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Patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis experience an astonishingly high quality of life. This disease leads to progressive muscular weakness and the clinical course is always fatal. In spite of the continuously increasing loss of control, new studies have shown that many ALS patients are satisfied with their lives.

Healthy individuals who gain weight, even to a weight still considered normal, are at risk for developing chronic kidney disease, according to a new study. The study suggests that CKD should be added to the list of conditions that are associated with weight gain, including diabetes and hypertension.

Devices known as brain-machine interfaces could someday be used routinely to help paralyzed patients and amputees control prosthetic limbs with just their thoughts. Now researchers have taken the concept a step further, devising a way for computerized devices not only to translate brain signals into movement but also to evolve with the brain as it learns.

Just like humans, liver cells can't resist eating just one or two small doughnuts, say chemists in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Communications. Exploiting liver cells' appetite for polystyrene ring "doughnuts", just a few microns across, might give scientists a new way to deliver drugs selectively, potentially eliminating nasty side effects of life-saving treatments such as chemotherapy.

Standard neurological exams of older adults are good predictors of future brain health and quality of life and should be part of physician's routine examination of older adults.

Withdrawing certain immunosuppressive drugs following kidney transplantation prolongs survival and saves money compared with keeping patients on these medications for life, according to a new study.

Subtle but clinically detectable neurological abnormalities, such as reduced reflexes and an unstable posture, may be associated with the risk of death and stroke in otherwise healthy older adults, according to a new report.

A team of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom has developed a technique using ultraviolet light to identify organic matter in soils that they say could be used to document the existence of life on Mars.

Researchers can now help explain how the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis transforms into a cyst form that resists drugs and the body's immune system, yet can emerge from its dormant state to strike when a patient's immune system is weakened. The discovery linking this stress-response mechanism to cyst formation and maintenance not only offers a possible target for new drugs, but it could also lead to a preventative vaccine -- for animals.

Researchers have discovered a new way to limit gene transfer and expression to specific tissues in animals. In studies to determine how plasmids enter the nuclei of non-dividing cells, the group previously identified a region of a smooth muscle cell-specific promoter that was able to mediate nuclear targeting of any plasmid carrying this sequence uniquely in cultured smooth muscle cells but in no other cell type.