Airplane air

<b>Can flying help alleviate jet lag? Studies of the biochemical mechanisms that synchronize biological clocks throughout the body show that the low-oxygen environment of airplanes may actually help you adjust to your new time zone</b>. Adamovich et al. observed daily cycles in the concentration of oxygen in blood and tissues of mice kept on a normal light-dark cycle. These variations were sufficient to alter the abundance of the transcription factor HIF1α (hypoxia-inducible factor 1α). In cultured cells, changes in oxygen concentration could entrain the circadian clock only if HIF1α was present. When animals were subjected to a 6-hour change in the light cycle (like traveling eastward on a jet), animals kept in a low concentration of oxygen adapted more quickly.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJww32fJ80m1qG70jugQzY3rdzszOetS7k_lYA1TWiNA5L8IZBgFDn6Pl_Dcwn_Jg0c4lOJqJ9eeAp22ebgKjWHXPv0hZq6yaz_oXxG4j3nr6-TOjwfxbc5zbRNmHY971iKNfGoDrSDS3/s1600/Airplane+air.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJww32fJ80m1qG70jugQzY3rdzszOetS7k_lYA1TWiNA5L8IZBgFDn6Pl_Dcwn_Jg0c4lOJqJ9eeAp22ebgKjWHXPv0hZq6yaz_oXxG4j3nr6-TOjwfxbc5zbRNmHY971iKNfGoDrSDS3/s400/Airplane+air.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> source: <a href="http://newsfeedmika.blogspot.com/">sciencemag.org</a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <b>MiKa</b></div>

Airplane air

Can flying help alleviate jet lag? Studies of the biochemical mechanisms that synchronize biological clocks throughout the body show that th...

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Resolving a ticklish problem

<b>What is the neural correlate of ticklishness? When Ishiyama and Brecht tickled rats, the animals produced noises and other joyful responses.</b> During the tickling, the authors observed nerve cell activity in deep layers of the somatosensory cortex corresponding to the animals' trunks. Furthermore, microstimulation of this brain region evoked the same behavior. Just as in humans, mood could modulate this neuronal activity. Anxiety-inducing situations suppressed the cells' firing, and the animal could no longer be tickled.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLE3e0sdb7jiKMJoRKsUhGREpgGAMwaawfm7Ct_TYzHtjy2W1VEeD_f75XEzigSJiMfwhS7nQWfpHom_DokZEJL59Cp3HdUtL154L8nCo6hrCt_3QatCZWFdR4H-7IBkiZZIvGPE_msvT/s1600/Resolving+a+ticklish+problem.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLE3e0sdb7jiKMJoRKsUhGREpgGAMwaawfm7Ct_TYzHtjy2W1VEeD_f75XEzigSJiMfwhS7nQWfpHom_DokZEJL59Cp3HdUtL154L8nCo6hrCt_3QatCZWFdR4H-7IBkiZZIvGPE_msvT/s400/Resolving+a+ticklish+problem.gif" width="400" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> source: sciencemag.org</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <b>Mika</b></div>

Resolving a ticklish problem

What is the neural correlate of ticklishness? When Ishiyama and Brecht tickled rats, the animals produced noises and other joyful responses....

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Donations to Foundation Vexed Hillary Clinton’s Aides

In the years before Hillary Clinton announced she would run again for president, her top aides expressed profound concerns in internal emails about how foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s own moneymaking ventures would affect Mrs. Clinton’s political future.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcmg-UDxnCxCJLF4LZ8c30ZDK0CdYhyphenhyphenz3LlLSBynFCGFfBGOpjdDHgl39yCHV5QG6dJWdUijaNFt_nwFqL1EDEzIT1D-RnNjBE_pqPHo3E93Ip_MzLLgtSrLbXIz_5XAx5slD4WhK2VLKv/s1600/co+gai+thang+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcmg-UDxnCxCJLF4LZ8c30ZDK0CdYhyphenhyphenz3LlLSBynFCGFfBGOpjdDHgl39yCHV5QG6dJWdUijaNFt_nwFqL1EDEzIT1D-RnNjBE_pqPHo3E93Ip_MzLLgtSrLbXIz_5XAx5slD4WhK2VLKv/s400/co+gai+thang+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> <br /> The emails, obtained by hackers and being gradually released by WikiLeaks this month, also are revealing how efforts to minimize potential conflicts at the foundation led to power struggles and infighting among aides and Mrs. Clinton’s family.<br /> One top aide to Mr. Clinton, Douglas J. Band, noted in an email that the former president had received personal income from some foundation donors and “gets many expensive gifts from them.”<br /> Chelsea Clinton accused her father’s aides of taking “significant sums of money from my parents personally,” of “hustling” during foundation events to win clients for their own business, and of even installing spyware on her chief of staff’s computer.<br /> Hillary Clinton, another email showed, had promised to attend a Clinton Foundation gathering in Morocco at the behest of its king, who had pledged $12 million to the charity. Her advisers worried that would look unseemly just as she was beginning her presidential campaign in earnest.<br /> “She created this mess and she knows it,” a close aide, Huma Abedin, wrote of Mrs. Clinton in a January 2015 email.<br /> For months, the Clintons have defended their foundation, making public proclamations that it went above and beyond what the law required in terms of transparency while Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department.<br /> The emails, which came from the account of John D. Podesta, who had a leadership role at the foundation and is now Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, have not contained evidence to support Republican contentions that Mrs. Clinton performed any favors for foundation donors.

Donations to Foundation Vexed Hillary Clinton’s Aides

In the years before Hillary Clinton announced she would run again for president, her top aides expressed profound concerns in internal email...

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