 10 February 2012
Cancer drug reverses Alzheimer's
In a discovery the researchers describe as "unprecedented," a cancer drug already approved by the FDA has been shown to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer's disease...
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9 February 2012
Milky Way's black hole in asteroid feeding frenzy
The X-ray flares that are observed on a daily basis from the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may represent the demise of asteroids plunging into the singularity, according to an analysis of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory...
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8 February 2012
Stimulants' ADHD calming mechanism revealed
The counterintuitive calming effect of amphetamines was first observed in a group of hyperactive children more than 70 years ago, but the actual physiological mechanism at work has remained a mystery until now...
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7 February 2012
Disease breathalyzer more sensitive than blood tests
Using what the developers call a "metabolic breathalyzer," diseases such as diabetes, cancer and infections could be detected much earlier than is currently possible with blood tests...
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6 February 2012
Missing tree rings invalidate climate reconstructions
Penn State researchers have called into question the common practice of using tree rings to reconstruct past climate events, showing that tree rings are sometimes completely absent for very cold years...
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3 February 2012
Gender behaviors directly manipulated
Uncovering the individual genes that are directly influenced by testosterone and estrogen has allowed scientists to manipulate individual behaviors in mice, such as sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young...
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2 February 2012
Wireless highway charging proposed for electric cars
An innovative wireless system that charges electric cars while they are on the road could also be used to control driverless electric vehicles...
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1 February 2012
Brain waves reveal mind's internal voice
Eavesdropping on the brain's internal monologs or communicating with locked-in patients may one day be a reality, as scientists learn how to decode the brain's electrical activity into audio signals. The technique reads electrical activity in a region of the human auditory system and then reconstructs the words... |
31 January 2012
Size matters: evolutionary changes in body size measured
For the first time, scientists have measured how quickly large-scale evolutionary changes in body size occur. Intriguingly, while it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant, shrinkage is a much more rapid process...
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30 January 2012
Ankle gets top rating for scratching pleasure
American itch boffins have been studying which parts of the body produce the most pleasure when scratched. Their analysis of itch relief at different body sites and related pleasurability reveals the ankle to be a scratch-pleasure hotpspot...
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26 January 2012
Magic mushrooms get MRI treatment
Brain scans have revealed that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, makes users' memories more vivid by suppressing activity in certain areas of the brain...
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25 January 2012
Racehorse "speed gene" traced to 18th century British mare
Irish researchers writing in the journal Nature Communications say that the original "speed gene" variant entered the equine Thoroughbred line from a single British mare about 300 years ago...
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