Press monitoring
Why aren't we smarter already? Evolutionary limits on cognition
8.12.2011 | Press monitoring
We put a lot of energy into improving our memory, intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. But maybe smarter isn’t really all that better. A new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, warns that there are...
How fruit flies can teach us about curing chronic pain and halting mosquito-borne diseases
7.12.2011 | Press monitoring
Studies of a protein that fruit flies use to sense heat and chemicals may someday provide solutions to human pain and the control of disease-spreading mosquitoes. In the current issue of Nature, biologist Paul Garrity of the National Center for Behavioral Genomics at Brandeis University and his team, spearheaded by KyeongJin Kang and Vince...
Breakthrough in the production of flood-tolerant crops
5.12.2011 | Press monitoring
As countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and parts of the United States and United Kingdom have fallen victim to catastrophic flooding in recent years, tolerance of crops to partial or complete submergence is a key target for global food security. Starved of oxygen, crops cannot survive a flood for long periods of time, leading to...
Super athletic mice are fit because their muscles burn more sugar
2.12.2011 | Press monitoring
Muscle performance and fitness are partly determined by how well your muscle cells use sugar as a fuel source. In turn, exercising improves the muscle's ability to take up sugars from the bloodstream and burn them for energy. On the flip side, conditions that reduce physical activity -- such as obesity or chronic disease -- reduce the muscle's...
E. coli bacteria engineered to eat switchgrass and make transportation fuels
1.12.2011 | Press monitoring
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into all three of those transportation fuels. What's more, the microbes are able to do this without any help from enzyme...
Breakthrough: 'Global warming gene'
30.11.2011 | Press monitoring
Scientists at the University of Bristol, along with their colleagues in Minnesota and at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, have recently published exciting new research in the journal PNAS, which increases our knowledge about the way in which rising temperatures affect plant growth. Just a small a change in temperature (from 20 C - 28 C) is...
Research sheds new light on body parts’ sensitivity to environmental changes
29.11.2011 | Press monitoring
Research by a team of Michigan State University scientists has shed new light on why some body parts are more sensitive to environmental change than others, work that could someday lead to better ways of treating a variety of diseases, including Type-2 diabetes. The research, led by assistant zoology professor Alexander Shingleton, is detailed...
Scientists Turn On Fountain of Youth in Yeast
28.11.2011 | Press monitoring
Collaborations between Johns Hopkins and National Taiwan University researchers have successfully manipulated the life span of common, single-celled yeast organisms by figuring out how to remove and restore protein functions related to yeast aging. A chemical variation of a "fuel-gauge" enzyme that senses energy in yeast acts like a life span...
Targeting Bacterial Gas Defenses Allow for Increased Efficacy of Numerous Antibiotics
25.11.2011 | Press monitoring
Although scientists have known for centuries that many bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (H2S) it was thought to be simply a toxic by-product of cellular activity. Now, researchers at NYU School of Medicine have discovered H2S in fact plays a major role in protecting bacteria from the effects of numerous different antibiotics. This information...
Older Men With Higher Testosterone Levels Lose Less Muscle Mass as They Age
24.11.2011 | Press monitoring
A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that higher levels of testosterone were associated with reduced loss of lean muscle mass in older men, especially in those who were losing weight. In these men, higher testosterone levels were also associated with less...
