Category Biology/Biotechnology

A Duke University research team has found a small area of the brain in mice that can profoundly control the animals’ sense of pain.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this brain center turns pain off, not on. It’s also located in an area where few people would have thought to look for an anti-pain center, the amygdala, which is often considered the home of negative emotions and responses, like the fight or flight response and general anxiety.

“People do believe there is a central place to relieve pain, that’s why placebos work,” said senior author Fan Wang, the Morris N...

Novel training method could shrink carbon footprint for greener deep learning. Engineers have found a way to train deep neural networks for a fraction of the energy required today. Their Early Bird method finds key network connectivity patterns early in training, reducing the computations and carbon footprint for training deep learning.

Early Bird is an energy-efficient method for training deep neural networks (DNNs), the form of artificial intelligence (AI) behind self-driving cars, inte...

Finding time to commit to exercise can be a real challenge, forcing many of us to squeeze in a quick run or gym session whenever there’s a spare moment. But research suggests if you really want to make the most of your exercise, you should do it at the same time each day. It’s a schedule your body will thank you for.

A 2019 study lead by researchers from Brown Alpert Medical School in the US showed it really doesn’t matter if you’re a dawn jogger or a twilight cyclist; it’s the consistency that’s key if it’s weight-loss you’re after.

The US Department of Health and Human Services suggests two and a half hours of moderate physical activity each week is the least we should be doing to keep healthy.

And not just a minute here or there, but at least 10 minutes of heart-pounding e...

Study also looks at effect of leaky gut on concentration. Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in saturated fat can hinder our ability to concentrate – not great news for people whose diets have gone south while they’re working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study compared how 51 women performed on a test of their attention after they ate either a meal high in saturated fat or the same meal made with sunflower oil, which is high in unsaturated fat.

Their performance on the test was worse after eating the high-saturated-fat meal than after they ate the meal containing a heal...