Category: Science News

{Measurements demonstrated that the brain activity of people who dream during NREM sleep, compared to people who do not dream in NREM sleep, is closer to brain activity of awake people.}

Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Wisconsin utilised a TMS-EEG device, which combines transcranial magnetic stimulation and EEG, to examine how the brain activity of people in the restful non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is affected by whether they dream or do not dream.

When the NREM sleep of subjects had lasted at least three minutes, researchers gave magnetic pulses that induced a weak electric field and activated neurons. After a series of pulses, the subject was woken with an alarm sound, and they were then asked whether they had dreamed and to describe the content of the dream.

‘It is traditionally thought that dreaming occurs only in REM sleep. However, as also our study demonstrates, subjects woken from NREM sleep are also able to give accounts of their dreams in more than half of cases,’ Post-doctoral Researcher Jaakko Nieminen from Aalto University explains.

‘EEG showed that the deterministic brain activity produced by magnetic pulses was notably shorter in people who did not dream, i.e. were unconscious, than in people who had dreamt. We also observed that the longer the story about the dream, the more the subject’s EEG resembled that measured from people who were awake,’ Dr Nieminen explains.

{{Assessment of consciousness may help in treatment of brain injury patients}}

Dr Nieminen performed the measurements with his research colleague Olivia Gosseries at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sleep and Consciousness, which is headed by Giulio Tononi. The measurements were carried out during a period of over 40 nights and a total of 11 subjects participated. Due to sleeping difficulties and other challenges, reliable measurements could only be acquired from six subjects. During the night, subjects were woken a maximum of 16 times.

‘Consciousness in different physiological states (e.g. during wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia and vegetative state) has previously been researched with TMS-EEG measurements. We wanted to eliminate all other differences related to the different states as thoroughly as possible, and for this reason we focused on the narrow physiological state of NREM sleep,’ Dr Nieminen notes.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is already utilised in such things as the treatment of depression and pain. According to Dr Nieminen, in the future the precise data provided by TMS-EEG measurements on the state of consciousness may also help in the treatment of brain injury patients who are unable to communicate.

The research results were published in Scientific Reports.

{The fertility of dogs may have suffered a sharp decline over the past three decades, a new study has found. The research found that sperm quality in a population of stud dogs studied over a 26-year period had fallen significantly.}

A study led by researchers at The University of Nottingham has discovered that the fertility of dogs may have suffered a sharp decline over the past three decades.

The research, published in the academic journal Scientific Reports, found that sperm quality in a population of stud dogs studied over a 26-year period had fallen significantly.

The work has highlighted a potential link to environmental contaminants, after they were able to demonstrate that chemicals found in the sperm and testes of adult dogs — and in some commercially available pet foods — had a detrimental effect on sperm function at the concentrations detected.

As ‘man’s best friend’ and closest companion animal, the researchers believe that the latest results may offer a new piece of the puzzle over the reported significant decline in human semen quality — a controversial subject which scientists continue to debate.

Dr Richard Lea, Reader in Reproductive Biology in the University’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, who led the research said: “This is the first time that such a decline in male fertility has been reported in the dog and we believe this is due to environmental contaminants, some of which we have detected in dog food and in the sperm and testes of the animals themselves.

“While further research is needed to conclusively demonstrate a link, the dog may indeed be a sentinel for humans — it shares the same environment, exhibits the same range of diseases, many with the same frequency and responds in a similar way to therapies.”

The study centred on samples taken from stud dogs at an assistance dogs breeding centre over the course of 26 years. Professor Gary England, Foundation Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science and Professor of Comparative Veterinary Reproduction, who oversaw the collection of semen said: “The strength of the study is that all samples were processed and analysed by the same laboratory using the same protocols during that time and consequently the data generated is robust.”

The work centred on five specific breeds of dogs — Labrador retriever, golden retriever, curly coat retriever, border collie and German shepherd — with between 42 and 97 dogs studied every year.

Semen was collected from the dogs and analysed to assess the percentage of sperm that showed a normal forward progressive pattern of motility and that appeared normal under a microscope (morphology).

Over the 26 years of the study, they found a striking decrease in the percentage of normal motile sperm. Between 1988 and 1998, sperm motility declined by 2.5 per cent per year and following a short period when stud dogs of compromised fertility were retired from the study, sperm motility from 2002 to 2014 continued to decline at a rate of 1.2% per year.

In addition, the team discovered that the male pups generated from the stud dogs with declining semen quality, had an increased incidence of cryptorchidism, a condition in which the testes of pups fail to correctly descend into the scrotum.

Sperm collected from the same breeding population of dogs, and testes recovered from dogs undergoing routine castration, were found to contain environmental contaminants at concentrations able to disrupt sperm motility and viability when tested.

The same chemicals that disrupted sperm quality, were also discovered in a range of commercially available dog foods — including brands specifically marketed for puppies.

Dr Lea added: “We looked at other factors which may also play a part, for example, some genetic conditions do have an impact on fertility. However, we discounted that because 26 years is simply too rapid a decline to be associated with a genetic problem.”

Over the past 70 years, studies have suggested a significant decline in human semen quality and a cluster of issues called ‘testicular dysgenesis syndrome’ that impact on male fertility which also include increased incidence of testicular cancer, the birth defect hypospadias and undescended testes.

However, declining human semen quality remains a controversial issue — many have criticised the variability of the data of the studies on the basis of changes in laboratory methods, training of laboratory personnel and improved quality control over the years.

Dr Lea added: “The Nottingham study presents a unique set of reliable data from a controlled population which is free from these factors. This raises the tantalising prospect that the decline in canine semen quality has an environmental cause and begs the question whether a similar effect could also be observed in human male fertility.”

{New research finds that major volcanic activity on the planet Mercury most likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago. These findings add insight into the geological evolution of Mercury in particular, and what happens when rocky planets cool and contract in general.}

New research from North Carolina State University finds that major volcanic activity on the planet Mercury most likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago. These findings add insight into the geological evolution of Mercury in particular, and what happens when rocky planets cool and contract in general.

There are two types of volcanic activity: effusive and explosive. Explosive volcanism is often a violent event that results in large ash and debris eruptions, such as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. Effusive volcanism refers to widespread lava flows that slowly pour out over the landscape — believed to be a key process by which planets form their crusts.

Determining the ages of effusive volcanic deposits can give researchers a handle on a planet’s geological history. For example, effusive volcanism was active a few hundred million years ago on Venus, a few million years ago on Mars, and it still takes place on Earth today. Until now, the duration of effusive volcanic activity on Mercury, made of the same materials as these other planets, had not been known.

NC State assistant professor and planetary geologist Paul Byrne and colleagues determined when the bulk of Mercury’s crust-forming volcanism ended by using photographs of the surface imaged by NASA’s MESSENGER mission. Because there are no physical samples from the planet that could be used for radiometric dating, the researchers used crater size-frequency analysis, in which the number and size of craters on the planet’s surface are placed into established mathematical models, to calculate absolute ages for effusive volcanic deposits on Mercury.

According to their results, major volcanism on Mercury stopped at around 3.5 billion years ago, in stark contrast to the volcanic ages found for Venus, Mars and Earth.

“There is a huge geological difference between Mercury and Earth, Mars or Venus,” Byrne says. “Mercury has a much smaller mantle, where radioactive decay produces heat, than those other planets, and so it lost its heat much earlier. As a result, Mercury began to contract, and the crust essentially sealed off any conduits by which magma could reach the surface.

“These new results validate 40-year-old predictions about global cooling and contraction shutting off volcanism,” Byrne continues. “Now that we can account for observations of the volcanic and tectonic properties of Mercury, we have a consistent story for its geological formation and evolution, as well as new insight into what happens when planetary bodies cool and contract.”

The research appears in Geophysical Research Letters, with co-authors from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mount Holyoke College, the University of Georgia, Southwest Research Institute and Brown University. The MESSENGER mission provided substantial funding for this work.

{House dust differences between communities affect immune development.}

By probing the differences between two farming communities, an interdisciplinary team of researchers found that substances in the house dust from Amish, but not Hutterite, homes is associated with changes to immune cells that appear to protect children from developing asthma.

By probing the differences between two farming communities — the Amish of Indiana and the Hutterites of South Dakota — an interdisciplinary team of researchers found that specific aspects of the Amish environment are associated with changes to immune cells that appear to protect children from developing asthma.

In the Aug. 4, 2016, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers showed that substances in the house dust from Amish, but not Hutterite, homes were able to engage and shape the innate immune system (the body’s front-line response to most microbes) in young Amish children in ways that may suppress pathologic responses leading to allergic asthma.

“It shows that the source of protection is not simply farming, and has narrowed in on what the specific protection might be,” said study co-author Carole Ober, PhD, professor and chairman of human genetics at the University of Chicago. “We also clearly show, in humans and in mice, that this protection requires engagement of the innate immune system.”

“Over a decade ago, our colleague Erika von Mutius discovered that growing up on a farm can protect against asthma,” Ober said. “Our new study builds on her work, some initial observations made by co-author Mark Holbreich among the Amish, and our long-standing work on asthma in the Hutterites.

The Amish and Hutterite farming communities in the United States, founded by immigrants from Central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, provide textbook opportunities for such comparative studies. The Amish and the Hutterites have similar genetic ancestry. They share similar lifestyles and customs, such as no television and a Germanic farming diet. They have large families, get childhood vaccinations, breastfeed their children, drink raw milk and don’t allow indoor pets.

The communities, however, are distinct in two important ways. Although both groups depend on agriculture, their farming practices differ. The Amish have retained traditional methods. They live on single-family dairy farms and rely on horses for fieldwork and transportation. In contrast, the Hutterites live on large communal farms. They use modern, industrialized farm machinery. This distances young Hutterite children from the constant daily exposure to farm animals.

The other striking difference is what Ober calls a “whopping disparity in asthma.” About 5 percent of Amish schoolchildren aged 6 to 14 have asthma. This is about half of the U.S. average (10.3%) for children aged 5 to 14, and one-fourth of the prevalence (21.3%) among Hutterite children.

To understand this disparity, the researchers studied 30 Amish children 7 to 14 years old, and 30 age-matched Hutterite children. They scrutinized the children’s genetic profiles, which confirmed the remarkable similarities between Amish and Hutterite children. They compared the types of immune cells in the children’s blood, collected airborne dust from Amish and Hutterite homes and measured the microbial load in homes in both communities.

The first gee-whiz moment came from the blood studies. These revealed startling differences between the innate immune response from the Amish and Hutterites.

“The Amish had more and younger neutrophils, blood cells crucial to fight infections, and fewer eosinophils, blood cells that promote allergic inflammation,” said study co-author, immunologist Anne Sperling, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. Gene expression profiles in blood cells also revealed enhanced activation of key innate immunity genes in Amish children.

The second eureka moment came from experiments using mice. When study co-author, immunologist Donata Vercelli, MD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine and associate director of the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center at the University of Arizona, exposed mice to house-dust extracts, she found the airways of mice that received Amish dust were protected from asthma-like responses to allergens. In contrast, mice exposed to Hutterite house dust were not protected.

What was different? Dust collected from Amish homes was “much richer in microbial products,” the authors note, than dust from Hutterite homes.

“Neither the Amish nor the Hutterites have dirty homes,” Ober explained. “Both are tidy. The Amish barns, however, are much closer to their homes. Their children run in and out of them, often barefoot, all day long. There’s no obvious dirt in the Amish homes, no lapse of cleanliness. It’s just in the air, and in the dust.”

To better understand how asthma protection was achieved, the researchers used mice that lack MyD88 and Trif, genes crucial for innate immune responses. In these mice, the protective effect of the Amish dust was completely lost.

“The results of the mouse experiments conclusively prove that products from the Amish environment are sufficient to confer protection from asthma, and highlight the novel, central role that innate immunity plays in directing this process,” Vercelli said.

“In the end,” the authors concluded, “the novelty of our work lies in the identification of innate immunity as the primary target of the protective Amish environment.”

“We hope that our findings will allow the identification of relevant substances that will lead to completely novel strategies to prevent asthma and allergy,” said co-author Erika von Mutius, PhD, professor at Dr. von Hauner Children Hospital in Munich, Germany.

“You can’t put a cow in every family’s house,” Ober added, “but we may be able to protect children from asthma by finding a way to re-create the time-tested Amish experience.”

The National Institutes of Health, the St. Vincent Foundation and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Foundation supported the study.

Additional authors were Michelle Stein, Cara Hrusch, Catherine Igartua and Jack Gilbert from the University of Chicago; Justyna Gozdz, Vadim Pivniouk, Julie Ledford, Mauricius Marques dos Santos, Julia Neilson, Sean Murray, Raina Maier and Fernando Martinez from the University of Arizona; Nervana Metwali and Peter Thorne from the University of Iowa.

{Macaque findings point to older smile origins.}

{When human and chimp infants are dozing, they sometimes show facial movements that resemble smiles. These facial expressions, called spontaneous smiles, are considered the evolutionary origin of real smiles and laughter. Researchers show that this not only happens to higher-order primates like humans and chimpanzees, but also in newborn Japanese macaques, which are more distant relatives in the evolutionary tree.}

Researchers at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute show that this not only happens to higher-order primates like humans and chimpanzees, but also in newborn Japanese macaques, which are more distant relatives in the evolutionary tree.

“About a decade ago we found that chimp infants also display spontaneous smiles,” says study author Masaki Tomonaga. “Since we see the same behavior in more distant relatives, we can infer that the origin of smiles goes back at least 30 million years, when old world monkeys and our direct ancestors diverged.”

Lead author Fumito Kawakami caught macaque infants smiling when they were receiving routine health checkups. “These checkups can take quite long, so the infants tend to nap in between,” says Kawakami. “We took this opportunity to empirically examine the behavior.”

In total they observed 58 spontaneous smiles from seven macaque infants, all of which showed spontaneous smiles at least once. “Spontaneous macaque smiles are more like short, lop-sided spasms compared to those of human infants. There were two significant similarities; they both happened between irregular REM sleep, and they show more lop-sided smiles compared to symmetrical, full smiles,” says Kawakami. “A major difference, though, is that the smiles were much shorter.”

Some researchers have argued that infants’ spontaneous smiles exist to make parents feel that their children are adorable and to enhance parent-child communication. On the other hand, this study suggests that spontaneous smiles don’t express feelings of pleasure in chimpanzees and Japanese monkeys; rather, the smiles are more similar to submissive signals (grimaces) rather than smiles (play faces). The team interpreted that spontaneous smiles facilitate the development of cheek muscles, enabling humans, chimpanzees, and Japanese monkeys to produce smiles, laughs, and grimaces.

So is smiling special to monkeys and primates? Tomonaga says he won’t rule out the possibility.

“There are case reports about mice laughing when they get tickled and dogs displaying facial expressions of pleasure. It may be the case that many mammal infants display spontaneous smiles, in which case smiling would have an older evolutionary origin. Who knows? ” he says with a smile.

{The number of honey bee colonies fell by nearly 12% last winter, an international study indicates. The study found that the spring and early summer months of 2015, from March to July, were cold in Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, with mean temperatures ranging from 12.8 – 14.4 °C. This may have had negative effects on colony development, resulting in both relatively high numbers of dead colonies and unsolvable queen problems after winter.}

The number of honey bee colonies fell by nearly 12% last winter, an international study involving the University of Strathclyde indicates.

Beekeepers in 29 countries reported that, out of nearly 400,000 colonies they managed, 11.9% had failed to survive the winter.

Cases of colonies perishing after problems occurred with their queen were higher than expected.

The UK and Spain were worst affected, compared with the previous year, when other areas of Europe were hardest hit.

The preliminary findings were made through a study by honey bee research association COLOSS, based in the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern.

Dr Alison Gray, of Strathclyde’s Department of Mathematics & Statistics, a partner in the study, said: “These loss rates vary considerably between countries. In this year’s survey the highest losses were found in Ireland and Northern Ireland, followed by Wales and Spain.

“The pattern of loss rates differs from last year, when higher mortality and loss rates were found in central Europe and countries to the east. This year the higher loss rates tend to be in the west and northern countries, although Spain had high rates of loss in both years.

“All the loss rates quoted here include losses due to unresolvable queen problems after winter, as well as colonies that died over winter for various reasons. Losses due to queen problems were unexpectedly high in some countries and this will be a matter of further investigation.

“The crucial role of honey bees in crop pollination means that maintaining colony numbers is of great importance to agriculture, the economy and food security. Honey bees also pollinate many flowering plants and trees important for other wildlife, and so have a vital role in maintaining the natural environment and biodiversity.

“Our research with COLOSS studies the levels of colony losses and potential drivers of colony decline, including management practices, pests and diseases and environmental factors.”

The study found that the spring and early summer months of 2015, from March to July, were cold in Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, with mean temperatures ranging from 12.8 — 14.4 °C. This may have had negative effects on colony development, resulting in both relatively high numbers of dead colonies and unsolvable queen problems after winter.

{Researchers have found a way to convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source. Produced by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants and car engines, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But trees and other plants do slowly capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to sugars that store energy.}

As scientists and policymakers around the world try to combat the increasing rate of climate change, they have focused on the chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

Produced by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants and car engines, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But trees and other plants do slowly capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to sugars that store energy.

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago, researchers have found a similar way to convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source using sunlight.

One of the chief challenges of sequestering carbon dioxide is that it is relatively chemically unreactive. “On its own, it is quite difficult to convert carbon dioxide into something else,” said Argonne chemist Larry Curtiss, an author of the study.

To make carbon dioxide into something that could be a usable fuel, Curtiss and his colleagues needed to find a catalyst — a particular compound that could make carbon dioxide react more readily. When converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into a sugar, plants use an organic catalyst called an enzyme; the researchers used a metal compound called tungsten diselenide, which they fashioned into nanosized flakes to maximize the surface area and to expose its reactive edges.

While plants use their catalysts to make sugar, the Argonne researchers used theirs to convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide. Although carbon monoxide is also a greenhouse gas, it is much more reactive than carbon dioxide and scientists already have ways of converting carbon monoxide into usable fuel, such as methanol. “Making fuel from carbon monoxide means travelling ‘downhill’ energetically, while trying to create it directly from carbon dioxide means needing to go ‘uphill,’” said Argonne physicist Peter Zapol, another author of the study.

Although the reaction to transform carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide is different from anything found in nature, it requires the same basic inputs as photosynthesis. “In photosynthesis, trees need energy from light, water and carbon dioxide in order to make their fuel; in our experiment, the ingredients are the same, but the product is different,” said Curtiss.

The setup for the reaction is sufficiently similar to nature that the research team was able to construct an “artificial leaf” that could complete the entire three-step reaction pathway. In the first step, incoming photons — packets of light — are converted to pairs of negatively-charged electrons and corresponding positively-charged “holes” that then separate from each other. In the second step, the holes react with water molecules, creating protons and oxygen molecules. Finally, the protons, electrons and carbon dioxide all react together to create carbon monoxide and water.

“We burn so many different kinds of hydrocarbons — like coal, oil or gasoline — that finding an economical way to make chemical fuels more reusable with the help of sunlight might have a big impact,” Zapol said.

Towards this goal, the study also showed that the reaction occurs with minimal lost energy — the reaction is very efficient. “The less efficient a reaction is, the higher the energy cost to recycle carbon dioxide, so having an efficient reaction is crucial,” Zapol said.

According to Curtiss, the tungsten diselenide catalyst is also quite durable, lasting for more than 100 hours — a high bar for catalysts to meet.

The study, “Nanostructured transition metal dichalcogenide electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction in ionic liquid,” is published in Science. Much of the experimental work was performed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, while the computational work was performed at Argonne.

{For the first time, scientists report using transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, to target a specific kind of brain activity during sleep and strengthen memory in healthy people.}

When you sleep, your brain is busy storing and consolidating things you learned that day, stuff you’ll need in your memory toolkit tomorrow, next week, or next year. For many people, especially those with neurological conditions, memory impairment can be a debilitating symptom that affects every-day life in profound ways.For the first time, UNC School of Medicine scientists report using transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, to target a specific kind of brain activity during sleep and strengthen memory in healthy people.

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, offer a non-invasive method to potentially help millions of people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder.

For years, researchers have recorded electrical brain activity that oscillates or alternates during sleep; they present as waves on an electroencephalogram (EEG). These waves are called sleep spindles, and scientists have suspected their involvement in cataloging and storing memories as we sleep.

“But we didn’t know if sleep spindles enable or even cause memories to be stored and consolidated,” said senior author Flavio Frohlich, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and member of the UNC Neuroscience Center. “They could’ve been merely byproducts of other brain processes that enabled what we learn to be stored as a memory. But our study shows that, indeed, the spindles are crucial for the process of creating memories we need for every-day life. And we can target them to enhance memory.”

This marks the first time a research group has reported selectively targeting sleep spindles without also increasing other natural electrical brain activity during sleep. This has never been accomplished with tDCS — transcranial direct current stimulation — the much more popular cousin of tACS in which a constant stream of weak electrical current is applied to the scalp.

During Frohlich’s study, 16 male participants underwent a screening night of sleep before completing two nights of sleep for the study.

Before going to sleep each night, all participants performed two common memory exercises — associative word-pairing tests and motor sequence tapping tasks, which involved repeatedly finger-tapping a specific sequence. During both study nights, each participant had electrodes placed at specific spots on their scalps. During sleep one of the nights, each person received tACS — an alternating current of weak electricity synchronized with the brain’s natural sleep spindles. During sleep the other night, each person received sham stimulation as placebo.

Each morning, researchers had participants perform the same standard memory tests. Frohlich’s team found no improvement in test scores for associative word-pairing but a significant improvement in the motor tasks when comparing the results between the stimulation and placebo night.

“This demonstrated a direct causal link between the electric activity pattern of sleep spindles and the process of motor memory consolidation.” Frohlich said.

Caroline Lustenberger, PhD, first author and postdoctoral fellow in the Frohlich lab, said, “We’re excited about this because we know sleep spindles, along with memory formation, are impaired in a number of disorders, such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. We hope that targeting these sleep spindles could be a new type of treatment for memory impairment and cognitive deficits.”

Frohlich said, “The next step is to try the same intervention, the same type of non-invasive brain stimulation, in patients that have known deficits in these spindle activity patterns.”

Frohlich’s team previously used tACS to target the brain’s natural alpha oscillations to boost creativity. This was a proof of concept. It showed it was possible to target these particular brain waves, which are prominent as we create ideas, daydream, or meditate. These waves are impaired in people with neurological and psychiatric illnesses, including depression.

{A diet high in saturated fat can make your brain struggle to control what you eat, says a new study. Consuming fish oil instead of lard can make a significant difference, the study shows.}

A diet high in saturated fat can make your brain struggle to control what you eat, says a new study in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

If people are looking to lose weight, stay clear of saturated fat. Consuming these types of fatty food affects a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which helps regulate hunger.

The fat causes inflammation that impedes the brain to control the food intake. In other words, people struggle to control how much they eat, when to stop and what type of food to eat — symptoms seen in obesity.

The study found, through tests in rats, that a meal rich in saturated fat, reduces a person’s cognitive function that make it more difficult to control eating habits.

“These days, great attention is dedicated to the influence of the diet on people’s wellbeing. Although the effects of high fat diet on metabolism have been widely studied, little is known about the effects on the brain;” explained Professor Marianna Crispino and Professor Maria Pina Mollica from the University of Naples Federico II.

A diet rich in fat can take different forms and in fact, there are different types of fats. Saturated fats are found in lard, butter or fried food. Unsaturated fats are rich in food such as fish, avocado or olive oil.

Consuming fish oil instead of lard makes a significant difference.The research shows that brain function remains normal and manages to restrain from eating more than necessary.

“The difference was very clear and we were amazed to establish the impact of a fatty diet onto the brain. Our results suggest that being more aware about the type of fat consumed with the diet may reduce the risk of obesity and prevent several metabolic diseases,” concludes Professor Crispino.

{45-year study shows benefits of being physically active over a lifetime}

A 45 year study in middle-aged men has shown that the impact of low physical capacity on risk of death is second only to smoking. The study was designed to investigate risk factors for cardiovascular disease and mortality.

A 45 year study in middle-aged men has shown that the impact of low physical capacity on risk of death is second only to smoking. The research is published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

“The benefits of being physically active over a lifetime are clear,” said lead author Dr Per Ladenvall, a researcher in the Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. “Low physical capacity is a greater risk for death than high blood pressure or high cholesterol.”

The study included 792 men from the “Study of Men Born in 1913,” a representative sample of 50 year old men in Gothenburg recruited in 1963. The study was designed to investigate risk factors for cardiovascular disease and mortality.

In 1967, at 54 years of age, the 792 men did an exercise test. Of those, 656 men also did a maximum exercise test in which they pushed themselves to the limit. The remaining men were excluded from the maximum exercise test because they had a health condition that could make it unsafe. Maximal oxygen uptake, called VO2 max, was measured in a subpopulation of the 656 men using ergospirometry.

Dr Ladenvall said: “VO2 max is a measure of aerobic capacity and the higher the figure, the more physically fit a person is. In 1967 it was difficult to do ergospirometry in large populations, so the researchers derived a formula using the measurements in the subpopulation, and then calculated predicted VO2 max for the remaining 656 men who had done the maximum exercise test.”

After the initial examination in 1967, the men were followed up until 2012, at the age of 100 years. Several physical examinations were performed, about one every 10 years. Data on all-cause death was obtained from the National Cause of Death Registry.

To analyse the association between predicted VO2 max and mortality the men were divided into three groups (tertiles) ranging from low to high: 2.00 l/min, 2.26 l/min, and 2.56 l/min.

The researchers found that each tertile increase in predicted VO2 max was associated with a 21% lower risk of death over 45 years of follow up, and after adjusting for other risk factors (smoking, blood pressure and serum cholesterol).

Dr Ladenvall said: “We found that low aerobic capacity was associated with increased rates of death. The association between exercise capacity and all-cause death was graded, with the strongest risk in the tertile with the lowest maximum aerobic capacity. The effect of aerobic capacity on risk of death was second only to smoking.”

“The length of follow up in our study is unique,” continued Dr Ladenvall. “When this study began, most data was derived from hospital cohorts and there was very limited data on exercise testing in a large general population. Our sample is representative of the male population in Gothenburg at that time. The risk associated with low aerobic capacity was evident throughout more than four decades and suggests that being physically active can have a big impact over a lifetime.”

He concluded: “We have come a long way in reducing smoking. The next major challenge is to keep us physically active and also to reduce physical inactivity, such as prolonged sitting.”