Brain's Nicotine Withdrawal Center Located

Hopefully this knowledge will be used to develop a treatment to allow people to quit smoking gradually without serious withdrawal symptoms.

Brain's Nicotine Center Found

By Bob Grant

Photo Source: Midbrain Anatomy

A brain region called the interpeduncular nucleus, nestled deep within the midbrain [See Figure 1], is the seat of nicotine withdrawal, according to new research in mice. Andrew Tapper of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues used light to stimulate GABAergic neurons within the interpeduncular nucleus to elicit withdrawal symptoms even in mice who had not been exposed to nicotine. “We were surprised to find that one population of neurons within a single brain region could actually control physical nicotine withdrawal behaviors,” Tapper told the Melbourne Herald Sun.
Tapper and his collaborators habituated mice to nicotine by spiking their water with the drug for six weeks. When the researchers then withheld nicotine from those mice, they exhibited the classic symptoms of withdrawal—excessive scratching and shaking among them. They then noted increased activity in GABAergic neurons in the interpeduncular nucleus, which is linked to feelings of anxiety and receives sensory input from a variety of other brain regions. Topper and his colleagues could even replicate nicotine withdrawal symptoms by exciting neurons in the interpeduncular nucleus in mice who had never been exposed to the drug. And they could dampen withdrawal symptoms by dampening the excitability of GABAergic neurons during withdrawal. They published their findings yesterday (November 14) in Current Biology.
The results hint that treatments aimed at the interpeduncular nucleus could help wean users off of nicotine or other drugs of addiction, according to Topper.

Source:  http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38313/title/Brain-s-Nicotine-Center-Found/

Synthetic vs. Organic Fertilizer

Today synthetic fertilizers are utilized in the majority of food production in the world. There are numerous problems including water pollution, soil acidification, and trace mineral depletion, among many others. For more information on that check out the Wikipedia page on fertilizer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer. Many think organic fertilizers would be unable to produce comparable yields, but recent research indicates this may not be entirely true.

Researchers Study Value of Chicken Litter in Cotton Production

 
By Don Comis
June 23, 2010 Chicken litter is much more valuable as a fertilizer than previously thought, according to an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) study showing its newfound advantages over conventional fertilizers.
Litter is a mixture of chicken manure and sawdust or other bedding material. Some cotton farmers in the Mississippi area are switching to chicken litter and away from standard inorganic, synthetic fertilizers. Many other farmers are interested in the possible economic benefits of using chicken litter, but are reluctant to switch without the numbers to back up their decision.

Now a study by ARS agronomist Haile Tewolde at the agency's Genetics and Precision Agriculture Research Unit (GPARU) at Mississippi State, Miss., and cooperators has provided those numbers. Tewolde did the research with GPARU soil scientist Ardeshir Adeli, two Mississippi State University colleagues, and Karamat Sistani, research leader at the ARS Animal Waste Management Research Unit in Bowling Green, Ky.
Previous studies only considered the economic value of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in chicken litter, compared to that in synthetic fertilizers. Farmers know that chicken litter, an organic fertilizer, is a better soil conditioner than synthetic fertilizers, but have never had a way to assign a number to the value of that benefit.
In their study, Tewolde and colleagues figured the litter's value as a soil conditioner as an extra $17 per ton of litter. They calculated this by balancing the price tag of the nutrients in litter with its resulting higher yields, a reflection of its soil conditioning benefits.
They found that cotton yields peaked 12 percent higher with organic fertilizers, compared to peak yields with synthetic fertilizers. With all benefits factored in, they found that chicken litter has a value of about $78 a ton, compared to $61 a ton when figured by the traditional method.

The economic analyses also showed that farmers could further increase their profits by using less of either fertilizer than currently used for maximum yields—which is also good news for the environment.
This research was published in the Agronomy Journal.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2010/100623.htm