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A common sleep aid restores healthier sleep patterns and protects mice from the brain damage seen in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, according to new research. The drug, lemborexant, prevents the harmful buildup of an abnormal form of a protein called tau in the brain, reducing the inflammatory brain damage tau is known to cause in Alzheimer's. The study suggests that lemborexant could help treat or prevent the damage caused by tau in multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal syndrome and some frontotemporal dementias. "In this new study, we have shown that lemborexant improves sleep and...

The Central Neutron Detector installed in Experimental Hall B. Silvia Niccolai and her team at the Laboratory of the Physics of the two Infinities Irène Joliot-Curie (IJCLab), a joint research unit of CNRS in Orsay, France, Paris-Saclay University, and Paris-City University, began constructing the detector in 2011 with funding from the French National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics. Credit: Silvia Niccolai ================================================================================= Recent advancements at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have enabled physicists to explore the internal structure of neutrons in unprecedented detail. Using a new detector, researchers have achieved a deeper understanding of how quarks and gluons...

A drug commonly used to treat glaucoma has been shown in zebrafish and mice to protect against the build-up in the brain of the protein tau, which causes various forms of dementia and is implicated in Alzheimer's disease. Researchers screened more than 1,400 clinically-approved drug compounds using zebrafish genetically engineered to make them mimic so-called tauopathies. They discovered that drugs known as carbonic anhydrase inhibitors—of which the glaucoma drug methazolamide is one—clear tau build-up and reduce signs of the disease in zebrafish and mice carrying the mutant forms of tau that cause human dementias. Professor David Rubinsztein, Dr. Angeleen Fleming...

Facile preparation of peptide glass at room temperature using standard lab equipment. Credit: Tel Aviv University ============================================================================== Tel Aviv University researchers have created a unique glass that is both an effective adhesive and highly transparent. This spontaneously forming glass could significantly influence multiple high-tech industries. Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) have created a new type of glass with unique and even contradictory properties, such as being a strong adhesive (sticky) and incredibly transparent at the same time. The glass, which forms spontaneously when comes in contact with water at room temperature, could bring about a revolution in an array...

Whether enjoyed on its own or mixed into a latte, Americano or even a martini, espresso provides an ultra-concentrated jolt of caffeine to coffee lovers. But it might do more than just wake you up. Research shows that, in preliminary in vitro laboratory tests, espresso compounds can inhibit tau protein aggregation—a process that is believed to be involved in the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Recent research has suggested that coffee could also have beneficial effects against certain neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. Although the exact mechanisms that cause these conditions are still unclear, it's thought that a protein called tau...

An ancient human foraging instinct, fueled by fructose production in the brain, may hold clues to the development and possible treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to researchers. "We make the case that Alzheimer's disease is driven by diet," said Richard Johnson, MD. Johnson and his team suggest that AD is a harmful adaptation of an evolutionary survival pathway used in animals and our distant ancestors during times of scarcity. When threatened with the possibility of starvation, early humans developed a survival response which sent them foraging for food. Yet foraging is only effective if metabolism is inhibited in various...

Fromm is having one hell of a game. Tau is not.

Clarksburg, MD—Two different research groups have independently made the same important discoveries on how Alzheimer’s disease spreads in the brain, according to a February 2 New York Times story. The groups’ findings have the potential to give us a much more sophisticated understanding of what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease and, more importantly, what can be done to prevent or repair damage in the brain. The Times reported on the research teams of Bradley T. Hyman, MD, Ph.D., at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and Karen E. Duff, Ph.D., of Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Each research group...

Dewdrop-sized motes serve as invisible security guards A remarkable new invention from Tel Aviv University — a network of tiny sensors as small as dewdrops called "Smart Dew" — will foil even the most determined intruder. Scattered outdoors on rocks, fence posts and doorways, or indoors on the floor of a bank, the dewdrops are a completely new and cost-effective system for safeguarding and securing wide swathes of property. Prof. Yoram Shapira and his Tel Aviv University Faculty of Engineering team drew upon the space-age science of motes to develop the new security tool. Dozens, hundreds and even thousands of...

A new test can accurately detect Alzheimer's disease in its earliest stages, before dementia symptoms surface and widespread damage occurs, U.S. researchers said on Monday. The test, which measures proteins in spinal fluid that can point to Alzheimer's, was 87 percent accurate at predicting which patients with early memory problems and other symptoms of cognitive impairment would eventually be diagnosed with Alzheimer's, they said. "With this test, we can reliably detect and track the progression of Alzheimer's disease," said Leslie Shaw of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Annals of Neurology. Such tests, which...

Author Reveals Its Origin and Meaning for St. Francis PADUA, Italy, JULY 22, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A major scholar on the Franciscans wrote a book on the meaning of the signature symbol of St. Francis of Assisi, the Tau. Order of Friars Minor Father Damien Vorreux, who died in 1998, explained in this posthumously published work that this letter, the last of the Hebrew alphabet, and the Omega in the Greek, was very well known at the time of St. Francis, and was already used by the Semites, Greeks and Latins. He heard, for example, Pope Innocent III open Lateran Council...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- While a breakthrough for humans could be years away, a new study in mice suggests some memory recovery may be possible in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. "There basically are two prongs and we need to deal with both," said lead researcher Karen Ashe, a University of Minnesota neurologist. "What we're showing is that there are neurons which are affected (by Alzheimer's) but not dead." New research shows a mutant protein named tau is poisoning brain cells, and that blocking its production may allow some of those sick neurons to recover. It worked in demented mice...