Machado Joseph disease (MJD) is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with deposits of an aberrant form of the protein ataxin-3 in the brain. The disease is also fatal and the most common hereditary motor neurodegenerative disease in many countries. Despite this, not much is known about MJD including the neurological basis of some of its symptoms, which cannot be linked to the brain damage found in patients.

But now, researchers in Portugal and France using a new animal model of the disease were able to show, for the first time, that MJD also affects the striatum, a brain area associated with movement and balance control.

These new findings, just published as advance online publication in the journal Human Molecular Genetics, finally clarify the cause of previously unexplained symptoms, such as muscle twisting and abrupt dance-like movements of the limbs. The research helps to understand better a still incurable pathology while also providing a new animal model to study the disease as well as potential treatments.

Humans communicate with machines every day and work is always being done to make interfaces more intuitive, but purely in regard to mechanical aspects.

There's no question that the machines are in control - you do it in a way they understand or you are stuck. Moore's Law has been in effect for processors and raw horsepower but interface advancements and understanding are still trapped in the 1960s.

The Humaine project wants to change that by bringing together specialists and scholars from very different disciplines to create the building blocks and tools needed to give machines so-called ‘soft’ skills, like understanding emotions.

New geological evidence radiometric dating indicates the Grand Canyon may be so old that dinosaurs once lumbered along its rim, pushing back its assumed origins by 40 million to 50 million years.

The researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the California Institute of Technology gathered evidence from rocks in the canyon and on surrounding plateaus that were deposited near sea level several hundred million years ago before the region uplifted and eroded to form the canyon.

"As rocks moved to the surface in the Grand Canyon region, they cooled off," said CU-Boulder geological sciences Assistant Professor Rebecca Flowers. "The cooling history of the rocks allowed us to reconstruct the ancient topography, telling us the Grand Canyon has an older prehistory than many had thought."

New research shows that even affluent college students who don't need resources will still attempt to trade sexual currency for provisions, said Daniel Kruger, research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

The exchange of resources for sex, referred to by scientists as 'nuptial gifts', has occurred throughout history in many species, including humans, Kruger said. The male of the species offers protection and resources to the female and offspring in exchange for reproductive rights.

Female penguins mate with males who bring them pebbles to build egg nests. Hummingbirds mate to gain access to the most productive flowers guarded by larger males. In humans, an arranged marriage might be considered a contract to trade resources, he said.

Discrimination against overweight people is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. The study also says that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight discrimination in the workplace and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity is common.

The study documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 25- to 74-years-old. The data was obtained from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States.

Married men do less of it than live-in boyfriends but they do twice as much as they did 20 years ago and now it's linked to mental health. What is this magical creation?

Housework.

Not just housework, but really any 20 minutes of physical activity, including the housework we all have to do anyway, is enough to boost mental health, reveals a large study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

There’s a strange wave phenomenon that’s plagued rocket scientists for years, a lurking threat with the power to destroy an engine at almost any time. For decades, scientists have had a limited understanding of how or why it happens because they could not replicate or investigate the problem under controlled laboratory conditions.

Scientists generally believe that these powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the combustion process, were the cause of rocket failures in several U.S. and Russian rockets. Scientists have also observed these mysterious oscillations in other propulsion and power-generating systems such as missiles and gas turbines.

If the aging process can’t be stopped, it can at least be predicted, say researchers from Tel Aviv University.

They have developed a new biological marker that represents the age of a body’s bones. It reveals that the speed of physical aging is strongly influenced by genetics.

Christened the osseographic score (OSS), this new marker can be used by doctors as a scientific tool for predicting a person’s general functioning and lifespan, says Tel Aviv University scientist Dr. Leonid Kalichman, an instructor at The Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions. He is a co-author of the study published in Biogerontology and the American Journal of Human Biology (2007), which was conducted in partnership with Dr. Ida Malkin and Prof. Eugene Kobyliansky, both from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.

Chemists are describing development of a “revolutionary” process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen, which could be used to cheaply and efficiently power vehicles equipped with hydrogen fuel cells without producing any pollutants.

The process involves combining plant sugars, water, and a cocktail of powerful enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide under mild reaction conditions. They say it is the world’s most efficient method for producing hydrogen.

The new system helps solve the three major technical barriers to the so-called “hydrogen economy,” researchers said. Those roadblocks involve how to produce low-cost sustainable hydrogen, how to store hydrogen, and how to distribute it efficiently, the researchers say.

A study published in the April 2008 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition(1) suggests an association between high egg consumption and all-cause mortality and the response from the American Egg Board is below.

The researchers, Djoussé and Gaziano, analyzed data from the Physicians Health Study I which followed male physicians over a 20 year period. As an epidemiological study, it does not show cause-and-effect and has other inherent weaknesses, the Egg Board response says.

The researchers did not control for a variety of factors including intake of other foods and nutrients including saturated fat. In addition, the high egg consumers exhibited other lifestyle and dietary patterns associated with increased health risks.