ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News

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• Second-hand e-cig smoke compared to regular cigarette smoke
• Home is where the microbes are
• Electric current to brain boosts memory: May help treat memory disorders from stroke, Alzheimer's, brain injury
• Genomic sequencing reveals mutations, insights into 2014 Ebola outbreak
• From bite site to brain: How rabies virus hijacks and speeds up transport in nerve cells
• Small molecule acts as on-off switch for nature's antibiotic factory: Tells Streptomyces to either veg out or get busy
• Up to 3,000 times the bacterial growth on hollow-head toothbrushes
• Synthesis produces new fungus-derived antibiotic
• Indoor mold poses health risk to asthma sufferers
• Avatars make the Internet sign to deaf people
• Readers with dyslexia have disrupted network connections in the brain, map the circuitry of dyslexia shows
• From nose to knee: Engineered cartilage regenerates joints
• Inside the teenage brain: New studies explain risky behavior
• Evolution used similar molecular toolkits to shape flies, worms, and humans

Second-hand e-cig smoke compared to regular cigarette smoke Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:28 AM PDT Second-hand e-cig smoke has 10 times less particulate matter than regular cigarette smoke; but higher levels of certain toxic metals, a new study finds.

Home is where the microbes are Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:27 AM PDT A person's home is their castle, and they populate it with their own subjects: millions and millions of bacteria. Scientists have detailed the microbes that live in houses and apartments. The results shed light on the complicated interaction between humans and the microbes that live on and around us. Mounting evidence suggests that these microscopic, teeming communities play a role in human health and disease treatment and transmission.

Electric current to brain boosts memory: May help treat memory disorders from stroke, Alzheimer's, brain injury Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:27 AM PDT Stimulating a region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, improves memory. The discovery opens a new field of possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the memory problems that occur in healthy aging.

Genomic sequencing reveals mutations, insights into 2014 Ebola outbreak Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:27 AM PDT In response to an ongoing, unprecedented outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa, a team of researchers has rapidly sequenced and analyzed more than 99 Ebola virus genomes. Their findings could have important implications for rapid field diagnostic tests.

From bite site to brain: How rabies virus hijacks and speeds up transport in nerve cells Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:27 AM PDT Rabies is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected animal into muscle tissue of the new host. From there, the virus travels all the way to the brain where it multiplies and causes the usually fatal disease. A new article sheds light on how the virus hijacks the transport system in nerve cells to reach the brain with maximal speed and efficiency.

Small molecule acts as on-off switch for nature's antibiotic factory: Tells Streptomyces to either veg out or get busy Posted: 28 Aug 2014 10:58 AM PDT Biochemists have identified the developmental on-off switch for Streptomyces, a group of soil microbes that produce more than two-thirds of the world's naturally derived antibiotic medicines. Their hope now would be to see whether it is possible to manipulate this switch to make nature's antibiotic factory more efficient.

Up to 3,000 times the bacterial growth on hollow-head toothbrushes Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:52 AM PDT Solid-head power toothbrushes retain less bacteria compared to hollow-head toothbrushes, according to new research.

Synthesis produces new fungus-derived antibiotic Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:09 AM PDT A fortuitous collaboration has led to the total synthesis of a recently discovered natural antibiotic. The laboratory recreation of a fungus-derived antibiotic, viridicatumtoxin B, may someday help bolster the fight against bacteria that evolve resistance to treatments in hospitals and clinics around the world.

Indoor mold poses health risk to asthma sufferers Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:09 AM PDT By critically reviewing the findings from 17 studies in eight different countries, the research has found that the presence of several types of mould can lead to breathing problems in asthma sufferers, as well as increasing the likelihood of developing the condition.

Avatars make the Internet sign to deaf people Posted: 28 Aug 2014 06:12 AM PDT It is challenging for deaf people to learn a sound-based language, since they are physically not able to hear those sounds. Hence, most of them struggle with written language as well as with text reading and comprehension. Therefore, most website content remains inaccessible for them. Computer scientists want to change the situation by means of a method they developed: animated online characters display content in sign language. In the long term, deaf people would be able to use the technique to communicate on online platforms via sign language.

Readers with dyslexia have disrupted network connections in the brain, map the circuitry of dyslexia shows Posted: 28 Aug 2014 06:12 AM PDT Dyslexia, the most commonly diagnosed learning disability in the United States, is a neurological reading disability that occurs when the regions of the brain that process written language don't function normally. The use of non-invasive functional neuroimaging tools has helped characterize how brain activity is disrupted in dyslexia. However, most prior work has focused on only a small number of brain regions, leaving a gap in our understanding of how multiple brain regions communicate with one another through networks, called functional connectivity, in persons with dyslexia. Scientists have now conducted a whole-brain functional connectivity analysis of dyslexia using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

From nose to knee: Engineered cartilage regenerates joints Posted: 28 Aug 2014 06:02 AM PDT Human articular cartilage defects can be treated with nasal septum cells. Researchers now report that cells taken from the nasal septum are able to adapt to the environment of the knee joint and can thus repair articular cartilage defects. The nasal cartilage cells' ability to self-renew and adapt to the joint environment is associated with the expression of so-called HOX genes.

Inside the teenage brain: New studies explain risky behavior Posted: 27 Aug 2014 05:35 PM PDT It's common knowledge that teenage boys seem predisposed to risky behaviors. Now, a series of new studies is shedding light on specific brain mechanisms that help to explain what might be going on inside juvenile male brains.

Evolution used similar molecular toolkits to shape flies, worms, and humans Posted: 27 Aug 2014 10:16 AM PDT Although separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, flies, worms, and humans share ancient patterns of gene expression, according to a massive analysis of genomic data. Two related studies tell a similar story: even though humans, worms, and flies bear little obvious similarity to each other, evolution used remarkably similar molecular toolkits to shape them.

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