Online Card Game Taps Community Health Data to Educate and Empower Residents

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

BOSTON–(Business Wire)–
A Web-based game that allows players to compare their community`s health to
other cities is among a select few projects to be showcased at the upcoming
Community Health Data Forum on June 2, sponsored by the National Academy of
Sciences` Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.

“Our goal was to create a fun way to interact with data and, along the way,
learn something about yourself, your friends and your community that might
motivate you to act,” said Chris Cartter, general manager at MeYou Health, a
Boston, Mass.-based subsidiary of Healthways and the creator of the game.

MeYou Health is dedicated to helping people pursue, achieve and maintain a
healthy life by helping them engage their social networks for support and
introducing them to small actions they can accomplish every day through fun,
interactive Web and mobile applications.

The June 2 forum is part of the Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI), a
public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize community
health data to develop applications that help raise awareness of community
health performance and spark action to improve health.

The card game, Community ClashTM, developed by MeYou Health in under six weeks,
is a mash-up of the traditional community metrics being promoted by the CHDI,
Twitter conversations, the Healthways Well-Being AssessmentSM and the
Gallup-Healthways Well-Being IndexTM (WBI). Updated with 1,000 new surveys each
night, the WBI is a real-time view of the public`s well-being.

“Gaming provides an interactive framework to process information that can be
applied to almost anything,” said Trapper Markelz. As head of product at MeYou
Health, Markelz led the development of Community Clash. A beta version of the
game will launch on June 2 at www.communityclash.com.

Additional Detail About the Game

To begin playing Community Clash, a player selects two locations to compare in a
head-to-head contest. Four random cards are dealt per location, each with a data
point representing community indicators like obesity, smoking, diabetes and
homicides, plus a fifth card with the WBI score, for each location.

A player can exchange up to two of the assigned cards before play begins by
reviewing a list of metrics and deciding which ones might improve their odds of
winning in the clash. They also have the option of generating their own
well-being score to use instead of their location`s WBI score by completing a
scientifically validated assessment.

“You’re taking a chance that your well-being score is better than that of your
community’s,” explains Markelz. A player who gets their personal well-being
score can share their “score card” with their friend`s networks, inviting social
comparisons and further game play.

To understand the data in human terms, players can drill down through a
visualization of Twitter conversations filtered by the topics of their playing
cards. MeYou Health`s database of 100 million tweets is refreshed daily with
millions of new conversations providing real-time insight into topics related to
the cards.

About Healthways and MeYou Health

Healthways (Nasdaq: HWAY) is the leading provider of specialized comprehensive
solutions to help millions of people maintain or improve their health and
well-being and, as a result, reduce overall costs. Healthways’ solutions are
designed to help healthy individuals stay healthy, mitigate and slow the
progression to disease associated with family or lifestyle risk factors and
promote the best possible health for those already affected by disease. Their
proven, evidence-based programs provide highly specific and personalized
interventions for each individual in a population, irrespective of age or health
status, and are delivered to consumers by phone, mail, internet and face-to-face
interactions, both domestically and internationally. Healthways also provides a
national complementary and alternative Health Provider Network and a national
Fitness Center Network, offering convenient access to individuals who seek
health services outside of, and in conjunction with, the traditional healthcare
system. For more information, please visit www.healthways.com.

MeYou Health, founded in 2009 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Healthways, Inc.,
is a well-being company dedicated to engaging, educating and empowering people
to pursue, achieve and maintain a healthy life. MeYou Health`s products help
people effectively engage their social networks for support, while creating fun
Web and mobile experiences that encourage people to become mindful of the small
actions they can accomplish every day. For more information, visit
www.meyouhealth.com.

MeYou Health
Alicia Benjamin, 866-885-2822, ext. 909
press@meyouhealth.com
www.meyouhealth.com

Copyright Business Wire 2010

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Waking up ”sleeping” eggs may boost fertility

May 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, May 18 (ANI): Scientists in the US say that aging women or women who froze ovaries prior to cancer treatments may have a chance to have babies based on a novel method that can bring dormant reproductive cells into an active state.

Female mammals are born with millions of dormant eggs, but only a small fraction ever mature into cells with reproductive potential.

One factor keeping cells in this immature state is the PTEN gene, which suppresses a signalling pathway involved in cell growth.

As part of the study, Aaron Hsueh at Stanford University Medical School in California and his colleagues exposed mouse ovaries to a PTEN inhibitor and a molecule that stimulates the signalling pathway that PTEN inhibits, reports New Scientist.

Control ovaries remained untreated. The ovaries were then transplanted back into the mice, and they received a hormone to stimulate egg development.

Two weeks later, the treated ovaries contained two to six times as many mature follicles – which have the potential to release mature eggs – as the untreated ones.

Twenty healthy mouse pups were born after fertilised eggs from the treated ovaries were implanted into surrogate mothers.

Hsueh”s team has used a similar approach to stimulate fragments of human ovarian tissue. When these were implanted into mice, four times as many mature follicles were produced as in controls. But for ethical reasons, the eggs could not be fertilised.

The study has been published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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The good life begins at 50

May 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, May 18 (ANI): Life may begin at 40, but the fun really starts at 50, that’s the conclusion of a new study.

According to the study, carried out at Stony Brook University, in New York, falling levels of stress and worry, a longer life and better health mean life begins at 50.

Instead of taking a backseat, older adults now pursue fulfillment in a more active and vigorous middle age, reports The Daily Express.

In the study, boffins found that older folks benefited from a “positivity effect” meaning they recalled fewer bad memories, had more emotional control and an ability to see things positively.

The US study of 340,000 people was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study found variables like having children or no job had no effect on age-related patterns of well being. (ANI)

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Newborns learn while asleep

May 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 18 (ANI): Sleeping newborn infants are better learners than previously thought, according to a University of Florida researcher.

The boffin’s study could lead to identifying those at risk for developmental disorders such as autism and dyslexia.

“We found a basic form of learning in sleeping newborns, a type of learning that may not be seen in sleeping adults,” said Dana Byrd, a research affiliate in psychology at UF who collaborated with a team of scientists.

The findings give valuable information about how it is that newborns are able to learn so quickly from the world, when they sleep for 16 to 18 hours a day, Byrd said. “Sleeping newborns are better learners, better ‘data sponges’ than we knew,” she said.

In order to understand how newborns learn while in their most frequent state, Byrd and her colleagues tested the learning abilities of sleeping newborns by repeating tones that were followed by a gentle puff of air to the eyelids. After about 20 minutes, 24 of the 26 babies squeezed their eyelids together when the tone was sounded without the puff of air.

The research team’s paper, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the results of their experiment with the 1- or 2-day-old infants, comparing them with a control group using EEG and video recordings. The brain waves of the 24 infants were found to change, providing a neural measurement of memory updating.

“While past studies find this type of learning can occur in infants who are awake, this is the first study to document it in their most frequent state, while they are asleep,” Byrd said. “Since newborns sleep so much of the time, it is important that they not only take in information but use the information in such a way to respond appropriately.”

Not only did the newborns show they can learn to give this reflex in response to the simple tone, but they gave the response at the right time, she said.

Learned eyelid movement reflects the normal functioning of the circuitry in the cerebellum, a neural structure at the base of the brain.

This study’s method potentially offers a unique non-invasive tool for early identification of infants with atypical cerebellar structure, who are potentially at risk for a range of developmental disorders, including autism and dyslexia, she said.

The capacity of infants to learn during sleep contrasts with some researchers’ stance that learning new material does not take place in sleeping adults, Byrd said.

The immature nature of sleep patterns in infants could help explain why, she said.

“Newborn infants’ sleep patterns are quite different than those of older children or adults in that they show more active sleep where heart and breathing rates are very changeable,” she said. “It may be this sleep state is more amenable to experiencing the world in a way that facilitates learning.” (ANI)

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Witness brain scan doesn’t help

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, May 12 (ANI): Monitoring brain activity of witnesses reveals no more than what they say they remember, a study has shown.

The study by Jesse Rissman and his team at Stanford University in California comes amid controversy over whether to admit functional MRI scans as evidence in US courts.

As part of their research, the team asked 16 volunteers to view 200 mugshots, reports New Scientist.

An hour later, they were again shown pictures of faces, some of which they had seen before and others that were new.

The researchers recorded fMRI scans of the volunteers” brains as they reported which faces they recognised.

While the brain scans matched the volunteers” decisions on whether the faces were familiar, they could not predict if the recollection was accurate.

The team also don”t know how easily a witness could cheat the system: remembering a recent event or fabricating a lie may look the same to the scanner.

The study has been published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Chemicals from seaweeds damage coral on contact

May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 11 (ANI): Researchers have offered first proof that several common species of seaweeds in both the Pacific and Caribbean Oceans can kill corals upon contact using chemical means.

While competition between seaweed and coral is just one of many factors affecting the decline of coral reefs worldwide, this chemical threat may provide a serious setback to efforts aimed at repopulating damaged reefs. Seaweeds are normally kept in check by herbivorous fish, but in many areas overfishing has reduced the populations of these plant-consumers, allowing seaweeds to overpopulate coral reefs.

A study documenting the chemical effects of seaweeds on corals was scheduled to be published May 10, 2010 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Between 40 and 70 percent of the seaweeds we studied killed corals,” said Mark Hay, a professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. “We don”t know how significant this is compared to other problems affecting coral, but we know this is a growing problem. For reefs that have been battered by human use or overfishing, the presence of seaweeds may prevent natural recovery from happening at all.”

Coral reefs are declining worldwide, and scientists studying the problem had suspected that proliferation of seaweed was part of the cause – perhaps by crowding out the coral or by damaging it physically.

Using racks of coral being transplanted as part of repopulation efforts, Hay and graduate student Douglas Rasher compared the fate of corals from two different species when they were placed next to different types of seaweed common around Fijian reefs in the Pacific – and Panamanian reefs in Caribbean. They planted the seaweeds next to coral being transplanted – and also placed plastic plants next to some of the coral to simulate the effects of shading and mechanical damage. Other coral in the racks had neither seaweeds nor plastic plants near them.

The researchers revisited the coral two days, 10 days and 20 days later. In as little as two days, corals in contact with some seaweed species bleached and died in areas of direct contact. In other cases, the effects took a full 20 days to appear – or for some seaweed species, no damaging effects were noted during the 20-day period. Ultimately, as much as 70 percent of the seaweed species studied turned out to have harmful effects – but only when they were in direct contact with the coral.

To confirm that chemical factors were responsible, Hay and Rasher extracted chemicals from the seaweeds – and from only the surfaces of the seaweeds. They then applied both types of chemicals to corals by placing the chemicals into gel matrix bound to a strip of window screen, forming something similar to a gauze bandage and applying that directly to the corals. To a control group of corals, they applied the gel and screen without the seaweed chemicals.

The effects confirmed that chemicals from both the surface of certain seaweeds and extracts from those entire plants killed corals.

“In all cases where the coral had been harmed, the chemistry appeared to be responsible for it,” said Hay. “The evolutionary reasons why the seaweeds have these compounds are not known. It may be that these compounds protect the seaweeds against microbial infection, or that they help compete with other seaweeds. But it”s clear now that they also harm the corals, either by killing them or suppressing their growth.” (ANI)

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Climate Change: 255 scientists urge people to take constructive action

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): Following the recent spate of attacks on the authenticity of the dangers of climate-change, a collective of 255 scientists, members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel Prize laureates, have defended the objectivity behind the issue.

The statement signed by the 255 distinguished scientists says that the scientific research process confirms the conclusions about climate change.

It specifically reaffirms the “compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend,” and highlights that there is nothing identified in recent events that has changed the fundamental conclusions about climate change.

It also condemns the recent politically motivated attacks on climate scientists several of which are spurred by commercial interests and dogma rather than an earnest effort to provide an alternative theory.

According to the scientists, evidence shows that the planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, and that warming the planet causes complex climate changes that affect people and the environment.

They have also issued a warning for the populace to wake up to this inexorable reality, “Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively.”

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Ancient leaves shed light on future climate

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): Scientists say that fossil plant remains from millions of years ago might shed light on future climate changes caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide.

“Carbon isotopes are really important for understanding the carbon cycle of the past, and we care about the carbon cycle of the past because it gives us clues about future climate change,” say Aaron Diefendorf, graduate student in geosciences at Penn State.

The researchers say that clues about how the environment responded to global warming events millions of years ago can be found in carbon isotope ratios from ancient fossil leaves, sediments and pollen.

However, environmental conditions also impact leaf carbon isotope ratios, a complexity Diefendorf and Mueller resolved with their study.

The researchers suggest the environmental relationships highlighted in their study can be used to modify existing climate records to produce a more accurate, robust account of past atmospheric conditions and how it correlates with temperature change.

The study appeared in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Early UVA light exposure ‘doesn’t cause melanoma’

May 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 5 (ANI): Scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found that early life exposure to ultraviolet A light does not cause melanoma.

The researchers, therefore, concluded that UVA exposure is unlikely to have contributed to the rise in the incidence of melanoma over the past 30 years

UVA is a carcinogen responsible for squamous cell carcinomas that also causes premature aging of the skin and suppresses the immune system. It”s also possible, the authors note, that long-term chronic exposure to UVA can hasten the progression to malignancy of melanocytes in the skin that are already on the path to becoming melanoma.

Study’s lead author David Mitchell, professor in M. D. Anderson”s Department of Carcinogenesis located at its Science Park – Research Division in Smithville, Texas, and colleagues tested the effects of UVA and ultraviolet B (UVB) light exposure in melanoma-prone fish hybrids that develop the disease spontaneously 15-20 percent of the time without exposure to UV light.

The scientists exposed a hybrid form of the genus Xiphophorus, more commonly known as platyfishes and swordtails, to either UVA or UVB daily between their fifth and 10th day of life. The fish were then scored for melanoma 14 months after exposure.

“We found that UVB exposure induced melanoma in 43 percent of the 194 treated fish, a much higher rate than the 18.5 percent incidence in the control group that received no UV exposure,” Mitchell said.

This was expected because UVB exposure at an early age is a well-established cause of melanoma.

Only 12.4 percent of 282 fish exposed to UVA developed the disease, which is not statistically different from the control group.

The study has been reported in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Purple periwinkles may help fight inflammatory diseases

May 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 4 (ANI): Vinpocetine, a natural product derived from the periwinkle plant, can act as a novel anti-inflammatory agent that may one day be used for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, as well as other inflammatory conditions, say scientists.

In the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center were the first to find that vinpocetine acts as a potent anti-inflammatory agent when tested in a mouse model of lung inflammation, as well as several other types of human cells.

Results of the study show that vinpocetine greatly reduces inflammation, and, unlike steroids, does not cause severe side effects.

“What is extremely exciting and promising about these findings is vinpocetine”s excellent safety profile,” said Chen Yan, Ph.D., associate professor within the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Medical Center and a senior author of the study. “Previously, most drugs tested in this area have failed, not because of a lack of efficacy, but because of safety issues. We”re very encouraged by these results and believe vinpocetine has great potential for the treatment of COPD and other inflammatory diseases.”

Vinpocetine is a well-known natural product that was originally discovered nearly 30 years ago and is currently used as a dietary supplement for the prevention and treatment of cognitive disorders, such as stroke and memory loss, in Europe, Japan and China. (ANI)

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Our bodies make their own morphine

April 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 27 (ANI): Human bodies may possess the biochemical machinery to produce a small but steady amount of natural morphine, according to a new study.

In the study, it was shown that mice produce the “incredible painkiller”, and that humans and other mammals possess the same chemical road map for making it, said study co-author Meinhart Zenk, who studies plant-based pharmaceuticals at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

To come up with finding, boffins injected mice with an extra dose of a natural brain chemical called tetrahydropapaveroline (THP), which humans and mice are known to produce, reports The National Geographic News.

And then, by using a tool called a mass spectrometer to analyze the mouse urine, the team was able to tell that THP underwent chemical changes in the body that created morphine.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Boffins develop computational method to uncover gene regulation

April 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 24 (ANI): A new computational model to uncover gene regulation, the key to how our body develops – and how it can go wrong, has been developed by researchers.

The researchers, from The University of Manchester (UK), Aalto University (Finland) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg (Germany), say the new method identifies targets of regulator genes.

The human genome contains instructions for making all the cells in our body. An individual cell”s make up (e.g. muscle or blood) depends on how these instructions are read. This is controlled by gene regulatory mechanisms. Uncovering these mechanisms holds a key to greatly improving our understanding of biological systems.

One important regulatory mechanism is based on genes that actively promote or repress the activity of other genes. The new research addresses the problem of identifying the targets these regulator genes affect.

The new method, presented in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is based on careful modelling of time series measurements of gene activity. It combines a simple biochemical model of the cell with probabilistic modelling to deal with incomplete and uncertain measurements.

Dr Magnus Rattray, a senior researcher at Manchester’s Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: “Combining biochemical and probabilistic modelling techniques as done here holds great promise for the future. Many systems we are looking at now are too complex for purely physical models and connecting to experimental data in a principled manner is essential.”

Dr Antti Honkela, his colleague at Aalto University School of Science and Technology, added: “A major contribution of our work is to show how data-driven machine learning techniques can be used to uncover physical models of cell regulation. This demonstrates how data-driven modelling can clearly benefit from the incorporation of physical modelling ideas.” (ANI)

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30-million-years-old worms munched on whale bones

April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Palaeontologists have discovered the first fossil boreholes of the worm Osedax that consumes whale bones on the deep-sea floor.

The international team of scientists led by the paleontologist Steffen Kiel at the University of Kiel, Germany, concludes that ‘boneworms’ are at least 30 million years old.

Six years ago, Osedax was first described based on specimens living on a whale carcass in 2891 m depth off California. Since then, paleontologists have been searching for fossil evidence to pin down its geologic age.

Now, scientists have found 30-million-year-old whalebones with holes and excavations matching those of living Osedax in size and shape.

The evidence of the boreholes and cavities made by the living worms was provided by Greg Rouse (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), one of the original discoverers of Osedax.

To produce accurate images of the fossil boreholes, the bones were CT-scanned by the scientists. The fossil bones belong to ancestors of our modern baleen whales and their age was determined using so-called co-occurring index fossils.

“The age of our fossils coincides with the time when whales began to inhabit the open ocean,” said Steffen Kiel.

Only from the open ocean dead whales could sink to the deep-sea floor where they served as food for the boneworms.

“Food is extremely rare on the vast deep-sea floor and the concurrent appearance of these whales and Osedax shows that even hard whale bones were quickly utilized as food source,” said Steffen Kiel.

The ancient bones were found by the American fossil collector Jim Goedert.

The findings have been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. (ANI)

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Two key brain regions work in tandem like integrated network

April 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 20 (ANI): Two important areas in the central nervous system— basal ganglia and the cerebellum—are linked together to form an integrated functional network, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.

Each subcortical structure houses a unique learning mechanism.

It is believed that the basal ganglia circuits are involved in reward-driven learning and the gradual formation of habits.

On the other hand, cerebellar circuits are thought to contribute to more rapid and plastic learning in response to errors in performance.

“The basal ganglia and the cerebellum are two major subcortical structures that receive input from and send output to the cerebral cortex to influence movement and cognition,” explained senior author Dr. Peter L. Strick, professor of neurobiology and co-director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pitt School of Medicine.

“In the past, these two learning mechanisms were viewed as entirely separate, and we wondered how signals from the two were integrated. Using a unique method for revealing chains of synaptically linked neurons, we have demonstrated that the cerebellum and basal ganglia are actually interconnected and communicate with each other,” said Strick.

The finding not only has important implications for the normal control of movement and cognition, but it also helps to explain some puzzling findings from patients with basal ganglia disorders.

“Our findings provide a neural basis for these findings. In essence, the pathways that we have discovered may enable abnormal signals from the basal ganglia to disrupt cerebellar function. The alterations in cerebellar function are likely to contribute to the disabling symptoms of basal ganglia disorders. Thus, a new approach for treating these symptoms might be to attempt to normalize cerebellar activity,” said Strick.

The findings are available online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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New discovery could protect humans from influenza virus

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 31 (ANI): Scientists have identified an influenza detector gene that could potentially prevent the transmission of the virus to humans.

A University of Alberta-led research team has discovered the genetic detector that allows ducks to live, unharmed, as the host of influenza.

The duck”s virus detector gene, called retinoic acid inducible gene—I, or RIG-I, enables a duck”s immune system to contain the virus, which typically spreads from ducks to chickens, where it mutates and can evolve to be a human threat like the H5N1 influenza virus.

The first human H5N1 cases were in Hong Kong in 1997. Eighteen people with close contact to chickens became infected and six died.

The research by Katharine Magor, a U of A associate professor of biology, shows that chickens do not have a RIG-I gene.

A healthy chicken can die within 18 hours after infection, but researchers have successfully transferred the RIG-I gene from ducks to chicken cells.

The chicken”s defenses against influenza were augmented and RIG-I reduced viral replication by half.

One potential application of this research could affect the worldwide poultry industry by production of an influenza-resistant chicken created by transgenesis.

The study appears in the online, early edition of Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Why some people are more susceptible to stress than others

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 31 (ANI): Scientists have found new clues to why some people are more susceptible to stress than others.

In a study of mice, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center determined that weeks after experiencing a stressful event, animals that were more susceptible to stress exhibited enhanced neurogenesis – the birth of new nerve cells in the brain.

Specifically, the cells that these animals produced after a stressful event survived longer than new brain cells produced by mice that were more resilient.

In addition, when researchers prevented neurogenesis in both stress-susceptible and resilient mice, the animals previously susceptible to stress became more resilient.

“This work shows that there is a period of time during which it may be possible to alter memories relevant to a social situation by manipulating adult-generated nerve cells in the brain,” said Dr. Amelia Eisch, associate professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study.

“This could eventually lead to a better understanding of why, in humans, there is an enormous variety of responses to stressful situations,” Eisch added.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Power of plants harnessed to fight hemophilia

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 31 (ANI): Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida have modified plants to fight hemophilia, a disease linked with legends of European monarchs.

The standard treatment for the disease is infusion with an expensively produced protein that helps the blood to clot. But in some patients the immune system fights the therapy, and in a subset of those, it sets off an allergic reaction that can result in death.

Now boffins at the universities have come up with a way that potentially could help patients develop tolerance to the therapeutic protein before they are in need of treatment.

They genetically modified plants to encapsulate the tolerance-inducing protein within cell walls so that when ingested, it can travel unscathed through the stomach and be released into the small intestines where the immune system can act on it.

The low-cost plant-based system, now being tested in mice, eventually could help improve the lives of many people who have hemophilia and dramatically reduce related health-care costs. The approach also has the potential for use with other conditions such as food allergies and autoimmune diseases.

“We”re hoping that our research will, in the future, result in better and more cost-effective therapies,” said Roland Herzog, Ph.D., an associate professor of pediatrics, molecular genetics and microbiology in the UF College of Medicine and a member of the UF Genetics Institute, who was one of the study”s leaders.

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hemophilia is characterized by defects in the gene that produces a protein required for blood to clot. People with hemophilia can suffer from spontaneous internal bleeding or severe bleeding resulting from minor injuries. Males get the disease, which is linked to the X chromosome, while females are “carriers” who rarely exhibit symptoms. The two forms of the disease — hemophilia A and B — are associated with the absence of proteins called factor VIII and factor IX, respectively. (ANI)

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How the brain constructs morality

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 30 (ANI): MIT neuroscientists have influenced people”s moral judgments by disrupting specific brain region, a development that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions – an ability known as “theory of mind.”

Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people”s intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects” ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people”s intentions was impaired.

The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 29.

The study offers “striking evidence” that the right TPJ, located at the brain”s surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It”s also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT”s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

“You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” she says. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people”s moral judgments is really astonishing.”

To reach the conclusion, the researchers used a non-invasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells” ability to fire normally, but the effect is only temporary.

In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters” actions on a scale of 1 (absolutely forbidden) to 7 (absolutely permissible).

In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for someone to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even though it appears he intended to do harm.

In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible. Therefore, the researchers believe that TMS interfered with subjects” ability to interpret others” intentions, forcing them to rely more on outcome information to make their judgments. (ANI)

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How bats avoid collisions

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 30 (ANI): A study led by Brown University researchers has discovered how bats avoid collisions.

For the study, James Simmons, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University, and his colleagues at Brown and in Japan, conducted a series of innovative experiments designed to mimic a thick forest.

Their research has appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences early edition.

According to the researchers, echolocating bats minimize sound wave interference by tweaking the frequencies of the sounds they emit – their broadcasts – to detect and maneuver around obstacles.

They also found that bats make mental templates of each broadcast and the echo it creates, to differentiate one broadcast/echo set from another.

The research may lead to the design of better sonar and radar systems by capitalizing on the bats” natural ability to ferret out duplicative echoes in environments that otherwise could produce “phantom” objects.

The scientists created a 13-row long by 11-row wide U-shaped grid of ceiling-to-floor chain links to test big brown bats” ability to locate obstacles at various distances in their flight path and to make nearly instantaneous adjustments.

They used a miniature radio microphone created by their Japanese colleagues and attached it to the bats” heads to record their sounds (which are made in pairs).

Other microphones placed in the room recorded the echoes produced from the bats” broadcasts, giving the researchers a comprehensive, accurate recording of the bats” echo-processing methods.

The scientists also filmed the bats with high-resolution video cameras.

The team noticed almost immediately that the bats were confronted with overlapping echoes to their rapid firing of broadcasts. That could create confusion where obstacles were located and even produce objects that weren”t really there.

Mary Bates, a fourth-year graduate student at Brown and a contributing author on the paper, said: “When there are a lot of obstacles in the environment, a bat needs to emit sounds quickly.

“It can”t wait for another sound to return before updating its image” (of the scene in which it”s flying).

An echo from the bat”s first broadcast could masquerade as the echo from a subsequent broadcast.

The bat overcomes this potentially confusing cascade of signals by making a template, or mental fingerprint, of each broadcast and corresponding echo, the team learned. That way, the bat needs only to slightly alter the frequency of its broadcast to create a broadcast/echo template that doesn”t match the original.

The team found that bats change the frequency of their broadcasts by no more than 6 kilohertz. That”s a good thing, as bats” frequency range covers only roughly 20 to 100 kilohertz.

Simmons said: “They”ve evolved this, so they can fly in clutter.

“Otherwise, they”d bump into trees and branches.” (ANI)

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Potential new target for treating hepatitis C identified

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 30 (ANI): A team of researchers has discovered that binding of a potent inhibitor of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) to the genetic material of the virus causes a major conformational change that may adversely affect the ability of the virus to replicate.

This discovery, published in the March 29 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a potential new target for structure-based design of new hepatitis C treatments.

Currently, the most effective treatment for hepatitis C is an agent called pegylated interferon, which is often combined with an antiviral drug called ribavirin.

“The available therapies for hepatitis C infection have limited effectiveness, with less than a 50 percent response,” says Darrell R. Davis, Ph.D., the lead author and professor and interim chair of medicinal chemistry and professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah. “However, small molecules that inhibit viral replication have been reported and they represent potential opportunities for new, more effective HCV treatments.”

HCV is a member of the Flaviviridae family of viruses, which also includes the viruses that cause yellow fever and dengue. There are six major genotypes of HCV, which differ slightly in their genetic constitution and vary in their response to treatment. HCV has a single strand of ribonucleic acid (RNA) as its genetic material and the virus replicates by copying this RNA. Previous research has shown that the three-dimensional structure of HCV RNA appears to be crucial for initiating the viral replication process.

Davis and his colleagues, including scientists from Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc., in Carlsbad, Calif., studied a potent small-molecule HCV replication inhibitor called Isis-11 to understand how it inhibits viral replication. They discovered that Isis-11 binds to a region of the viral RNA that is common to all six genotypes of HCV, altering the structure in a way that likely prevents the synthesis of viral proteins. The Isis-11 inhibitor effectively eliminated a bent RNA conformation that other laboratories have shown is required for the proper function of the HCV genomic RNA.

“Binding of Isis-11 resulted in a major conformational change in a specific region of HCV RNA that is thought to be critical for viral replication,” says Davis. “This alteration in structure provides a possible mechanism for the antiviral activity of Isis-11 and other HCV replication inhibitors in that chemical class.” (ANI)

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