Headlines of the day
Exorcist's calendar full; Vatican seeks help (CNN)
Chimps show reluctance to barter (MSNBC)
Good news for mice everywhere, Humans must wait their turn.
Sniffling mouse could unlock cold cure: British scientists
The first mouse to catch a cold has given British scientists fresh hope that they could finally find a cure for coughs and sneezes, as well as more serious conditions like asthma, they said Monday.
Scientists at Imperial College London created a genetically engineered mouse susceptible to the virus causing most colds, which normally only infects humans and chimpanzees.
The breakthrough means that it should now be easier to test new cold remedies as well as treatments for other respiratory conditions like asthma and bronchitis, potentially speeding up the discovery of cures.
The research, led by Professor Sebastian Johnston, was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
"These mouse models should provide a major boost to research efforts to develop new treatments for the common cold as well as for more potentially fatal illnesses such as acute attacks of asthma and of COPD (constructive obstructive pulmonary disorder, such as chronic bronchitis)," Johnston said.
The discovery was welcomed by Leszek Borysiewicz, chief executive of Britain's Medical Research Council, which funded the study.
He said the research would "open up new paths to finding treatments which have been delayed for many years and provides us with the opportunities for further breakthroughs in the future".
Rhinoviruses, which cause most colds, were discovered 50 years ago but studying them without being able to experiment on mice has proved difficult.
The Common Cold Unit started work in Britain in 1946 to find a cure for the sniffles through experiments on human volunteers but it was disbanded in 1989 after failing to crack the problem.
Most colds are triggered when rhinoviruses latch on to a receptor molecule found on the surface of cells.
In mice, the receptor is slightly different to the version in humans so the viruses are unable to bind with it.
But in this case, the Imperial College scientists modified the mouse receptor to make it more like the human one, meaning the rodent could catch a cold.
Life is the blue plate special: If your order the roast beef, you get the green beans. Order the bananas and you get…well... you see.
You Are What You Eat: Some Differences Between Humans And Chimpanzees Traced To Diet
ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2008) — Using mice as models, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology traced some of the differences between humans and chimpanzees to differences in our diet.
Humans consume a distinct diet compared to other apes. Not only do we consume much more meat and fat, but we also cook our food. It has been hypothesized that adopting these dietary patterns played a key role during human evolution. However, to date, the influence of diet on the physiological and genetic differences between humans and other apes has not been widely examined.
By feeding laboratory mice different human and chimp diets over a mere two week period, researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, were able to reconstruct some of the physiological and genetic differences observed between humans and chimpanzees.
The researchers fed laboratory mice one of three diets: a raw fruit and vegetable diet fed to chimpanzees in zoos, a human diet consisting of food served at the Institute cafeteria or a pure fast food menu from the local McDonald's™ (the latter caused the mice to significantly gain weight). The chimpanzee diet was clearly distinct from the two human diets in its effect on the liver - thousands of differences were observed in the levels at which genes were expressed in the mouse livers. No such differences were observed in the mouse brains. A significant fraction of the genes that changed in the mouse livers, had previously been observed as different between humans and chimpanzees. This indicates that the differences observed in these particular genes might be caused by the difference in human and chimpanzee diets.
Furthermore, the diet-related genes also appear to have evolved faster than other genes - protein and promoter sequences of these genes changed faster than expected, possibly because of adaptation to new diets.
Homer Simpson vindicated. Glazed donuts all around.
Daytime Nap Can Benefit A Person's Memory Performance
ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2008) — A brief bout of non-REM sleep (45 minutes) obtained during a daytime nap clearly benefits a person's declarative memory performance, according to a new study.
The study, authored by Matthew A. Tucker, PhD, of the Center for Sleep and Cognition and the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, focused on 33 subjects (11 males, 22 females) with an average age of 23.3 years. The participants arrived at the sleep lab at 11:30 a.m., were trained on each of the declarative memory tasks at 12:15 p.m., and at 1 p.m., 16 subjects took a nap while 17 remained awake in the lab. After the nap period, all subjects remained in the lab until the retest at 4 p.m.
It was discovered that, across three very different declarative memory tasks, a nap benefited performance compared to comparable periods of wakefulness, but only for those subjects that strongly acquired the tasks during the training session.
"These results suggest that there is a threshold acquisition level that has to be obtained for sleep to optimally process the memory," said Dr. Tucker. "The importance of this finding is that sleep may not indiscriminately process all information we acquire during wakefulness, only the information we learn well."
It is recommended that adults get between seven and eight hours of nightly sleep.
The article "Enhancement of Declarative Memory Performance Following a Daytime Nap is Contingent on Strength of Initial Task Acquisition" was published in the February 1 issue of the journal Sleep.
Bacon used to be good for you, back when it came from the pig of knowledge ...before the fall.
Bacon, eggs used to be full of omega-3s
KATONAH, N.Y., Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Eating fish isn't the only way to add omega-3 to one's diet -- grass-fed livestock and some oils also give an anti-inflammatory boost , a U.S. author advises.
Susan Allport, author of "The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed From Our Diet and What We Can Do To Replace Them," explains that livestock used to eat grass, insects and other green foods, but livestock today eats mostly seeds and grains. Omega-3s originate in the green leaves of plants -- not fish, as many believe -- and they accumulate in animals that eat the green foods including fish.
Food today is full of polyunsaturated fats, omega-6s that are much more prevalent in seeds and grains. Polyunsaturated fats produce cell messengers -- prostaglandins -- which are far more inflammatory, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.
"It may not be practical for us to eat only grass-fed (livestock) and eggs, but it's also not possible for us to catch, or raise, enough fish to correct this problem," Allport says in a statement. "We can increase our omega-3s by eating small amounts of fish and grass-fed animals and using vegetable oils with a healthier balance of omega-6s to omega-3s."
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