June 4th, 2010Author: yogiNew tools that use different colors of light to silence brain activity could lead to new treatments for disorders such as epilepsy, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease and brain injury, neuroscientists say.
These so-called “super-silencers” provide precise control over the timing of the shutdown of overactive brain circuits, something that’s impossible with existing drugs or other conventional treatments, according to the research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The research is published in the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Nature.
“Silencing different sets of neurons with different colors of light allows us to understand how they work together to implement brain functions,” study senior author Ed Boyden, a professor in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, said in a news release.
“Using these new tools, we can look at two neural pathways and study how they compute together. These tools will help us understand how to control neural circuits, leading to new understandings and treatments for brain disorders — some of the biggest unmet medical needs in the world,” Boyden added.
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June 4th, 2010Author: yogiUnemployed young people could suffer from “permanent psychological scars” due to being out of work, according to a survey by the Prince’s Trust.
A YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people aged between 16 and 25 showed one in 10 of those who had been out of work had turned to drugs or alcohol abuse.
And those not in education or training were twice as likely to feel down, depressed, isolated or rejected.
Latest figures show almost a million 16-25s are unemployed.
The Prince’s Trust provides loans to young people to help them back into work and is calling on the government and businesses to do more to help the younger generation escape unemployment.
Professor David Blanchflower, who was involved in the research, told the BBC that the government needs to help these young people as soon as possible.
“You need to get these folks into the labour market, and give them experience, because we know that in May, June and July the class of 2010 are coming out. We need to take this as a national crisis because it’s going to flood us again later in the year,” he said.
‘Tomorrow’s unemployable’
The Prince’s Trust has launched a new campaign to raise £1m a week to support unemployed and disadvantaged young people.
The trust said its survey showed that 25% of unemployed young people believed their joblessness had caused arguments with their parents or other relatives, and 15% said their life lacked direction.
Martina Milburn, the charity’s chief executive, said: “The emotional effects on young people are profound, long-term and can become irreversible. We must act now to prevent a lost generation of young people before it is too late.”
She said young people “bore the brunt of the recession”, which left “one in five 16-to-24 year olds out of work”.
June 3rd, 2010Author: yogiLong-term physical activity has an anti-ageing effect at the cellular level, a German study suggests. Researchers focused on telomeres, the protective caps on the chromosomes that keep a cell’s DNA stable but shorten with age. They found telomeres shortened less quickly in key immune cells of athletes with a long history of endurance training.The study, by Saarland University, appears in the journal Circulation.
In a separate study of young Swedish men, cardiovascular fitness has been linked to increased intelligence and higher educational achievement. Telomeres are relatively short sections of specialised DNA that sit at the ends of all our chromosomes. They have been compared to the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces that prevent the laces from unravelling. Each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten and the cell becomes more susceptible to dying.
June 1st, 2010Author: yogiThe fight against fat is going high-tech. To get an inside look at eating and exercise habits, scientists are developing wearable wireless sensors to monitor overweight and obese people as they go about their daily lives. The experimental devices are designed to keep track of how many minutes they work out, how much food they consume and even whether they are at a fast-food joint when they should be in the park. The goal is to cut down on self-reported answers that often cover up what’s really happening.
In a lab in this Los Angeles suburb, two overweight teenagers help test the devices by taking turns sitting, standing, lying down, running on a treadmill and playing Wii. As music thumps in the background, wireless sensors on their chests record their heart rates, stress levels and amount of physical activity. The information is sent to a cell phone. Traditional weight-loss interventions rely mainly on people’s memory of what they ate for dinner and how many minutes they worked out. But researchers have long known that method can be unreliable since people often forget details or lie.