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Nutrients Fed To Pregnant Mice Altered Their Offspring’s Coat Color

A startling scientific discovery about nutrition demonstrates that we are more than what we eat: we are likely what our mothers ate, too, according to scientists. In a study of nutrition’s effects on development, the scientists showed they could change the coat color of baby mice simply by feeding their mothers four common nutritional supplements before and during pregnancy and lactation. Moreover, these four supplements lowered the offspring’s susceptibility to obesity, diabetes and cancer.

Antidepressant drugs may protect brain from damage due to depression

Studying women with histories of clinical depression, have found that the use of antidepressant drugs appears to protect a key brain structure often damaged by depression. Previous research has shown that a region of the brain involved in learning and memory, called the hippocampus, is smaller in people who have been clinically depressed than in those who never have suffered a depressive episode. Now, researchers have found that this region is not quite as small in depressed patients who have taken antidepressant drugs.

Battle lasers edge closer to reality

Laser weapons? This may not be as exotic as fans of Han Solo once thought, thanks to recent leaps forward in the development of a powerful free-electron laser, or FEL. Free electron lasers have been shown to generate very large amounts of power, tunable from the microwave to the visible spectrum. The Office of Naval Research is part of a team that is developing an electrically driven, tunable laser that could transmit infrared light for use in ship-defense systems.

Eating peanuts helps keep heart healthy without weight gain

Adding peanuts to that apple a day that keeps the doctor away is a good way to stay heart-healthy and trim, says a Purdue University professor. Research by Richard Mattes, professor of foods and nutrition, and his doctoral student, Corinna Alper, proves regular peanut consumption helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease without weight gain. “Peanuts are the most widely consumed nut in this country,” Mattes said. “They are a rich source of monosaturated fatty acids, magnesium and folate, vitamin E, copper, arginine and fiber, all of which have cardiovascular disease risk-reducing properties.”

Sweat Disorder far More Common than Thought

It’s summertime, everybody sweats. But for people with hyperhidrosis-excessive or abnormal sweating-the perspiration never stops. A new study by Saint Louis University researchers has found that approximately 7.8 million Americans are living with this condition, which sometimes results in anxiety, depression, isolation and a reduced quality of life. The results are based on a survey of 150,000 households in the United States, making it the largest study of hyperhidrosis in this country.

Behind the Blockbusters–Special Effects Tool Locks Characters onto Film

A motion-tracking software called Fastrack has helped a Hollywood special effects house rapidly stitch computer graphics into several of this year’s biggest movie hits. Developed by researchers at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), the Fastrack technology has helped specialists at Academy Award-winning special effects studio Rhythm & Hues drastically reduce production time for such films as X-Men 2, Daredevil, and the upcoming Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Cat in the Hat.’

New Research Reveals Banning Smoking at Home Protects Infants

New research reveals that banning smoking in the home leads to a small but meaningful fall in infant exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, whereas less strict measures have no effect. Parents from 314 households with young infants took part in the study. Parents were interviewed at home about their knowledge and use of harm reduction strategies, tobacco consumption, and details of the home environment. A sample of the infant’s urine was taken to measure levels of cotinine (a by-product of nicotine) and creatinine.

How old mice get bright again

All of us experience a successive decline in learning and memory capacities with ageing. In the course of their investigations of the neurophysiological basis of this decline, Thomas Blank, Ingrid Nijholt, Min-Jeong Kye, Jelena Radulovic, and Joachim Spiess from the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in G?ttingen have obtained new insight into the mechanisms of age-related learning deficits in the mouse model. In experiments with mice, the Max Planck researchers were able to revert the observed age-related learning and memory deficits by down-regulation of calcium-activated potassium channels (SK3) located in the hippocampus, a brain region recognized to be important for learning and memory. The researchers published their results as a Brief Communication in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Stem cell death gives clue to brain cell survival

A signal that triggers half the stem cells in the developing brain to commit suicide at a stage where their survival will likely do more harm than good has been identified by researchers. Identifying the factors that result in the timely, massive cell suicide is important to understanding the developmental puzzle, the researchers say of the work featured on the cover of the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

Narrow wind causes huge ocean impact

A narrow but intense wind may be the mechanism responsible for the existence of a newly discovered ocean convection site east of Greenland, says a Candian scientist. In earlier research, oceanographers discovered that deep water in the Irminger Sea (east of Greenland) was of similar temperature and salinity to that in the Labrador Sea. The latter is one of only two areas where deep ocean water is traditionally thought to form in the North Atlantic through convection (a process whereby surface water loses heat and moisture, becomes dense, sinks to the bottom and flows towards the equator).

Destruction of ozone layer is slowing after worldwide ban on CFC release

The rate at which ozone is being destroyed in the upper stratosphere is slowing, and the levels of ozone-destroying chlorine in that layer of the atmosphere have peaked and are going down — the first clear evidence that a worldwide reduction in chlorofluorocarbon pollution is having the desired effect, according to a new study. “This is the beginning of a recovery of the ozone layer,” said Professor Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the scientist who led the ozone trend-analysis research team. “We had a monumental problem of global scale that we have started to solve.”

Tip to elderly: Get hitched

Healthy older people living with a partner feel they have the highest quality of life, whilst those in residential homes are likely to report the poorest, according to new research funded by the Economic & Social Research Council as part of its Growing Older Programme. A three-year-long study of residents aged between 65 and 98 in the London Borough of Wandsworth was carried out by a team led by Professor Graham Beaumont and Dr Pamela Kenealy of the University of Surrey Roehampton and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. They found that next to having a partner, older people identified family and good health as important to their quality of life.

HAART prolongs survival in AIDS patients with nervous system lymphoma

AIDS patients with primary central nervous system lymphoma who receive the HAART “cocktail” therapy live much longer than those not treated with the therapy, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas found. A study published in today’s issue of the journal AIDS reports that patients treated with HAART ? Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy ? survived at least 22 months, compared with a median of 29 days for those who didn’t take the prescription drug regimen.

Music therapy strikes a chord with cancer patients

Music therapy for patients who have undergone a bone-marrow transplant reduces their reports of pain and nausea and may even play a role in quickening the pace at which their new marrow starts producing blood cells, according to a pilot study to be published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. The patients who met twice each week for music-assisted relaxation and imagery reported significantly less pain and nausea ? on average, they rated both their pain and nausea “severe” before sessions, but “moderate” after sessions. Their new bone marrow took hold faster, too: The average time until patients began producing their own white blood cells was 13.5 days in the group receiving music therapy, compared to 15.5 days in the control group.