DOES GENDER GET OLD?

When sparks get old

Sparks are transient local elevations of Ca ion concentration observed in different types of muscle cells. Such local Ca2+ signals can be provoked in skeletal muscle cells by altering the osmotic pressure of the extracellular solution. In this issue, Weisleder et al. (see p. 639) demonstrate that the Ca2+ response to osmotic stress is substantially altered in aged muscle. The study presents evi...

Senescence: Even Bacteria Get Old

Cellular senescence, even in the presence of abundant nutrients, has now been demonstrated in several microbes, including most recently the bacterium Escherichia coli, suggesting that it may be a universal adaptive response to the inevitable damage to cell constituents that accumulates with time.

Categorizing with gender: does implicit grammatical gender affect semantic processing in 24-month-old toddlers?

The current study investigated the interaction of implicit grammatical gender and semantic category knowledge during object identification. German-learning toddlers (24-month-olds) were presented with picture pairs and heard a noun (without a preceding article) labeling one of the pictures. Labels for target and distracter images either matched or mismatched in grammatical gender and either mat...

Does the issue of stored blood get old: is all blood equal?

Why do our kidneys get old?

The majority of the human population shows a decline in renal clearance with age and a loss of renal physiologic reserve. Kidneys are increasingly less able to deal with stressful challenges such as a salt or acid load. It is not clear what underlies this aging-related change and whether it is inevitable or can be modified in such a way as to preserve renal function throughout the life span. Th...