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Personal reflection triggers increased brain activity during depressive episode

By Guest PostNovember 17, 2013Healthanxiety, brain imaging technology, british queen, depression, depressive episode, fmri, frontal cortex, increased brain activity, laura parkes, may sarsam, neuroimaging, personal reflection, peter kinderman, psychological theory, university of liverpool, university of manchester

Research by the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester has found that people experiencing depressive episodes display increased brain activity when they think about themselves.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain imaging technologies, scientists found that people experiencing a depressive episode process information about themselves in the brain differently to people who are not depressed.

Researchers scanned the brains of people in major depressive episodes and those that weren’t whilst they chose positive, negative and neutral adjectives to describe either themselves or the British Queen – a figure significantly removed from their daily lives but one that all participants were familiar with. (more…)

Newly discovered ocean plume could be major source of iron

By Guest PostAugust 20, 2013Environmentabigail noble, atmospheric carbon dioxide, brazil, carbon cycle, carl lamborg, chad hammerschmidt, climate, cloud of nutrients, coffee mug, earth crust, fissure, growth of phytoplankton, gyre, helium, hydrothermal vents, iron flux, mak saito, mantle, mid atlantic ridge, mid atlantic vents, namibia, ocean plume, pacific ocean, rv knorr, seawater samples, source of iron, south atlantic ocean, tyler goepfert, uk, university of liverpool, whoi researchers

Study reveals micronutrient riches rising from the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Scientists have discovered a vast plume of iron and other micronutrients more than 1,000 km long billowing from hydrothermal vents in the South Atlantic Ocean. The finding, soon to be published in the journal Nature Geoscience, calls past estimates of iron abundances into question, and may challenge researchers’ assumptions about iron sources in the world’s seas.

“This study and other studies like it are going to force the scientific community to reevaluate how much iron is really being contributed by hydrothermal vents and to increase those estimates, and that has implications for not only iron geochemistry but a number of other disciplines as well,” says Mak Saito, a WHOI associate scientist and lead author of the study. (more…)

British butterfly desperate for warm weather this summer

By Guest PostJune 11, 2013Environment, Naturebritish butterfly, climate, computer modeling, fluctuation, habitats, jenny hodgson, jonathan bennie, microclimates, silver spotted skipper, summer, sussex wildlife trust, temperature, university of exeter, university of liverpool, university of york, variable climate, warm weather, warmer conditions, zoe davies

Butterflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and new research has revealed that when summer weather turns bad the silver-spotted skipper battles for survival.

The butterfly, which previously faced extinction from habitat loss, is recovering following conservation efforts but the recent cool wet summers in England have almost stalled its progress.

A 27 year study by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Liverpool, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the charity Butterfly Conservation has been published in the journal Ecology Letters. The study estimated changes in temperature across a range of silver-spotted skipper habitats and found that localised fluctuations in temperature lead to extreme fluctuations in the butterfly population size and in the probability of the butterflies colonising new sites. (more…)

Tag Archives: university of liverpool

Personal reflection triggers increased brain activity during depressive episode

Newly discovered ocean plume could be major source of iron

British butterfly desperate for warm weather this summer