A team of Duke University Medical Center and Australian scientists has found that addictive drugs may have hijacked the same nerve cells and connections in the brain that serve a powerful, ancient instinct: the appetite for salt. Their rodent research shows how certain genes are regulated in a part of the brain that controls the equilibrium of salt, water, energy, reproduction, and other rhythms – the hypothalamus. The scientists found that the gene patterns activated by stimulating an instinctive behavior, salt appetite, were the same groups of genes regulated by cocaine or opiate (such as heroin) addiction. “We were surprised and gratified to see that blocking addiction-related pathways could powerfully interfere with sodium appetite,” said co-lead author Wolfgang Liedtke, MD, PhD , an assistant professor of medicine and neurobiology at Duke University.

Strokes are a leading cause of mortality and adult disability. Those that involve intracerebral hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain) are especially deadly, and there are no effective treatments to control such bleeding.

PORTLAND, Ore. – According to research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, the commonly held belief that oral contraceptives cause weight gain appears to be false.

The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity and invited the world to take action to safeguard the variety of life on earth. Unfortunately, though, it is seldom completely clear what should be safeguarded. An example is provided by the cheetah, which conventional wisdom tells us does not vary much throughout its wide (if shrinking) range.

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company – part owned by Shell – has announced plans to build a major oil platform near crucial feeding habitat of the Western North Pacific gray whale population. Only around 130 whales of the critically endangered Western population exist today, and their primary feeding habitat – off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East – is already besieged by multiple oil and gas exploration and development projects. The construction and operation of an additional off-shore platform could have numerous negative impacts on the whales, potentially disrupting feeding behaviours and increasing the chance of fatal ship strikes

Scientists dream of developing a real-world version of the Pied Piper's magic flute — new poisons that pose no threat to people, pets or wildlife, while specifically targeting rats, those germ-laden creatures that outnumber humans 6 to 1 in some urban areas.