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Researchers ID brain cells that streamline sensory info

New research in monkeys may provide a clue about how the brain manages vast amounts of information and remembers what it needs. Researchers have identified brain cells that streamline and simplify sensory information ? markedly reducing the brain’s workload. “When you need to remember people you’ve just met at a meeting, the brain probably doesn’t memorize each person’s facial features to help you identify them later,” says Sam Deadwyler, Ph.D., a Wake Forest neuroscientist and study investigator. “Instead, it records vital information, such as their hairstyle, height, or age, all classifications that we are familiar with from meeting people in general. Our research suggests how the brain might do this, which could lead to ways to improve memory in humans.”

New map predicts where wolves will attack

Scientists have developed a high-tech map that predicts where wolves will prey on livestock, which in turn may allow wildlife managers and ranchers to prevent attacks in the first place. Using geographic information system (GIS) mapping, the scientists looked at road density, farm size, availability of deer and other factors to develop statewide maps for Wisconsin and Minnesota. Despite dramatic differences in the two states’ wolf populations, hunting policies, and farm sizes, the maps revealed several similarities among the sites where wolves had preyed on cattle in the past.

Depression can lead to back pain

It is well documented that physical pain can lead to feelings of depression, but a new study shows the reverse can be true, as well. The study shows that depression is a risk factor for onset of severe neck and low back pain. Researchers followed a random sample of nearly 800 adults without neck and low back pain and found that people who suffer from depression are four times as likely to develop intense or disabling neck and low back pain than those who are not depressed.

Stress can turn safe chemicals deadly

Stress is a well known culprit in disease, but now researchers have shown that stress can intensify the effects of relatively safe chemicals, making them very harmful to the brain and liver in animals and likely in humans, as well. Even short-term exposure to specific chemicals — just 28 days — when combined with stress was enough to cause widespread cellular damage in the brain and liver of rats, said Mohamed Abou Donia, Ph.D., a Duke pharmacologist and senior author of the study.

Swedish bogs flooding atmosphere with methane

The permafrost in the bogs of subarctic Sweden is undergoing dramatic changes. The part of the soil that thaws in the summer, the so-called active layer, has become thicker since 1970, and the permafrost has disappeared altogether in some locations. This has lead to significant changes in the vegetation and to a subsequent increase in emission of the greenhouse gas methane. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Smoking in movies returns to 1950s levels

Today’s movie actors are lighting up as much as their 1950s counterparts, according to researchers who say cigarettes made a dramatic return to the silver screen in the past decade. In the top-grossing films of the 1950s, there were 10.7 smoking “incidents” ? characters taking a drag, prominently displayed ashtrays or tobacco ads ? per hour of screen time, Stanton A Glantz, Ph.D. and colleagues found. By the early 1980s, smoking had become scarce, appearing only 4.9 times per hour. Cigarettes have made a comeback, however.

Asia’s bear-sized catfish are disappearing

One of the world’s largest freshwater fish, an Asian catfish as big as a bear, may disappear in the near future, warns a UC Davis conservation biologist from his research base in Cambodia. The giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), which grows to 10 feet long and 650 pounds, is a migratory species in the rivers of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. It has been a mainstay for local fishers for centuries. Now very few fish are being caught. At one typical traditional fishing spot on the Mekong River at Chiang Khong, Thailand, 30 fish were caught in 1995, seven in 1997, two in 1998 and none in 2000 and 2001.

Scientists find HIV-blocking protein in monkeys

Scientists have identified a protein that blocks HIV replication in monkey cells. Humans have a similar protein, although it is not as effective at stopping HIV, say the researchers whose work is published in this week’s issue of Nature. “Identification of this HIV-blocking factor opens new avenues for intervening in the early stage of HIV infection, before the virus can gain a toehold,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “The discovery also gives us critical insights about viral uncoating, a little understood step in the viral lifecycle. Basic discoveries like this provide the scientific springboard to future improvements in therapies for HIV disease.”

Embryonic pig cell transplants halt rat diabetes

An experimental cross-species transplant to treat diabetes has passed an early test in rats with better-than-expected results, suggesting the innovative approach might halt type 1 diabetes while greatly reducing the risk of rejection. Scientists set up control and experimental groups of rats with diabetes. The experimental group received embryonic pig pancreas cell transplants and antirejection drugs to prevent the rats’ immune systems from destroying the transplants. The control group received only the transplants and no immune suppression drugs. To the researchers’ surprise, the control group’s transplants grew unmolested by the immune system, halting the rats’ diabetes and changing the focus of the study to transplanting without the need for immune suppression.

Marine sponges point way to nanoscale materials production

“Nature was nano before nano was cool,” stated Henry Fountain in a recent New York Times article on the proliferation of nanotechnology research projects. No one is more aware of this fact of nature than Dan Morse of the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research groups have been studying the ways that nature builds ocean organisms at the nanoscale for over ten years. They have studied the abalone shell for its high-performance, super-resistant, composite mineral structure. Now they are now looking to learn new biotechnological routes to make high performance electronic and optical materials.

Antibiotic could help with spinal cord injury paralysis

Researchers have found that a commonly prescribed antibiotic could be used to help prevent paralysis and other long-term functional deficits associated with a partial spinal cord injury (SCI). Researchers in the field have known that a significant proportion of paralysis and long-term functional disorders associated with SCI are triggered by post-trauma tissue loss. Administering the antibiotic, minocycline, to rats within the first hour after a paralyzing injury has been shown to reduce this tissue loss and ultimately enable more hind-leg function, the ability to walk with more coordination, better foot posture and stepping, and better support of body weight than untreated controls.

Heart drug to be used for parasite disease

Two Santa Barbara researchers have discovered that calcium channel blockers may prove to be an inexpensive alternative for controlling schistosome infection, a serious global health problem that afflicts more than 200 million people annually in developing nations. An estimated 200,000 people, many of them older children, die every year from schistosomiasis. Many more suffer chronic damage to vital organs, including the liver and bladder. A San Francisco company will use the drugs to treat schistosomiasis in Africa and elsewhere.