Happy Nirvana

Bitter taste receptors we have in our mouths were found to also exist in our lungs – what researchers discovered about these functioning receptors in the smooth muscle of the bronchus in the lungs may transform future treatment for asthma and obstructive lung diseases, scientists wrote in an article published in Nature Medicine. When bitter [...]

When birds, like the dodo, go extinct, it may be a sign of a much more widespread problem. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons “Every 20 minutes,” the saying goes, “we lose an animal species.” In reality, however, it is difficult to collect the data that details this trend—and motivates policy makers to take action. Now, researchers [...]

Many of us have likely heard stories of people who lost weight, only to fall ill or die shortly thereafter, presumably due to the weight loss.  The exact reasons for this potential reaction may never be completely clear, but research does point to one possibility:  The release of toxins, which are stored in body fat. [...]

Robert Webster, an influenza expert, says health authorities worldwide need to remain watchful for possible influenza outbreaks, despite swine flu being much less deadly than people had originally feared. Webster, chairman of the virology and molecular biology department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, says that bird flu remains a possible [...]

An international team of scientists found that a unique “signature” of three proteins present in the spinal fluid of 90 per cent of people with Alzheimer’s disease was 100 per cent successful in identifying which patients in another group with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) went on to develop Alzheimer’s, opening the possibility that such a [...]

Getting your zzz’s might be as important to a healthy weight as what you eat and how active you are.  Consider these two recent findings: In a controlled experiment, 12 young men reported feeling hungrier before both breakfast and dinner after sleeping only four hours a night compared to eight.  The result?  They ate on [...]

Photo via chuck12600 If you hate carbon emissions, the Australian Outback may seem like a paradise, unless you’re a bit gassy, that is. According to a new study, the vast, sparsely populated Outback stores an incredible amount of carbon within its forests and grasslands, a whopping 9.7 billion tons of the stuff, in fact. As [...]

photo: Mike Baird via flickr Yes, really… An interesting presentation at the annual meeting for the Society of Conservation Biology explains how if sea otters were restored to historically high populations along the coasts of North America, the amount of carbon stored by their activities would be worth more than $700 million on the European [...]

New research from Japan suggests that dental pulp from extracted teeth may be an easy source of Induced Pluripotent Stem (IPS) cells, which like embryonic stem cells, have the potential to form several different cell types, but without the controversial ethical problems. These were the findings of a study led by K. Tezuka from the [...]

Researchers at the University of Leicester, England will use the state-of-the-art genetic techniques to examine DNA from over 20,000 patients with heart disease. The study will help to identify new genes and molecules responsible for Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). This, in turn may help to develop new diagnostic and treatment strategies. The project is being [...]