France has more than 365 types of cheese… and I want to try them all!
Here is what I am reading today:
“Cognitive scientists working at MIT have devised a means for not only altering the dreams of rats, but of demonstrating a way of testing what they’ve achieved, offering evidence that it can be done, and in so doing have offered a glimpse into what may lie ahead for people who wish to manipulate their own dreams. Daniel Bendor and Matthew Wilson, working out of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Neuroscience, used audio sounds to influence the dreams of rats they were studying.”
“”We knew that BPA could cause anxiety in a variety of species, and wanted to begin to understand why and how that happens,” says Dr. Heather Patisaul, an associate professor of biology at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. BPA is a chemical used in a wide variety of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, and is used in consumer products such as some food containers.”
“A new paper that describes two studies by Jaye Derrick, PhD, research scientist at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, found that watching a rerun of a favorite TV show may help restore the drive to get things done in people who have used up their reserves of willpower or self-control.”
“In his dinner talk at the 1st ECRC “Franz-Volhard” Symposium of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and Charité — Universitätsmedizin on Sept. 7, 2012 in Berlin-Buch, Schwarze reported on his research and gave a preview of what his wood treatment method could mean, particularly for young violinists.”
“The researchers worked with children aged between seven and nine who had underperformed in standardised reading tests. The research suggests that DHA supplementation is a simple and effective way to improve reading and behaviour in healthy but underperforming children. DHA is a key omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and seafood, but in this study the source was algae, making it suitable for vegetarians.”
“Testicular cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in young men ages 15 to 45 years. The malignancy is becoming more common, and researchers suspect this is due to increasing exposure to unrecognized environmental causes. To see if recreational drug use might play a role, Victoria Cortessis, MSPH, PhD, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC in Los Angeles, and her colleagues looked at the self-reported history of recreational drug use in 163 young men diagnosed with testicular cancer and compared it with that of 292 healthy men of the same age and race/ethnicity.”
“More than a kilometer below the ocean’s surface, where the sunless water is inky black, scientists have documented one of nature’s most spectacular living light shows. An underwater survey has found that roughly 20% of bottom-dwelling organisms in the Bahamas produce light. Moreover, all of the organisms surveyed by the researchers proved to have visual senses tuned to the wavelengths of light generated by this bioluminescence. The work speaks to the important role self-generated light plays in deep-sea communities, marine biologists say.
Bioluminescence has evolved many times in marine species and may help organisms find mates and food or avoid predators. In the middle depths of the ocean—the mesopelagic zone that is located 200 to 1000 meters below the surface—the vast majority of organisms can bioluminesce. Much less was known about bioluminescence in organisms living close to the sea floor. Such benthic organisms are harder to visit or sample and therefore study, says Sönke Johnsen, a marine biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.”
“Muscles that burn energy without contracting have yielded new clues about how the body retains a constant temperature – and they may provide new targets for combating obesity. Traditionally, the body’s main thermostat was thought to be brown fat. It raids the body’s white fat stores in cold conditions to burn energy and keep the body warm. Muscles also play a role in keeping the body warm by contracting and triggering the shiver response – but this is only a short-term fix because prolonged shivering damages muscles. Now it seems that muscles have another way to turn up the heat.”
