Hi! Hope everyone had a great weekend. :)
I don't know if you noticed or not, but I added this nifty little Twitter feature to the right hand side of the page, just under "Labels." This is for those of you who don't want to wait for each post to see new headlines! I'll be tweeting links to various articles I find here and there, or retweeting as the case may be. Just a nifty little idea.
First off, experiments in mice have found that the brains of those mice with only one copy of a gene that produces "brain-derived neurotrophic factor," or BDNF, are more affected by stress. Apparently, stress in these mice causes the hippocampus area of the brain to shrink and the dendrites to withdraw, whereas mice with the normal two copies of the gene, and therefore a normal amount of BDNF, show no physical change in that area of the brain. Researchers are now searching to find ways to control the amount of BDNF protein so they can determine when in development supplementation would be most effective. Very interesting!
I know I heard about hallucinogenic testing going on here and there in the recent past, but I just found another article about it. Scientists are gathering in California this week for a pretty big conference on the topic, particularly for use with OCD, end of life anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other psychological disorders. I cannot say this doesn't make me pretty happy. Check out the article link at the bottom of the post to read about various tests and reactions to psilocybin in groovy experiments. :)
Everyone's biggest fear when it comes to antibiotics is that a superbug will become resistant to everything and we'll have nothing left to beat infections with, right? Or is that just mine? In any case, researchers have taken a close look at vancomycin, the "last resort" antibiotic, and actually determined the mechanism by which bacteria develop resistance to it. It had been debated whether bacteria were tipped off to the antibiotic by noticing it directly, or noticing what it was doing to their cell walls. It turns out the former is the case, the knowledge of which may help to develop sneakier antibiotics that could still go unnoticed. Considering the growing number of people who are affected by resistant infections, this is pretty great progress!
Last for the weekend - researchers have devised a more direct method of splitting water molecules for use in solar powered energy...things. Mimicking the photosynthesis process of plants, a group of scientists have utilized a harmless virus in a gel (to hold conformation) to do the splitting so that hydrogen can be stored for use at any time, rather than only when the sun is shining. Original in its particular method, the system is still in its creation phase and needs to become more cost effective, efficient, and complete before going into effect. An end date isn't set, but it's a valuable concept and it's nice to see that it works!
Check out the Twitter feed on the right hand side of the page to see the articles I didn't include today, but were still pretty neat.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you Tuesday!
-Miss mouse
References and Links:
Stressed Out Mice
Psychedelic Medicine
Resistance!
Virus Energy
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