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"Wie einfühlsam ein Mensch reagiert, wird offenbar unter anderem von einem einzigen DNS-Baustein beeinflusst. Dieser winzige genetische Unterschied wirkt sich auf das Sozialverhalten aus und ist daher für Mitmenschen schnell zu erkennen. Dies legt eine Studie von Aleksandr Kogan und Kollegen von der Universität in Toronto nahe (PNAS, online). Die genetischen Unterschiede betreffen jenes Gen und das dazugehörige Rezeptormolekül, welches das Neurohormon Oxytocin bindet... Wie eine derart kleine DNS-Änderung zu solch offensichtlichen Verhaltensunterschieden führen kann, ist unklar. Zudem sei das Gen des Oxytocin-Rezeptors nur 'einer der Fäden, die an einer Person ziehen und sie freundlicher und hilfsbereiter machen', so Kogan"

Apply the electrodes... Externally modulating the brain's activity can boost its performance. The easiest way to manipulate the brain is through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which involves applying electrodes directly to the head to influence neuron activity with an electric current. Roi Cohen Kadosh's team at the University of Oxford showed last year that targeting tDCS at the brain's right parietal lobe can boost a person's arithmetic ability - the effects were still apparent six months after the tDCS session (newscientist.com/article/dn19679). More recently, Richard Chi and Allan Snyder at the University of Sydney, Australia, demonstrated that tDCS can improve a person's insight. The pair applied tDCS to volunteers' anterior frontal lobes - regions known to play a role in how we perceive the world - and found the participants were three times as likely as normal to complete a problem-solving task (newscientist.com/article/dn20080). Brain stimulation can also boost a person's learning abilities, according to Agnes Flöel's team at the University of Münster in Germany. Twenty minutes of tDCS to a part of the brain called the left perisylvian area was enough to speed up and improve language learning in a group of 19 volunteers (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.20098). Using the same technique to stimulate the brain's motor cortex, meanwhile, can enhance a person's ability to learn a movement-based skill (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0805413106).

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Consortium is an international collaboration of research groups funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The goal of ENCODE is to build a comprehensive parts list of functional elements in the human genome, including elements that act at the protein and RNA levels, and regulatory elements that control cells and circumstances in which a gene is active.

"Computerhacker kennt jeder. Jetzt kommen die Biohacker. Die experimentieren in ihren DIY-Laboren mit Bakterien, Enzymen und sogar mit Genen. Ein Besuch im neuen Biohacker-Space in Graz"

Hunting for the elusive neutrino typically involves treks to Antarctica, the Mediterranean, and Lake Baikal. But a growing number of projects are looking for the most energetic neutrinos by aiming radio telescopes at the moon.

People considered likeable by those that met them in real life have been found to make a similar impression on people who view their social networking

A major extinction event is under way - but predicting which species will survive could be harder than we thought. That's the conclusion of one of the most accurate analyses ever of diversity in the marine animal fossil record.

Salinomycin can target and kill the chemotherapy-resistant cells in lab cultures and mice