Timing of chemical signal critical for normal emotional development
A signaling protein suspected of malfunctioning in anxiety and mood disorders plays a key role in the development of emotional behavior, report researchers funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Mice lacking it in frontal brain circuits during an early critical perio...Stanford sleep experts treat medical condition behind violent 'sleep sex'
.... Over the past 10 years, researchers have suspected that violent behavior during sleep is a sleep-related disorder, but they didn't have the facts to prove it. Although these cases sound psychological in origin, Guilleminault believes the underlying problem relates to sleep. Rather than quietly passin...UCSF prion finding in mice leads team to urge similar study in cattle
...ious skeletal muscle groups of slaughtered animals suspected of having BSE, using highly sensitive and quantita...uscle biopsy might even be used to diagnose humans suspected of having any of the various forms of prion diseases, he says. As brain biopsies are a high-risk pro...Dartmouth biologists say algae might be missing mercury link in aquatic food chain
...he paper, and a graduate student at Dartmouth. "We suspected there was an algal link, but few laboratories had the technology to make such precise measurements before. With our trace-metal techniques, weve achieved mercury detection levels that are 50 times more sensitive than any other method." The technology...New technique monitors chromium contamination in groundwater
...y used in electroplating, hexavalent chromium is a suspected carcinogen and a common contaminant in groundwater. Now, scientists have discovered a simple, but effective, method for monitoring this pollutant. Under certain chemical conditions, hexavalent chromium will convert to trivalent chromium a less toxi...Medicines, caffeine and antibacterial soap among contaminants found in American streams
...tities used, toxicity, potential hormone activity, suspected persistence in the environment and the availability of reference standards and an analytical method, says USGS research hydrologist Dana Kolpin, Ph.D., who headed the national study. In addition to medications, caffeine and cotinine, a nicotine break...SV40 found in human lymphoma samples
...can be infected by SV40, an infection that was not suspected in the past," she said. SV40 usually infects rhesus monkeys. However, in the 1950s and early 1960s, some batches of polio vaccine became accidentally infected with the virus. The vaccine was then given to millions of people worldwide. Because some pa...Single cell type seems to control internal clock and pupil of eye
...ith another, easy-to-detect protein. Melanopsin is suspected to be light-sensitive but not involved in forming visual images. The scientists discovered that only a tiny fraction of nerve cells in the retina make melanopsin. These melanopsin-expressing nerve cells, which reach deep into the brain to areas that ...Genetics, stress and environmental cues influence relapse drinking
...humans, where recovering alcoholics are exposed to suspected 'triggers' while under supportive care. The idea behind this type of treatment is that the cues - such as those associated with a bar - will, eventually, not have the same impact on the individual." Regardless what direction future treatments may t...Fly cells on the move may reveal clues to cancer metastases
...der cells to be their vehicle. Montell and Silver suspected the polar cells might send an initial, short-range biochemical signal, in the form of a molecule, to nearby cells. However, standard gene knockouts, in which a particular gene of interest is eliminated, were unlikely to reveal these answers because t...Scientists find alcohol, drugs boost endorphins in key forebrain region
...region is the nucleus accumbens. We and others had suspected this response, but it had never been proven until now because methods were not available to test it. "In this latest work, Dr. Olive adapted a technique for quantifying endorphins and used it to measure how one of the brains natural painkillers respo......, increasing its presence in cells, the scientists suspected interferon-gamma might be involved in damaging tissue. Unexpectedly, mice without normal interferon-gamma function had more heart damage, and mice treated with extra interferon-gamma had less damage than normal mice. Extra interferon-gamma prevent...Microbe genes help scientists reconstruct animal origins
...-celled microbes known as choanoflagellates. Long suspected to be close relatives of animals, choanoflagellates have a lineage that dates to more than 600 million years ago, the time when animals - multicellular organisms with distinct body plans and systems of organs -are believed to have evolved in the anci...Primitive microbe offers model for evolution of animals
...t filter food from the water. Scientists have long suspected that choanoflagellates might represent modern examples of what the ancestors of multicellular animals, or metazoans, looked like. And the circumstantial evidence supporting that notion was compelling -- choanoflagellates are nearly identical to cell......ntist, 1 March 1997, p 30). Biologists have long suspected that noise pollution is disrupting the hearing and behaviour of these inhabitants of the deep, compelling them to beach themselves. Now researchers believe that it could cause haemorrhaging and decompression sickness. When whales and dolphins dive,...UNC, Duke researchers discover cause of mysterious pancreatitis in some people
...ular Genetics Laboratory. This work proves what we suspected from a preliminary study we did in 1997, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that involved three patients with double mutations, Noone said. It shows you can have pancreatitis from these mutations without having any of the severe lung d......so known. The functions of some microbe genes are suspected based on similarities to known genes, but a large number of genes are unique to one organism and have unknown functions. The Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center will be a centralized training and resource facility that supports research on t...Canadian researchers find cancer suspect from grilled meat in human milk
...ociated with breast cancer. PhIP is one of the few suspected mammary carcinogens found in breast milk that is almost exclusively associated with grilled meat, says Josephy. It is also the first member of its chemical class, a group of highly mutagenic compounds known as heterocyclic amines (HCAs), to be found ...Compounds in garlic fight malaria and cancer
...ibacterial properties. For years scientists have suspected that one of these compounds in garlic may be helpful against malaria and have proven it in animal models. Crandall and his colleagues, though, were more interested in understanding how these disulfides worked against infection. They tested 11 d......"The answers are no, no, and no," says Linden. "We suspected that the time of the ion channels' opening didn't change, but the rate of ion flow or the efficiency of glutamate binding were reasonable possibilities. The experiments, however, show that none of these three are present in Purkinje cells during lon...