Tag: "motivation" at biology news

UCSB scientists probe sea floor venting to gain understanding of early life on Earth

... twentieth century, and have now become a powerful motivation for research and exploration, according to the National Science Foundation, a major funder of this work. The NSF explains that subseafloor ecosystems may represent both the cradle of life on Earth and a model for the exploration and discovery of life...

Researchers trace evolution to relatively simple genetic changes

...ut how evolution occurs in natural habitats. "Our motivation is to try to understand how new animal types evolve in nature," said molecular geneticist David M. Kingsley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "People have been interested in whether a few g...

Octopuses occasionally stroll around on two arms, UC Berkeley biologists report

...ut how evolution occurs in natural habitats. "Our motivation is to try to understand how new animal types evolve in nature," said molecular geneticist David M. Kingsley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "People have been interested in whether a few g...

Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive

... of other feelings." The study, entitled "Reward, motivation and emotion systems associated with early-stage in... all of our subjects showed activity in reward and motivation regions. To emotion researchers like me, this is pretty exciting because it's the first physiologica...

Brain Scan Study of Smokers Reveals Signature of Craving

...related images in areas associated with attention, motivation and reward. However, those studies examined smoker...rs examined smokers' brain responses in attention, motivation and reward regions after a period of overnight abstinence from smoking and after smoking as usual. W...

Siberian tigers hang tough

... that a few dedicated individuals, with sufficient motivation and adequate support, can make a difference in the world." Coordinators of the survey effort gathered in Vladivostok today to present their results, but emphasize that numbers are still preliminary. Still to come will be an assessment of the prey sp...

Cultural norms not unique to human societies

...tain traditions, discovered they possess a natural motivation to copy their peers well into adulthood and say that although other species show some cultural behaviors, the level of cultural variation shown by chimpanzees is exceeded only by humans. The study, conducted at the Yerkes National Primate Research Ce...

Quantum dots provide a faster, more sensitive method for detecting respiratory viral infections

...ic viral infection, drug companies don't have much motivation to develop effective treatments because doctors are unlikely to prescribe them very often. Currently, there are three diagnostic tests available for identifying respiratory viruses like RSV. The "gold standard" involves incubating an infected sample...

Discarded placentas deliver researchers promising cells similar to embryonic stem cells

.... Strom added. The researchers say their original motivation was, and still is, to identify cells with the same therapeutic promise as embryonic stem cells. To this end, they began looking at the viability of amnion as a cell source in late 2001, obtaining discarded placentas from full-term births under an Ins...

Grabbing addiction by the tail

... tissue deep in the brain involved in pleasure and motivation ?mis-communicate. Normally, one neuron triggers ac...id Wang. "It's the trigger that leads to sustained motivation to seek a drug." In contrast, addicted animals who received an intravenous injection of the artifi...

Aggression-related gene weakens brain's impulse control circuits

...among other areas. Volume of an area important for motivation and impulse regulation (orbital frontal cortex) was increased by 14 percent in men only. Although the reasons are unknown, this could reflect deficient pruning ?the withering of unused neuronal connections as the brain matures and becomes more effici...

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

...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 to the study, had no medical, ps...

BioMed Central launches Biology Direct

...ng on the eve of the journal's launch, explain the motivation for establishing Biology Direct: "We were compelled to launch this experiment because, while scientific publishing cannot be effective without peer review, we saw flaws in the current, predominantly, anonymous review system that run too deep to be r...

A case of mistaken molecular identity

... night," said Levin. "And this gives us additional motivation to improve conditions for people living in areas where Chagas disease is common." Silvia Matsumoto, a physician from the Dr. Teodoro Alvarez Hospital in Buenos Aires and first author of the paper, launched the investigation after noticing Chagas pat...

Purdue creates new low-cost system to detect bacteria

...tion of that instrument," Hirleman said. A major motivation for the research is to reduce the time it takes for industry to identify harmful organisms in food processing. Scientists in food-processing plants routinely grow cultures to test for dangerous pathogens. "The dairy industry, for example, grows bac...

The appearance of your hands can reveal your age, study finds

...son's age by viewing only their hands. "A primary motivation to have plastic surgery is to look and feel better, often by seeking a younger looking appearance. However, looking younger after your facelift or eyelid surgery can conflict with aged hands that simply do not match the face," said Roxanne Guy, MD, ...

The brain's motivation station

...identified "may let an organism's expectations and motivation interact with events in the physical world to infl...tion of this mesolimbic circuit may help translate motivation into memory." ...

A reason why video games are hard to give up

...sychology at Rochester, aimed to evaluate players' motivation in virtual environments. Study volunteers answered...etermination Theory, a widely researched theory of motivation developed at the University of Rochester. Rather than dissect the actual games, which other res...

Altered perception of reward in human cocaine addiction

... was a "disconnect" between subjective measures of motivation (how much they said they were engaged in the task) and the objective measures of motivation (how fast and accurately they performed on the task). "These behavioral data implicate a disruption ...

New research identifies gene important for nicotine's effects on the brain

... neurotransmitters that plays an important role in motivation and reward processes. Nicotine activates the dopamine system in the brain as do other drugs of abuse including cocaine and amphetamines. "Our work and that of others has shown that nicotine changes signaling in nerve cells in the dopamine system...

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