Strategy-based cognitive training has the potential to enhance cognitive performance and spill over to real-life benefit according to a data-driven perspective article by the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. The research-based perspective highlights cognitive, neural and real-life changes measured in randomized clinical trials that compared a gist-reasoning strategy-training program to memory training in populations ranging from teenagers to healthy older adults, individuals with brain injury to those at-risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Respiratory failure caused by chronic lung infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria is a common cause of death in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that is common in individuals of European descent. A study published on April 24th in PLOS Pathogens demonstrates that an antimicrobial peptide produced by human immune cells can promote mutations in the bacterium that make it more lethal.

Boston, MA — People who increased the amount of coffee they drank each day by more than one cup over a four-year period had a 11% lower risk for type 2 diabetes than those who made no changes to their coffee consumption, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. In addition, the study found that those who decreased their coffee consumption by more than a cup per day increased their type 2 diabetes risk by 17%.

A decade-long effort by members of the International Glossina Genome Initiative (IGGI) has produced the first complete genome sequence of the tsetse fly, Glossina morsitans. The blood-sucking insect is the sole transmitter of sleeping sickness, a potentially deadly disease endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The vast store of genetic data will help researchers develop new ways to prevent the disease and provide insights into the tsetse fly's unique biology.

The tsetse fly is quite unique in the insect world: it feeds exclusively on the blood of humans and animals, gives birth to live young and provides nutrition to its young by lactation.

Suicide is a general risk for people with psychosis. According to the Journal of Psychiatry, 20 percent to 40 percent of those diagnosed with psychosis attempt suicide, and up to 10 percent succeed.

And teens with psychotic symptoms are nearly 70 times more likely to attempt suicide than adolescents in the general population, according to a 2013 study in JAMA Psychiatry.

But what contributes to such high numbers?

Jane Timmons-Mitchell, PhD, from Case Western Reserve University's social work school, and Tatiana Falcone, MD, from the Cleveland Clinic, reviewed studies of teenagers with psychosis to better understand why they are more at risk for suicide than other groups similarly diagnosed.

While our chromosomes are relatively stable within our lifetimes, the genetic material found in our mitochondria is highly variable across individuals and may impact upon human health, say researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital.

Genomes are changing, they say, not just from generation to generation, but even and in fact within our individual cells. The researchers are the first to identify the extent to which the editing processes of RNA code can vary across a large number of individuals.