Light enhances brain activity during a cognitive task even in some people who are totally blind, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Montreal and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The findings contribute to scientists’ understanding of everyone’s brains, as they also revealed how quickly light impacts on cognition. “We were stunned to discover that the…
After taking an in-depth look at the basic biology of a fungus that is decimating bat colonies as it spreads across the U.S., researchers report that they can find little that might stop the organism from spreading further and persisting indefinitely in bat caves. Their report appears in the journal PLOS ONE. The aptly named fungus Pseudogymnoascus (Geomyces) destructans causes…
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body. Mouse iPSCs were created in 2006 by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto…
If a 6-month-old can distinguish between 20 dots and 10 dots, she’s more likely to be good at math in preschool. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which finds that part of our proficiency at addition and subtraction may simply be something we’re born with. Researchers have long wondered where our math skills come from. Are they innate, or…
A biological clock capable of determining how old different human tissues and cells are has been discovered by a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles. The findings, published in Genome Biology, show how the UCLA team created the internal clock using a naturally occurring process that alters DNA. The preliminary results may shed light on cancer…
In June 2007, James Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, went to Houston to pick up his genome. At a ceremonial press conference at Baylor College of Medicine, scientists handed the 79-year-old Nobel Prize-winner a DVD on which they had recorded a highly accurate reading of all the DNA nestled in the nucleus of each of his cells.…