MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), often referred to as ‘ecstasy’, has been shown to selectively and persistently impair central serotonergic neurotransmission in laboratory animals. As of recent, evidence in human studies has suggested a link between recreational ecstasy use and a disruption of the brain’s serotonergic system. However, human neurocognitive and neuroimaging studies have ...

In this article I review the association between exposure to carrageenan and the occurrence of colonic ulcerations and gastrointestinal neoplasms in animal models. Although the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1982 identified sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of degraded carrageenan in animals to regard it as posing a carcinogenic risk to humans, carrageenan is still use...

Assessing the harmful effects of multicollinearity in a regression model with multiple predictors has always been one of the great problems in applied econometrics. As correlations amongst predictors are almost always present to some extent (especially in time-series data generated by natural experiments), the question is at what point does inter-correlation become harmful. Despite receiving qu...

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Cigarette smoking causes a variety of lifethreatening diseases, including lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. An estimated 400,000 deaths each year are caused directly by cigarette smoking. Smoking is responsible for changes in all parts of the body, including the digestive system. This fact can have serious consequences because it is the digestive system th...

Recent research [9,2] has enabled the accurate prediction of the limiting distribution of tree sizes for Genetic Programming with standard sub-tree swapping crossover when GP is applied to a flat fitness landscape. In that work, however, tree sizes are measured in terms of number of internal nodes. While the relationship between internal nodes and length is one-to-one for the case of a-ary tree...

Centre for Animal Disease Research and Diagnosis, E-mail : [email protected] In the thirst of modernization and industrialization man has contributed pollution to the life and ecology of plants, animals and microbes. Increased demand for food and fiber has lead to the chemicalization of agriculture and we have reached on such a stage that modern agriculture is dependent on high yielding varie...

Free radicals are substances normally produced by the human body as one of the defense mechanisms against harmful substances. When the rate of their production exceeds the antioxidant capacity of the body, oxidative stress occurs. Oxidative stress carries harmful effects to all the body systems and is implicated in the pathogenesis of various diseases including hypertension, atherosclerosis, di...