8037398
submission
TheClockworkSoul writes:
Scientific American reports on a study published this month in the Journal of Communication, which found that women who engage in a role-playing game online actually commit more time on average than the guy players do.
The authors surveyed 7,000 logged in to EverQuest II, and found that the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31, and that playing time tended to increase with age. Interestingly, however, the female gamers not only tended to log more time online (29 hours a week, versus 25 for the males), but were more likely to lie about how much they really play.
6454453
submission
TheClockworkSoul writes:
The BBC reports that researchers at the University of Oxford have devised a way to write memories onto the brains of flies, revealing which brain cells are involved in making bad memories.
The researchers said that in flies just 12 brain cells were responsible for what is known as "associative learning". They modified these neurons by adding receptors for ATP, so that the cells activate in the presence of the chemical, but since ATP isn't usually found floating around a fly's brain, the flies generally behave just like any other fly. Most interestingly, however, is that the scientists then, injected ATP into the flies' brains, in a form that was locked inside a light-sensitive chemical cage. When they shined a laser on the fly brains, the ATP was released, and the "associative learning" cells were activated. The laser flash was paired with an odor, effectively giving the fly a memory of a bad experience with that odor that it never actually had, such that it then avoided that odor in later experiments.
This research, says Professor Gero Miesenböck, the lead investigator of the study, has begun to unravel how animals and humans learn from mistakes and how "error signals" drive animals to adapt their behavior.
They describe their findings in the journal Cell.
6432495
submission
TheClockworkSoul writes:
Stem cells so far have been used to mend tissues ranging from damaged hearts to collapsed tracheas. Now the multifaceted cells have proved successful at regrowing bone in humans. In the first procedure of its kind, doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center replaced a 14-year-old boy's missing cheekbones–in part by repurposing stem cells from his own body.
To create the new bones, which have become part of the patient's own skull structure and have remained securely in place for four and a half months, the medical team used a combination of fat-derived stem cells, donated bone scaffolds, growth factors, and bone-coating tissue. The technique, should it be approved for widespread use, could benefit some seven million people in the U.S. who need more bone–everyone from cancer patients to injured war veterans.
5908807
submission
TheClockworkSoul writes:
According to both the BBC and NewScientist, showering may be bad for your health. Apparently, dirty shower heads can be an ideal breeding ground for Mycobacterium avium, a bug responsible for a type of pulmonary disease more prevalent than tuberculosis in developed countries, cases of which have risen in parallel with the rise in showering. Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbor significant levels the critter.
