Scientists report first cell made with artificial Genes
Scientists say they have developed the first cell controlled by an artificial genome.
Although it’s a near-copy of a natural genome, the researchers say their method can be used to better understand the basic machinery driving life, and to engineer bacteria for tasks such as fuel production or environmental cleanup.
The research group, at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., was already credited with chemically producing a bacterial genome, and with transplanting the genome of one bacterium to another. In the latest work, reported in the May 21 issue of the research journal Science, the team combined both methods. The result is what they call a “synthetic cell,” though only its genome is synthetic, or artificial.
“This is the first synthetic cell... we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer,” said J. Craig Venter, president of the institute and leader of the research. Read Full Story>>
Source<http://www.world-science.net>
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Sleep deprivation can make you gain weight and also increases the risk of having diabetes
Lack of sleep does make you gain weight faster. And that can lead to diabetes. This is how it happens: the hormone ghrelin, produced in the intestines, stimulates appetite. The hormone leptin, made by fat cells, signals the brain when you are full. Lack of sleep causes ghrelin levels to go up – and leptin levels to go down.
When that happens you get hungry (particularly for carbs) – and you’re less satisfied when you do eat. So you want more food… a constant cycle that can lead to weight gain.
In fact, a Stanford study actually confirmed that people who slept less than eight hours a night had higher levels of ghrelin and lower levels of leptin. As expected, they also had more body fat – which correlated with their sleep patterns. Those who slept the least — weighed the most.
Adequate sleep is essential in maintaining hormone balance. It breaks that night-time hormonal chain that leads to weight gain. Eliminating that gain can in turn reduce your diabetes risk. Read Full Story>>
Source<http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com>
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Drug Induces a Memory of Safety in Rat Brains
Researchers have found a way to pharmacologically induce a memory of safety in the brain of rats, mimicking the effect of training. The finding suggests possibilities for new treatments for individuals suffering from anxiety disorders.
Rats normally freeze when they hear a tone they have been conditioned to associate with an electric shock. The reaction can be extinguished by repeatedly exposing the rats to the tone with no shock. In this work, administering a protein directly into the brain of rats achieved the same effect as extinction training. The protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, is one of a class of proteins that support the growth and survival of neurons.
Prior work has shown that extinction training does not erase a previously conditioned fear memory, but creates a new memory associating the tone with safety. "The surprising finding here is that the drug substituted for extinction training, suggesting that it induced such a memory," said Dr. Gregory Quirk at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, who led the investigation with support from the National Institute of Mental Health. Read Full Story>>
Source<http://www.sciencedaily.com>
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Flooring Can Affect How Consumers Make Purchase Decisions, Researcher Finds
From teachers to hairdressers, people who stand on their feet all day will tell you that the flooring beneath them can be the difference between a good day and a bad one. But can the difference between carpet and hard tile flooring affect how you make decisions?
Research published this month by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, and author of the famed ceiling height study, suggests that the way people judge products may be influenced by the ground beneath them.
In the study, published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, authors Meyers-Levy and Juliet Zhu and Lan Jiang (University of British Columbia) explored the feelings evoked by the two most common flooring types in retail environments: hard vinyl tile and carpet. "When a person stands on carpeted flooring, it feels comforting," says Meyers-Levy. "But the irony is that when people stand on carpet, they will judge products that are close to them as less comforting."
The authors first conducted a study to show that carpeting truly does evoke a greater sense of physical comfort than tiled flooring. "Given this finding, we then tackled a more practical and intriguing question," says Meyers-Levy. "Would these bodily sensations elicited by the flooring transfer to people's assessments of products that they observe while shopping?" Read Full Story>>
Source<http://www.sciencedaily.com>
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Coffee Consumption Unrelated to Alertness: Stimulating Effects May Be Illusion, Study Finds
The stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion, according to new research that shows there is no real benefit to be gained from the habitual morning cup of coffee.
Tests on 379 individuals who abstained from caffeine for 16 hours before being given either caffeine or a placebo and then tested for a range of responses showed little variance in levels of alertness.
The study, published online in the journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, reports that frequent coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing effects and the stimulatory effects of caffeine. While frequent consumers may feel alerted by coffee, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal. And given the increased propensity to anxiety and raised blood pressure induced by caffeine consumption, there is no net benefit to be gained.
Peter Rogers, from the University of Bristol's Department of Experimental Psychology and one of the lead authors of the study, said: "Our study shows that we don't gain an advantage from consuming caffeine -- although we feel alerted by it, this is caffeine just bringing us back to normal. On the other hand, while caffeine can increase anxiety, tolerance means that for most caffeine consumers this effect is negligible." Read Full Story>>
Source<www.sciencedaily.com>
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What Happens When We Get Angry?
When we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone production increases, cortisol (the stress hormone) decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more stimulated. This is indicated by a new investigation lead by scientists from the University of Valencia (UV) that analyses the changes in the brain's cardiovascular, hormonal and asymmetric activation response when we get angry.
"Inducing emotions generates profound changes in the autonomous nervous system, which controls the cardiovascular response, and also in the endocrine system. In addition, changes in cerebral activity also occur, especially in the frontal and temporal lobes", Neus Herrero, main author of the study and researcher at UV, explains to SINC.
The researchers induced anger in 30 men using the version that has been adapted to Spanish of the procedure "Anger Induction" (AI), consisting of 50 phrases in first person that reflect daily situations that provoke anger. Before and immediately after the inducement of anger they measured the heart rate and arterial tension, the levels of testosterone and cortisol, and the asymmetric activation of the brain (using the dichotic listening technique), the general state of mind and the subjective experience of the anger emotion. Read Full story>>
Source <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/>
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