Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, claim researchers in this week’s BMJ.

The authors identified 15 studies published between 1996 and October 2002 that examined the role of NSAID use in preventing Alzheimer’’s disease. They carried out three separate analyses to quantify the risk of Alzheimer’’s disease in NSAID users and in aspirin users and to determine any influence on duration of use.

Their results show that N

A group of nuclear-envelope-associated proteins have been found in a plant for the very first time by a team of researchers at Ohio State University. Led by Professor Iris Meier, this new finding show that these proteins (Plant RanGAP and MAF) have in common a nuclear envelope-targeting domain which is unique to plants and distinctly different from sequences found in known animal nuclear envelope proteins.

This finding is significant because it implies that a funadamentally different nuclea

Changes in the brain’s white matter, a common occurrence among the elderly, increase a person’s risk of having multiple strokes, according to a report in today’s rapid access issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

White matter is the inner part of the brain, through which most of the brain’s nerve connections pass. Leukoaraiosis – the scattered loss of white matter in the brain – is particularly associated with strokes caused by blockages in small arteries deep i

Gene more than doubles risk of depression following life stresses

Among people who suffered multiple stressful life events over 5 years, 43 percent with one version of a gene developed depression, compared to only 17 percent with another version of the gene, say researchers funded, in part, by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Those with the “short,” or stress-sensitive version of the serotonin transporter gene were also at higher risk for depression if they had been ab

As politicians and the public leap aboard the hydrogen fuel bandwagon, a University of California, Berkeley, energy expert suggests we all step back and take a critical look at the technology and consider simpler, cheaper options.

In a paper appearing in the July 18 issue of Science magazine, Alex Farrell, assistant professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley, and David Keith, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, present various sh

Deep convection, or mixing, of ocean waters in the North Atlantic, widely thought to occur in only the Labrador Sea and the Mediterranean, may occur in a third location first proposed nearly 100 years ago by the explorer and oceanographer Fridtjof Nansen. The findings, reported this week in the journal Nature, may alter thinking about the ocean’s overturning circulation that affects earth’s climate.

An international team of scientists reports in Nature that convection, a pr