Scientists Want MRI To Read Minds

A magnetic resonance imaging machine at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracks neurons in a way that reveals how real-time thoughts form, a report says.

The Chicago Tribune said the machine is one of the world's most advanced MRI machines. Scientists said the machine's ability to reveal real-time thoughts by tracking the firing of individual neurons in the brain could lead to a major breakthrough in the diagnosis of strokes, autism, Alzheimer's and other disorders.

But Dr. Keith Thulborn, director of UIC's Center for MR Research, which houses the machine, said the main goal is to find out what people are thinking.

"We'd like to get to the stage of reading thoughts," he said.

Although there could be positive implications for such a measure, ethical questions are already arising, reported the Tribune.

Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, said she has worries over how people may use such technology.

"People may be thrown in jail for being suspected terrorists on the basis of a brain scan," she told the Tribune. "Some kid may be put in the wrong educational track on the basis of a brain scan."

Big Families May Be Bad For Mom And Dad

University of Utah researchers say having a large number of offspring could be detrimental to the health of parents.

The study, based on data collected from 21,000 couples who lived in Utah between 1860 and 1985, said parents with higher numbers of children are more likely to have ill health and die younger, the BBC reported Tuesday. The study said this is especially acute in women.

The researchers said their findings may explain the occurrence of menopause, which ends the reproductive years of women.

"Menopause appears to allow mothers to live longer and rear more offspring to adulthood and this unusual life history probably evolved in our species because, as we found, offspring so extremely depend on their mother's survival," the researchers said.

The authors said the findings also explain why modern women tend to have fewer children than in the past.

"If women have generally incurred greater fitness costs of reproduction, this could explain why they generally prefer fewer offspring than their husbands and reduce their fertility when they obtain more reproductive autonomy."

Clean Air Challenge For Major Asian Cities

Hundreds of millions of city dwellers breathe air so polluted with chemicals, smoke and particles that it dramatically exceeds World Health Organization limits with major impacts on health and the environment.

A major study on the state of air pollution in 20 of Asia’s key cities shows that while there have been improvements in achieving better air quality, air pollution still poses a threat to health and quality of life of many people.

The study led by the Stockholm Environment Institute’s (SEI) centre at the University of York (UK) and the Clean Air Initiative for Asia Cities (CAI-Asia) was being published as Asian Environment Ministers held the first governmental meeting on urban air quality in Asia on 13-14 December in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as part of the Better Air Quality 2006 Workshop.

The World Health Organization estimates that 537,000 people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific die prematurely each year due to air pollution.

The study found that there has been a general improvement in the ability of Asia cities to manage urban air quality since the 1990s. But air quality in the majority of the cities examined still exceeds international guidelines for the protection of human health for certain pollutants. Concentrations of sulphur dioxide, the gas responsible for acid rain, have stabilized at a relative low level and rarely exceed health guidelines. However, the use of high sulphur fuel content in some countries may result in an increase in emissions.

Emissions of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter, mainly from the transport sector, are of concern in all cities currently experiencing rapid motorization. In addition, tropospheric ozone, a main constituent of photochemical smog, will increase if motor vehicle use continues to rise.

The study examined the capability to manage air quality and collected air quality data for Bangkok, Beijing, Busan, Colombo, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kathmandu, Kolkata, Metro Manila, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Surabaya, Taipei and Tokyo.

The assessment showed that while there are underlying similarities in the air pollution problems in each city, many differences still exist.

Bangkok, Seoul, Shanghai and Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo were identified as having excellent capacity to manage air quality. These cities have achieved major reductions in key emissions but still face the challenge of addressing moderate fine particulate pollution resulting from vehicles fumes.

Colombo, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Metro Manila and Mumbai were identified as having moderate capability in air quality management. They have achieved reductions in sulphur dioxide emissions but have the challenge of addressing transport-related emissions.

Dhaka, Hanoi, Surabaya and Kathmandu were identified has having limited capability to manage air quality. Air pollution data was limited for key pollutants. These cities have the challenge of improving air quality monitoring as well as further achieving reductions in emissions.

Dr Dieter Schwela, SEI, lead author, said: "Some cities have made tremendous progress in improving their air quality. However, more work needs to be done to address specific pollutants such as fine particulate matter which poses a real threat to human health."

"The study has shown that there is a great opportunity for those cities which need to develop further their air quality management capability to learn from cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo that are further along the road to achieving better air quality."

The study’s authors recommend further action is required to improve air quality in Asia’s cities which include:

1) Taking a more strategic approach to managing air quality to include all aspects of the problem.

2) Adopting more stringent vehicle emission standards.

3) Using more cleaner fuels for motor vehicles, industry and power plants.

4) Better inspection and source of emissions.

5) Stricter enforcement of legislation and more stringent standards for air quality.

6) Harmonization of air quality standards across Asia.

7) Development of more reliable inventories of air pollution emissions.

8) Regional approach to air pollution to address transboundary air pollution and global climate change.

Potential Alzheimer's Disease Treatment Discovered In Wales, UK

An antibody with the potential to block production of the brain chemical linked to Alzheimer's disease has been developed by researchers at Cardiff University in Wales, UK. The research is published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

There is no known cure or preventative treatment for Alzheimer's disease, a debilitating illness affecting one in 20 people over the age of 65 and one in five over the age of 80 in the UK. Worldwide, the disease afflicts more than 12 million people. Alzheimer's causes a distressing, irreversible and progressive loss of brain function and memory.

A team led by Dr. Emma Kidd at Cardiff University's Welsh School of Pharmacy made the discovery during research funded by the Alzheimer's Society, the UK's leading care and research charity for Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia.

The results of the study show that it is possible to decrease production of a small protein called *-amyloid (A*), which is believed to be the main cause of the disease. Deposits of A* build up in the brain, preventing it from functioning properly.

The team has developed an antibody that binds to a naturally occurring protein in the brain, amyloid precursor protein (APP), preventing the production of A*. The antibody blocks the access to APP of an enzyme, b-secretase, crucial for the formation of Ab.

"Our results are highly encouraging at this stage," Dr. Kidd said. "We believe that our approach could lead in time to a new therapy for this distressing and debilitating disease as it should prevent or reduce the irreversible deterioration of a patient's memory and other brain functions. This would also reduce the burden on caretakers, usually family members, who look after patients in the earlier stages of the disease," she said.

"We also believe it is possible that our antibody could be used as a preventative treatment to protect people at high risk of Alzheimer's Disease through their family history or other factors," she said.

The work funded by the Alzheimer's Society research program, Quality Research In Dementia, was conducted on cultured cells in the laboratory. The team believes that a form of the antibody could be used as a treatment to reduce A* build-up in the brain, improving the patient's memory and quality of life. Any development of the antibody as a drug will take several years. The team is in the process of seeking funding for the next stage of development of the antibody.

The charity's Quality Research in Dementia program is led and steered by caretakers and people with dementia, who set the priorities. This ensures that funding only goes to projects with a potential for high impact on the lives of people with dementia and their caretakers.

Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer's Society said: "We are thrilled to have been able to fund this innovative work. As a charity we rely on donations from the public and we hope people will understand how important it is to invest more in research into all types of dementia so that we eventually may have a selection of new treatments to change the lives of people with dementia and their caretakers."

A High-Protein Diet Can Be Good For The Heart

Traditional high-protein diets are heart killers, clogging the arteries with saturated fat from meat, eggs and cheese. But, according to a report from Harvard Medical School, a large study shows that there is such a thing as a heart-healthy high-protein diet that can lower harmful LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure.

The diet described in Healthy Eating: A Guide to the New Nutrition offers a healthful alternative to the old-fashioned Atkins-style diets that ooze artery-clogging saturated fat with every bite. Instead, this eating plan, one of several studied in the OmniHeart trial, includes high-protein foods from both animal and plant sources that are lower in saturated fat. Along with chicken and fish, dietary sources of protein include nuts, beans, whole-grain cereals and fat-free dairy products.

A high-protein diet doesn't have to be all steak and eggs, according to Dr. Frank M. Sacks, the editor of the report and Professor of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Harvard Medical School. And not all low-carb diets are the same. The most successful diet plans of any type have certain elements in common, including an emphasis on vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

Healthy Eating is a 48-page report that includes a full discussion of the latest scientific developments in the field of nutrition. Diet influences your risk for many diseases and conditions, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, eye disease and some forms of cancer. The report includes information on what foods can help protect you from certain diseases -- or make you more prone to them.

Genetics Predicts Toxicity Following Blood And Marrow Transplantation

The outlook for cancer patients treated with blood and marrow transplantation (BMT) for fatal blood cancers is much brighter today based on research conducted at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), Theresa E. Hahn, PhD, Department of Medicine, explained at the 48th Annual Meeting & Exposition of the American Society of Hematology, in Orlando, FL.

BMT is used to cure leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma; however, the therapy can be associated with high levels of toxicity. "Mortality due to conditioning regimen-related toxicity has decreased over the past decade," notes Dr. Hahn, "but it is still a major limitation for both autologous and allogeneic BMT."

Dr. Hahn, in collaboration with Christine B. Ambrosone, PhD (Epidemiology/ Prevention), and Philip L. McCarthy, Jr., MD (Medicine), found that the genetic makeup of patients can predict who develops toxicity following the high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation given prior to BMT, and whether their toxicity is likely to be moderate, severe or fatal. This finding has the potential to improve outcomes by allowing individualized conditioning regimens.

The research team performed a genotype analysis of blood and bone marrow samples from 268 BMT patients to determine whether the presence or absence of two glutathione-S-transferase isoenzymes could predict which patients would develop toxicity.

"These enzymes metabolize and detoxify many chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation," explains Dr. Hahn. "Genotype analysis demonstrated that genetic variability affecting the activity of these enzymes in patients can predict which patients will develop toxicity."

New Approach Targets Brain Cancer Stem Cells

A Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) neuroscientist at the University of Queensland has co-discovered a much-needed new approach to treating brain tumours.

In research published in Nature, QBI's Professor Brent Reynolds together with colleagues in Italy and USA have identified a protein that dramatically inhibits brain cancer stem cells in laboratory animals.

Professor Reynolds said brain cancer kills more than 1200 Australians annually and any treatment that inhibits the growth of brain tumours would likely lead to a better patient prognosis.

"We have discovered that the naturally occurring molecule, bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP4), appears to target the cells responsible for brain tumour initiation and long-term progression," Professor Reynolds said.

"The morbidity rate for patients with certain types of brain tumours is often tragically high, with a life expectancy of less than a year."

Currently doctors treat brain tumours with a combination of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or steroid therapy.

Significantly, when the international team studied mice implanted with cells from a human brain tumour, the BMP4 protein was shown to inhibit tumour growth and extend their life.

Alternatively, all animals that received a placebo in place of BMP4 died within three months.

The US scientist who first isolated a tumour stem cell from the human brain, Professor Dennis Steindler, Executive Director of the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida, said the approach of the Reynolds team and their collaborators was both novel and important.

"This will be one of the first studies to apply insights from the molecular biology of cancer stem cells to a potentially new therapeutic approach for treating primary human brain cancers," Professor Steindler said.

Given the strength of these results, Professor Reynolds said he and his colleagues were working to develop the use of BMP4 for future clinical trials.