Significant findings have emerged from the California Teachers Study (CTS) that suggest long-term recreational physical activity plays a protective role against invasive and in situ breast cancer.
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Deep red tomatoes get their rich color from lycopene, a disease-fighting antioxidant. A new study, however, suggests that a special variety of orange-colored tomatoes provide a different form of lycopene, one that our bodies may more readily use. Researchers found that eating spaghetti covered in sauce made from these orange tomatoes, called Tangerine tomatoes, caused a noticeable boost in this form of lycopene in participants’ blood.
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Psychological depression appears to contribute to worse medical outcomes for patients with heart failure, ranking it in importance with such risk factors as high cholesterol, hypertension, and even the ability of the heart to pump blood throughout the body.
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Giving choline to infants who were exposed in the womb to alcohol may mitigate some of the resulting problems. Prenatal alcohol exposure affects physical and central nervous system development, putting children at risk for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders that at their worst include full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome. These disorders can mean a lifetime of potentially serious problems with learning, attention, motor skills and social behavior.
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Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle — the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick — is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.
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Oregon Health & Science University research shows how calcium regulates the recharging of high-frequency auditory nerve cells after they’ve fired a signal burst. The study indicates calcium ions play a greater role in keeping in check the brain’s most powerful circuits, such as those used for processing sound signals, than previously thought. A better understanding of that role could someday help prevent the death of neurons behind such neurological disorders as stroke and multiple sclerosis.
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Researchers have long said they won’t be able to understand the brain until they can put together a “wiring diagram” — a map of how billions of neurons are interconnected. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have jumped what many believe to be a major hurdle to preparing that chart: Identifying all of the connections to a single neuron.
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Researchers at Montana State University are trying to determine if a chemical treatment effective at controlling the African blue louse on cattle will also work on sheep. The African blue louse has been found on sheep in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah, as well as Montana. The louse can stain wool, reduce wool quality and cause ewes to have anemia.
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Wheat producers in northwest Montana experienced an unprecedented insect outbreak during the 2006 growing season of the orange wheat blossom midge. Infested spring wheat fields that normally yield 80 to 90 bushels per acre produced less than 2 bushels. A conservative estimate put the economic loss at over $1.5 million in Flathead County, Montana.
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Form does follow function, as far as visual cortex neurons tasked with perceiving action are concerned. Far from being the static nerve cells researchers believed them to be, capable of performing only a single function, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found these neurons rapidly shift back and forth between two ways of collecting information about moving objects.
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