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Biology News - January 2007

Evolution of Giant Axons and Myelinated Fibers

January 22nd 2007 02:35
Neural Network
Axon image courtesy of stock.xchng
Hartline and Colman published their paper on the two basic mechanisms of conduction of nerve impulses. The full paper is online and free.


Source: Current Biology, Vol 17, 09 Jan 2007

"Rapid Conduction and the Evolution of Giant Axons and Myelinated Fibers" by D.K. Hartline and D.R. Colman
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Cellphones and Brain Cancer

January 12th 2007 19:19
A recent study published in the "Journal of the National Cancer Institute" indicates that there is no link between cellphone use and brain cancer. Schüz, et al., followed over 400,000 people who began using cellphones between 1982 and 1995 and found no increased risk of tumors.

Sources: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, doi:10.1093/jnci/djj464
An article about the study at Arstechnica



"Cellular Telephone Use and Cancer Risk: Update of a Nationwide Danish Cohort" by Joachim Schüz, Rune Jacobsen, Jørgen H. Olsen, John D. Boice, Jr, Joseph K. McLaughlin, Christoffer Johansen
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Cellphones Affect Blood Flow in the Brain

January 11th 2007 19:01
Cellphone
Cellphone image courtesy of stock.xchng
Aalto, et al., have found that the electromagnetic field created around cellphones in use affects blood flow in the brain. Blood flow decreases under the antenna--the inferior temporal cortex in their subjects--and increases in the prefrontal cortex. Not enough is known about how the brain works to say if this is good or bad; it simply is.

Source: Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, doi:10.1038/sj.jcbfm.9600279

"Mobile phone affects cerebral blood flow in humans" by Sargo Aalto, Christian Haarala, Anna Brück, Hannu Sipilä, Heikki Hämäläinen, and Juha O Rinne
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Relieving Jellyfish Stings

January 6th 2007 05:18
Scientific American has an interesting online article about relieving the pain from jellyfish stings by relieving oneself on the stings. Several television shows have joked about the use of urine to counteract the poison from jellyfish stings.
Jellyfish
Jellyfish image courtesy of stock.xchng
Scientific American's verdict? Don't pee on yourself. (Did you really need anyone to tell you that?)

Jellyfish tentacles are lined with nematocysts, little packets of stinging that stick to your skin when the tentacles rub against you. A change in the balance of solutes triggers the release of more toxin, as does rubbing or scratching the sting.

Salt water is the best remedy at the beach. A baking soda/salt water paste can also help to draw the poison away from the skin.

Source: Scientific American, 2007 Jan 04
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Fourth Type of Muscle Fiber Increases Endurance

January 3rd 2007 04:14
Muscles are made up of four types of fibers: two slow-twitch, one fast-twitch, and that other one. The fourth type, called IIX (read "two-ex"), is distributed throughout different muscles, making it difficult to study exactly when and for what purpose it is recruited. Using genetic manipulation in mice, Arany, et al., changed 15% IIX muscles into 100% IIX muscles. The mice lasted 25% longer on their exercise wheels than control mice.

Source: Cell Metabolism, Vol 5, Jan 2007

"The Transcriptional Coactivator PGC-1(beta) Drives the Formation of Oxidative Type IIX Fibers in Skeletal Muscle" by Zoltan Arany, Nathan Lebrasseur, Carl Morris, Eric Smith, Wenli Yang, Yanhong Ma, Sherry Chin, and Bruce M. Spiegelman
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Maternal Serotonin Levels Affect Embryonic Deveopment

January 1st 2007 07:22
Côté, et al., in a paper titled, "Maternal serotonin is crucial for murine embryonic development", demonstrate that lack of serotonin in early development contributes to abnormalities in brain and other tissues and a significant decrease in birth weight. Serotonin comes from the mother at that stage in life. Mice were used in the study. More research will be needed to determine the exact correlation with humans.

The article is free and online.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0606722104
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