Childhood Sleep Apnea Linked To Brain Damage, Lower IQ:
In what is believed to be the first study showing neural changes in the brains of children with serious, untreated sleep apnea, Johns Hopkins researchers conclude that children with the disorder appear to suffer damage in two brain structures tied to learning ability.
Constant Lighting May Disrupt Development Of Preemies' Biological Clocks:
Keeping the lights on around the clock in neonatal intensive care units may interfere with the development of premature babies' biological clocks.
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he finding that exposure to constant light disrupts the developing biological clock in baby mice provides an underlying mechanism that helps explain the results of several previous clinical studies. One found that infants from neonatal units with cyclic lighting tend to begin sleeping through the night more quickly than those from units with constant lighting. Other studies have found that infants placed in units that maintain a day/night cycle gain weight faster than those in units with constant light.
Neurobiologists have known that a novel environment sparks exploration and learning, but very little is known about whether the brain really prefers novelty as such. Rather, the major "novelty center" of the brain--called the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA)--might be activated by the unexpectedness of a stimulus, the emotional arousal it causes, or the need to respond behaviorally. The SN/VTA exerts a major influence on learning because it is functionally linked to both the hippocampus, which is the brain's learning center, and the amygdala, the center for processing emotional information.
A Wandering Eye: Single Cells Come Running To Form An Eye:
Eyes are among the earliest recognisable structures in an embryo; they start off as bulges on the sides of tube-shaped tissue that will eventually become the brain. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now discovered that cells are programmed to make eyes early in development and individually migrate to the right place to do so.
The study, published in the journal Science, overturns the textbook model of the process and suggests that also other organs might be formed by the movement of single cells rather than sheets of entire tissues.
On The Track Of Tiny Larvae, A New Model Elucidates Connections In Marine Ecology:
A computer model newly developed by researchers combines ocean current simulations and genetic forecasting to help scientists predict animal dispersion patterns and details of the ecology of coral reefs across the Caribbean Sea.
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This test showed that combining the oceanographic and genetic models allowed the researchers to successfully predict genetic patterns on a regional scale. This breakthrough approach to integrating genetic and oceanographic models helps predict genetic links among several locations and is an important new tool for the management and ecological study of marine protected areas.
Evolving Defenses Rapidly Suppress Male Killers:
In the game of survival, anything goes--even the selective extermination of males. Male killing is the preferred strategy for a diverse group of bacteria that infect insects and other arthropods. Aside from its tabloid appeal, male killing offers biologists a platform for investigating genetic conflict--evolutionary battles between competing elements within the same genome. Male-killing bacteria are passed from mother to offspring, but only males die from infection, suggesting that males harbor genetic elements that allow them to succumb to infection.
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