“I can’t move my legs,” the 26-year-old man told his younger brother, who towered above him as he lay sprawled on the floor. He’d been on his computer for hours, he explained, and when he tried to stand up, he couldn’t. His legs looked normal, felt normal, yet they wouldn’t move. At first, he figured…
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Then, Dr. Yemiscigil and Dr. Vlaev drew records for 14,159 of the participants. To enlarge and enrich their sample, they also gathered comparable data for another 4,041 men and women enrolled in a different study that asked similar questions about people’s physical activities and sense of purpose. Finally, they collated and compared the results, determining,…
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Can a protein found in a mosquito lead to a better understanding of the workings of our own brains? Prof. Ofer Yizhar and his team in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Neurobiology Department took a light-sensitive protein derived from mosquitos and used it to devise an improved method for investigating the messages that are passed…
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EAST LANSING, Mich. – As climate change threatens global food security, researchers at Michigan State University are building better beans crucial to human nutrition by tapping into the genetics of the more heat-resistant tepary bean. The tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius A. Gray) is a sister of the common bean which includes kidney, pinto and navy…
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Severe symptoms of COVID-19, leading often to death, are thought to result from the patient’s own acute immune response rather than from damage inflicted directly by the virus. Immense research efforts are therefore invested in figuring out how the virus manages to mount an effective invasion while throwing the immune system off course. A new…
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Quick: Pick your three favorite fast-food restaurants. If you’re like many people, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King may come to mind–even if you much prefer In-N-Out or Chick-fil-A. A new study from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and UC San Francisco’s Department of Neurology found that when it comes to making choices, we surprisingly…
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Brown bears that are more inclined to grate and rub against trees have more offspring and more mates, according to a University of Alberta study. The results suggest there might be a fitness component to the poorly understood behaviour. “As far as we know, all bears do this dance, rubbing their back up against the…
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Annually, more than 350,000 children in the world are affected by pediatric cancer. Radiation has improved outcomes dramatically, but the damage caused to healthy tissue can affect the long-term health of a child. While clinicians and radiation specialists design treatments using the most up-to-date information available, there hasn’t been a single guiding source of data…
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LA JOLLA, CA–Scientists at Scripps Research have unveiled a new Ebola virus vaccine design, which they say has several advantages over standard vaccine approaches for Ebola and related viruses that continue to threaten global health. In the new design, described in a paper in Nature Communications, copies of the Ebola virus outer spike protein, known…
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Environmental enrichment — with infrastructure, unfamiliar odors and tastes, and toys and puzzles — is often used in zoos, laboratories, and farms to stimulate animals and increase their wellbeing. Stimulating environments are better for mental health and cognition because they boost the growth and function of neurons and their connections, the glia cells that support…
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