Without sleep, the emotional centers of the brain dramatically overreact to negative experiences, reveals a new brain imaging study in Current Biology.   The reason for that hyperactive emotional response in sleep-deprived people stems from a shutdown of the prefrontal lobe—a region that normally keeps emotions under control.

The new study from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Berkeley is the first to explain, at the neural level, what seems to be a universal phenomenon: that sleep loss leads to emotionally irrational behavior, according to the researchers. The findings might also offer some insight into the clinical connection between sleep disruptions and psychiatric disorders.

Height may point to a biological basis for pedophilia, according to new research released by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The study found that pedophilic males were shorter on average than males without a sexual attraction to children.

The study, published in Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, suggests that pedophiles may have been exposed to pre-birth conditions that affected their physical development. The researchers observed this height difference by analyzing the files of over 1,000 men who were assessed for pedophilia or other sexual disorders between 1995 and 2006 at the Kurt Freund Laboratory in Toronto, Canada.

A difference in average height is a trait found in other illnesses with biological links.

Philosophers and scientists have long been interested in how the mind processes the inevitability of death, both cognitively and emotionally. One would expect, for example, that reminders of our mortality - like the sudden death of a loved one - would throw us into a state of disabling fear of the unknown. But that doesn't happen. If the prospect of death is so incomprehensible, why are we not trembling in a constant state of terror over this fact?

Psychologists have some ideas about how we cope with existential dread. One emerging idea--"terror management theory" --holds that the brain is hard-wired to keep us from being paralyzed by fear.

Researchers have found that vaccination against influenza strains seems to be more effective in a semi-urban population than in a rural population of schoolchildren in Gabon, Africa, according to an article in the Dec. 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. The study suggests that infection with parasites and/or poor nutrition may have an impact on the effectiveness of influenza vaccine.

Lead author E. van Riet (Department of Parasitology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands) and a team of researchers analyzed antibody and cellular responses to influenza A and B strains in 33 children from a semi-urban school in Lambaréné in Gabon, Africa, and 22 children from a rural area nearby.

Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine in collaboration with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have created a computer program called Pathogen Simulation (PathSim) to study the progression of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in humans. David Thorley-Lawson, PhD, professor of pathology at Tufts University School of Medicine, is combining PathSim, laboratory methods, and clinical studies to provide a new and powerful approach to understanding EBV and ultimately designing anti-viral therapies.

“PathSim is an agent-based computer program. The agents are the virus itself, and the T and B cells of the patient’s immune system,” explains Thorley-Lawson. Using PathSim, Thorley-Lawson can manipulate these agents to simulate EBV infection and persistence in humans.

MIT researchers have created a new structured gel that can rapidly change color in response to a variety of stimuli, including temperature, pressure, salt concentration and humidity.

Among other applications, the structured gel could be used as a fast and inexpensive chemical sensor, says Edwin Thomas, MIT's Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. One place where such an environmental sensor could be useful is a food processing plant, where the sensor could indicate whether food that must remain dry has been overly exposed to humidity.

A critical component of the structured gel is a material that expands or contracts when exposed to certain stimuli.

With an eye on curing diabetes, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have successfully transplanted embryonic pig pancreatic cells destined to produce insulin into diabetic macaque monkeys – all without the need for risky immune suppression drugs that prevent rejection.

The transplanted cells, known as primordia, are in the earliest stages of developing into pancreatic tissues. Within several weeks of the transplants, the cells became engrafted, or established, within the three rhesus macaque monkeys that received them. The cells also released pig insulin in response to rising blood glucose levels, as would be expected in healthy animals and humans.

Sifting through the massive backlog of microbial genome sequences from the public databases the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute identified genes that kill the bacteria employed in the sequencing process and throw a microbial wrench in the works. Their observations also offer a possible strategy for the discovery of new antibiotics.

Which goes to show; data that goes unnoticed, despite its widespread availability, can reveal extraordinary insights to the discerning eye.

In nature, promiscuous microbes share genetic information so readily that using genes to infer their species position on the evolutionary tree of life was thought to be futile.

A clinical trial evaluating a brain cancer vaccine in patients with newly diagnosed brain cancer has begun at NYU Medical Center. The study will evaluate the addition of the vaccine following standard therapy with surgery and chemotherapy in patients with glioblastoma multiforme, a deadly form of brain cancer.

The vaccine, called DCVax-Brain, incorporates proteins found in patients’ tumors and is designed to attack cancer cells containing these proteins. The study underway at NYU Medical Center is an expansion of an earlier phase I trial of the vaccine. The vaccine is made by the Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc., based in Bothell, Washington.

“We are really excited about the promise of this vaccine,” said Patrick J.

An ever-changing U.S. consumer who enjoys the convenience of ready-to-eat produce and seasonable fruits during the dead of winter has brought new challenges to food import safety, experts said Oct. 18.

With U.S. food imports set to top more than $2 trillion this year and expected to triple by 2015, a panel on food safety commissioned by President Bush met at Texas A&M University to discuss ways to strengthen the national and global import infrastructure.

Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said the nation’s consumer is one who “expects to eat strawberries in February.”

That has led to more change and complexity among how food is processed and delivered into the U.S.