Research news
Indiana farm fatality summary stresses importance of farm safety
Purdue University’s Agricultural Safety and Health Program released the annual Indiana Farm Fatality Summary with Historical Overview, coinciding with National Farm Safety and Health Week.
Savannas challenge preconceived notions of chimpanzee behavior
While humans are able to survive in arid climates, great apes need swaths of lush forest in Africa (bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas) or Southeast Asia (orangutans) to thrive, except for some innovative savanna chimpanzees. An international team of primatologists reviewed the characteristics of these chimpanzees – and their environments – to understand how they thrive while lacking many of the biological and cultural traits that humans possess (for example, numerous sweat glands, relative hairlessness,
Novel device for exploratory imaging enables about 1,000 times more access to brain tissue
Science is examining the brain’s neural activity for applications ranging from innovative therapies for brain-related injuries and disease to computational learning architectures for artificial intelligence and deep neural networks.
Purdue record for the whitest paint appears in latest edition of 'Guinness World Records'
Want to save big on your air conditioning bills? Wait a few years to coat your home with the world’s whitest paint, which may dramatically reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning.
Taking lessons from a sea slug, study points to better hardware for artificial intelligence
For artificial intelligence to get any smarter, it needs first to be as intelligent as one of the simplest creatures in the animal kingdom: the sea slug.
A possible new pathway for treating epileptic seizures in patients with autism
Autism affects about 2% of children in the United States, and about 30% of these children have seizures. Recent large-scale genetic studies revealed that genetic variants in a sodium channel, called voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.2, is a leading cause of autism. Overactive sodium channels in the neuron cause seizures. Doctors often treat seizures by giving the patient a medication meant to close the sodium channels, reducing the flow of sodium through axons. For many patients such treatment works, but in some cases – up to 20 or 30% – the treatment doesn’t work. These children have “loss-of-function” variants in Nav1.2, which is expected to reduce the sodium channel activity as “anti-seizures”. Thus, how the deficiency in sodium channel Nav1.2 leads to seizures is a major mystery in the field that puzzles physicians and scientists.
