Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/280115208?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Patients' own skin cells are transformed into heart cells to create 'disease in a dish'
Jan. 27, 2013 ? Most patients with an inherited heart condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) don't know they have a problem until they're in their early 20s. The lack of symptoms at younger ages makes it very difficult for researchers to study how ARVD/C evolves or to develop treatments. A new stem cell-based technology created by 2012 Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., helps solve this problem. With this technology, researchers can generate heart muscle cells from a patient's own skin cells. However, these newly made heart cells are mostly immature. That raises questions about whether or not they can be used to mimic a disease that occurs in adulthood.
In a paper published January 27 in Nature, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and Johns Hopkins University unveil the first maturation-based "disease in a dish" model for ARVD/C. The model was created using Yamanaka's technology and a new method to mimic maturity by making the cells' metabolism more like that in adult hearts. For that reason, this model is likely more relevant to human ARVD/C than other models and therefore better suited for studying the disease and testing new treatments.
"It's tough to demonstrate that a disease-in-a-dish model is clinically relevant for an adult-onset disease. But we made a key finding here -- we can recapitulate the defects in this disease only when we induce adult-like metabolism. This is an important breakthrough considering that ARVD/C symptoms usually don't arise until young adulthood. Yet the stem cells we're working with are embryonic in nature," said Huei-Sheng Vincent Chen, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor at Sanford-Burnham and senior author of the study.
To establish this model, Chen teamed up with expert ARVD/C cardiologists Daniel Judge, M.D., Joseph Marine, M.D., and Hugh Calkins, M.D., at Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins is home to one of the largest ARVD/C patient registries in the world.
"There is currently no treatment to prevent progression of ARVD/C, a rare disorder that preferentially affects athletes. With this new model, we hope we are now on a path to develop better therapies for this life-threatening disease," said Judge, associate professor and medical director of the Center for Inherited Heart Disease at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Disease in a dish
To recreate a person's own unique ARVD/C in the lab, the team first obtained skin samples from ARVD/C patients with certain mutations believed to be involved in the disease. Next they performed Yamanaka's technique: adding a few molecules that dial back the developmental clock on these adult skin cells, producing embryonic-like induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The researchers then coaxed the iPSCs into producing an unlimited supply of patient-specific heart muscle cells. These heart cells were largely embryonic in nature, but carried along the original patient's genetic mutations.
However, for nearly a year, no matter what they tried, the team couldn't get their ARVD/C heart muscle cells to show any signs of the disease. Without actual signs of adult-onset ARVD/C, these young, patient-specific heart muscle cells were no use for studying the disease or testing new therapeutic drugs.
Speeding up time
Eventually, the team experienced the big "aha!" moment they'd been looking for. They discovered that metabolic maturity is the key to inducing signs of ARVD/C, an adult disease, in their embryonic-like cells. Human fetal heart muscle cells use glucose (sugar) as their primary source of energy. In contrast, adult heart muscle cells prefer using fat for energy production. So Chen's team applied several cocktails to trigger this shift to adult metabolism in their model.
After more trial and error, they discovered that metabolic malfunction is at the core of ARVD/C disease. Moreover, Chen's team tracked down the final piece of puzzle to make patient-specific heart muscle cells behave like sick ARVD/C hearts: the abnormal over-activation of a protein called PPAR?. Scientists previously attributed ARVD/C to a problem in weakened connections between heart muscle cells, which occur only in half of the ARVD/C patients. With the newly established model, they not only replicated this adult-onset disease in a dish, but also presented new potential drug targets for treating ARVD/C.
What's next?
Chen's team was recently awarded a new grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to create additional iPSC-based ARVD/C models. With more ARVD/C models, they will determine whether or not all (or at least most) patients develop the disease via the same metabolic defects discovered in this current study.
Together with the Johns Hopkins team, Chen also hopes to conduct preclinical studies to find a new therapy for this deadly heart condition.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Changsung Kim, Johnson Wong, Jianyan Wen, Shirong Wang, Cheng Wang, Sean Spiering, Natalia G. Kan, Sonia Forcales, Pier Lorenzo Puri, Teresa C. Leone, Joseph E. Marine, Hugh Calkins, Daniel P. Kelly, Daniel P. Judge, Huei-Sheng Vincent Chen. Studying arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia with patient-specific iPSCs. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature11799
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/SopuqUp_z60/130127134201.htm
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Study: Distant rural areas may feel cities' heat
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Heat rising up from cities such as New York, Paris and Tokyo might be remotely warming up winters far away in some rural parts of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia, a surprising study theorizes.
In an unusual twist, that same urban heat from buildings and cars may be slightly cooling the autumns in much of the Western United States, Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, according to the study published Sunday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
Meteorologists long have known that cities are warmer than rural areas, with the heat of buildings and cars, along with asphalt and roofs that absorb heat. That's called the urban heat island effect and it's long been thought that the heat stayed close to the cities.
But the study, based on a computer model and the Northern Hemisphere, now suggests the heat does something else, albeit indirectly. It travels about half a mile up into the air and then its energy changes the high-altitude currents in the atmosphere that dictate prevailing weather.
"Basically, it changes the flow." said Guang Zhang of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. He wrote the paper with Aixue Hu at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
This doesn't change overall global temperature averages significantly, unlike man-made greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Instead it redistributes some of the heat, the scientists said.
The changes seem to vary with the seasons and by region because of the way air currents flow at different times of the year. During the winter, the jet stream is altered and weakened, keeping cold air closer to the Arctic Circle and from dipping down as sharply, Hu explained.
The computer model showed that parts of Siberia and northwestern Canada may get, on average, an extra 1.4 degrees to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 to 1 degree Celsius) during the winter, which "may not be a bad thing," Zhang said. The effect isn't quite as much in northern North Dakota and Minnesota, where temperatures might be about half a degree warmer (0.3 degrees Celsius), and even less along the East Coast.
In contrast, Europe and the Pacific Northwest are cooled slightly in the winter from this effect. The jet stream changes prevent weather systems from bringing warmer air from the Atlantic to Europe and from the Pacific to the U.S. Northwest, thus cooling those areas a bit, he said.
The biggest cooling occurs in the fall, but Hu said he's not quite sure why that happens.
Several outside scientists said they were surprised by the study results, calling the work "intriguing" and "clever." But they said it would have to be shown in more than one computer model and in repeated experiments before they could accept this theory.
"It's an interesting and rationally carried out study," said David Parker, climate monitoring chief of the United Kingdom meteorology office. "We must be cautious until other models are used to test their hypothesis."
___
Online:
Nature Climate Change: http://www.nature.com/nclimate
___
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/study-distant-rural-areas-may-feel-cities-heat-180509317.html
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Monday, January 28, 2013
Health care among early leaders in the S&P 500
NEW YORK (AP) ? Health care stocks have started off the year on a tear.
The industry group that includes health care providers, drugmakers and biotechnology companies has advanced 7.3 percent this year, making it the second-best in the Standard and Poor's 500 index, trailing only energy companies. Even drugmakers, traditionally considered a safe-haven play, are outperforming the market.
The rally has solid foundations, but not all companies will benefit equally from the influx of cash. Also, the wide range of stocks in the sector offer investors vastly differing risk and return dynamics.
U.S. health care spending is projected to climb at a faster pace than economic growth in coming years as the population ages and President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act gives millions of Americans greater access to care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that total health care spending will rise 70 percent over last year's estimated level of $2.8 trillion to $4.8 trillion by 2021. That's almost 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
"There's just a lot more money flowing into health care and we're seeing the markets react accordingly," says Derek Taner, a portfolio manager at Invesco.
President Obama's re-election in November gave the sector a boost by removing the uncertainty surrounding the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Republican candidate Mitt Romney had said that he would overturn the act if elected.
The biggest beneficiaries of the act will likely be hospital companies, which have the potential to increase their earnings significantly, says Taner, who manages Invesco's Global Health Care fund.
So-called managed-care companies should also benefit from the increase in spending, though they also face higher taxes and restrictions on how they can price their coverage, so the law will be challenging to them too.
HCA Holdings Inc., a bellwether for the hospital industry, has gained 25 percent so far this year. Tenet Healthcare Corp., a Dallas-based operator of acute care hospitals, has advanced 20 percent.
Drugmakers, often regarded as defensive growth companies by analysts, are also emerging from the doldrums after lagging the broader index for much of the last decade.
Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest drugmaker by revenue, has returned 31 percent over the last 10 years, compared with 113 percent for the S&P 500.
The big pharmaceutical companies were shunned by investors as they faced challenges from rising research costs and the economic slump in Europe, which prompted governments to try to rein in health care spending.
Drug companies were also hurt by what the industry dubbed the "patent cliff," as an unprecedented number of patents expired on drugs worth billions of dollars in sales. The expiration of patents allows cheaper generic versions of drugs to replace blockbuster products. That hurts sales.
Pfizer lost exclusivity for its cholesterol-fighting drug Lipitor in the U.S. in November 2011. In its most recent earnings report, Pfizer said that U.S. revenues from the drug plunged 87 percent in the third quarter of 2012 to $192 million. The company will release its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday.
The worst of the impact of patent expiration may now be over for the drugmakers, and the market has already factored it into stock prices, says Mark Bussard, a health care analyst at fund manager T. Rowe Price.
"The 'patent cliff' for most of the companies has now come and gone," says Bussard, who is a physician by training. "Some of the largest losses to generic competition are in the rear-view mirror now."
Approvals for first-of-a-kind drugs have also been climbing as drugmakers continue to pursue an emerging business model focused on treatments for rare and hard-to-treat diseases.
The Food and Drug Administration approved 39 new drugs last year, up from 30 the year before and the highest annual tally since 1997, when the agency also approved 39 drugs.
In addition to being relatively low-risk investments, due to the steady demand for drugs, Big Pharma also pays big dividends.
The largest drug companies in the S&P 500 have higher dividend yields than the broader index, which yields 2.1 percent. Pfizer currently has a 3.6 percent yield and Merck & Co. yields 4 percent.
Biotechnology companies are possibly the most exciting companies in the sector and are also advancing.
Investing in this sector can be challenging, though, as the vast majority of drugs being developed don't work out.
"It's probably unwise ... to try to pick the individual winner," says Sam Isaly, the manager of Eaton Vance's Worldwide Health Sciences Fund. "It depends on whether you're a lotto player or not."
While the Affordable Care Act ensures that money will flow into the industry in the near term, that spending can't keep rising exponentially. At some point, the focus will turn to the cost of the reforms, particularly if the initial spending estimates are exceeded, causing renewed uncertainty for the industry.
"That's a longer-term concern that is going to come into play at some point," says Invesco's Taner. "Right now we're in the honeymoon period. People aren't thinking about that."
And if history is a guide, the cost estimates will likely prove too low.
Upon passing the Medicare bill in 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated total program expenditures would amount to $1.3 billion in 1967. That estimate proved to be "wildly optimistic," with the actual cost coming in at $4.6 billion, according to research by Citigroup health care analysts.
To counter the rising costs, governments and employers will increasingly try to shift more of the cost to individual consumers, transforming the industry from an "employer-driven insurance market" to an "employee-driven consumer market," says Eddie Yoon of Fidelity.
"The companies that are the most innovative in helping drive costs down are going to be the growth companies of tomorrow," says Yoon, who manages the investment firm's Select Health Care Portfolio.
___
AP Business Writers Matthew Perrone and Linda Johnson contributed.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/health-care-among-early-leaders-p-500-231523801--finance.html
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The Human Brain Project: Winner of the of the largest European scientific funding competition
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vTblVzpD8We8fSUnuMETYgQOHrijI5wW0pE3tn4i7OgiI3AB7R7Uk7rHp5aCWneRusW7XvtACYxo8WyJmxDEb1xWbp8QL-jMPFWT0gQsY=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Anita Kar
anita.kar@mcgill.ca
514-398-3376
McGill University
The European Commission has officially announced the selection of the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of its two FET Flagship projects. The new project will federate European efforts to address one of the greatest challenges of modern science: understanding the human brain.
The goal of the Human Brain Project is to pull together all our existing knowledge about the human brain and to reconstruct the brain, piece by piece, in supercomputer-based models and simulations. The models offer the prospect of a new understanding of the human brain and its diseases and of completely new computing and robotic technologies. On January 28, the European Commission supported this vision, announcing that it has selected the HBP as one of two projects to be funded through the new FET Flagship Program.
Federating more than 80 European and international research institutions, the Human Brain Project is planned to last ten years (2013-2023). The cost is estimated at 1.19 billion euros. The project will also associate some important North American and Japanese partners. It will be coordinated at the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, by neuroscientist Henry Markram with co-directors Karlheinz Meier of Heidelberg University, Germany, and Richard Frackowiak of Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL).
Canada's role in this international project is through Dr. Alan Evans of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University. His group has developed a high-performance computational platform for neuroscience (CBRAIN) and multi-site databasing technologies that will be used to assemble brain imaging data across the HBP. He is also collaborating with European scientists on the creation of ultra high-resolution 3D brain maps. This ambitious project will integrate data across all scales, from molecules to whole-brain organization. It will have profound implications for our understanding of brain development in children and normal brain function, as well as for combatting brain disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease, said Dr. Evans. "The MNI's pioneering work on brain imaging technology has led to significant advances in our understanding of the brain and neurological disorders," says Dr. Guy Rouleau, Director of the MNI. "I am proud that our expertise is a key contributor to this international program focused on improving quality of life worldwide."
"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is delighted to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of Dr. Evans and his team. Their work on the CBRAIN infrastructure and this leading-edge HBP will allow the integration of Canadian neuroscientists into an eventual global brain project," said Dr. Anthony Phillips, Scientific Director for the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. "Congratulations to the Canadian and European researchers who will be working collaboratively towards the same goal which is to provide insights into neuroscience that will ultimately improve people's health."
"From mapping the sensory and motor cortices of the brain to pioneering work on the mechanisms of memory, McGill University has long been synonymous with world-class neuroscience research," says Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations). "The research of Dr. Evans and his team marks an exciting new chapter in our collective pursuit to unlock the potential of the human brain and the entire nervous system a critical step that would not be possible without the generous support of the European Commission and the FET Flagship Program."
The selection of the Human Brain Project as a FET Flagship is the result of more than three years of preparation and a rigorous and severe evaluation by a large panel of independent, high profile scientists, chosen by the European Commission. In the coming months, the partners will negotiate a detailed agreement with the Community for the initial first two and a half year ramp-up phase (2013-mid 2016). The project will begin work in the closing months of 2013.
###
The Neuro
The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital The Neuro, is a unique academic medical centre dedicated to neuroscience. Founded in 1934 by the renowned Dr. Wilder Penfield, The Neuro is recognized internationally for integrating research, compassionate patient care and advanced training, all key to advances in science and medicine. The Neuro is a research and teaching institute of McGill University and forms the basis for the Neuroscience Mission of the McGill University Health Centre.
Neuro researchers are world leaders in cellular and molecular neuroscience, brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience and the study and treatment of epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and neuromuscular disorders. For more information, visit theneuro.com.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Anita Kar
anita.kar@mcgill.ca
514-398-3376
McGill University
The European Commission has officially announced the selection of the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of its two FET Flagship projects. The new project will federate European efforts to address one of the greatest challenges of modern science: understanding the human brain.
The goal of the Human Brain Project is to pull together all our existing knowledge about the human brain and to reconstruct the brain, piece by piece, in supercomputer-based models and simulations. The models offer the prospect of a new understanding of the human brain and its diseases and of completely new computing and robotic technologies. On January 28, the European Commission supported this vision, announcing that it has selected the HBP as one of two projects to be funded through the new FET Flagship Program.
Federating more than 80 European and international research institutions, the Human Brain Project is planned to last ten years (2013-2023). The cost is estimated at 1.19 billion euros. The project will also associate some important North American and Japanese partners. It will be coordinated at the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, by neuroscientist Henry Markram with co-directors Karlheinz Meier of Heidelberg University, Germany, and Richard Frackowiak of Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL).
Canada's role in this international project is through Dr. Alan Evans of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University. His group has developed a high-performance computational platform for neuroscience (CBRAIN) and multi-site databasing technologies that will be used to assemble brain imaging data across the HBP. He is also collaborating with European scientists on the creation of ultra high-resolution 3D brain maps. This ambitious project will integrate data across all scales, from molecules to whole-brain organization. It will have profound implications for our understanding of brain development in children and normal brain function, as well as for combatting brain disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease, said Dr. Evans. "The MNI's pioneering work on brain imaging technology has led to significant advances in our understanding of the brain and neurological disorders," says Dr. Guy Rouleau, Director of the MNI. "I am proud that our expertise is a key contributor to this international program focused on improving quality of life worldwide."
"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is delighted to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of Dr. Evans and his team. Their work on the CBRAIN infrastructure and this leading-edge HBP will allow the integration of Canadian neuroscientists into an eventual global brain project," said Dr. Anthony Phillips, Scientific Director for the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. "Congratulations to the Canadian and European researchers who will be working collaboratively towards the same goal which is to provide insights into neuroscience that will ultimately improve people's health."
"From mapping the sensory and motor cortices of the brain to pioneering work on the mechanisms of memory, McGill University has long been synonymous with world-class neuroscience research," says Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations). "The research of Dr. Evans and his team marks an exciting new chapter in our collective pursuit to unlock the potential of the human brain and the entire nervous system a critical step that would not be possible without the generous support of the European Commission and the FET Flagship Program."
The selection of the Human Brain Project as a FET Flagship is the result of more than three years of preparation and a rigorous and severe evaluation by a large panel of independent, high profile scientists, chosen by the European Commission. In the coming months, the partners will negotiate a detailed agreement with the Community for the initial first two and a half year ramp-up phase (2013-mid 2016). The project will begin work in the closing months of 2013.
###
The Neuro
The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital The Neuro, is a unique academic medical centre dedicated to neuroscience. Founded in 1934 by the renowned Dr. Wilder Penfield, The Neuro is recognized internationally for integrating research, compassionate patient care and advanced training, all key to advances in science and medicine. The Neuro is a research and teaching institute of McGill University and forms the basis for the Neuroscience Mission of the McGill University Health Centre.
Neuro researchers are world leaders in cellular and molecular neuroscience, brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience and the study and treatment of epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and neuromuscular disorders. For more information, visit theneuro.com.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/mu-thb012813.php
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Saturday, January 26, 2013
Socially isolated rats are more vulnerable to addiction, report researchers
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Rats that are socially isolated during a critical period of adolescence are more vulnerable to addiction to amphetamine and alcohol, found researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. Amphetamine addiction is also harder to extinguish in the socially isolated rats.
These effects, which are described this week in the journal Neuron, persist even after the rats are reintroduced into the community of other rats.
"Basically the animals become more manipulatable," said Hitoshi Morikawa, associate professor of neurobiology in the College of Natural Sciences. "They're more sensitive to reward, and once conditioned the conditioning takes longer to extinguish. We've been able to observe this at both the behavioral and neuronal level."
Morikawa said the negative effects of social isolation during adolescence have been well documented when it comes to traits such as anxiety, aggression, cognitive rigidity and spatial learning. What wasn't clear until now is how social isolation affects the specific kind of behavior and brain activity that has to do with addiction.
"Isolated animals have a more aggressive profile," said Leslie Whitaker, a former doctoral student in Morikawa's lab and now a researcher at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "They are more anxious. Put them in an open field and they freeze more. We also know that those areas of the brain that are more involved in conscious memory are impaired. But the kind of memory involved in addiction isn't conscious memory. It's an unconscious preference for the place in which you got the reward. You keep coming back to it without even knowing why. That kind of memory is enhanced by the isolation."
The rats in the study were isolated from their peers for about a month from 21 days of age. That period is comparable with early-to-middle adolescence in humans. They were then tested to see how they responded to different levels of exposure to amphetamine and alcohol.
The results were striking, said Micka?l Degoulet, a postdoctoral researcher in Morikawa's lab. The isolated rats were much quicker to form a preference for the small, distinctive box in which they received amphetamine or alcohol than were the never-isolated control group. Nearly all the isolated rats showed a preference after just one exposure to either drug. The control rats only became conditioned after repeated exposures.
Morikawa said that this kind of preference for the environmental context in which the reward was received provides researchers with a more useful way of understanding addiction than seeing it as a desire for more of the addictive substance.
"When you drink or take addictive drugs, that triggers the release of dopamine," he said. "People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter or a pleasure transmitter, which may or may not be true, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it is also a learning transmitter. It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released. It tells our brain that what we're doing at that moment is rewarding and thus worth repeating."
In an important sense, says Morikawa, you don't become addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief but to the constellation of environmental, behavioral and physiological cues that are reinforced when the substance triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.
Morikawa and Whitaker have also been able to document these changes at the neuronal level. Social isolation primes dopamine neurons in the rats' brain to quickly learn to generate spikes in response to inputs from other brain areas. So dopamine neurons will learn to respond to the context more quickly.
If the control, group-housed rats are given enough repeated exposure to amphetamine, they eventually achieve the same degree of addiction as the socially isolated rats. Even from this point of comparable addiction, however, there are differences. It takes longer for the socially isolated rats to kick the addiction to amphetamine when they're exposed to the same extinction protocols. (They spend time in the same environments, but amphetamine is no longer available.)
"So the social isolation leads to addiction more quickly, and it's harder to extinguish," said Whitaker.
Whitaker said that the implications of these findings for addiction in humans are obvious. There is a rich literature that documents the negative effects of social isolation in humans, as well as a great deal of evidence that addiction in rats and humans is functionally similar at the neurological level.
"It's not a one-to-one correlation, but there are socially impoverished human environments," she said. "There are children who are neglected, who have less social input. It's reasonable to make guesses about what the impact of that is going to be."
Morikawa points out that their findings may also have implications for how social isolation during adolescence affects conditionability when it comes to other kinds of rewards.
"We think that maybe what's happening is that the brain reacts to the impoverished environment, to a lack of opportunities to be reinforced by rewarding stimuli, by increasing its sensitivity to reward-based conditioning," said Morikawa. "The deprived brain may be overinterpreting any reward it encounters. And if that's the case, it's likely that you are more conditionable not only to drugs but to any sort of reward, including food reward. One interesting possibility is that it might also make adolescents more prone to food 'addiction,' and then to obesity."
###
University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu
Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.
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HTC-made au Infobar A02 launches in Japan, wraps unique Android UI in trippy body
KDDI's funky au Infobar is back! Once again designed by the famed Naoto Fukasawa, this A02 -- co-developed by HTC -- brings the series up to date with Qualcomm's 1.5GHz quad-core APQ8064 (but with just 1GB of RAM), 4.7-inch 720p display, 16GB of storage, microSD slot, 2,100mAh battery, LTE radio (800/1500) and Android 4.1. Better yet, this phone also supports both CDMA2000 800/2100 and WCDMA 850/1900/2100, making it a great global phone. Judging by one of the demo clips after the break, it seems that this Infobar's 8-megapixel main imager (with F2.0 lens) and 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera take advantage of HTC's ImageSense chip for speedy burst shots. Likewise, you'll find Beats Audio built into the system. As per typical Japanese mobile phone, the usual NFC (with Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet), 1seg TV tuner and infrared are also packed inside the 9.7mm-thick, 147g-heavy waterproof (IPX5 and IPX7) and dustproof (IP5X) body.
We're already fans of the iconic nishikigoi (meaning "brocaded carp") color scheme as pictured above, but what really caught our attention this time are the fluid animations and uniqueness of the "iida UI" 2.0 (iida stands for "innovation," "imagination," "design" and "art") by interactive designer Yugo Nakamura. As you'll see in the video clips after the break, the home screen here shares some similarities with Windows Phone 8's counterpart -- in the way items snap to grid and resize, even though the former is enhanced by plenty of bouncy animation, more colors and funny sounds (designed by Japanese musician Cornelius). Expect this A02 -- which is also available in blue or gray -- to hit the Japanese market in mid-February.
Gallery: HTC-made au Infobar A02 launches in Japan, wraps 4.7-inch screen and quad-core chip in funky colors
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Via: Engadget Japanese
Source: KDDI (Japanese)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/htc-au-infobar-a02/
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