Pioneer in false memory research presents latest findings at AAAS Symposium

During a recent study of memory recall and the use of suggestive interviewing, UC Irvine cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully planted false memories in volunteers of several study groups — memories that included such unlikely events as kissing frogs, shaking hands with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, and witnessing a demonic possession.

Her success at planting these memories challenge the

Results reported in Nature Medicine

Opening up the possibility of a new approach to the treatment of diabetes, researchers have shown in animal studies that a drug long available in Europe can simultaneously block three of the major biochemical pathways responsible for the blood-vessel damage that causes serious diabetic complications.

Dr. Michael Brownlee of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was the senior researcher for the international consortium that carried out t

UI researchers discover new mechanism controlling movement of cell structures

Organelles are compartments and structures inside cells that perform varied and vital functions, including energy production, storage and transportation of important substances and removal of waste products. Normal cellular function requires that organelles be positioned in specific locations in a cell. Thus, movement of the organelles to their appropriate destinations is critical.

A team of Univer

Warming land and ocean surfaces, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other recent evidence strongly suggest that Earth’s climate is already changing rapidly because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to Warren Washington, senior scientist and head of the Climate Change Research Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Computer models of Earth’s climate support these observations, he says, and indicate more severe changes yet to come.

Powerful computer models predict that winter temperatures in the polar regions of the world could rise as much as 10 degrees centigrade in the next hundred years, if no efforts are made to control production of carbon dioxide, methane and other gasses.

“With projections to the year 2100, we can show what will happen if we continue with business as usual—if we don’t do anything to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses,” said Warren M. Washington, senior research scientist for the National Cent

How will global warming affect life on Earth? Uncertainties about future climate change and the impact of human activity make it difficult to predict exactly what lies ahead. But the past offers clues, say scientists who are studying a period of warming that occurred about 55 million years ago.

In a joint project of the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire and the Smithsonian Institution, researchers have been analyzing fossils from the badlands of Wyoming found in a dist