Category Archives: News & Archives

Anti-diabetic drug slows aging and lengthens lifespan, animal study suggests

A study by Belgian doctoral researcher Wouter De Haes (KU Leuven) and colleagues provides new evidence that metformin, the world's most widely used anti-diabetic drug, slows aging and increases lifespan. In experiments reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers tease out the mechanism behind metformin's age-slowing effects: the drug causes…

How to erase a memory –- and restore it: Researchers reactivate memories in rats

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have erased and reactivated memories in rats, profoundly altering the animals' reaction to past events. The study, published in the June 1 advanced online issue of the journal Nature, is the first to show the ability to selectively remove a memory and predictably reactivate it…

A habitable environment on Martian volcano?

The Martian volcano Arsia Mons may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet, geologists say. The research shows that volcanic eruptions beneath a glacial ice sheet would have created substantial amounts of liquid water on Mars's surface around 210 million years ago. Where there was water,…

Woman’s cancer wiped out … by measles virus

In a breakthrough that could offer new hope to people with some kinds of cancer, Mayo Clinic researchers say they managed to wipe out a woman's cancer with a blast of measles vaccine strong enough to inoculate 10 million people. The 50-year-old woman's blood cancer, which had spread through her body, went into complete remission…

Tobacco Plants May Contain Cure for Cancer, a New Twist in Protein–Lipid Interactions

Scientists at La Trobe University published a study this week about a protein found in the flowers of ornamental tobacco plant that targets human cancer cells and destroys them. This raises the prospect of the deepest kind of irony: tobacco grown to produce drugs used to treat cancers caused by tobacco. Mark Hulett, Marc Kvansakul and others…

Longevity gene may boost brain power: Researchers discover the gene may enhance cognitive abilities

Scientists showed that people who have a variant of a longevity gene, called KLOTHO, have improved brain skills such as thinking, learning and memory regardless of their age, sex, or whether they have a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Increasing KLOTHO gene levels in mice made them smarter, possibly by increasing the strength of connections…

Genetic Mutants? 5 Strange Science Facts About Moms

Many people will spend Mother's Day, this Sunday (May 11), celebrating the love, warmth and emotional support they get from their mothers. But did you know that many moms are also genetic mutants whose very brains altered in the process of motherhood? Yes, this makes good old mom sound a little bit like an X-man,…

Trusting the Future? Ethics of Human Genetic Modification

Taboos are an interesting social construct. Every culture tends to regard their own as both inviolable and immutable, but history begs to disagree. It's commonplace for societies to hold as absolute their understanding of what is right and moral and necessary, and to resist the notion that these convictions are, or should be, subject to…

Functioning of aged brains and muscles in mice made younger: More progress with GDF 11, anti-aging protein

Professors Lee Rubin and Amy Wagers of Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology have shown that a protein that can make failing hearts in aging mice appear younger may also improve brain and skeletal muscle function. Hope for aging brains, skeletal muscle Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have shown that a protein,…

New Genetic Test Reveals Your Ancestral Origin

For centuries, scientists have sought a biological method for tracing a person's geographic origin. Now, a group of researchers has developed such a genetic ancestry test that can pinpoint the location where a person's ancestors originated more than 1,000 years ago. The genetic algorithm accurately predicts the country of ancestral origin for about 80…