ScienceBlog.com

If trust is a two-way street, then researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have mapped where in the brain that trust is formulated and how the decision to trust shifts with experience. In a report in this week’s issue of the journal Science, researchers describe where and when trust is formed between two anonymous people interacting via functional magnetic resonance imaging in machines more than 1,500 miles apart. They found that as the interaction continued, the trust response occurred earlier and earlier in the subjects’ interchanges — until a decision about trust occurred even before the latest interaction was completed.

Chagas disease, which is transmitted to humans by a blood-sucking insect known as an Assassin bug, is the most devastating parasitic infection in Central and South America and Mexico. The protozoan parasite that causes the disease, Trypanosoma cruzi, infects 16 to 18 million people, causing severe chronic illness and tens of thousands of deaths per year.

A standard and inexpensive tuberculosis treatment regimen cut the overall TB rate in half and lowered the rate of drug-resistant cases even more dramatically in a remote Mexican health district with a high prevalence of the disease. “This shows what basic TB control can accomplish,” said Maria de Lourdes García García, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar who led the Mexican study.

Penn State researchers have devised a new protocol-and created the proof-of-concept software to implement it-that can prevent information-sharing turf wars among government agencies without jeopardizing or compromising their own interests.

Administering hormonal treatment in addition to radiation therapy in patients with high-risk prostate cancer can improve survival rate, according to a new study published in the April 1, 2005, issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States. Yet burning grass pellets as a biofuel is economical, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable, says a Cornell University forage crop expert.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory working with a researcher from Chonnam National University in South Korea have found that magnetic fluctuations appear to be responsible for superconductivity in a compound called plutonium-cobalt-pentagallium (PuCoGa5). The discovery of this “unconventional superconductivity” may lead scientists to a whole new class of superconducting materials and toward the goal of eventually synthesizing “room-temperature” superconductors.

re: Higg’s boson.

errr … sorry, forgot URL

www.ohpurleese.com

Apr 1 2005

Two independent researchers claim they may have found the Higg’s boson – the particle believed to endow ‘mass’ to all objects – 2 years ahead of CERN ?

Details of the press release at :

Vegetarians who don’t cook their food have abnormally low bone mass, usually a sign of osteoporosis and increased fracture risk. But a research team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis also found that raw food vegetarians have other biological markers indicating their bones, although light in weight, may be healthy.

A special type of MRI scan that measures the flow of water molecules through the brain can help doctors determine early in the course of brain cancer regimen if a patient’s tumor will shrink, a new study shows. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center developed the assessment, which they call a functional diffusion map. They used a magnetic resonance imaging scan that tracks the diffusion, or movement, of water through the brain and mapped the changes in diffusion from the start of therapy to three weeks later. The tumor cells block the flow of water, so as those cells die, water diffusion changes.

Weather forecasts could become barometers for predicting the potential threat of West Nile virus to humans and wildlife, according to scientists at two state agencies based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Researchers at the Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) and the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) report a reliable link between weather conditions and an abundance of two mosquito species linked to outbreaks in humans and wildlife, especially birds.

Payday loan companies — which make high-cost loans to cash-strapped people – target military members and their families, according to a study co-authored by a University of Florida law professor. After collecting data from more than 13,000 ZIP codes across the country, the study’s authors found payday loan operations clustered in areas near military bases.

Hi, I try to inspire health information collection and sharing through a non-income earning community website. To encourage more visitors (collect more health success stories to share), I have released two press releases (copy of most recent includes a ‘Meningococcemia Theory’ – see copy below).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the approval of Baraclude (entecavir) tablets and oral solution for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B in adults. Chronic hepatitis B is a serious disease caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV) that attacks the liver. The virus can cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.25 million Americans are chronically infected with the HBV virus.

Good news may be on the horizon for the millions who struggle with chronic bad breath with the identification by oral biologists at the University at Buffalo of several previously unknown halitosis-related bacteria that may represent new targets for treatment.

Many people don’t realize there is a medical name for it, and some chock it up to one of those odd things that run in the family. But all sufferers of restless leg syndrome, or RLS, experience similar things: uncomfortable sensations in the legs and sometimes arms that make it difficult for them to sleep. Now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine are launching a pilot study on the efficacy and tolerability of a new therapeutic approach to this oft undiagnosed — but common — sleep disorder.

The emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of coastal “dead zones,” the collapse of fisheries and shifts in regional climate are just some of the potential consequences of humankind’s degradation of the planet’s ecosystems, according to a new United Nations-backed report launched today.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland have discovered that urine actually helps a particular yeast stick to cells along the urinary tract. The finding might offer a new way to prevent or treat certain yeast and fungal infections, and the researchers’ work also provides an unexpected new role for some proteins already known to help hungry yeast live longer.

Launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will soon see the Shuttle blasting off again for a new exciting mission in space. According to NASA’s current schedule, this will be between 15 May and 3 June (the precise date will be set once the flight readiness review process has been completed at the end of April).