A new drug has been shown to improve the brain function of people with early stage Alzheimer's disease and reduce a key protein associated with the disease in the spinal fluid, in a small study published in the journal Lancet Neurology and presented at the 2008 Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease.

The drug, known as PBT2, counteracts the production and build-up of a protein called amyloid-beta that occurs in Alzheimer's disease. This protein, which can build up into a 'plaque', is believed to be toxic to brain cells and to prevent them from functioning properly.

Seventy-eight participants with early stage Alzheimer's disease took either 50mg or 250mg doses of the drug PBT2, or a placebo, over the course of 12 weeks in a randomised, double-blind clinical trial, led by a researcher from Imperial College London working with colleagues in Australia and Sweden. Both doses of PBT2 capsules were observed to be safe and well tolerated during the course of the study.

Fueled by hormone fluctuations, the teenage years can be a time of huge emotional upheaval. But, as an initiative by MIT's Young Adult Development Project finds, the roller coaster may not end at the 18th birthday.

Research gathered, analyzed and published this summer by MIT suggests that the years from 18 to 25 should be regarded as a specific developmental period with its own characteristics, milestones and limitations--a time of both stunning accomplishment and chilling risk as young adults are propelled into full maturity.

"Consensus is emerging that an 18-year-old is not the same person she or he will be at 25, just as an 11-year-old is not the same as he or she will be at 18. They don't look the same, feel the same, think the same, or act the same," says A. Rae Simpson, the program director of parenting education and research at MIT's Center for Work, Family and Personal Life, and the creator of the Young Adult Development Project.

Simpson's work, which has been distilled into downloadable documents, has implications for colleges and universities hoping to ease student stress and depression as well as for parents dealing with adult children. Young adults also may gain greater understanding into their own psyche.

National Science Foundation-funded scientists working in an ice-free region of Antarctica have discovered the last traces of tundra--in the form of fossilized plants and insects--on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began a relentless drop millions of years ago.

An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8 degrees Celsius, over a relatively brief period of geological time roughly 14 million years ago, forced the extinction of tundra plants and insects and transformed the interior of Antarctica into a perpetual deep-freeze from which it has never emerged.

The international team of scientists headed by David Marchant, an earth scientist at Boston University and Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis, geoscientists at North Dakota State University, combined evidence from glacial geology, paleoecology, dating of volcanic ashes and computer modeling, to report a major climate change centered on 14 million years ago. The collaboration resulted in a major advance in the understanding of Antarctica's climatic history.