Bipolar Disorder (BPD or manic-depressive illness) is one of the most serious of all mental disorders, affecting millions of individuals worldwide. Affected individuals alternate between states of deep depression and mania. While depression is characterized by persistent and long-term sadness or despair, mania is a mental state characterized by great excitement, flight of ideas, a decreased need for sleep, and, sometimes, uncontrollable behavior, hallucinations, or delusions.

BPD likely arises from the complex interaction of multiple genes and environmental factors. Unlike some brain diseases, no single gene has been implicated in BPD.

Cocaine addicts often suffer a downward emotional spiral that is a key to their craving and chronic relapse. While researchers have developed animal models of the reward of cocaine, they have not been able to model this emotional impact until now.

Regina Carelli and colleagues report experiments with rats in which they have mimicked the negative affect of cocaine addiction and even how it drives greater cocaine use. They said their animal model could enable better understanding of the emotional motivations of cocaine addiction and how to ameliorate them.

Photosynthesis by plants, algae, and some bacteria is crucial to life on Earth. It results in food from sunlight and in its process organisms release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution say a new discovery puts a dramatic twist on what we know - namely that certain marine microorganisms have evolved a way to break the established rules of photosynthesis.

The studies, in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta and Limnology and Oceanography, suggest these marine microorganisms get a significant proportion of their energy without a net release of oxygen or uptake of carbon dioxide.

Macrophages, derived from Greek and meaning “eating cells”, are biological cells that spring from white blood cells to destroy foreign or dying cells. They are basically cellular “policemen” that can differentiate between good and bad cells.

But some cancer cells over-express the molecular protein that macrophages recognize as friendly — they create a fake ID — which allows the cancer to avoid being perceived as foreign by macrophages. In addition, the molecules involved in the recognition mechanism appear somewhat variable from person to person, with possible links to success or failure in transplantation of stem cells.

If participants in the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer study have their way, a telescope on the moon will allow astronomers to see 'back in time' and study the young Universe during the first 100 million years of its existence.

Although the night sky is filled with stars, these stars did not form instantaneously after the Big Bang. There was an interval, now called the “Dark Ages,” in which the Universe was unlit by any star.

The most abundant element in the Universe, and the raw material from which stars, planets, and people are formed, is hydrogen. Fortunately, the hydrogen atom can produce a signal in the radio-wavelength part of the spectrum, at 21 cm; a wavelength far longer than what the human eye can detect.

Scientists have discovered epigenetic changes (i.e. chemical changes to a gene that do not alter the DNA sequence) in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This is the first epigenome-wide investigation in psychiatric research, and this groundbreaking data may be a significant step on the journey to fully understanding major psychosis.

Dr. Arturas Petronis, senior scientist in the Krembil Family Epigenetic Laboratory at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and his team studied 12,000 locations on the genome using an epigenomic profiling technology developed at CAMH. Approximately one in every two hundred of these genes showed an epigenetic difference in the brains of psychiatric patients.

Significantly, these changes were noted on genes involved in neurotransmission (the exchange of chemical messages within the brain), brain development, and other processes linked to disease origins.