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grayton downing

BBC News - Korean cigarette firm pulls 'racist' monkey ads - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-asia-24638074

cigarette monkey ads language social media

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • South Korea's largest tobacco company has promised to change an advertising campaign after accusations of racism.
  • Posters promoting a new line of cigarettes featured pictures of monkeys dressed as news reporters, declaring "Africa is coming!"
  • "We are deeply offended by KT&G's shameless and insulting use of this mocking imagery," said the African Tobacco Control Alliance in a statement calling for the withdrawal of the ad campaign, saying it was "at a minimum culturally insensitive".
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  • "Mocking Africa to sell a product that causes death and disease is unacceptable, and we will not stand for the exploitation of Africa by tobacco companies."
  • She called the controversy "regrettable" and said the company wished to "dispel concerns of racism".
grayton downing

Inhibit Mitochondria to Live Longer? | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35673/title/Inhibit-Mitochondria-to-Live-Longer-/

scientist research mitochondria life-span

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  • Although previous work had indirectly suggested that changing mitochondrial function affected lifespan, “this is the first clear demonstration [that it] extends mouse lifespan,” Miller added.
  • well known that mitochondria are linked to health. Some evidence suggests that inhibiting mitochondrial function can be harmful—as in the case of diabetes or obesity—but earlier data from nematodes and fruit flies also suggest a link to lifespan increase. The latest findings are a step toward untangling one of the current debates in the field—whether inhibiting mitochondrial function is detrimental or beneficial,
  • The average lifespan of BXD mice range from 1 year to almost 2.5 years. The researchers were able to link 3 genes to longevity variability, including mitochondrial ribosomal protein S5 (Mrps5), which encodes a protein integral to mitochondrial protein synthesis. They found that BXD strains with 50 percent less Mrps5 expression lived about 250 days longer than BXD mice with more robust Mrps5 expression.
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  • researchers were also able to activate the mitochondrial UPR via pharmacological means. Dosing worms with the antibiotic doxycyline, which inhibits bacterial and mitochondrial protein translation, also activated the mitochondrial UPR and extended worm lifespans. Rapamycin, shown to enhance longevity in mice, also extended worm lifespan and induced mitonuclear protein imbalance and the mitochondrial UPR in mouse hepatocytes.
  • mitochondrial ribosomal proteins are not to be trifled with. “There are a number of well-defined severe disorders in humans, including neonatal lethality, due to defects in those exact proteins,”
  • is beginning to cast a wider net, looking to see whether mitonuclear protein imbalance could explain longevity induced by other means, such as caloric restriction. Auwerx hopes that the work will aid in designing a drug intervention “to pump up this response via pharmacological tools.”
  • he’s optimistic that his team has identified a “common thread” demonstrating that longevity is not affected so much by inhibiting or stimulating mitochondria, but how the organelles “deal with proteins.”
grayton downing

Epigenetics Play Cupid for Prairie Voles | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35826/title/Epigenetics-Play-Cupid-for-Prairie-Voles/

play cupid scientist research

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • It’s the first time anyone’s shown any epigenetic basis for partner preference,
  • Mohamed Kabbaj, a neuroscientist at Florida State University and an author of the paper, said that work in other species gave him clues that epigenetics could be important for social behavior. For instance, previous work suggests that modifications are involved in bonds between mothers and offspring in rats.
  • the researchers blocked vasopressin or oxytocin receptors in the animals, the TSA had no effect on pair bond formation, supporting the theory that oxytocin and vasopressin were mediating the effects of the epigenetic modification.
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  • The mating and cohabitation produced the exact same effects [as TSA],” said Bruce Cushing, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Akron who was not involved in the study. “That is really powerful.”
grayton downing

Bird Flu Mutation Risk | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35879/title/Bird-Flu-Mutation-Risk/

flu mutation science research knowledge

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • some strains of both viruses are just one mutation away from getting a better grip on the cells in our upper airways. If wild viruses accrue those mutations, they may find it far easier to spread from infected to uninfected people, increasing the risk of a pandemic.
  • “These viruses are rapidly evolving and our stockpiles of vaccine are largely based on outdated strains,” he said. “We hope that our discoveries will help us to stay ahead of the curve by ensuring that vaccines are stockpiled against strains that are closest to adapting to humans.”
  • rather than focusing on these previously identified mutations, the team took a new approach. They modeled the way HA interacts with different glycans, and identified four structural features that bestow the protein with a preference for human receptors over bird ones.
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  • they analyzed the diversity of existing H5N1 strains and found that many wild viruses are already tantalizingly close to becoming potentially contagious among humans.
  • we know very little about the actual receptors in human airways that are relevant for flu viruses.” Even the so-called “human” receptors can vary significantly, and it’s unclear which ones are found in different parts of the airways, or how common they are.
  • identified should be tested in ferret experiments to see if they genuinely are more efficient at spreading between mammals. However, given the controversy surrounding the development of potentially contagious flu strains, Fouchier wonders “whether we would be allowed to empirically test this newly acquired knowledge in animal models.”
grayton downing

Optogenetics and OCD | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35887/title/Optogenetics-and-OCD/

ocd scientist research

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • abnormal brain activity seen in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a likely cause of the condition, according to two papers published today (June 6) in Science. Both studies used optogenetic techniques, which allow specific brain cells to be turned on and off at the flick of a light switch, to link the abnormal brain activity to OCD behavior in mice.
  • relationship between [neural] circuit abnormalities and [OCD-like] behavior,
  • “so I’m very aware of how severe the illness is and how important it is for us to develop new and more effective treatments.” The problem is, she added, “we don’t have a very good understanding of the pathologic changes that lead to OCD.”
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  • Ahmari turned to mice and to optogenetics—whereby specific types of brain cells can be switched on and off in response to light. The cells of interest were engineered to express light-responsive ion channels, such that when the cells are exposed to light—by means of a fiber optic cable pointing a laser at the relevant brain region—the channels open, ions flood in, and nerve impulses fire.
  • But crucially, the teams had very slightly different targets in the striatum—the general ventral striatum in the case of Ahmari’s study and the specific fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons of the centromedial striatum in Graybiel’s study, suggesting that different neural circuits send inhibitory and stimulatory signals for certain OCD-like behaviors.
  • “they’ve been able to really delineate a pathway for compulsive behaviors in a more refined way than we’ve ever been able to do in humans, and that’s exciting because it points us in the direction of pathogenesis and pathophysiology of the disorder, but also . . . to new targets for potential intervention.”
grayton downing

NIH to Cut Back on Chimp Research | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36208/title/NIH-to-Cut-Back-on-Chimp-Research/

research science

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • announced plans this morning (June 26) to accept and implement changes to its chimpanzee research program
  • “This represents a significant, positive, albeit incremental step forward
  • “Americans have benefitted greatly from the chimpanzees’ service to biomedical research, but new scientific methods and technologies have rendered their use in research largely unnecessary,” said Collins in a statement. “After extensive consideration with the expert guidance of many, I am confident that greatly reducing their use in biomedical research is scientifically sound and the right thing to do.”
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  • establishing a review panel to consider the use of chimpanzees in future research that satisfies criteria laid by the IOM report, such as minimally invasive projects involving genomic and behavioral research; winding down research projects that do not meet IOM’s criteria; and providing ethologically appropriate housing facilities that attempt to mimic the animals’ natural settings.
  • Funds available to the NIH for retiring chimpanzees have been nearly depleted—only $800,000 of the $30 million allocated under the CHIMP Act of 2002 is still available. The agency will be seeking additional funds from Congress to implement its chimp retirement plan.
  • “It is crucial now to ensure that the release of hundreds of chimpanzees to sanctuary becomes a reality.”
grayton downing

Ancient Georgian Ancestors | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37913/title/Ancient-Georgian-Ancestors/

fossils science research knowledge

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • unearthed the first ever completely preserved skull of an adult hominin from the Paleolithic era—spanning approximately 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago.
  • l is clearly the cherry on the cake, however, because it is “spectacularly complete,” said White. “It’s an amazing skull,” added Robert Foley, a professor of human evolution at the University of Cambridge, who also was not involved in the work. “Just a fantastic specimen.”
  • Its matching cranium was discovered five years later. It was easy to tell the parts were from the same individual, however, because “the teeth match with each other,”
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  • features of the skull, it is thought to have been a male with large cheek bones, teeth, and jaws, but a small brain
  • newly described skull also expands the morphological variability of the specimens found at the Dmanisi site—some of which appear less primitive. Despite this variability, Zollikofer believes all the specimens are members of the same species. That would be “the most parsimonious explanation,”
  • He suggested that other hominin fossils previously classified as separate species—such as H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, and H. erectus—should be re-examined.
  • urge for a change in perspective, because what has happened in the last ten years is that people tried to divide—they tried to show species diversity—and what we try to show now is diversity, but within one single evolving species,” Zollikofer said.
grayton downing

The Art of Science | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36123/title/The-Art-of-Science/

science art

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • According to the exhibition’s organizers, art and science both “involve the pursuit of those moments of discovery when what is perceived suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts.”
  • the natural beauty of C. elegans suddenly sent a scientist in search of a camera—in this case the camera in her phone
  • “I held it right up to the microscope eyepiece and took a photo,” she says. “A quick Instagram filter later, and I had my image.” After sharing the image with the world, some of Wright’s non-biologist friends, many of whom had never heard of C. elegans, told her they wanted to know more about the model organism. 
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  • “[Science] requires technical skill and it is a process of creating something new where you cannot always predict the outcome.”
  • Many scientists work under the principle that beauty and simplicity often underlie phenomena in nature,” says biophysicist Joshua Shaevitz. His work, “The history of gliding,”
  • is a dazzling array of colorful filaments made by tracking the paths of hundreds of thousands of the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. “The process of scientific research often seems dull from the outside, but on the inside there are stunningly beautiful elements to all aspects of nature,” says Shaevitz.
grayton downing

Accused "Fraudster" Heads Two Journals | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36299/title/Accused--Fraudster--Heads-Two-Journals/

journals scientist fraud bias knowledge

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Dmitry Kuznetsov, a Russian biochemist whose published work has been repeatedly alleged to be fraudulent, is now the chief editor of two science journals. The appointments are raising questions about the scientific integrity of the publications.
  • one of the worst fraud records in the history of science,” said Dan Larhammar, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden who has written about problems in Kuznetsov's work. “That should be a major concern to” the publisher that recruited Kuznetsov as editor-in-chief, he said.
  • “As a result of these claims [by Kuznetsov and colleagues] a couple of students have spent several years of their life on a wild goose chase,” Coey told The Scientist.
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  • researchers in various fields of study have also voiced their concerns about the quality of Kuznetsov’s research
  • the questions concerning Kuznetsov’s work, researchers who have published in one of the journals he edits, the British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research, report having no abnormal interactions with the editors during the review process. “I found my experience with that journal to be no different than with any other,”
  • Swanson said he has no way to judge the validity of the accusations against Kuznetsov, and that it would be unfair to jump to conclusions. If the allegations are true, however, “it certainly hurts the reputation of their journal, and I suspect they would rectify that problem (again, if there is truth here) fairly quickly. Most reputable researchers would not want to submit to such a journal.”
grayton downing

The Downside of Antibiotics? | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36329/title/The-Downside-of-Antibiotics-/

antibiotics science

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • addition to the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bugs
  • the average person who might be prescribed a short course of antibiotics, DePinho reckoned there would probably be nothing to worry about.
  • What the authors are suggesting is that in addition to the bactericidal properties of antibiotics, they also affect . . . the mitochondria
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  • “coupled with the concerns about drug-resistance. . . one should only use antibiotics when you really need antibiotics.”
grayton downing

Maternal Antibodies Linked to Autism | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36379/title/Maternal-Antibodies-Linked-to-Autism/

autism science research education

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • WIKIPEDIA, KEN HAMMOND (USDA)In 2008, Judy van de Water from the University of California, Davis, discovered a group of autoantibodies—those that trigger immune responses against the body’s own molecules—that are especially common in mothers of children with autism.
  • “Given that, at present, only between 15 and 20 percent of children with autism have known causes—mainly genetic and infectious mechanisms—this will be a major advance.”
  • “It would allow mothers to plan,” said van de Water, by enrolling their children in educational programs that promote social skills from an early age.
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  • team is now working to address these issues, trying to identify the specific parts of the six proteins that the antibodies stick to, determine how they affect the developing brain, and understand how they might be used to predict autism risk. Van de Water and Amaral are consulting for Pediatric Bioscience, which is creating a predictive test based on the results.
  • the team’s colleagues Melissa Bauman and David Amaral, also from UC Davis, injected eight pregnant rhesus monkeys with antibodies purified from mothers with autistic children.
  • Moving this to monkeys is a big step,
  • next step is to come up with a therapeutic to block the antibodies—not just to pick them up, but to do something about it,”
  • The parents have been surprisingly supportive,” she said. “But the autism field has been fraught with false alarms, so we want to be really careful.”
grayton downing

BBC News - First human trial of new bone-marrow transplant method - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...health-24609025

human trial transplant science

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Doctors at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital have carried out a pioneering bone-marrow transplant technique.
  • Mohammed Ahmed, who is nearly five years old, was among the first three children in the world to try out the new treatment.
  • Mohammed's doctors then modified these donated immune cells, called "T-cells", in the lab to engineer a safety switch - a self-destruct message that could be activated if Mohammed's body should start to reject them once transplanted.
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  • "We waited for a full match but it did not come. By the grace of God, we took the decision to have the treatment.
  • There are currently about 1,600 people in the UK waiting for a bone-marrow transplant and 37,000 worldwide.
grayton downing

BBC News - Exoplanet tally soars above 1,000 - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-24549384

science research knowledge space kepler

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The number of observed exoplanets - worlds circling distant stars - has passed 1,000.
  • These new worlds are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.
  • The Kepler space telescope, which spotted many of these worlds in recent years, broke down earlier this year. Scientists still have to trawl through more than 3,500 other candidates from this mission so the number could rapidly increase.
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  • In January 2013, astronomers used Kepler's data to estimate that there could be at least 17 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy.
  • The number of confirmed planets frequently increases because as scientists analyse the data they are able publish their results online immediately. But as the finds are not yet peer reviewed, the total figure remains subject to change.
  • "That's why the other catalogues just lag behind. The review is reliable as it's exactly the same as what the journals do."
  • "no consensus for the definition of a planet" a
  • "Some objects, like some Kepler planets, are declared 'confirmed planets' but have not been published in [referenced] articles. It does not mean that they will not be published later on, but it introduces another fuzziness in the tally," he added.
  • "I don't just want to know where the exoplanets are, I want to understand the stars, because they are the hosts for the planets. I want to understand the whole galaxy and the distribution of the stars because everything is connected," he explained.
  • For him, the most exciting discoveries are Earth-like planets which could be habitable.
  • This planet likely has the same mass as Earth but is outside the "habitable zone" as it circles its star far closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.
grayton downing

Lost in Translation | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36561/title/Lost-in-Translation/

scientist translation bias research

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • excessive reporting of positive results in papers that describe animal testing of potential therapies, just like the publishing bias seen in clinical research, according to a paper published today
  • We know publication bias happens a lot in clinical trials,” said Torgerson, “so I was surprised at myself for being surprised at the results, because of course, if it happens in human research, why wouldn’t it happen in animal research?”
  • his suspicions about publication bias by performing a statistical meta-analysis of thousands of reported animal tests for various neurological interventions—a total of 4,445 reported tests of 160 different drugs and other treatments for conditions that included Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, brain ischemia, and more.
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  • One, as mentioned, is the suppression of negative results. The second is selective reporting of only the statistical analyses of data that provide a significant score. “Practically any data set, if it is tortured enough, will confess, and you will get a statistically significant result,”
  • , a publication bias “almost certainly” applies in other areas of preclinical research,
  • he suggested that a forum where investigators can deposit neutral or negative results in the form of articles, should be established to ensure that such findings are in the public arena and not hidden. This should help prevent other researchers from pursuing fruitless avenues of research, he said, “which is a waste of animals and a waste of research money.” Not to mention a risk to people enrolled in potentially pointless trials.
grayton downing

Manipulating Mouse Memory | The Scientist Magazine® - 1 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36705/title/Manipulating-Mouse-Memory/

mouse memory science research knowledge brain science

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Eyewitness testimony has long been an important part of most judicial systems around the world. However, over the last three decades, psychologists have consistently proven how tenuous the memories truly are, and how easily they can be altered or even manufactured through the power of suggestion.
  • creating such faux memories in the brain, demonstrating that the manipulation of a specific subset of neurons in the mouse hippocampus can cause the animals to falsely remember a fear of a foot schock.
  • same optogenetic technique to essentially transfer a fear memory from one situation to another.
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  • , the rodent displayed a heightened fear response, although no foot shock had ever been given in that location. The mice eventually became conditioned to the false memory, and would freeze in Box A even in the absence of pulsing light.
  • “The brain mechanisms for forming and recalling the false memories are not distinguishable from those underlying genuine memories,” said Tonegawa.
  • hypothesized that a similar mechanism could be behind the formation of false memories in humans and said the findings underscore the problematic nature of eyewitness testimony in court proceedings.
  • “We hope this kind of research will reinforce the need to look at eyewitness testimony carefully,” said Tonegawa, “so that innocent people will not be incriminated.”
  • Tonegawa said he thinks that false memories with positive connotations likely form in the same way—a hypothesis he hopes to test with future experiments. In addition, given that false memories appear robust enough to compete with real memories, Tonegawa said he plans to investigate the factors that affect the relative strengths of the two types of memory.
grayton downing

Language Makes the Invisible Visible | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37012/title/Language-Makes-the-Invisible-Visible/

language scientist science research sense perception

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Language helps the human brain perceive obscured objects,
  • While some scientists have argued that vision is independent from outside factors, such as sounds or the brain’s accumulated knowledge, the study indicates that language influences perception at its most basic level.
  • “I think [the study] makes a really important contribution to the field of visual perception and cognition in general,” said Michael Spivey,
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  • tested the effects of language on perception by either saying or not saying a word and showing study participants either an obscured image that matched the word, an obscured image that did not match the word, or no image at all. Images ranged from kangaroos to bananas to laundry baskets. The researchers then asked the participants if they had perceived any objects and, if so, ascertained what they had seen.
  • participants were more likely to perceive an image if they had been given an accurate verbal cue first than if they had been given no cue or an incorrect one. With an accurate cue, they identified the object correctly around 50 percent and 80 percent of the time
  •  By using continuous flash suppression, Lupyan has “done the best job yet of showing where the interaction happening is in perception,” Spivey said.
  • Lupyan said that his work could help researchers discern whether people who speak different languages perceive the world differently. For instance, if two people spoke different languages that either did or did not have words for a certain color or texture, the person lacking language to describe the color or texture might be less likely to perceive it.
  • “More and more what the field is finding is that any cognitive or perceptual capacity you find interesting is probably richly connected with other ones.” “The visual system—and perception in general—uses all the information it can get to make sense of the inputs,” said Lupyan. “Vision is not just about the photons hitting the eye.”
  • “The visual system—and perception in general—uses all the information it can get to make sense of the inputs,” said Lupyan
grayton downing

Lab-Grown Model Brains | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37262/title/Lab-Grown-Model-Brains/

brains science research technology brain science

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • In an Austrian laboratory, a team of scientists has grown three-dimensional models of embryonic human brain
  • “Even the most complex organ—the human brain—can start to form without any micro-manipulation.”
  • Knoblich cautioned that the organoids are not “brains-in-a-jar.” “We’re talking about the very first steps of embryonic brain development, like in the first nine weeks of pregnancy,” he said. “They’re nowhere near an adult human brain and they don’t form anything that resembles a neuronal network.”
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  • It took a huge amount of work to fine-tune the conditions, but once the team did, the organoids grew successfully within just 20 to 30 days.
  • scientists have developed organoids that mimic several human organs, including eyes, kidneys, intestines, and even brains.
  • They really highlight the ability just nudge these human embryonic cells and allow them to self-assemble
  • The mouse brain isn’t good enough for studying microcephaly,” said Huttner. “You need to put those genes into an adequate model like this one. It is, after all, human. It definitely enriches the field. There’s no doubt about that.”
  • organoids are unlikely to replace animal experiments entirely. “We can’t duplicate the elegance with which one can do genetics in animal models,” he said, “but we might be able to reduce the number of animal experiments, especially when it comes to toxicology or drug testing.”
  • the future, he hopes to develop larger organoids.
grayton downing

A Start to Saving Lives - Treating Sore Throats - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ves-treating-sore-throats.html

lives science research education

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Getting parents to take sore throats more seriously and treating them more aggressively with penicillin could save thousands of lives in poor countries relatively cheaply, doctors from India and South Africa say.
  • The authors of a recent paper in the journal Global Heart estimate that a quarter of all sore throats are caused by strep A bacteria and that such infections lead to as many as 500,000 deaths a year, almost all of them in poor countries.
  • . Cuba, Costa Rica and Martinique have sharply reduced rheumatic fever by public education about sore throat, screening for strep by symptoms, and treating quickly.
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