Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Could Lessen the Impact

Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease is expected to increase as the population of elderly grows. Early diagnosis and treatment will be the key to lessening the disease’s worst effects, but, how to spot the disease before its symptoms become serious (and harm is already done) is a challenge for health professionals. A new study by psychologists Konstantine K. Zakzanis, Ph.D., and Mark Boulos, B.Sc., of the University of

First-principles calculation explains the strange behavior of magnesium diboride

Magnesium diboride (MgB2) becomes superconducting at 39 degrees Kelvin, one of the highest known transition temperatures (Tc) of any superconductor. What’s more, its puzzling characteristics include more than one superconducting energy gap, a state of affairs anticipated in theory but never before seen experimentally.

Now theorists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Universit

A Bose-Einstein condensate, a form of matter heretofore only observed in atoms chilled to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, may now have been observed at temperatures in excess of one degree Kelvin in excitons, the bound pairs of electrons and holes that enable semiconductors to function as electronic devices.

Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with a scientist at the University of California’s Santa Barbara camp

Undergoing anaesthesia may be more like falling asleep than we once thought, according to new research from Imperial College London and Harvard Medical School, USA.

Researchers report today in the journal Nature Neuroscience how two of the most widely used anaesthetics, pentobarbital and propofol induce sleep by mimicking the natural process of falling into a deep sleep.

Using behavioural studies and molecular imaging techniques in rats, the team of basic scientists and clinicians

New research sheds light on gender differences, running and racing animals

Was Lassie only the second fastest collie in the valley? Was Roy Rogers’s horse Trigger faster than Dale Evans’s filly, Buttermilk? Men are readily acknowledged as faster runners than women. Can the same assumption be made about gender in horses and dogs?

Background

It’s not too hard to see why that assumption might be made. Sir Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile in 19

In a powerful demonstration of how animal research can help humans, a pair of scientific teams is reporting the discovery of defects in a deafness gene in mice that led to the identification of similar genetic defects in people with hearing loss.

The findings, published in two new papers, may eventually lead to a screening test and therapy for families affected by one type of inherited hearing loss.

The discoveries also bring scientists closer to understanding the intricate choreo