Category Archives: Medicinal News

Mice 'eavesdrop' on rats' tear signal

Tears might not seem to have an odor. But studies have shown that proteins in tears do act as pheromonal cues. For example, the tear glands of male mice produce a protein that makes females more receptive to sex. Now researchers reporting in Current Biology on March 29 have found that rat tears contain proteins...

Read more

Pig model of Huntington's offers advantages for testing treatments

Using genetic engineering technology, a team of scientists has established a pig model of Huntington's disease (HD), an inherited neurodegenerative disease. The researchers anticipate that the pigs could be a practical way to test treatments for HD, which is caused by a gene encoding a toxic protein that causes brain cells to die.

The research is...

Read more

What stops mass extinctions?

Black plague killed between 30 to 50 percent of people worldwide. The cause, Yersinia pestis, is still around, but people are not dying of the plague. An even more devastating modern disease caused by the chytrid fungus wiped entire frog and salamander populations off the map. New results from work at the Smithsonian Tropical Research...

Read more

Fat-sensing hormone helps control tadpole metamorphosis

When tadpoles are but tadpoles, they're voracious eaters, chomping down all of the plant matter in their paths.

Now, a University of Michigan study has shown that this voraciousness is because the hormonal and neural brakes to their eating are absent at this stage of development.

"One of the findings from our work is that during the...

Read more

Monkeys' brains synchronize as they collaborate to perform a motor task

Though their purpose and function are still largely unknown, mirror neurons in the brain are believed by some neuroscientists to be central to how humans relate to each other. Deficiencies in mirror neurons might also play a role in autism and other disorders affecting social skills.

Scientists have previously shown that when one animal watches another...

Read more

Fossils highlight Canada-Russia connection 53 million years ago

A new 53 million-year-old insect fossil called a scorpionfly discovered at B.C.'s McAbee fossil bed site bears a striking resemblance to fossils of the same age from Pacific-coastal Russia, giving further evidence of an ancient Canada-Russia connection.

"We've seen this connection before through fossil plants and animals, but these insects show this in a beautiful...

Read more