The helpless behavior that is commonly linked to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is preceded by stress-related losses of synapses—microscopic connections between brain cells—in the brain’s hippocampal region, researchers at Yale School of Medicine report in Biological Psychiatry.
The team used a six-day treatment with the antidepressant desipramine to reverse helpless behavior and restore hippocampal synapses in rats.
Economics is always called the dismal science, because it has science pretensions yet never makes accurate predictions. The outlook, according to economists, is always rather bleak.
But given the current state of the economy, economists are downright ecstatic, because they can be relevant again. And, in this case, it turns out they are a lot more optimistic than unemployed people are about the future.
You know when economists are cheery things must be pretty bad.
The hot buzz word in the health care reform sector is "comparative effectivness research," and the lay press is picking up on the partisan rumblings in Washington over this provision in the recent stimulus legislation. But what is CE research, and why should we care about the minutiae involved in the bickering of a bunch of Washington politicians?
In fact, we should care very much, as it could change the way physicians practice medicine and consumers use health care.
It’s been a while since Popeye taught us to eat our spinach; vegetables are due for a makeover. “Whatever sparks their imagination seems to spark their appetite,” says Cornell researcher Colin Payne of a new study led by Brian Wansink of
Cornell’s Food and Branding lab. This research shows that children eat significantly more vegetables when their food has been excitingly renamed.
If you are a side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana), then you have an orange, a yellow or a blue throat (easily determined by looking in mirror). If your throat is orange, then you are a big, bad machine and will easily kick the ass of anyone with a blue throat and steal his lady lizards. Ah yeah.
If your throat is blue, you are a wuss but not a complete wuss, and can still defend your women against the über-wussy yellow-throats.
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have gained new insights about the atmosphere of Pluto - (it's a dwarf now, get over it.)
What stands out? Large amounts of methane in the atmosphere and it's hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, though -180 degrees Celsius is still not the place for your interplanetary tropical vacation. These properties of Pluto's atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface.
Astronomers using a telescope aboard the NASA Swift Satellite have captured information from the early stages of a gamma ray burst - the most violent and luminous explosions occurring in the Universe since the Big Bang.
Swift is able to both locate and point at gamma ray bursts (GRBs) far quicker than any other telescope, so by using its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) the astronomers were able to obtain an ultraviolet spectrum of a GRB just 251 seconds after its onset - the earliest ever captured. Further use of the instrument in this way will allow them to calculate the distance and brightness of GRBs within a few hundred seconds of their initial outburst, and gather new information about the causes of bursts and the galaxies they originate from.
When Alan Pradel of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris CAT scanned a 300-million-year-old fossilized iniopterygian from Kansas, he and his colleagues saw a symmetrical blob nestled within the braincase.
This turned out to be the oldest brain found in fossil form, a wholly unexpected and rare discovery.
A female moth selects a mate based on the scent of his pheromones. An analysis of the pheromones used by the European Corn Borer (ECB, Ostrinia nubilalis) shows that females can discern a male's ancestry, age and possibly reproductive fitness from the chemical cocktail he exudes.
Jean-Marc Lassance and Christer Löfstedt from Lund University, Sweden, studied the influence of pheromones on mating preferences and carried out an analysis of the composition of the scent and genetic makeup of the animals involved. In addition, they compared the odor bouquet used by males with the scent used by females to attract potential mates.
If you're about to invest in a lot of DVDs for your new baby, here's a way to save some money; they won't help. Of course, there is some correlation/causation data to classical music but it's correlation/causation data because parents who listen to classical music and buy it for their kids tend to be better educated and care about their kids' education, which is reflected in more ways than just music.
