Researchers from UC Irvine show that specific memories can be made by directly altering brain cells in the cerebral cortex, which produces the predicted specific memory. The researchers say this is the first piece of evidence that memories can be created by direct cortical manipulation.

To conduct their research, the team, led by senior author Norman M. Weinberger, played a specific tone to test rodents, then stimulated the nucleus basalis deep within their brains, which released acetylcholine (ACh), a chemical involved in memory formation. This procedure increased the number of brain cells responding to the specific tone. The following day, the scientists played many sounds to the animals and found that their respiration spiked when they recognized the particular tone, showing that specific memory content was created by brain changes directly induced during the experiment. Created memories have the same features as natural memories, including long-term retention.

By finding the way the brain makes memories, along with how it creates new memories with specific content, researchers hope this will pave the way to prevent and resolve learning and memory disorders.

NEXT: Scientists develop MERS strain for potential vaccine

Sourced from: Science Daily, Scientists Create New Memories by Directly Changing the Brain

A London taxi driver named George Smith has the dubious distinction of being the first person to be charged with drunk driving.  Only a month after the city’s cabbies start using electric-powered cars, Smith drives his cab into a building.  He freely admits he’s drunk and later pleads guilty and pays a fine of 25 shillings.

It was lucky for the police that Smith was so forthcoming because they had no way of proving scientifically that he was too drunk to drive.  In 1910, New York became the first state in the U.S. to prohibit driving while intoxicated, followed soon by California, but police still had no way of determining how drunk was too drunk.

Fortunately, the first big boom in car sales in the U.S. came during the 1920s, when the country had a nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol. But when Prohibition ended in 1933, a lot of public officials worried that drunk driving would skyrocket. Scientists had determined that the key was to be able to measure the level of alcohol in a driver’s blood, but what was needed was a way to get a reading immediately, at the scene, instead of driving him or her to a doctor to have a blood test done.

An Indiana University professor named Rolla Harger came up with a solution in 1936 when he patented a device he called the “drunkometer.”  It was designed to be deliberately simple—all the suspected drinker had to do was blow into a balloon. The police officer then attached the balloon to a tube filled with purple fluid (potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid) and released the air inside of it. If a person had alcohol on his breath, the fluid changed from purple to yellow, and the faster it changed, the drunker the person was. In fact, a dramatic change in color was often enough to make people admit on the spot how much they had drunk.

In 1938, committees from the American Medical Association and the National Safety Council agreed that a person with a blood alcohol level of .15 should be considered inebriated, and that became the standard for most drunk driving laws.

For all of its benefits, the drunkometer was cumbersome and required some calculation to determine how drunk a person was. In 1954, a former Indiana State Police officer named Robert Borkenstein raised drunk driver testing to another level with his invention of the “Breathalyzer.”  It was smaller and more accurate than the drunkometer and also did the necessary calculations automatically.  Plus, it was even harder for a determined driver to beat, although some went to great lengths to try.  One Canadian driver actually started eating his underwear before taking a Breathalyzer test because he thought the cotton would absorb the alcohol.

Still, drunk driving laws weren’t strictly enforced until the 1980s when a group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, was formed to pressure police to crack down.  The founder of MADD was a California woman named Candy Lightner, whose 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver who had three previous DUI convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier.

Campaigns by MADD and other groups helped get the minimum legal drinking age in the U.S. raised to 21 and also lower the blood alcohol limit to .10 from .15. In 1992, in response to a recommendation from the National Traffic Safety Administration, states lowered the limit again, this time to .08.

Unfortunately, drunk driving continues to be a problem—it’s still the cause of almost one third of all traffic fatalities, and just below 20 percent of the deaths in car crashes for children under 14.

Scientists have developed a strain of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that could be used to develop a vaccine against the deadly pathogen.

The team, from the Autonomous University of Madrid (“la Autónoma”) in Spain, engineered the lab strain, called rMERS-CoV-[delta]E, to have a mutation in its envelope protein that allows it to infect a limited number of cells and replicate itself but not spread into surrounding tissue and cause disease. This is an important feature for a vaccine, because vaccines need enough live virus to provoke an immune response and produce antibodies, but not so much that it overwhelms the body to cause illness.

According to the World Health Organization, the virus has infected 114 and killed 54 people since September 2012. Even though the virus has not infected many people to date, scientists are very concerned because if the virus mutates into a form that spreads easily among humans, it could lead to a widespread epidemic.

While conducting their research, the team at la Autónoma found that mutations in the envelope protein (E protein) of the virus enabled it to replicate its genetic material but not infect neighboring cells.While the research provides a good start in its finding of one safeguard with E protein, the FDA requires that live vaccines have at least three safeguards to ensure they do not revert to dangerous forms.

NEXT: First drunk driver: Sept. 10, 1897

Sourced from: Medical News Today, MERS lab strain could lead to vaccine

Overweight and obese children have an increased risk for high blood pressure as adults, according to a new study presented at the American Heart Association High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions 2013.

Since 1986, researchers tracked the growth and blood pressure of more than 1,100 children from Indianapolis for 27 years. They found that 6 percent of children with normal weight had high blood pressure as adults, whereas 14 percent of overweight children had high blood pressure as adults, and 26 percent of obese children developed blood pressure.

One in three U.S. children and teens are overweight or obese, and these findings highlight the threat posed by childhood obesity, researchers said.

According to Sara E. Watson, M.D., study author and a pediatric endocrinology fellow at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University in Indianapolis, the new findings add to a growing body of evidence that heart disease may start in childhood.

Watson recommends that overweight and obese children can reduce their risk of high blood pressure through exercise and a healthy diet with minimal salt intake. It is important that pediatricians counsel patients on the risks of developing high blood pressure, Watson said.

NEXT: Eat your veggies

Sourced from: EurekAlert!, Childhood obesity may quadruple high blood pressure risk in adulthood

Developing countries often can’t afford to use in-home water purification systems or more advanced technology to purify drinking water. There is a need for lower-cost, sustainable alternatives, and researchers are conducting studies on various natural materials that can latch on to heavy metals in a way that can filter water.

Mexico, in particular, does not have a system to filter out heavy metals. Professor Douglas Schauer, Ph.D., from Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, along with six of his students, traveled to Mexico’s Universidad Politécnica de Francisco I. Madero in Hidalgo. Their purpose was to study the effectiveness of an ingredient growing right in their backyards—cilantro.

Schauer and his students worked with scientists from Mexico’s university in small-scale experiments. They found that cilantro may be more effective than some other methods, such as activated carbon, in removing heavy metals from water.

Cilantro’s potential purification abilities could be attributed to the architectural structure of its cells, which lends itself to absorb heavy metals, researchers said. Schauer said their studies suggest that cilantro shows promise as a way to remove toxic heavy metals from water and that it could be used like tea-bags or reusable water filter cartridges to purify drinking water.

Much more research, however, needs to be done to confirm the herb’s purification abilities.

These findings were presented in the 246^th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

NEXT: Childhood obesity raises risk for high blood pressure

Sourced from: EurekAlert!, Cilantro, that favorite salsa ingredient, purifies drinking water

Estrogen causes middle-aged men to experience changes in body composition and sexual function in a way similar to how women go through menopause, according to a new study.

The new study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, built upon evidence that a relatively small proportion of testosterone in men is converted into estrogen and that men with more testosterone end up with more testosterone converted into estrogen.

Scientists have conducted previous studies on low testosterone levels in men can cause adverse physical symptoms. Researchers of this study, from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), aimed to determine what levels of testosterone and estrogen corresponded with what physical changes.

Participants included 150 men ages 20 to 50, who were divided into two groups. The first group was given daily doses of testosterone (or a placebo) for four months. The second group was given the same testosterone doses but was also given a substance that prevents testosterone from being converted into estrogen.

Findings showed that in the men whose estrogen production was not blocked, varying levels of testosterone respectively corresponded with decreased sexual desire, erectile dysfunction and reduced lean body mass, muscle size and strength.

Men whose estrogen production was blocked showed increased fat and adverse changes in sexual function regardless of testosterone dosage levels.

Results suggest that the decline in estrogen levels can be the exclusive cause of some symptoms, such as weight gain or erectile dysfunction, and that these symptoms aren’t caused by testosterone deficiency alone.

Findings provide insight into the relationship between specific testosterone levels and the decline of physiological functions, which can help researchers determine which men should be treated with testosterone supplements. More significantly, researchers said this study shows that the forms of testosterone used for therapy should be capable of being converted into estrogen.

However, further studies should be conducted to find out how testosterone replacement therapy could affect prostate cancer and prostate enlargement that causes unpleasant symptoms in many older men, researchers said.

NEXT: Cilantro used to purify water

Sourced from: Medical News Today, Menopause for men: estrogen affects middle-aged males