Health News

Testosterone in male songbirds may enhance desire to sing but not song quality

Date: Jan-04-2014
For the male canary, the ability to sing a pitch-perfect song is key to wooing female canaries. As the seasons change, so does the song quality and frequency. The hormone testosterone plays a role in this changing song behavior.Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have found that introducing testosterone in select areas of a male canary's brain can affect its ability to successfully attract and mate with a female through birdsong.

Mapping emotions in the body yields consistent global results

Date: Jan-04-2014
Emotions manifest themselves as sensations in the body. While anxiety is often accompanied by a tight feeling in the chest, love may elicit a warm feeling throughout the body. But now, a new study from researchers in Finland reveals that perceptions of these sensations are consistently similar around the world, suggesting an underlying biological basis.The researchers, from Aalto University, published the results of their study in the journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.They note that emotions adjust not only our mental state, but also our bodily sensations.

How alcohol leads to birth defects - clues from embryo heart images

Date: Jan-04-2014
Scientists have found a way to image the very early development of the embryonic heart in research that may help them to explain how drinking alcohol in pregnancy can lead to heart defects at the baby's birth.The researchers, based in Cleveland, OH, knew that "even one episode of heavy drinking" could lead to fetal alcohol syndrome, which is a collection of congenital (present at birth) defects, including problems with the heart.

Alcohol, tobacco and drug use higher in mentally ill, study shows

Date: Jan-04-2014
New research from the Washington University School of Medicine has revealed that compared with the general population, alcohol, tobacco and drug use is much higher among individuals who have psychotic disorders. This is according to a study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.The research team, including first author Dr. Sarah M. Hartz, says their research is the largest ever study that assesses substance use among populations with serious psychiatric illness.To reach their findings, the investigators analyzed the smoking, drinking and drug use of 20,000 participants.

Differences in brain structure in patients with distinct sites of chronic pain

Date: Jan-04-2014
Accumulating evidence indicates that chronic pain of different etiologies is often associated with distinct gray matter volume reductions in multiple brain regions associated with acute pain processing, and gray matter atrophy critically affects the perception and modulation of chronic pain. Dr. Cuiping Mao and co-workers from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China investigated changes in gray matter volume in chronic back pain patients having different sites of pain using voxel-based morphometry.

Mass spectrometer detection of 10 protein spots after acute high-altitude HBI

Date: Jan-04-2014
Hypobaric hypoxia can cause severe brain damage and mitochondrial dysfunction, and is involved in hypoxic brain injury.Dr. Jianyu Li and colleagues from Logistics College of Chinese People's Armed Police Forces evaluated the degree of brain damage with different exposure times to hypoxia and further investigate the differential expression of cerebral mitochondrial proteins by comparative proteomic analysis, in a broader attempt to search for treatment targets of hypobaric hypoxia brain injury. Furthermore, ten protein spots were selected and identified by mass spectrometry.

Biologists discover solution to problem limiting development of human stem cell therapies

Date: Jan-04-2014
Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered an effective strategy that could prevent the human immune system from rejecting the grafts derived from human embryonic stem cells, a major problem now limiting the development of human stem cell therapies. Their discovery may also provide scientists with a better understanding of how tumors evade the human immune system when they spread throughout the body.

Research into fruit fly cells could lead to cancer insights

Date: Jan-04-2014
New research by scientists at the University of Exeter has shown that cells demonstrate remarkable flexibility and versatility when it comes to how they divide - a finding with potential links to the underlying causes of many cancers.The study, published in Developmental Cell, describes a number of routes to the formation of a microtubule spindle - the tracks along which DNA moves when a cell divides in order to make two genetically identical cells.In order to understand the phenomenon, the authors, including Biosciences researchers Dr.

'Quit smoking to cut risk of impaired vision'

Date: Jan-03-2014
In a large study of Swedish men, further evidence has emerged of the smoking link to cataract development in the eye, with addiction to 15 cigarettes a day raising the risk of needing a cataract operation by 42%, compared with people who have never smoked.Introducing their study, the authors point out that smoking was already an established risk factor for cataracts, "which is the leading cause of visual impairment in the world, responsible for more than 50% of world blindness.

Stem cell transplantation: new approach 'protects from rejection'

Date: Jan-03-2014
Many patients who undergo stem cell transplantations run the risk that their immune system may reject the donor cells. But new research from the University of California-San Diego has detailed a new approach that may help tackle this problem. This is according to a study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.The research team, led by Yang Xu, says their findings may also provide researchers with a better understanding as to how tumors avert the immune system as they spread throughout the human body.