To produce cellular energy, nearly all multicellular organisms use a series of highly specialized proteins embedded in the inner member of the mitochondria to transport and pump electrons, collectively known as the electron transport chain. A new study has revealed that this is not the case in European mistletoes, the traditional Christmas ornament hung to give someone a kiss underneath it.
After sequencing the organism's genome, researchers couldn't find any mitochondrial genes for coding the protein subunits that make up the electron transport chain’s first station, called complex I. To find out which parts of the assembly line machinery had disappeared, researchers extracted proteins from mitochondria in the mistletoe's leaves and compar ...
At least to some scientists it is. Scientists believe that catching a yawn is a sign of empathy, since it is more likely to occur between relatives than strangers. Plus, other social primates like chimps and bonobos do it, too. A new study suggests that women (traditionally branded the more empathetic sex) might be more susceptible to copycat yawning than men. Researchers surreptitiously analyzed more than 4000 real-world yawns on planes and trains, in restaurants, and in offices. They noted when someone yawned, and then whether a nearby acquaintance or friend did the same within a 3-minute period. Men and women spontaneously yawned with about the same frequency. But when someone else yawned first, women were more likely than men to follow ...
Bayer Corporation and the Public Health Committee of the American Society for Microbiology sponsored a study of hand washing in public restrooms. Researchers from the survey group hid in stalls or pretended to comb their hair while they observed over 6,000 men and women in five large cities. Their observations revealed that many people prefer a "get up and go" strategy, failing to wash their hands after using the restroom facilities. In New York's Penn Station, for example, only 60% of restroom users washed after relieving themselves. Similar rates were found in other cities: 64% of restroom users washed at a Braves game in Atlanta, 69% washed in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, 71% used soap and water in a New Orleans casino, and a laudab ...
A promising new drug called baloxavir marboxil (Xofluza) developed in Japan has been shown to stop the flu virus from spreading 24 hours after intake.
The drug interferes with influenza A and influenza B's main replication process instead of inhibiting the neuraminidase enzyme, as accomplished by previous drugs such as oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). As shown in the illustration, viral neuraminidase sits on the surface of influenza viruses and enables it to be released once reproduced within the infected host cell.
Xofluza accomplishes its mode of action by inhibiting the cap-dependentendonuclease activity of the viral polymerase. It achieves this by inhibiting the process known as cap snatching, which is a mechanism expl ...
In a new study, scientists have discovered that early marijuana use may result in abnormal brain function and lower IQ. To conduct this study, four groups of teenagers were recruited:
Those with depression who were not marijuana users
Those with depression who were frequent marijuana users
Frequent marijuana users without depression
and healthy individuals who were not marijuana users
Participants were later divided into youth who started using marijuana before the age of 17 and those who began using it later or not at all.
These participants underwent psychiatric, cognitive and IQ testing as well as brain scanning. The study found no evidence that marijuana use improved depressive symptoms; there was no difference in psychiatric symptoms between ...
A dog searching for a lost child is typically given an item of clothing to smell. But what does that scent “look” like?
To find out, scientists tested 48 dogs, half of which had special police or rescue training. In a laboratory room, the scientists slid each dog’s favorite toy across the floor to a hiding place, while the dog waited in another room. One researcher then brought the dog to the testing room and pointed at the starting point of the odor trail and told the dog, “Look for it! Bring it!” In one trial, the dog found either its favored toy or a different item.
Many of the surprised dogs continued searching for the toy used to lay the scent trail—an indication that they had a mental representation of what they expected to find. Bot ...
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. It's the equivalent of having a baby, placing him/her in a basket, and then leaving it on a random person's front porch. While this may seem strange to us, it's not uncommon to some species of birds. One of nature's shrewdest examples of this behavior comes from cowbirds. Not only do they lay their eggs inside the nests of other birds and expect them to rear the foster chicks as their own, scientists have found another way these birds may be harming their hosts -- their extra-thick eggshells can crack the hosts’ own eggs when they falls into the nest.
To test this idea, researchers of recent study gathered 157 freshly laid cowbird eggs and dropped them onto host eggs fro ...
According to a new study on human behavior, 90% of the population can be classified into four basic personality types: Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious. However, the latter of the four types, Envious, is the most common, with 30% compared to 20% for each of the other groups.
If you're the type of person who doesn't mind what you achieve, just as long as it's better than everyone else, then you're considered envious. Optimists, which account for 20% of the people tested in the study, are those who believe that they and their partner will make the best choice for both of them. Pessimists were defined in the study as those who selected the option which they see as the lesser of two evils - they accounted for 20% as well. The trusti ...
Ancient baby's teeth have revealed that Neanderthals followed today's breastfeeding guidelines. Scientists analyzed a fossilized baby tooth from a Neanderthal child, and found the infant was breastfed exclusively for the first seven months of life and given supplementary foods and mother's milk for another seven months before being weaned.
This fascinating discovery sheds light on the remarkable similarities between Neanderthal parenting practices and contemporary breastfeeding guidelines. By examining the composition of the fossilized baby tooth, scientists have uncovered valuable insights into the dietary patterns of our ancient relatives.
The Neanderthal infant's exclusive breastfeeding for the first seven months of life mirrors the advice ...
A new psychology study suggests that women are better than men at reading people's thoughts and emotions, just by looking at the eyes.
Researchers from around the globe tested the way genes influence a person's cognitive empathy; their ability to accurately recognise another person's emotional state. 90,000 people were shown different photographs of people's eyes and asked to determine their mood. Results showed that women more consistently picked the correct feeling when the participants had to select what emotion they perceived when shown a visual of a person's eyes.
This is the first big study on cognitive empathy and its relationship to gender. The international research team has also identified a potential genetic region that influences ...
There's no question that many parents today still, to some extent, hesitate to vaccinate their babies due to fears that it's linked to autism. Of course, this idea all started after a 1998 study published in The Lancet showed a link between sudden behavioral changes in 12 children shortly after a vaccine was administered (article linked below). Although the study has been retracted due to technical flaws, such as the small sample size used by the researchers to make their conclusions, parents to this day still reference the article to justify why they shouldn't vaccinate their children.
Most misinformation on vaccines comes from the lack of education on how they're developed, what they contain, and how they work. Personally I don't blame par ...
Despite slang terms that imply otherwise, the human penis contains no bones. The same cannot be said for many of our closest evolutionary relatives: Chimpanzees and bonobos both have penis bones (a macaque one is pictured, left), also known as bacula.
To find out why some primates have the feature whereas others don’t, researchers traced the bone’s evolutionary history through time. The baculum first evolved between 145 million and 95 million years ago, as reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. That means it was present in the most recent common ancestor of all primates and carnivores. Why some descendants, like humans, lost their bacula appears to be due to differences in mating practices: In primates, the presence of a penis ...
The short clip above shows what happens to an injured plant when a nibbling insect attacks the leaves of a plant: the entire plant is alerted to begin anticipatory defense responses.
Working in the model plant Arabidopsis, researchers recently showed that a systemic signal begins with the release of glutamate, which is perceived by glutamate receptor–like ion channels upon injury to a leaf. The ion channels then set off a cascade of changes in calcium ion concentration that propagate through the phloem vasculature and through intercellular channels called plasmodesmata. This glutamate-based long-distance signaling is rapid; within minutes, an undamaged leaf can respond to the fate of a distant leaf.
In a recent study, scientists delivered a molecule called FKBP1b into the central memory station found in the brain of aging rats. Upon administrating the molecule, hundreds of formally active genes were reactivated, in a pattern that closely resembles those of younger, more mentally agile rats than aged ones. As a result, the rats showed enhanced learning and appeared to reverse memory shortfalls when tackling a maze. These findings suggest that the mental rustiness which accompanies aging happens because the amount of this one molecule goes down; a follow up study is currently in the works to see why that is.
People are fascinated by the topic of déjà vu, or the feeling that one is reliving some prior experience. The déjà vu phenomenon has been investigated by psychologists throughout the history of the discipline, and a number of theories — neurological, supernatural, pathological, and otherwise — have been proposed to explain its presumed occurrence.
A team of Dutch researchers, led by Herman Sno, have investigated the topic at length in recent years. Sno and his colleagues argue that the déjà vu experience can be examined using the hologram as a model. In holographic photography, each piece of an image contains the full information necessary to reproduce the image, a property that gives holographic images their three-dimensional qualities. T ...
