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Gizmorama - October 29, 2014
Good Morning, Memory loss is hard to swallow, but, thanks to new research, with some cocoa it may be reversible. I like the taste of that! Who won't?
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
ErinP.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click
GopherArchives****-- Naturally occurring compounds in cocoa reverse memory loss --*NEW YORK (UPI) - People entering their 50s and 60s tend to begin losing some parts of their short-term memory, but compounds found naturally in cocoa may help reverse that occurrence.
Researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center provided a cocoa flavanol-containing test drink to 37 healthy volunteers between the ages of 50 and 69. Some received a high-flavanol diet and others received a low-flavanol diet. Brain imaging was done before and after the test period, and the researchers found a noticeable improvement in the dentate gyrus region of the brain, which is associated with the kind of memory loss they were studying.
The researchers say this kind of treatment is not meant for people suffering from Alzheimer's, but rather healthy adults with no known brain issues beyond regular age-related memory loss. "If a participant had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months that person on average had the memory of a typical 30- or 40-year-old," said Dr. Scott A. Small, who was one of the researchers involved in the study. He also added a larger study needs to be done to confirm the results, which his team is planning on doing.
The new research can be found in the latest edition of Nature Neuroscience.
*-- Microbes from melting permafrost speed up climate change --*TUCSON (UPI) - Microbes released from melting permafrost may be one of the most significant factors in accelerating climate change.
A newly discovered microbe appears to be releasing massive amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost succumbs to rising global temperatures.
Scientists from the United States, Australia and Sweden discovered the microbe in the permafrost soils of northern Sweden early this year. The microbe, currently named Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis, had not been previously identified, and scientists discovered it releases huge amount of methane from melting permafrost.
Methane only makes up about nine percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it can hold up to 21 times more heat in its molecules than carbon dioxide can.
"If you think of the African savanna as an analogy, you could say that both lions and elephants produce carbon dioxide, but they eat different things," said senior author Scott Saleska, an associate professor in the UA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and director of the UA's new Ecosystem Genomics Institute. "In Methanoflorens, we discovered the microbial equivalent of an elephant, an organism that plays an enormously important role in what happens to the whole ecosystem."
The scientists say having a better understanding of how much greenhouse gas comes from these kinds of microbes will help with climate change predictions and modeling.
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