Christen Brownlee
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All Stories by Christen Brownlee
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Eat Smart
Your daily diet may have an impact on your brain's resiliency in the face of injury or disease.
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Hunger for Knowledge: Appetite hormone may stimulate memory
A hormone that's been tied to promoting hunger may also play a pivotal role in creating and retrieving memories, according to a new study in mice.
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Transplant reroutes cells from sperm to eggs
Fish cells destined to become sperm can become eggs when transplanted into larvae.
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Buff and Brainy
Physical exercise encourages brains to function at an optimum level, even if they're damaged or diseased.
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Model for Madness: Engineered mice have schizophrenia-like symptoms
Scientists have genetically altered mice so that they mimic the deficits in short-term memory and attention of schizophrenic patients.
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Soil microbes are reservoir for antibiotic resistance
Bacteria that live in dirt are surprisingly resistant to antibiotics, even those they presumably have never before encountered.
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Earth
Global warming may already be a killer
Earth's rising temperatures may be a precipitating factor in the extinctions of dozens of tropical frog species.
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Good for Something: Prion protein maintains stem cells
The same protein that, in an altered shape, causes mad cow disease maintains the body's cache of blood-producing stem cells.
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Health & Medicine
Tumor’s border cells told to leave
Cells on a tumor's outer layer that touch healthy tissue receive a chemical signal that sends them wandering away.
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Hunter Beware: Infectious proteins found in deer muscle
Infectious agents that cause a mad cow–like infection in deer and elk are present in infected animals' muscles.
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Polar-opposite bacteria swim south in the north
Some aquatic bacteria that orient themselves using Earth's magnetic field swim in the opposite direction from what researchers typically expect.
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Enzyme measures RNA using natural ruler
An enzyme that chops RNA into identically sized pieces uses itself to measure those lengths.