Searching for Hidden Causes of Alzheimer’s Disease: Can Tiny RNA Snippets Shed Light on a Growing Problem?

By Dieter Edbauer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

‘I’m so stressed!’ or ‘it’s just old age!’ are reassuring excuses that seniors may give themselves when they notice difficulties in recalling new memories. But deep inside, many are worried it might be Alzheimer’s and will go to great lengths to conceal their memory problems from friends and family. In the sad case of Alzheimer’s disease, this won’t be possible for long. As more memories get lost, mood swings and aggression set in, and patients gradually lose their independence and control over their bodily functions. By then the brain is filled with toxic deposits called plaques and tangles, consisting of the two proteins Ab and tau, respectively. Many neurons have lost synaptic connections or have died altogether, resulting in a shrunken brain. Unfortunately there is still no cure and current treatments are only moderately effective.

Smoking at Home: Not with Children, Please

By Rosa Martínez, University of Barcelona Press

Parents who smoke should be aware of the risk it signifies for the health of their children. Much more effort is still needed to change social attitudes and persuade parents to not smoke at home. If you need more reasons to stop smoking at home, consider the following data: tobacco consumption must be decreased by 15%, particularly at home, in order to reduce the number of childhood asthma cases.

Asthma is the most common chronic illness during childhood and adolescence in industrialized countries. Unfortunately, there is no treatment to cure this illness, which may considerably decrease one’s quality of life. Its prevalence has been increasing over the last 40 years in many countries but no statistical or simulation model existed to forecast the evolution of childhood asthma in Europe.

Teaching a Foreign Language? Use Web 2.0

By Maria (Melina) Laina, University of Athens

Teens spend a lot of time at school or with friends and family and adopt many ways of socializing in their daily life. They may communicate in person, but often communication is not in person; rather, it is performed remotely through a myriad of other means — Facebook, Twitter, email, multimedia messaging services (MMS) and short messaging services (SMS), smartphones, or via e-teaching and associated learning platforms such as smartboards. All these remote methods have enhanced the communicative creativity of the new generation and have altered the way they act and react as well how they learn. Based on those changes, it seemed that teenage secondary school students might be good candidates for assessing the integration of many of these networking/communication tools into a German language course. To that end, a study using Web 2.0 (an expansive Web-based system of communication/information tools) was undertaken.