Nitric Oxide regulates stem cell division in the adult brain; Strategy seen for repairing brain damage caused by neurodegenerative disease and stroke

Most neurons in the mammalian brain are produced during embryonic development. However, several regions of the adult brain continue to spawn large numbers of neurons through the proliferation of neural stem cells. Moreover, it is becoming clear that these new neurons are integrated into existing brain circuitry.

Now, researcher

People with heart failure and normal cholesterol may benefit from cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, researchers report in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

“This is the first prospective study to show that statins have beneficial effects in heart failure in the absence of coronary artery disease or high blood cholesterol,” says senior author James K. Liao, M.D., director of vascular medicine research at Brigham & Women&

A new technique allows radiologists to lower the radiation dose that computed tomography (CT) delivers by tailoring the dose based on a child’s size, according to a study appearing in the August issue of the journal Radiology.

“The purpose of our research was to provide the technologists who run CT scanners with a precise recipe for lowering the radiation dose levels for pediatric patients by matching radiation to body size, while still delivering a high-quality CT scan,” said th

Females prefer burrows

The signal is an arched wall of sand called a hood which courting males of the fiddler crab Uca musica build at the entrances to their burrows on sand flats in Panama. Males have one very large claw that they wave to attract females to their burrows and females visit several males before choosing a mate by staying with a male in his burrow. These small crabs are at great risk of predation from ever-present shore birds. When moving between burrows they reduce th

Earth’s youngest desert is shown in this July MERIS satellite image of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, over the last 40 years the Aral Sea has evaporated back to half its original surface area and a quarter its initial volume, leaving a 40,000 square kilometre zone of dry white-coloured salt terrain now called the Aralkum Desert.

As its water level has dropped 13 metres since the 1960s the Sea has actually split into two – the larger horseshoe-shaped

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 R