Duke University Medical Center geneticists have discovered new proteins that help the olfactory system in mammals organize properly. Thus the proteins are key to the ability of mammals, including humans, to detect and respond appropriately to chemicals in the environment via their sense of smell. The finding in mice paves the way for scientists to unravel the underlying code that allows the brain to interpret smells, according to the researchers.
Using genetic manipulations, th
It depends on what were thinking about!
Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe brain activity in search of the answer. According to a new fMRI study using a “diary” method to collect memories, it all depends on what were thinking about!
Researchers have known for decades that thinking about autobiographical facts is different from thinking about autobiographical episodes that happened only once. Since both kinds of thoughts
Moscow engineers have invented and produced a black box the size of a meccano brick which is able to record and memorise all details of movement of the object carrying the device. In fact, the device does not do it during its entire life-cycle but only within the last 15 seconds. However, these last seconds in particular are often the most important ones.
This device has been invented, produced and is being tested by engineers of the Moscow CONUS Company, specialisi
A place so barren that NASA uses it as a model for the Martian environment, Chiles Atacama desert gets rain maybe once a decade. In 2003, scientists reported that the driest Atacama soils were sterile.
Not so, reports a team of Arizona scientists. Bleak though it may be, microbial life lurks beneath the arid surface of the Atacamas absolute desert. “We found life, we can culture it, and we can extract and look at its DNA,” said Raina Maier, a professor of soil, water a
Medical scientists at the University of Leicester have announced they have narrowed the search for the death clock gene in humans. Their study relates to a hunt for a gene that has important implications for aging and cancer as well as other age-related diseases.
The gene controls the length of human telomeres – repeat DNA sequences that cap a chromosome. Each time a human cell divides, the cap shortens. When it gets too short, cells die. Telomere length therefore acts
The Minimally Invasive Surgical Therapies (MIST) Consortium for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) has launched a new study to compare long-term benefits and risks of transurethral needle ablation (TUNA) and transurethral microwave thermotherapy (TUMT) to a regimen of the alpha-1 inhibitor alfuzosin and the 5-alpha reductase inhibitor finasteride. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at NIH, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is investing more tha