Tag: "helping" at biology news

Brain inflammation may be friend, not foe, for Alzheimer's patients

...e in Alzheimer’s disease, protecting the brain and helping get rid of clumps of material known as plaques tha...rotector and is acting more like an ambulance crew helping at the site of a road wreck, not causing the crash. The work suggests that doctors not rush in to...

Math that powers spam filters used to understand how brain learns to move our muscles

...ements,” says Shadmehr. Beyond possible use in helping stroke patients, the new tool might also be applied to better understand how we learn language, develop ideas and make memories. “How we learn to think operates under many of the same principles as how we learn to move,” Shadmehr says. ...

CSIRO scientists join fight to save 'Tassie devil'

...or land uses,” Mr Marvanek said. Dr Hyatt said helping the Tassie devil to survive the DFTD threat was crucial, not just because it is a major tourism attraction but also to ensure devils continue to play the vital role they have in maintaining Tasmania’s environmental balance. Other collaborators in...

Stroke study sheds light on left-right brain divide

... brain has in keeping track of our own actions and helping us to notice when we have made mistakes,’ Dr Hodgson added. ‘This type of “self-monitoring” function may play a crucial role in many day to day situations. For example, when preparing a meal we often have to keep track of several tasks at once and ma...

CU study reveals why starling females cheat

..., therefore, are usually related to the chicks. By helping the chicks survive, they pass on familial genes. In contrast, some females cheat with males outside their group if they sense their mates are too genetically similar to themselves. Mating with strangers increases their brood's genetic diversity, e...

Gene therapy study shows safety and statistically significant improvement in Parkinson's disease

...asing GAD causes more GABA to be synthesized, thus helping to calm the STN over-activity. The value of this strategy has been demonstrated in previous human studies where reducing STN activity by either electrical stimulation or lesioning can help ameliorate the symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s disease. T...

Scientists close in on missing carbon sink

...ge amount of carbon," Stephens explains. "They are helping to offset industrial carbon emissions and the atmospheric impacts of clearing land more than we realized." Capturing vertical movements Most of the computer models produced incorrect estimates because, in relying on ground-level measurements,...

Putting feelings into words produces therapeutic effects in the brain

...on is a “potent and powerful therapy that has been helping people for thousands of years.” Previous studies have shown that mindfulness meditation is effective in reducing a variety of chronic pain conditions, skin disease, stress-related health conditions and a variety of other ailments, he said. Creswe...

First confirmed common genetic risk factors for breast cancer

...event cancer from occurring in the first place, by helping cells to repair DNA breaks and other abnormalities that can result from chance or exposure to an environmental toxin, such as excessive UV sunlight. However, BRCA-1, BRCA-2 and the other previously identified breast cancer susceptibility genes are mu...

Mule deer moms rescue other fawns

...nvests time and energy and puts herself at risk by helping many other animals. In contrast, a whitetail mother waits to assess whether a fawn is her own before she steps in to defend it. As a result, whitetail fawns suffer considerably more predation during the first months of life than do mule deer fawns." ...

Philandering female felines forgo fidelity

... of males, which could be an advantage in terms of helping to maintain genetic diversity,” said ZSL’s Dada Go...e to have access to many males.” In addition to helping save cheetahs in Africa, WCS is also studying the last remaining populations of Asia’s cheetahs in I...

Catching cancer's spread by watching hemoglobin

...may make the technique convenient and powerful for helping to diagnose diseases such as melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. The technique can image blood vessels up to a millimeter below the surface. Looking at blood vessels just below skin growths would be very useful for distinguishing between mal...

How to steer a moving cell

...ell’s internal scaffolding, determines cell shape, helping the cell to grow and develop "growth cones." These are specialized structures at the tips of growing nerve fibers, called axons, which sense guidance signals in their environment and "steer" the axons. Cell movement also requires polarization to po...

UQ research heralds vaccine technology breakthrough

...h project was double-barrelled because, along with helping children, it included forming a new type of vaccine. The research group has developed a "recombinant" vaccine using the existing Hepatitis B vaccine to carry the RSV peptides. "Hepatitis B surface antigen forms virus-like particles, which are the v...

Dealing deadly cancers a knockout punch

New scientific evidence is helping to build a compelling case for oncolytic viruses as a first-line and adjunctive treatment for many cancers. Reovirus, a non-pathogenic virus under development at Calgary, Alberta-based Oncolytics Biotech, has shown powerful anti-cancer activity a...

Dinosaur hearing, listening to muscle noise, quieter cubicles

...udying the auditory systems of living organisms is helping scientists to learn the evolutionary pressures the...this question, and will propose specific ideas for helping to resolve this issue (4pMU5). Scientist and instrument-maker Richard Smith ( richard@smithwatkins....

Gene thought to assist chemo may help cancer thrive

A gene thought to be essential in helping chemotherapy kill cancer cells, may actually help ...cer research is that a working p53 is essential in helping chemo patients because it turns on the killing mechanism for the cells that were damaged by chemo. B...

Leukemia drug turns mini-molecules up, cancer genes down

...ion of two genes important for cancer development, helping to explain how the drug works. The drug is called all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) and it is considered the gold standard for treating the disease. The study showed that ATRA raises the levels of three particular miRNAs in leukemia cells and th...

NIDA study identifies genes that might help some people abstain from smoking

...d impact the success rate of cessation programs by helping health care providers choose the most appropriate treatment based on individual differences.? Dr. Uhl and his colleagues performed a genome-wide analysis on the DNA of two types of nicotine-dependent individuals, one that was able to successfully q...

Fish extinctions alter critical nutrients in water, study shows

...ible to carry out in the wild, but new methods are helping researchers better understand these systems. "Computer simulations provide a means to assess patterns of species loss in a system in which we just cannot do complex experiments," said co-author Alex Flecker, Cornell associate professor of ecology a...

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