps process sensory information, new research from a team of Massachusetts-based scientists suggests. The study, to be published in the Nov. 20 issue of the journal Neurology, measured the thickness of the somatosensory cortex — the part of the brain responsible for processing information related to touch such as temperature and pain — and found the area to be 21 per cent thicker on average in brains affected by migraines. Previous research on the SSC has found that it becomes thinner in neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. It thickens with motor training and learning. The research team measured the thickness of the SSC in 24 migraine patients, half of whom experienced auras — such as flickering lights, loss of vision or numbness — and compared the results with 12 subjects of the same sex and age who did not suffer from migraines. "Migraineurs had on average thicker SSCs than the control group," the study said, with the most significant changes measured in the area of the SSC that processes information for the head and face. Additionally, the study said that patients who experienced migraines without auras showed thickening in a larger area of the cortex. "Repeated migraine attacks may lead to, or be the result of, these structural changes in the brain," study author Dr. Nouchine Hadjkhani said in a release. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 10993 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An experimental form of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease has been shown to produce promising results. US scientists treated 12 patients with a virus genetically modified to carry a human gene which dampens down the nerve cells over-excited by Parkinson's. Now brain scans have revealed significant improvements - which were still present a year later. The study, led by the University of New York, features in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. However, the work is still at an early stage. The main aim was to test whether the therapy was safe. Scientists delivered the gene only to one side of the brain - that which controls movement on the side of the body most affected by Parkinson's - to reduce the potential risk. It makes an inhibitory chemical called GABA that turns down the activity in a key part of the pathway which controls movement. The US team tested the impact of the therapy by using a form of brain imaging known as positron emission tomography (PET) to track changes in the brain. They focused on two discrete brain networks - one that regulates movement, and another that affects thinking processes. Only the motor networks were altered by the therapy - but this was all the researchers had hoped for. The scans showed that the motor network on the untreated side of the body got worse, and that on the treated side got better. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 10992 - Posted: 11.20.2007

While eating less, purging and exercising to stay slim are still largely the preoccupations of teenage girls, teenage boys are increasingly following suit, a sweeping new U.S. study has found. Researchers found that between 1995 and 2005, 54 per cent of girls in their study reported they dieted, while 10 per cent said they used diet products, eight per cent admitted to purging, 67 per cent exercised, and 43 per cent exercised vigorously to lose weight. And among male teenagers, the researchers found that the prevalence of weight-control behaviours rose. Over the same time period, 24 per cent of boys overall reported that they dieted — with the prevalence rising almost every year in the 10-year study period. The researchers, at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., studied data from 1995 to 2005 gleaned by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via a biennial survey of high-school students in grades nine to 12. The data were self-reported, with students categorizing themselves as "white," "black" or "Hispanic" in questionnaires. The findings were published Oct. 29 ahead of print in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 10991 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeanna Bryner The secret to why male organisms evolve faster than their female counterparts comes down to this: Males are simple creatures. In nearly all species, males seem to ramp up glitzier garbs, more graceful dance moves and more melodic warbles in a never-ending vie to woo the best mates. Called sexual selection, the result is typically a showy male and a plain-Jane female. Evolution speeds along in the males compared to females. The idea that males evolve more quickly than females has been around since 19th century biologist Charles Darwin observed the majesty of a peacock’s tail feather in comparison with those of the drab peahen. How and why males exist in evolutionary overdrive despite carrying essentially the same genes as females has long puzzled scientists. New research on fruit flies, detailed online last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds males have fewer genetic obstacles to prevent them from responding quickly to selection pressures in their environments. "It’s because males are simpler," said lead author Marta Wayne, a zoologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The mode of inheritance in males involves simpler genetic architecture that does not include as many interactions between genes as could be involved in female inheritance." © 2007 Microsof

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 10990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY There is one undeniable fact about chronic pain: More often than not, it is untreated or undertreated. In a survey last year by the American Pain Society, only 55 percent of all patients with noncancer-related pain and fewer than 40 percent with severe pain said their pain was under control. But it does not have to be this way. There are myriad treatments — drugs, devices and alternative techniques — that can greatly ease persistent pain, if not eliminate it. Chronic pain is second only to respiratory infections as a reason patients seek medical care. Yet because physicians often do not take a patient’s pain seriously or treat it adequately, nearly half of chronic-pain patients have changed doctors at least once, and more than a quarter have changed doctors at least three times. In an ideal world, every such patient would be treated by a pain specialist familiar with the techniques for alleviating pain. But “very few patients with chronic disabling pain have access to a pain specialist,” a team of experts wrote in a supplement to Practical Pain Management in September. As a result, most patients have to rely on primary care physicians for pain treatment, obliging them to learn as much as they can about treatment approaches and to persist in their search for relief. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 10989 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carey Goldberg Cut off from their usual social group, the three macaque monkeys fell into simian depression. They no longer took pleasure in anything. They lost status and did not seem to care. more stories like thisColumbia University researchers gave three other exiled monkeys the antidepressant Prozac, and they showed no signs of depression. Later examination showed that in a key area deep in the monkeys' brains - the seahorse-shaped hippocampus - myriad new cells had sprouted. Then the scientists treated four more monkeys with X-ray radiation that blocked the hippocampus from making new cells. When those monkeys were sent into depressing exile, Prozac couldn't help them. And their brains later showed no signs of new cells in the hippocampus. That preliminary study, presented earlier this month at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference, adds the latest scientific backing to a hot theory of depression that has been gaining momentum - and drawing debate - for several years. It goes like this: Depression, which affects at least 19 million Americans a year, can involve problems not only with chemical messengers such as serotonin, but with the very structure of the brain, with the neurons and their connections. © 2007 NY Times Co

Keyword: Depression; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 10988 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Christopher Shea Security screeners at airports might do a better job spotting weapons if they spent their downtime playing video games - specifically, wasting aliens in lurid first-person shooters like Halo 3. That's just one of the tentative findings emerging from psychologists trying boost the human ability to find threatening objects in X-rayed luggage. The subfield, once tiny and obscure, has bloomed in recent years, spawning competing theories and rival labs - and now provocative suggestions about how airport security screening might be improved. Though baggage screening might seem on the surface like a repetitive and uncomplicated job, it turns out to be devilishly hard. Even well-trained security officers have trouble spotting guns, knives, and plastic explosives amid the tsunami of hair dryers, socks, MP3 players, metal toys, and the occasional cured ham that flows by during a holiday week like this one. A government report issued last week noted that agents were able to sneak fake bombs past security at 19 airports by creating minor distractions, including carrying a roll of coins to set off a metal detector. And a Transportation Security Administration document obtained by USA Today revealed that when investigators placed simulated explosives into bags at Los Angeles International Airport last year, human screeners missed three-quarters of them. © 2007 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 10987 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Initial results from a London pilot scheme where addicts inject themselves with heroin in a clinic suggest it has reduced drug use and crime. Clinics in Brighton and Darlington also form part of the trial. The injecting clinics, intended for hardened heroin addicts for whom conventional treatment has failed, have operated for about two years. The scheme, which has so far cost £2.5m, is funded by both the Home Office and the Department of Health. During the trial, a third of addicts are using heroin substitute methadone orally and a third will inject methadone under supervision. The remaining third, observed by nurses, are injecting themselves with diamorphine - unadulterated heroin - imported from Switzerland and provided by the clinic. Some 150 users will take part in the trial overall. Final results will not be known for another year but, in London, doctors and nursing staff say drug use has fallen significantly. They also say the lives of those on the scheme have stabilised because they are not buying from street dealers and getting involved in crime. Trial leader Professor John Strang, of the National Addiction Centre, based at London's Institute of Psychiatry, told BBC News that about 40% of users had "quit their involvement with the street scene completely". "Of those who have continued, which obviously is a disappointment, it goes down from every day to about four days per month," he added. "Their crimes, for example, have gone from 40 a month to perhaps four crimes per month. The reduction in crime is not perfect but is a great deal better for them and crucially a great deal better for society." People on the trial also attend regular counselling sessions and regular appointments with their GP. BBC correspondent Danny Shaw said initial results suggested the experiment was having a profound effect on hardened heroin addicts. Many were leading much more stable lives and were enjoying better family relationships because they were no longer in and out of prison, our correspondent added. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10986 - Posted: 11.19.2007

By KATE ZERNIKE Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled — even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing — because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content. What culture tells us about love is generally young love. Songs and movies and literature show us the rapture and the betrayal, the breathlessness and the tears. The O’Connors’ story, reported by the couple’s son in an interview with a television station in Arizona, where Mr. O’Connor lives in an assisted-living center, opened a window onto what might be called, for comparison’s sake, old love. Of course, it illuminated the relationships that often develop among Alzheimer’s patients — new attachments, some call them — and how the desire for intimacy persists even when dementia steals so much else. But in the description of Justice O’Connor’s reaction, the story revealed a poignancy and a richness to love in the later years, providing a rare model at a time when people are living longer, and loving longer. “This is right up there in terms of the cutting-edge ethical and cultural issues of late life love,” said Thomas R. Cole, director of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities and the Human Spirit at the University of Texas, and author of a cultural history of aging. “We need moral exemplars, not to slavishly imitate, but to help us identify ways of being in love when you’re older.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10985 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JON MOOALLEM Pete Bils’s background is in sales — or, as he puts it, “retail concepts.” He joined Select Comfort 12 years ago to teach its salespeople how to better sell the company’s Sleep Number Bed. The Sleep Number Bed is an air-filled mattress. Each side can be inflated with a little remote control to the ideal level of firmness for the person sleeping on it — his or her “sleep number,” zero to 100 — thus accommodating a husband who prefers his side firm and a wife who likes hers softer. You may recognize the Sleep Number Bed from its television commercials featuring the original Bionic Woman, Lindsay Wagner. Or you may have seen Bils himself explicating its many features and benefits in the loneliest hours of the night on the QVC shopping network. Off-camera, Bils spends much of his time reading scientific research. He mingles at medical conferences and is chairman of the company’s “Sleep Advisory Board,” a consortium of doctors. He “sleep tinkers,” coordinating pilot studies in sleep labs to understand how to build the mattress of the future. His goal at Select Comfort is to educate Americans about the science and benefits of healthful sleep, and this, plus his title — senior director of sleep innovation and clinical research — makes him seem deliberately more man-of-science than mattress-salesman. The distinction is less clear-cut when it comes to the man himself. “How’d you sleep last night?” Bils asked, strolling into a conference room to meet me at the company’s headquarters outside Minneapolis one morning last summer. He blared it, the way certain men blare, “Darn glad to meet you.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 10984 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT Deborah Kattler Kupetz is a Los Angeles businesswoman and mother of three who tries to watch her weight. That’s why she recently bought two lifelike plastic models of human body fat from a medical-supply company, a one-pound blob and a five-pound blob, and put them on display in her kitchen. By doing so, Kattler Kupetz wouldn’t seem to have much in common with Han Xin, a legendary Chinese general who lived more than 2,000 years ago. But she does. Upon entering one battle, Han assembled his soldiers with their backs to a river so that retreat was not an option. With no choice but to attack the enemy head-on, Han’s men did just that. This is what economists call a commitment device — a means with which to lock yourself into a course of action that you might not otherwise choose but that produces a desired result. While not as severe as Han’s strategy, Kattler Kupetz’s purchase of those fat blobs was a commitment device, too: every mealtime, they force her to envision what a few extra pounds of fat looks like. It is hard to think of anyone who employs commitment devices as avidly as the overweight American. Perhaps you once bought a yearlong gym membership or had a three-month supply of healthful meals delivered to your doorstep. Maybe you joined friends in a group diet or even taped your refrigerator shut. The popular new weight-loss pill Alli, which partly blocks the body’s absorption of fat, is a commitment device with real consequences: a person who takes Alli and then eats too much fatty food may experience a bout of oily diarrhea. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10983 - Posted: 06.24.2010