50 insane facts about the Eye

Our eyes enable us to see the world in all its colored glory and are the focus of many of our most commonly used idioms. From ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’ to ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’  But how much do we really know about the eyes?

To show just how interesting the eyes are, Last minute lenses compiled the 50 most insane facts about them and take it from us, there’s more to them than meets the eye!

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Eating Beans Helps Lower Bad Cholesterol

That old childhood ditty about "Beans, beans, the musical fruit …" really does tell the truth in the verse about beans being good for the heart, new research suggests.
Eating a daily serving of cooked beans is linked with lower levels of "bad" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, according to a new review study from researchers in Canada.
"We found a 5 percent reduction in bad cholesterol with one serving of legumes a day over six weeks on average," said study co-author Vanessa Ha, a research coordinator at the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Center at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

One serving equals about three-quarters cup of cooked legumes.
"When we compared beans, chickpeas, lentils and peas, we found no difference in the cholesterol-lowering effects of different types of legumes," Ha said. [Heart of the Matter: 7 Things to Know About Your Ticker]
The researchers evaluated data collected from 26 clinical trials involving 1,037 men and women who were primarily middle-age. Some of the trials involved healthy adults, while others included participants who were at moderate risk for heart disease.
The findings are published online today (April 7) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Bean benefits
When researchers compared men and women who included legumes in their diet with adults who did not, they found that people eating about one serving of legumes a day dropped LDL cholesterol by 0.17 points (measured in milimoles/Liter), on average, in six weeks.
Legumes had no effect on apolipoprotein B and non-HDL cholesterol, which are two other factors tied to heart disease; however, the researchers noted that fewer studies in the review evaluated these factors.
Eating beans seemed to benefit men's LDL cholesterol levels more than women's, perhaps because men had higher cholesterol levels or poorer diets to begin with, and responded better when they ate healthier foods, the researchers said.
Eating beans on a daily basis could help improve cholesterol levels in two different ways. One is by displacing other foods in the diet that may not be as heart healthy, such as foods high in saturated fats, like red meat and cheese, or high-glycemic foods, such as white rice and white bread, Ha said.
A second way is that beans, lentils and chickpeas are good sources of fiber, plant protein, vitamins and minerals, which may all play a role in lowering cardiovascular disease, she said.
Heart-healthy eating
Despite their health benefits, legumes still aren't a common food at mealtimes. By one estimate, Americans currently eat 0.2 servings daily on average.
"There's room or the potential to increase legume consumption as entrees, in soups or salads, or as a snack, like hummus," Ha said. People could eat dried green peas, lentils, chickpeas or beans — black, red, kidney, lima, pinto and cannellini, she said.
Perhaps some people worry that eating more of the "musical fruit," as the song suggests, might make them "toot." And although some studies in the analysis reported that participants complained of an upset stomach, flatulence or bloating, when they first included more legumes in their diet, they found that people's symptoms subsided with time.
The researchers said that longer and higher-quality studies are needed to confirm their results, but it still makes sense to eat more heart-healthy foods including beans.
A previous study found that a person who switched from a less healthy plan to a heart-healthy diet, which is high in fiber and low in saturated fats, might expect to reduce  LDL levels by 5 to 10 percent. If that person also increased legume intake to one serving a day, it could drop LDL cholesterol by another 5 percent.
Legumes aren't the only foods that might help cut cholesterol. Other research has shown that eating more oats and barley could drop LDL by 5 percent each.
"The benefits of increasing heart-healthy foods at mealtimes can really add up, to comparable LDL reductions seen with some statin drugs," Ha said.

source:: livescience.com

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The Weight-Loss Secret You’ve Never Heard

If you seem to have more than an inch to pinch on your waist no matter what you eat or whether you focus on intervals or weight training, the problem may not be your stomach but another organ.

You probably don’t give much thought to your liver (except maybe when you contemplate that third vodka soda), but its health is key to your overall health and weight. Your liver is the ultimate multitasker: It acts as a filter to remove toxins (like medications and alcohol) and nutrient byproducts such as ammonia from the blood; it aids in digestion by producing bile to help break down fat and absorb fat- and water-soluble vitamins and minerals; and it plays a part in regulating glucose, blood pressure, blood sugar, insulin, estrogen, testosterone, immunity, and blood cholesterol production and removal. And you thought you had a long to-do list!

Because of all of this activity, your liver may be in need of a little TLC. When it’s overworked, toxic residues can build up, causing inflammation that is associated with obesity. A stressed out liver can also cause fat to build up, especially around the belly. Added together, this can mean that no matter how much you restrict calories, weight loss is near impossible—unless you detox your liver.

Before you jump to start a crazy cleanse, check if you have other symptoms of liver problems, such as fatigue, insomnia, brain fog, rashes or acne, digestive troubles (constipation, acid reflux, indigestion, bloating), high cholesterol, and blood sugar and insulin imbalances, which can lead to low energy, cravings, and excessive thirst and urination.

If you think your liver may be amiss, ask your doctor for a liver function test, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) test, or alanine aminotransferase (ALT) test, or request CAT or MRI scan to get a picture of your liver.

Once you have the results, you can make the following lifestyle changes to help remedy and even reverse the problem.

1. If you smoke, stop.

2. Use medications only when necessary, as even taking a Tylenol can have severe consequences on the liver.

3. Do not drink alcohol.

4. Eat and drink clean. Skip foods and beverages that contain high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, additives, hormones, preservatives, or artificial colors, and eat free-range or organic whenever possible. Your liver has to work harder to filter all this gunk.

5. Consume cruciferous vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and cabbage. These contain sulphur compounds called glucosinolates that bind and eliminate toxins.

6. Ditch the salt, which can contribute to fluid retention and further strain the liver, and flavor foods with garlic, rosemary, dandelion, or chicory, which appear to support liver function.

7. Exercise the same way you take your prescription medicine: consistently and every day. Aim for at least a half hour, though more can be better, and be sure you’re doing intervals, which will help melt fat. A review published in the Journal of Hepatology found that a combination of diet and exercise was best to reduce body weight and therefore improve liver health.

 

source::www.shape.com

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Dog Detectives: A Nose for Conservation

Wicket, a WDC dog trained to track more than 20 different scents, works with Zambian wildlife authorities to find wire snares set by poachers. Photo by WDC

Seamus tracks an invasive plant called dyer's woad. After a decade of unsuccessful efforts to decrease the plant's population,  dogs helped to reduce it by almost 60 per cent in just four years. Photo by WDC

As part of a pilot program for locating wild Asian elephant dung in Myanmar, Wicket traversed otherwise impassable roads on elephant back — a first for her and the elephants. Photo by S.Hedges/WCS

If you’ve spent any time in the company of canines, you’ve probably observed their uncanny ability to sniff out the teeniest morsel of food on the kitchen floor, or locate the lone crumb lurking in the sliver of space beneath a couch. In many homes, dogs render an indispensable service every evening by searching out and “vacuuming” the fallen bits of dinner. Of course, dogs’ noses are being put to use for much greater good, such as detecting bombs, finding missing persons, and sniffing out drugs or other illicit objects. And now biologists have found yet another use for those cold, wet, miraculous noses: preserving biodiversity.

Around the world canines are being enlisted to track rare wildlife, sleuth out invasive species, and detect otherwise imperceptible changes that could harm wilderness areas and watersheds. But are these canines really providing significant support to conservation efforts, or is it just another excuse to bring your dog to work?
According to biologist Pete Coppolillo, putting dogs to work for conservation is not only effective but also an increasingly established methodology used by scientists and wilderness management authorities. As the executive director of a Montana-based nonprofit called Working Dogs for Conservation (WDC), Coppolillo and his colleagues have trained and dispatched dogs across 18 states and 11 countries. These wonder dogs have helped eradicate invasive weeds threatening to edge out native plants in Montana’s grasslands, identify beetle-infested trees in Minnesota forests, and detect and remove illegal wire snares set by poachers in Zambia. In the name of preserving biodiversity, these bold canines have sallied forth in ATVs, helicopters, and even on the backs of elephants to traverse the muddy roads of Myanmar during monsoon season.

So what makes a good conservation dog? “Frankly, it’s the crazy ones…”

But one of the most useful roles that dogs play in support of conservation is sniffing out scat (AKA animal poop). “Thanks to advances in technology and reduction of lab costs, analyses of scat can reveal not just what the animals are eating…but if they have elevated levels of hormones, and even genetic information,” said Coppolillo. Yielding important clues about life cycles, health, family groupings, and habitat range, these scatological portraits help us to better understand and protect wildlife. Scat analysis can also point to larger environmental problems, added Coppolillo, such as the presence of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and other toxins that can pervade both land and aquatic ecosystems. Historically, the main methods for studying wildlife have required scientists to capture animals and outfit them with GPS collars for tracking or extract blood and tissue samples, invasive techniques that can pose threats to animals and researchers alike. Biologists and wildlife authorities have also gone to great expense to search for animals using small aircraft, with hope of determining things like population density and territorial range.


In 2013, the Bureau of Land Management successfully utilized WDC’s scat-tracking dogs to identify habitat for grizzly bears in Montana’s Centennial Mountains, enabling officials to act quickly to protect the area from development and save money that would have been spent on more expensive and less effective methods like captures, camera traps, and hair snares. “Without the dogs’ help the bears would have most likely gone undetected and development would have gone forward,” said Coppolillo.

A black lab mix named Tucker heads into Pacific Northwest waters, guiding researchers to data-rich orca poop. Photo courtesy of Center for Whale Research

Another canine conservation group based at the University of Washington even takes dogs out to sea. Perched on the boat’s bow, dogs have successfully led scientists to orca poop afloat in the salty waters in and around Puget Sound. Less dangerous and intrusive than having to sidle up to a killer whale (orca) to conduct a biopsy, the dogs enabled researchers to collect and analyze hundreds of fecal samples over a period of several years and determine that diminishing Chinook salmon populations — the orcas’ favorite food — presents the greatest threat to these much loved marine mammals. According to Dr. Sam Wasser, who heads up the study and pioneered the dog-scat detection method in 1997, the findings made it clear that “if we really want to buy time for these killer whales, we need to figure out how to keep fish numbers up.”
While finding a single turd in a vast ocean or acres of wilderness is no small feat, time and again these intensely focused dogs have proven their ability to efficiently lead scientists to these treasure troves of information.
So what makes a good conservation dog? “Frankly, it’s the crazy ones,” Coppolillo said with a laugh. “The high-energy ones who will look at you with the Frisbee and say ‘come on, let’s go’ again and again.”
Selected from shelters around the country, the dogs undergo a temperament screening process — a series of tests that WDC is trying to put into app form so that shelter volunteers can watch tutorials about how to conduct screenings and then upload videos of the dogs’ tests for evaluation. Only about one dog out of 1,500 makes the cut.
The current pack, which includes a range of “working” breeds like labs, border collies, and German shepherds, have been trained using a distinct set of techniques that evolved from disciplines developed for dogs used in narcotic, forensic, and search-and-rescue operations. Most of the dogs under Coppolillo’s watch are currently based in Montana, with an outpost in California’s San Joaquin Valley, but permanent dog teams will be established in Zambia later this year to help stop the trafficking of ivory and bushmeat.
And while not every dog has the right stuff to become a conservation detective, most have the ability to track something as seemingly odorless as metal wire. So instead of training our pups to sit or roll over, perhaps their skills could be put to better use by teaching them to find that perpetually lost set of keys.

source:::science.kqed.org

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Try This at Home: Invisible Ink

 

A letter from the Revolutionary War with lines written in invisible ink.

Last year, the US Central Intelligence Agency released documents detailing recipes for invisible ink from 1917 and 1918. Among the recipes was a favorite ink recipe of German soliders during World War I — crushed aspirin mixed with water. Though the ink is easily available, uncovering it required a complicated chemical developer.
Other recipes in the CIA documents used solutions of iron, silver or copper salts as ink and developed the writing by heating the paper. This bit of history inspired my inner scientist and spy. Without access to chemicals in a lab, I experimented with invisible ink recipes using things I found around my house.
1. Lemon juice and heat
Dip a cotton swab or thin paintbrush in lemon juice. Write your message on white paper and let it dry. Hold the paper over a lamp, radiator or candle (but don’t let it catch fire!). The heat breaks down the acid into light-brown compounds, revealing your message forever.
This is how my experiment turned out. The top part of the picture is the paper before I held it over a candle.

Using lemon juice as invisible ink, before and after developing with heat.

2. Laundry detergent and black light
White shirts glow under black lights at a haunted house because the whitening agent in laundry detergent glows under ultraviolet light. Try writing your message using liquid laundry detergent. Holding the paper to a black light reveals a glowing message without damaging the paper.
But if spies intercept a message written with one of these inks, it’s likely they could decode it. We all can find something to heat paper. And black lights, though less common than candles, are still widely available.
To solve this problem, I borrowed a trick from George Washington: using two different chemicals to write and decode the message. Washington wrote with an watery ink containing iron salts. The receiver decoded the message by painting the paper with sodium carbonate, a chemical cousin of baking soda.
Maintaining ink supplies was crucial during Washington's day. Now a trip to the grocery store will keep you well supplied.
3. Baking soda and grape juice
Make a paste of baking soda in water. Write your message with this paste on a piece of paper and let it dry. To decode the message, paint the paper with thawed grape juice concentrate. The acidic juice reacts with the basic baking soda and the purple grape juice turns gray. This worked best when I used plenty of baking soda paste and undiluted grape juice concentrate:

Writing in baking soda and developing with grape juice.

In the pictures above, you can tell that the paper has been altered because the paper buckles as the watery lemon juice or baking soda paste dries. Traditionally, writers would re-steam the paper to remove the bumps after scribbling a message with wet ink.
During the Cold War, invisible ink technology improved enough to remove the time-consuming steaming step. Soviet and East German spy agencies developed chemical-coated paper similar to carbon paper we use today. Agents sandwiched this coated paper between two blank pieces of paper. Writing on the top sheet transferred the chemicals from the middle sheet to the bottom paper.
Perhaps hacking an ink-jet printer to print lemon juice invisible ink would transfer your message without damaging the paper as well. I’d love to hear from someone who has tried this.
Have fun sending secret messages!
Post by Melissae Fellet

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why this man has nose on forehead???

 

 

Growing a nose on a forehead or an ear on an arm is a revolutionary approach to surgical reconstruction.

mages of a nose implanted on a man's forehead have been all over the Internet, like ads for some creepy horror film you probably don't want to see. Almost as jarring are pictures of an ear protruding from a woman's inner arm.

They're not from some horror movie—they're real science. The nose-on-the-forehead photo depicts a nose repair in progress in China. The photo of the ear on an arm was published in the September 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Such surgeries are examples of new approaches to standard reconstructive techniques that may cost patients a few months of psychological discomfort but will eventually allow their facial features to be repaired.

Patrick Byrne, director of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins Health Care and Surgery Center in Green Spring Station, Maryland, believes his innovative ear reconstruction pictured in the NEJM was one of the first performed in the world. Growing noses on foreheads or ears on arms before transplanting them to the conventional locations is based on surgical reconstruction techniques going back hundreds of years. But modern-day applications are truly revolutionary, as Byrne explained in an interview with National Geographic News.

The photographs look like some sort of cruel joke. Is this a serious procedure?

Yes, it certainly is. It's called prelamination: Tissue that's going to be used to rebuild an area is constructed in multiple layers. In the case of the ear, I was trying to solve a difficult problem. [The woman had advanced basal cell carcinoma, a skin cancer. Treatment, including radiation, damaged the area too much to allow for a more traditional reconstruction.]

What are the layers, and why is each layer important?

Take the nose, for example. If the damage from disease or injury goes all the way through, then all three layers must be replaced: the skin on the outside, the cartilage, and the soft lining inside. The forehead skin tends to be the best match for the outside skin from an area called the paramedian forehead flap, described in medicine as early as 700 B.C. [Reconstructive surgeons have been using skin from this area of the forehead for nasal reconstruction for centuries.] Cartilage creates a three-dimensional form that will resemble a nose, and the choice to take it from the rib cage is pretty straightforward. A lot of nuance and challenge comes from the internal layer, the lining of the nose. If you don't have a pretty good blood supply nourishing the nose from the inside, over time it will fail. You'll be left with a mess of tissue that could be a deformity worse than the one you started with.

So how do you help ensure a good blood supply?

Prelamination, or implantation of tissue or cartilage to a skin flap while preserving blood supply, provides that inner layer. You put a skin graft on the undersurface of the skin flap, then allow it to heal under the surface of the forehead, so you've created two layers. You can then split the layers and put cartilage grafts inside, like a sandwich.

What did you think when you saw the forehead/nose photograph circulating on the Internet?

In reconstructive surgery we're always trying to provide creative solutions. I'm impressed with the creativity of surgeons worldwide, but with a clear caveat. I personally have a healthy dose of skepticism as to whether or not this was necessary and was the optimal choice. Why they chose to do it in the forehead instead of the usual way—construct it right there where needed on the nose and then transplant skin from the forehead—we'll never know. Perhaps they had some concerns about the blood supply. With something as complicated as nose or ear reconstruction, there's really no particular standard of care or defined solution. When it comes to how you take living tissue to re-create something close enough to make people feel it's a real nose or a real ear, there are endless feasible strategies.

Where do we go from here with this type of reconstructive surgery?

I believe that it's a realistic possibility that at some point in the future we can take samples of cells and we'll be able to grow composites in the laboratory. It would be the same strategy, constructing a three-layer body part but out of cells taken from the patient. That's the holy grail. But before that, maybe cartilage can be grown in the lab, and from there, use the forehead flap.

How do patients react to such bizarre, if temporary, placement of a reconstructed body part? Even though few have full noses on their foreheads, a fairly common reconstruction requires a flap of skin running from the forehead and attached to the nose to stay in place while healing for several weeks or months.

The range of coping strategies is all over the map. I've seen people continue their professional work. Others won't leave the house until the procedure is complete. The woman with the ear reconstruction on her arm was lucky. She could cover up the growing tissue and cartilage with a sleeve. And she had some fun with it. "She was playing with her kids, and if they got in trouble, she'd roll up her sleeve and say, 'Tell it to the arm,'" said Byrne.

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These Mad Scientists Want to Replace Solar Panels With Potted Plants

Designer Fabienne Felder wants to reupholster jumbo jets with moss. In her vision, passengers will sit on verdant tufts while the bryophytes purify the air and use electrons captured during photosynthesis to power the Direct TV panels on the seat backs. Many would think Felder was crazy, but biochemist Dr. Paolo Bombelli and plant scientist Ross Dennis from the University of Cambridge were impressed with her brio and offered her the opportunity to collaborate with their lab.

The scientists are researching the potential of photo microbial fuel cells, or photo-MFCs, which are essentially potted plants that act like miniature power plants and transform sunlight into electricity that can power iPads. They aren’t as efficient as traditional photovoltaic solar cells, but are more eco-friendly to manufacture.

Bombelli and Dennis have worked with designers previously and created a concept design called the Moss Table—a surface covered in photo-MFCs that could supposedly power a lamp. In reality, all the prototype cells could power was a small LCD display, but it illustrated the potential. While they appreciated Felder’s gonzo vision, the scientists proposed a project that would be possible this year instead of a decade in the future and decided to build a humble FM radio.

The result is a sound system comprised of ten photo-MFCs housed in a frame meant to evoke the feel of a biochemistry lab. It looks like a science experiment, but Felder’s biophilic boombox can generate enough power to play a short song. The array and a hidden capacitor can only power the radio for a few minutes at a time, and listening to an entire baseball game would require hundreds of plants, but she’s still bullish on the potential of truly green energy. “Give the researchers a few more years and it will all change,” says Felder. “But despite these little steps forward, the breakthrough we’ve had with the radio is not to be underestimated.”

“I like the idea of getting closer to nature again–to use it in ingenious ways, without exploiting it.”

The University of Cambridge holds a patent on this technology and they’re finalizing an educational kit that will surely replace potato clocks in 3rd grade classrooms around the country. Beyond that, stabilizing the technology and expanding its efficiency is the next order of business. Finding the perfect moss and growing them directly onto conductive surfaces could lead to efficiency gains, but more experiments are required. There are over 20,000 species of moss growing in Britain alone and aside from their ability to produce electricity they also insulate, muffle noises, filter the air, and have anti-fungal/bacterial properties.

“On a small scale I think we could soon-ish convert people’s normal houseplants into little power-generators for charging phones,” says Felder. “On a large scale, especially outdoors, the right mix of plants will be crucial and that will need more research, both in terms of plants and irrigation systems, maintenance, etc.”

The team’s well aware that it may take years before the technology is viable in the market. Even at maturity it might only make sense in developing countries. Despite the challenges, Felder is excited by the fact that current setups only convert approximately 0.1% of the electrons the mosses are exposed to. Even with that meager efficiency, if a quarter of London’s residents used moss to charge their mobile phones for 2 hours every other day, it would save 42.5 million kilowatt hours, nearly $12 million dollars per year, and keep approximately 40 tons of carbon dioxide from the environment.

“I like the idea of getting closer to nature again and to use it in ingenious ways, without exploiting it,” says Felder. “I am a designer by trade, but a scientist at heart.”

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source:wired .com

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First test to predict Alzheimer's years in advance

The world's first blood test to predict Alzheimer's disease before symptoms occur has been developed. The test identifies 10 chemicals in the blood associated with the disease two to three years before symptoms start, but it might be able to predict Alzheimer's decades earlier.

Globally, 35 million people are living with Alzheimer's. It is characterised by a toxic build up of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain, which destroys the neurons. Several blood tests can diagnose the disease, but until now, none has had the sensitivity to predict its onset.

Howard Federoff at Georgetown University in Washington DC and his colleagues studied 525 people aged 70 and over for five years. The group showed no signs of mental impairment at the start of the study. Each year, the team performed a detailed cognitive examination and took blood samples from all the participants. During this time, 28 people developed Alzheimer's or mild cognitive impairment, thought to be the earliest noticeable sign of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.

An analysis of the participants' blood highlighted 10 metabolites that were depleted in those with mild cognitive impairment who went on to get Alzheimer's compared with those who didn't. In subsequent trials, the team showed these chemicals could predict who would go on to get Alzheimer's within the next three years with up to 96 per cent accuracy.

Decades of warning?

The 10 metabolites play a key role in supporting cell membranes, maintaining neurons or sustaining energy processes. "We think the decrease in these chemicals reflects the breakdown of neural populations in the brain," says team member Mark Mapstone at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.

Once verified in a larger group, the test should provide a cheap and quick way of predicting Alzheimer's. Mapstone says that it may even be able to predict the disease much earlier, because the brain changes associated with Alzheimer's begin many years before symptoms occur. "These metabolic changes might occur 10 or 20 years earlier – that would give us a real head start on predicting the disease," he says.

The team is hoping to investigate this by looking back at other dementia studies in which blood has been taken over decades and seeing whether the chemical changes can be detected that early, says Federoff.

The group also analysed the full genome sequence of all of the participants in the study. That work has yet to be published, but Federoff says the changes in genes over the five years of the study are even more powerful than the metabolites at predicting who will develop dementia. "The gene changes are linked to the metabolite changes, so we're hoping to put all this together to provide a more complete description of the underlying pathology of the disease," he says. "What's most exciting is that we know the function of all the affected genes so if we can intercept these changes, they might make good candidates for new drugs."

Knowledge is power

But with no treatments available, would anyone want to take these tests?

Mapstone says yes. "In my experience, the majority of people are very interested to know whether they will get Alzheimer's. They believe that knowledge is power – particularly when it comes to your own health. We may not have any therapy yet but there are things we can do – we can get our financial and legal affairs in order, plan for future care, and inform family members."

If the test could predict the disease 20 years before symptoms appear, the implications are huge, he says. "Imagine what you would do in your early 40s to slow the onset of the disease. You could eat the right foods, avoid head trauma or do more exercise."

"In the short term, I think some people would want to know and some wouldn't," says Tracy Young-Pearse, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School. However, if treatments are developed that are only effective before neurons have started dying in large numbers, then it will be an easy decision to choose to take the blood test, she says.

Meanwhile, the new test will be valuable for drug discovery efforts, she says. Years of failed drugs trials have shown that you have to catch the disease early to have any influence.

Three studies starting this year hope to do just that. One will test anti-amyloid drugs on healthy people with a rare mutation that gives them early onset Alzheimer's by age 45 (see "Testing a drug for the memory curse").

The second will take advantage of a chemical developed last year that can be injected into the body and which accumulates in tau tangles. It will allow researchers to track the progression of tau in the living brain.

A third trial will investigate whether anti-amyloid drugs can prevent Alzheimer's in older people who don't yet have memory problems but do have amyloid building up in their brain.

"If an even earlier pre-clinical population could be identified with this blood test, it could be game changing," says Young-Pearse.

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