Curated News: Featured: DailyWire

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Scientists have identified the precise nerve cells that allow the brain to make a split-second change of course, like jamming on the brakes.

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Parkinson’s patients often become sedentary because of motor symptoms such as gait, balance problems or falls. However, new U-M research finds that non-exercise physical activity, more than occasional trips to the gym, is linked to less severe motor symptoms.

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A University of Adelaide led study has found that a psychiatric drug claimed to be a safe and effective treatment for depression in adolescents is actually ineffective and associated with serious side effects.

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The authors monitored the social and foraging behaviors of wild flocks of house finches, a common backyard songbird, and the spread of a naturally-occurring bird disease called Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, which is similar to "pink eye" in humans but cannot be contracted by humans.

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Juries in criminal cases typically decide if someone is guilty, then a judge determines a suitable level of punishment. New research confirms that these two separate assessments of guilt and punishment – though related -- are calculated in different parts of the brain. In fact, researchers found that they can disrupt and change one decision without affecting the other. New work by researchers at Vanderbilt University and Harvard University confirms that a specific area of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is crucial to punishment decisions. Researchers predicted and found that by altering brain activity in this brain area, they could change how subjects punished hypothetical defendants without changing the amount of blame placed on the defendants.

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Researchers from the University of Southampton have demonstrated how a pioneering ultrasonic device can significantly improve the cleaning of medical instruments and reduce contamination and risk of infection.

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New technique to selectively and noninvasively turn on groups of neurons in worms could be boon to science and medicine

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Book your holiday air travel early this year. That’s the advice from Dean Headley, Airline Quality Rating co-author and associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University.

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New research at the University of Warwick with colleagues from the London School of Economics has identified changes in the shape of rainfall across Europe; changes in the amount of drizzle compared with downpours and everything in-between.

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Early humans were skilful at using the landscape features of the Kenyan Rift to ambush and kill their prey. They became adept at predicting the pathways used by potential prey, enabling them to ambush large and dangerous animals.

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Scientists used high-power laser beams at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to simulate the shock effects of a meteorite impact in silica, one of the most abundant materials in the Earth’s crust. They observed, for the first time, its shockingly fast transformation into the mineral stishovite – a rare, extremely hard and dense form of silica.

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The largest nationwide clinical trial to study high-dose resveratrol long-term in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease found that a biomarker that declines when the disease progresses was stabilized in people who took the purified form of resveratrol.

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A team of researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and the University of Colorado Boulder has devised a novel optical technique — a combination of structured illumination microscopy (SIM) and single-particle averaging (SPA) — to resolve individual components of SPB duplication in living yeast cells.

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Working in a cave complex deep beneath South Africa’s Malmani dolomites, an international team of scientists has brought to light an unprecedented trove of hominin fossils — more than 1,500 well-preserved bones and teeth — representing the largest, most complete set of such remains found to date in Africa. The discovery of the fossils, cached in a barely accessible chamber in a subterranean labyrinth not far from Johannesburg, adds a new branch to the human family tree, a creature dubbed Homo naledi.

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An international research team, which includes NYU anthropologists Scott Williams and Myra Laird, has discovered a new species of a human relative. Homo naledi, uncovered in a cave outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, sheds light on the diversity of our genus and possibly its origin.

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People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) tend to slow down and decrease the intensity of their movements even though many retain the ability to move quickly and forcefully. Now, scientists report evidence that the slowdown likely arises from the brain’s “cost/benefit analysis,” which gets skewed by the loss of dopamine in people with PD. In addition, their small study demonstrated that noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain temporarily improved some patients’ motor symptoms.

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Researchers may have discovered a new marker found in the blood for episodic migraine, according to a study published in the September 9, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Episodic migraine is defined as having less than 15 headaches per month.

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Astronomers using ALMA have discovered an unexpected population of compact interstellar clouds hidden within the nearby dwarf irregular galaxy WLM.

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A team of Stony Brook University and international researchers have found that biogenic materials in sea spray may affect ice cloud formation and thus climate on a global scale.

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Two Baylor University researchers have published a new empirical study in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The research provides a greater understanding of workday breaks and offers suggestions on when, where and how to plan the most beneficial daily escapes from the J-O-B. The research also debunks some common break-time myths.

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An artificial intelligence programme to improve Tinder suggestions has been developed by Harm de Vries, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Montreal who was sick of swiping left.

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Global Temperature Report: August 2015

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Switzerland is the best place in the world for older people to live, closely followed by Norway and Sweden, according to a new report from HelpAge International, working in partnership with the University of Southampton, UK.

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Astronomers from the University of California, Irvine and Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute have generated the most accurate statistical description yet of faint, early galaxies as they existed in the universe 500 million years after the Big Bang.

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Contrary to popular belief, the worst injuries baseball catchers face on the field come from errant bats and foul balls, not home-plate collisions with base runners, according to findings of a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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Multi-institutional, multidisciplinary study looks past antibiotics and sanitation to a third strategy to control infectious disease: Adjusting the landscape of the human body to remove the mechanism that allows pathogens to cause disease.

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If you are in a special relationship with another person, thank grandma – not just yours, but all grandmothers since humans evolved.

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A McGill-led team has discovered a pattern that is consistent across a range of ecosystems. They found that, in a very systematic way, in crowded settings, prey reproduced less than they do in settings where their numbers are smaller. Some scientists are already suggesting that it may well be the discovery of a new law of nature.

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In an intensive citizen-science-aided survey of Hubble telescope images of 2,753 young, blue star clusters in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy (M31), astronomers have found that M31 and our own galaxy have a similar percentage of newborn stars based on mass. By nailing down what percentage of stars have a particular mass within a cluster (the Initial Mass Function), scientists can better interpret the light from distant galaxies and understand the formation history of stars in our universe.

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One of the longstanding debates in science, that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, permeated into the field of stem cell research, is the question of nature versus nurture influencing development. Science on stem cells thus far, has suggested that, as one side of the existential debate holds: their fate is not predestined. But new research from the Neural Stem Cell Institute and Drexel University suggests that the cells’ tabula might not be as rasa as we have been led to believe.

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New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may help explain why drug treatments for addiction and depression don’t work for some patients. The conditions are linked to reward and aversion responses in the brain. And the research suggests that some treatments simultaneously stimulate reward and aversion responses, resulting in a net zero effect.

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Vision researchers in Boston have published the second paper of a study designed to determine if a driver who suffers from loss of central vision is able to detect pedestrians in a timely manner when driving. Central visual field loss, a scotoma or blind area in central vision, is found most commonly in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Patients with AMD may drive provided their visual acuity at least meets the requirements for a restricted license. However, the size and location of the blind area are usually not considered when making licensing decisions. The purpose of the study was to evaluate how much these blind areas delayed responses to pedestrian hazards in the safe environment of a driving simulator.

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A team led by NYIT Assistant Professor Gaberiel Bever has determined that Eunotosaurus africanus is the earliest known branch of the turtle tree of life

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The new approach shows how cells in the spinal cord synchronize many neurons at once to allow complex movements, which could have implications for treating spinal cord injuries and diseases

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In the popular mind, mass extinctions are associated with catastrophic events, like giant meteorite impacts and volcanic super-eruptions. But the world’s first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago, now appears to have had a more subtle cause: evolution itself. “People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction,” said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.

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Unlike current methods that coat nanoparticles with light-sensitive molecules, a new technique from the Weizmann Institute instead suspends the particles in a light-sensitive medium, then self-assemble. Possible applications include rewritable paper, water decontamination, and a way to precisely deliver medicines.

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The incidence of bicycle accidents has increased significantly in the U.S. in recent years, with many serious injuries occurring among riders older than 45, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco.

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The joy of running. That sense of well-being, freedom and extra energy that runners often experience is not just a matter of endorphins. A study at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) shows that the "runner’s high" phenomenon is also caused by dopamine, an important neurotransmitter for motivation.

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A new study led by a UC San Francisco sleep researcher supports what parents have been saying for centuries: to avoid getting sick, be sure to get enough sleep.

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Vision researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have discovered a gene that causes myopia, but only in people who spend a lot of time in childhood reading or doing other “nearwork.”

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How did the ankylosaur get its tail club? According to research that traces the evolution of the ankylosaur’s distinctive tail, the handle arrived first on the scene, and the knot at the end of the tail followed.

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Turning carbon dioxide from certain power plants into a more valuable chemical would reduce emissions while creating a revenue return. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh derived a metal-free catalyst that does the trick without the need for expensive, extreme conditions.

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The fungus Cryptococcus causes meningitis, a brain disease that kills about 1 million people each year. It’s difficult to treat because fungi are genetically quite similar to humans, so compounds that affect fungi tend to have toxic side effects for patients. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have identified 18 proteins that play a role in spore formation and germination. The findings raises the possibility of preventing the disease by blocking the spores’ germination.

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The death of brain cells in Parkinson’s disease may be caused by a form of cellular energy crisis in neurons that require unusually high quantities of energy to carry out their job of regulating movement, researchers at the University of Montreal reported today.

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Iowa State University researchers have developed a questionnaire to help you determine if you suffer from nomophobia or a fear of being without your mobile phone.

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A new study from the UC San Francisco Pediatric Brain Center shows that childhood cancer survivors suffering one stroke have double the risk of suffering a second stroke, when compared with non-cancer stroke survivors.

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A study led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles has demonstrated a new, efficient way to accelerate positrons, the antimatter opposites of electrons. The method may help boost the energy and shrink the size of future linear particle colliders – powerful accelerators that could be used to unravel the properties of nature’s fundamental building blocks.

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Grenada, Spain's climate and layout is like that of many cities in the Mediterranean area, which has the highest occurrence of pollen allergies in the world. The researchers hope their efforts will lead to fantastic urban green spaces that don’t cause allergic reactions for 30% of the city’s population.

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Could the sperm harpoon the egg to facilitate fertilization? That’s the intriguing possibility raised by the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s discovery that a protein within the head of the sperm forms spiky filaments, suggesting that these tiny filaments may lash together the sperm and its target.

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A new study shows that quitting smoking after a heart attack has immediate benefits, including less chest pain, better quality of daily life and improved mental health. Many of these improvements became apparent as little as one month after quitting and are more pronounced after one year, according to the research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.