By Thomas Andrillon, Chercheur en neurosciences à l ICM, Inserm Shutterstock
Our attention is a powerful lens, allowing our brains to pick out the relevant details out of the overwhelming flow of information reaching us every second.
However, scientists estimate we spend up to half our waking lives thinking about something other than the task at hand: our minds are wandering. This is striking considering the potential negative consequences, from decreased school or work performance to tragic traffic accidents.
We also know that mind-wandering and lapses of attention are more common when we are sleep-deprived, which suggests they may happen when the neurons in our brain start behaving in a way that resembles sleep. We tested the relationship between sleep and lapses of attention in new research published in Nature Communications.
How plants quickly adapt to shifting environmental conditions eurekalert.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eurekalert.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
IMAGE: Tanya Renner, Penn State
“The study of plants can provide novel solutions for human welfare through improved crops,” said Tanya Renner, assistant professor of entomology at Penn State. “A key challenge is to efficiently select traits and underlying genes that exert similar functions when transferred from a donor plant to a recipient. We believe that some of the genes involved in carnivory such as those involved in digesting insects and in maintaining leaf surfaces that prevent insects from escaping could help to improve pest resistance of crops or create varieties that can grow on increasingly widespread eroded and infertile soils.”
Gizem Ozbaykal-Guler recognised as an ‘outstanding young life-scientist’ through prestigious new Fellowship
Gizem Ozbaykal-Guler recognised as an ‘outstanding young life-scientist’ through prestigious new Fellowship 6 May 2021 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine https://lshtm.ac.uk/themes/custom/lshtm/images/lshtm-logo-black.png
New research aims to uncover novel concepts in cell biology and subsequent new treatments for bacterial infections Share
The prestigious fellowships are awarded to the world’s most outstanding young life-scientists who have proposed original approaches at the frontier of biological research. Gizem, a post-doctoral research fellow in the Mostowy lab at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), is one of 63 successful applicants to the latest round of fellowships announced by HFSP in April 2021.
Credit: Ludwig Cancer Research
APRIL 28, 2021, NEW YORK - A Ludwig Cancer Research study has identified a previously unrecognized mechanism by which cancer cells of a relatively benign subtype of pancreatic tumors methodically revert or de-differentiate to a progenitor, or immature, state of cellular development to spawn highly aggressive tumors that are capable of metastasis to the liver and lymph nodes.
The study, led by Ludwig Lausanne s Douglas Hanahan and published in
Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, also shows that engagement of the mechanism is associated with poorer outcomes in patients diagnosed with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs). Further, its findings provide concrete evidence that such cellular de-differentiation, widely observed across cancer types, is a not merely a random consequence of cancer cells other aberrations.