fire

First real-time view of developing neurons reveals surprises, say Stanford researchers

...d right. They expected to find that young neurons fire in response to a variety of different images, then...h neurons in an entire region of the brain as they fire one by one in real time. The technical savvy involved in monitoring neurons will allow researchers t...

South America's vast pantanal wetland may become next everglades, UNU experts warn

...loss of traditional cattle farming is facilitating fire in the dry season. Without cattle to eat or step on the grass, it gets dry and more easily burns, leading to more frequent fires which destroy flood-adapted trees, in which aquatic birds nest, while killing swamp deer and other animals. (The Pantanal...

World's largest rainforest drying experiment completes first phase

...e to fire, it is clear that drought in tandem with fire can swiftly push the tall, dense rainforests of the region towards savanna scrub. The amount of carbon that could be released to the atmosphere by this savannization process is significant --equivalent to several years of worldwide carbon emissions -...

No relief for Pacific Northwest drought

...cording to new projections of drought severity and fire risk that are based on "general circulation" model... States. As a result, 2005 should be a fairly mild fire season in most areas of the nation. But the same forecasts for a period from now to August show som...

Brain-mapping technique aids understanding of sleep, wakefulness

...signals back and forth. "By being active, animals fire up their cholinergic cells, which feed back to orexin neurons positively, and orexin neurons feed back to cholinergic cells," Dr. Yanagisawa said. "This creates a self-reinforcing loop, a positive feedback system that's very important to consolidatin...

Revolutionary nanotechnology illuminates brain cells at work

...utamate as the neurons returned to normal ready to fire again." "This is a tremendously exciting technology," remarked Wolf Frommer, leader of the FRET team at Carnegie. "I'm anxious to see what we can learn about the vast complexities of the brain over the coming years, such as the role of glial cells i...

Researchers make surprise discovery that some neurons can transmit three signals at once

...rgh discovered that immature rat brain cells could fire a simultaneous three-punch salvo ?three neurotransmitters bursting out of a single cell -- it was a finding they knew would excite more than just neurons. Just as surprising, they report in the lead article of this month's Nature Neuroscience, is th...

Speak up: Louder neurons form more connections

...are happening all the time,?he said. Neurons that fire regularly while learning to recognize a new person’s face, for example, will form larger arbors with more connections that help retain that memory for the future. Likewise, neurons stimulated by engaging toys or experiences will probably create large...

Confirmation of human protein interaction data by human expression data

...are happening all the time,?he said. Neurons that fire regularly while learning to recognize a new person’s face, for example, will form larger arbors with more connections that help retain that memory for the future. Likewise, neurons stimulated by engaging toys or experiences will probably create large...

Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest

...arch is to better understand what is the impact of fire on the transition forests, which lies between the ...orests, and in the end, to learn whether recurring fire may threaten the very existence of the forest." Repeated burning of transition forests in the Amazon...

Researchers find ways to turn manure into power

...es to find alternative fuel sources are lighting a fire under research to turn biomass materials such as manure into energy. Texas Senate Bill 20, signed this week by Gov. Rick Perry, compliments research underway to determine how and where biomass can be used. The new law requires more renewable energy ...

Scientists must offer solutions for conserving tropical forests in a rapidly changing world

...ublic of Panama, the old-growth forest has escaped fire and agriculture for at least 1500 years. STRIs Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) has repeatedly censused all steams one centimeter of diameter or more at 1.3 m height in a 50-hectare plot every five years since 1985. Wright notes that the abo...

Team led by Carnegie Mellon University scientist finds first evidence of a living memory trace

...ning, a 55-year-old proposition that "neurons that fire together wire together," thereby strengthening their connections. According to the theory, a stimulus activates some neurons while inhibiting others. Once this stimulus is removed, traces of that excitation/inhibition pattern ?so-called Hebbian rever...

Brainstem blocks pain to protect key behaviors

...hat "facilitate" pain, which he labeled "ON cells, fire in bursts when animals are awake and are inactive during slow-wave sleep. "OFF" cells, which suppress pain, are active during slow-wave sleep. Foo and Mason, who completed her post-doctoral training in Fields' laboratory, found that the pain-enhan...

UCLA imaging study of children with autism finds broken mirror neuron system

... imitating and observing emotions. Mirror neurons fire when a person performs a goal-directed action and while he or she observes the same action performed by others. Neuroscientists believe this observation-execution matching system provides a neural mechanism by which others' actions, intentions and em...

Satellites show Amazon parks, indigenous reserves stop forest clearing

... group used satellite-based maps of land cover and fire occurrence between 1997 and 2000 to compare parks and indigenous lands. Deforestation was 1.7 to 20 times higher along the outside versus the inside perimeter of reserves, while fires were 4 to 9 times higher. Indigenous lands clearly stopped clear...

Common bacteria pirate natural mechanism to get inside cells

...so want inside cells and out of the direct line of fire of the immune system or treatments such as antibiotics for bacterial infections, Dr. Daaka says. "Some bacteria and viruses bind to receptors on the plasma membrane and use them to go inside, and that is how they start replicating inside the cell," h...

Amazon rainforest greens up in the dry season

...sturbed forests has implications for understanding fire regimes in the tropics, including the fires that sometimes rage in tropical areas during El Nino years, which bring drought to many tropical areas, including the Amazon. The research team figured out when the intact forest grows by analyzing five ye...

Morning grogginess more debilitating than sleep deprivation, according to CU-Boulder study

...awakening. "If a person is awakened suddenly by a fire alarm, for example, motivation alone may be insufficient to overcome the effects of sleep inertia," he said. The paid study volunteers, nine of whom were included in the sleep inertia study, slept eight hours per night during the month leading up t...

Some like it hot: Worms at deep-sea vents favor a fiery 45-55°C

...r such conditions; in one previous study of desert fire ants, all died within one minute of exposure to a temperature of 55 degrees Celsius. Such ants will survive brief forays into similarly hot areas to obtain food, but do not choose to remain in superheated environs as Alvinellids do. "We speculate th...

Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation ?not genes

...ns in diet, probably related to the acquisition of fire and the emerging preference for cooked food. "No other animal relies on cooked food," he said. "Perhaps something in the cooking process altered the biochemical requirements for maximal access to nutrients as well as the need to process the natural t...

World Trade Center identifications pushed forensic DNA technology

...me obvious that many remains were commingled, that fire and water at the site had badly degraded many specimens, and that, as time progressed, the quality of DNA retrievable decreased dramatically. Until Septenber 2001, crime labs across the country generally used STRs ?short tandem repeats ?in forensics...

Better beetle sought for salt cedar control

...itis not subject to other control methods, such as fire and chemicaltreatments, Carney said. A total of 25 egg masses have been released at three different sites,all within cages, Carney said. While the Posidi beetles are approved foropen release, the Uzbekistan beetles have not been approved by Animal a...

UCLA scientists strengthen case for life more than 3.8 billion years ago

...critics, Harrison said. "We've been holding our fire rather than fire away at each criticism in a piecemeal way," he said. "We've gone back to Greenland and done the stud...

Septum keeps neurons in synch, can reduce epileptic seizures by 90 percent

... There are a variety of ways to induce neurons to fire rhythmically, including, interestingly, engaging in stimulating cognitive activities. Scientists and medical providers know that brain lesions, skull fractures, and high fever are among the factors that can produce epilepsy. But in most cases, there...

Flick of whiskers helps tease out brain's 'shadow' signaling system

...ng their electrical activity. But astrocytes don't fire in the same way, and conventional techniques don't...ter them. While scientists have known that neurons fire electrically in spectacular fashion to send signals, it's only recently that the slower chemical sig...

Bacteria give up secrets in war waged on plants

...ases, ranging from bacterial speck in tomatoes and fire blight in apples and pears can devastate crops. Human bacterial pathogens use a similar basic principle to cause diseases. "Bacterial diseases are generally difficult to control," said He, who works in the MSU-Department of Energy Plant Research La...

Brain-computer link lets paralyzed patients convert thoughts into actions

...ful action, however, is not simple. Active neurons fire between 20 and 200 times a second and they work in teams. Although scientists have long been able to eavesdrop on individual nerve cells, before 1996 no one had developed a reliable system for directly collecting precise data from large groups of ...

Fire ants: Their true story told by the scientist who loves them

When it comes to fire ants, most people prefer to wipe the venomous litt...eak. Then there's Walter R. Tschinkel. An ardent fire ant fan and one of its foremost researchers for more than 30 years, Florida State University's Disti...

Tastes great! Study shows brain's response to pleasing -- and changing -- tastes

...pleasurable." But research on how these neurons fire to signal pleasure is important for more than just curiosity's sake, he adds. The ventral pallidum is an important brain region for both pleasure and craving. If firing patterns go wrong in ventral pallidum, it could possibly contribute to eating dis...

Fire ant-attacking fly spreading rapidly in Texas

Parasitic flies introduced to control red imported fire ants have spread over four million acres in centra...lly from Brazil and Argentina, to control invasive fire ants without pesticides. The fly larvae develop inside the ants and kill their host. Dr. Ed LeBrun...

Psst! Coffee drinkers: Fruit flies have something to tell you about caffeine

... caffeine because their taste-receptor cells don't fire in response to it." The discovery, which is the first ever example of a protein required for both caffeine tasting and caffeine-induced behavior, will be published Sept. 19 in Current Biology. For the study, Montell and his colleagues kept 50 frui...

Mirrors in the mind: New studies elucidate how the brain reflects onto itself the actions of others

...aque monkeys: A particular subset of these neurons fire when, for example, a monkey picks up a banana, and...t a somewhat different set of mirror neurons would fire if a banana were poked, for example, rather than picked up. There is also evidence that mirror neuro...

Plants give up answers in the war on bacteria

... can be catastrophic to crops. One disease, called fire blight, did $40 million in destruction to Michigan apple trees in 2000 alone and all but eliminated commercial pear crops in Michigan for that year. He also sees useful human health implications. Understanding that animal pathogens, like dangerous ...

Mysterious 'neural noise' actually primes brain for peak performance

...esponsible for our crystal-clear thoughts, seem to fire in utterly random ways? In the November issue of Nature Neuroscience, the Rochester study shows that the brain's cortex uses seemingly chaotic, or "noisy," signals to represent the ambiguities of the real world--and that this noise dramatically enha...

Firefighters face increased risk for certain cancers

... through the skin and occur both at the scene of a fire and in the firehouse, where idling diesel fire trucks produce diesel exhaust. "Firefighters work in an inherently dangerous occupation on a dail...

Tarantula venom and chili peppers target same pain sensor

... that this and related receptors trigger nerves to fire pain signals when exposed to Death Valley-like heat or the fiery properties of peppery food, mustard oil and other compounds. Human pain-sensing neurons also have these receptors on their surface, and some pain treatments have been developed that tar...

Anticipation plays a powerful role in human memory, brain study finds

...t the mere anticipation of a fearful situation can fire up two memory-forming regions of the brain - even before the event has occurred. That means the simple act of anticipation may play a surprisingly important role in how fresh the memory of a tough experience remains. The findings of the brain-ima...

MIT: Pulsing light silences overactive neurons

...ses often must be treated by removing neurons that fire incorrectly. The new MIT research could lead to the development of optical brain prosthetics to control neurons, eliminating the need for irreversible surgery. "In the future, controlling the activity patterns of neurons may enable very specific t...

Anti-dandruff compound may help fight epilepsy

...s, “must open on cue to make sure nerve cells only fire for defined periods of time.? In their studies of these channels, Li and his colleagues developed a new way of testing thousands of druglike molecules to find any that could turn the potassium switch on or off. Their approach involved chemically sh...

How to manage forests in hurricane impact zones

...United States are adapted to disturbance from both fire and high wind," says Stanturf, project leader of t...s to meet both the short-term goals of salvage and fire prevention and the long-term goal of reforestation and ecological recovery." Stanturf and fellow ...

When your brain talks, your muscles don't always listen

...ike "doublets," the brief periods when the neurons fire faster, from slower periods of activity. The results showed lower firing rates among older subjects versus younger subjects--a diminished ability of the muscle fibers to "hear" and respond to the neurons' commands. "The repeated contraction of ...

Soft-cell approach cuts animal tests

...inflammation, pulmonary oedema, and pneumonia; fire combustion products, including cyanide, hydrogen s...contaminants, workplace airborne contaminants, and fire combustion products", says Dr Hayes. The technique has several advantages over conventional test...

Fighting influenza & co. with 40,000 blood samples

...r people. The reason for this is that with age the fire power of the immune system is reduced. Why this is the case is largely unknown. An international EU project led by the University of Bonn is now starting which aims at shedding light on this. Among other things, the researchers want to get a step clo...

Paper challenges 1491 Amazonian population theories

...findings are published in a paper titled "Holocene fire and occupation in Amazonia: records from two lake districts" that appears in a recent issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. Bush says this paper, and another forthcoming in the journal Frontiers i...

Brain's white matter -- More 'talkative' than once thought

...eds electrical impulses. Cells lacking the coating fire 20 to 90 times slower than cells coated with myelin. Myelin loss is well known to impair signaling and information processing, causing nerve cells to die and creating such neurodegenerative conditions as multiple sclerosis. Bergles speculates that...

Detecting cold, feeling pain: Study reveals why menthol feels fresh

...that, in mice, the receptor triggers the nerves to fire pain signals when they are exposed to high ambient heat or the fiery properties of peppery food. (Science, April 14, 2000). The study demonstrated that capsaicin and noxious heat elicit the sensation of burning pain through activation of the same rec...

Treating HIV in war zones -- Public health emergencies need rapid advice from WHO

... on ART since December 2003, says: "I heard gun fire all through the night. When I had only five pills left I lost my appetite and felt desperate…but despite the uncertainty I continued to take my treatment at the correct hour… When I had only one pill left I had the courage to go out and seek some mor...

'Smart' mice teach scientists about learning process, brain disorders

...in nerve-cell membranes and stimulates the cell to fire when a nerve-cell-signaling molecule, or neurotransmitter, binds to it. NR2B previously has been implicated in the early stages of learning. The new research showed that when Cdk5 is removed from the brain, the levels of NR2B significantly increas...