Super Foods Effective At Fighting Prostate Cancer

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists have been able to show for the first time that super foods like pomegranate, green tea and broccoli help fight prostate cancer.

The team performed a six-month trial at Bedford Hospital with 203 men who had prostate cancer. The researchers split the men into two groups, including those who took a specially developed superfood capsule and those who took a placebo. The doctors, patients and statisticians were not informed who was taking the capsule and who was taking the placebo.

They found that those who took a capsule containing essence of pomegranate, green tea, turmeric and broccoli had 63 percent less prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels than those who took the placebo. The PSA is a level of the protein produced by the prostate gland which is an indicator of prostate cancer.

Researchers reported that men who experienced a lower PSA increase took a purified polyphenol rich food pill called Pomi-T, which was designed by Professor Robert Thomas, a researcher on the project from both Bedford Hospital and Addenbrooke´s Hospital.

This test is the first time scientists have firmly established an influence on markers of cancer progression using a scientifically robust evaluation.

“Healthy eating and lifestyle is the main way of helping to combat the development of cancer but men can now also turn to a whole food supplement which has been shown to work,” Thomas said. “We hope this will help millions of men to help combat the onset of prostate cancer.”

If anything, this study is able to prove that super foods definitely do not elevate the risk of prostate cancer, but fried food does. Researchers reported in the journal The Prostate in January this year about how they were able to link fried food consumption and prostate cancer. They said the increase in cancer risk could be due to the carcinogenic compounds found in fried food when oil is heated to temperatures needed for deep frying. The scientists said people who consumed fried foods once or more each week had a 30 to 37 percent increased risk of developing prostate cancer.

“The link between prostate cancer and select deep-fried foods appeared to be limited to the highest level of consumption — defined in our study as more than once a week — which suggests that regular consumption of deep-fried foods confers particular risk for developing prostate cancer,” explained the study´s author Janet L. Stanford, co-director of the Hutchinson Center´s Program in Prostate Cancer Research.

Cocoa Tree Genome Opens Door For Better Tasting, More Productive Plants

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While sweets maker Mars Inc. isn´t necessarily known for producing the world´s finest chocolate, scientists at the company may have opened the door to better tasting cocoa and a more productive plant.

According to a report in the open access journal Genome Biology, researchers from the candy bar maker in collaboration with several other research institutions have just sequenced the genome of the most commonly cultivated“¯cacao“¯plant in the world. Previous research had shown that one species of the cocoa tree has more than 28,000 protein-coding genes. By comparison, humans have around 23,000.

The new study describes the sequence of a more common variety known as CCN 51, and will likely lead to real changes in the industry. Grown in Latin America, CCN 51 accounts for massive parts of the Brazilian, Peruvian and Colombian economies.

Cocoa beans are harvested from red, purple, orange, yellow, and green colored pods. The Costa Rican Matina variety produces one of the world’s finest chocolates from its mature green pods.

While CCN 51 is known for its high yields and is robust disease resistance, its red pods create chocolate with a more acidic, less desirable flavor than other varieties. The discrepancy is a problem for farmers who grow the variety, especially for the small farms that provide over 90 percent of the world’s supply.

Some have tried to cross-breed CCN 51 with Matina trees, however, the quality of those hybrids remains inferior to the pure Matina, and crossbreeding often produces “duds” that don´t yield any cocoa pods at all.

“Because of its high yield and disease resistance, the most ubiquitous clone in large cacao plantations in Latin America is CCN 51,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Unfortunately, it has a rather undesirable flavor profile because of its high acidity and astringency, and also because it lacks desirable floral aromas.”

In the study, the researchers sequenced the genome of the Matina“¯variety and then performed a genetic analysis to identify a gene on the fourth chromosome that is involved in pod color variation. They also found that a single DNA letter change in the gene can affect levels of the gene’s expression, resulting in the pod´s color change.

The scientists said they will continue to work on identifying genes responsible for color and taste, and noted that sequencing a tree’s DNA before deciding which ones to breed could lead to a more efficient process for farmers.

“Identification of genes that regulate pod color therefore constitutes a crucial first step toward the development of a platform for marker-assisted selection (MAS) aimed at the development of high-yielding alternatives to CCN 51,” they wrote. “The ability to screen young cacao seedlings with molecular markers and to select only those carrying alleles that result in green pods would greatly reduce the population sizes required for the laborious and expensive phenotypic evaluations of unlinked flavor and yield traits.”

The study could have a massive impact on the $100 billion that is spent on chocolate each year, according to World Cocoa Foundation statistics.

Giant Hot Pink Slugs Discovered Atop Unique Australian Peak

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Some of the earliest pillars of life on our ancient Earth can still be seen from time to time. Coral, for instance, takes many years to form and can give us a glimpse into the way things once were. The areas where coral grows have even recently been shown to have been dependent on volcanic activity in the earliest days of our planet.

Today, the discovery of yet another ancient wonder has been making the rounds across the web, and they´re as intensely pink as they are interesting.

High in the subalpine rocks of Australia lives Triboniophorus aff. graeffei, an extremely bright pink slug variety. These slugs live only in the regions around Mount Kaputar, an area which owes its existence to a volcanic eruption some 17 million years ago. The same area is also home to a more normal looking kind of slug with a horrifying diet. Aptly named, the so-called ℠cannibal snail´ lives amongst the pink slugs and feeds on other vegetarian snails living in the area.

”It’s just one of those magical places, especially when you are up there on a cool, misty morning,” said Michael Murphy, a national parks ranger in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.

“It’s a tiny island of alpine forest, hundreds of kilometers away from anything else like it. The slugs, for example, are buried in the leaf mould during the day, but sometimes at night they come out in their hundreds and feed off the mould and moss on the trees. They are amazing, unreal-looking creatures.”

Locals in the area have reported seeing the pink slugs for years, especially following rainy nights. Murphy told the Australian Broadcasting Company that on a good morning, there could be hundreds of these slugs slithering around.

“As bright pink as you can imagine, that’s how pink they are,” Murphy added.

It was only recently that taxonomists confirmed the slugs as a new species and determined that they only live in Mount Kaputar because of that ancient eruption which created their new habitat. Long ago, this area of Australia was covered in rainforest. When the volcano erupted 17 million years ago, the slugs´ home was preserved at the top of the mountain while everything else underneath dried up. Other plants and vertebrates also have this millions-year-old eruption to thank for their unique home as well. The NSW Scientific Committee is now working to list this area of 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers (or about six miles for those of us who didn´t grow up with the metric system) as an “endangered ecological community” to preserve these creatures.

”These species have evolved from lowland ancestors and have been isolated in an otherwise snail-hostile environment as conditions began to dry,” reads the Committee´s report.

The Cannibal snail also lives in this area and makes dinner out of other snails which share the ecosystem.

“We’ve actually got three species of cannibal snail on Mount Kaputar, and they’re voracious little fellas,” said Murphy. “They hunt around on the forest floor to pick up the slime trail of another snail, then hunt it down and gobble it up.”

Least Educated, Jobless White Women Have Lower Life Expectancy Than Others

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

As advances in technology and awareness of health issues increase throughout the years, so does life expectancy for most Americans.

However, a new study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JHSB) has found that both smoking and joblessness contribute to higher death rates for the nation´s least educated white women.

“The least-educated white women, during the 1980s and 1990s, began to live shorter lives — an unprecedented longevity decline that contradicted a broad, sweeping increase in life expectancies during the 20th century in most populations,” said study co-author Anna Zajacova, an assistant professor in the University of Wyoming´s (UWYO) Department of Sociology.

According to the study, the mortality risk for America´s least educated women was 37 percent greater than other women in any single year from 1997 to 2001. From 2002 to 2006, the odds of dying had risen to 66 percent, even after considering age as a factor.

Zajacova and her Harvard University colleague Jennifer Karas Montez culled data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Linked Mortality Files that included almost 47,000 white women, ages 45 to 84 between 1997 and 2006. The women in the study were split into two groups: those without a high school diploma and those who had graduated from high school. The two female researchers considered several different factors to see which were driving the higher mortality rates: poverty, obesity, home ownership, marital status and alcohol consumption.

Unsurprisingly, they found smoking to be a significant factor for mortality rate. They also found that joblessness was a major factor, even after considering factors related to employment, like income and health insurance.

“What is it about employment that has this huge impact on mortality, beyond the material resources it brings?” Montez asked in a New York Times interview.

The study was an attempt to explain the disturbing trend of lowering life expectancy for the least educated Americans, most notably women.

The researchers noted that during the 1980s and 1990s, educational inequalities grew in the United States — leading to less stable and lower-paying jobs for those with the lowest levels of education.

“These changes occurred for most demographic groups and resulted in growing health inequalities for the whole population, but they seemed to impact white women particularly strongly,” Zajacova said.

“Among white women with the least education, an unprecedented trend occurred: They began dying younger,” she added. “This is contrary to a century of systematically increasing life spans in most population in most countries across the globe, an unusual trend that was bound to attract research and policy attention.”

Montez suggested that having a job could boost health by giving someone sense of purpose and control over their life. A workplace also provides a social network, reducing isolation.

“Now, perhaps the question is why these two factors played such a prominent role,” Zajacova said. “This may be because both employment and smoking happen to be important for one´s health and longevity.”

“At the same time, the more- versus less-educated white women became more dissimilar in employment and smoking patterns over time, so these two important factors increasingly differentiated the healthier, more-educated white women from the less-educated ones,” she added.

Using Probiotics To Fight The Side Effects Of Antibiotics

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While antibiotics like penicillin are great for fighting off bacterial infections, they can also wreak havoc on beneficial gut bacteria, leading to diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems.

New research from scientists at the Cochrane Collaboration found that taking a “pre-emptive” probiotic could prevent diarrhea associated with antibiotics when symptoms are caused by the potentially dangerous Clostridium difficile bacterium.

Beneficial gut bacteria typically out-compete harmful bacteria like“¯C. difficile, but antibiotics can often shift the balance of power in the intestinal ecosystem. Some C. difficile infections show no symptoms, but others can result in diarrhea or colitis.

So-called “good bacteria” in probiotic foods may offer a safe way to help prevent“¯C. difficile from taking hold, according to the scientists.

“In the short-term, taking pro-biotics in conjunction with antibiotics appears to be a safe and effective way of preventing diarrhea associated with“¯Clostridium difficile infection,” said lead researcher Bradley Johnston of the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute in Toronto.

In the research review, scientists from the international collective looked at data from 23 clinical trials that included over 4,200 patients who were given antibiotics for a variety of reasons. The team found that the 2 percent of patients who were given probiotics developed C. difficile-associated diarrhea compared with 6 percent of patients those who were taking placebos with their antibiotics.

“The introduction of some pro-biotic regimens as adjuncts to antibiotics could have an immediate impact on patient outcomes, especially in outbreak settings,” Johnston added. “However, we still need to establish the pro-biotic strains and doses that provide the best results, and determine the safety of pro-biotics in immune-compromised patients.”

The review also showed that those who took probiotics had fewer undesirable side-effects, such as stomach cramps, nausea or a sour taste in the mouth. While the probiotics were associated with a lower risk of C. difficile-caused diarrhea, they noted that they did not prevent infections by the bacterium. The researchers also said more research should be conducted to discover the mechanism behind the effectiveness of probiotics.

“We think it’s possible that probiotics act to prevent the symptoms of“¯C. difficile infection rather than to prevent the infection itself,” said Johnston. “This possibility needs to be investigated further in future trials, which should help us to understand more about how probiotics work.”

Brendan Wren of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine applauded the study and recommended that patients consider taking probiotics in conjunction with an antibiotic regimen.

“Research into the prevention of C difficile is important — there is something special about the bacterium and the toxin it produces which allows it to have competitive advantage over other bugs and makes it difficult to get rid of,” he told BBC News. “The probiotic approach is a good idea. It could provide a pre-emptive strike to make sure the balance in your gut is fine.”

The review researchers also noted that the treatment of C. difficile can be quite lengthy and expensive, making the probiotic approach a safe and low-cost preventative measure.

How Do Cicadas Make That Sound?

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists are looking into how cicadas are able to make those extraordinarily loud sounds that annoy us all throughout the summer.

A research team from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) looked into cicadas’ unique ability to produce these loud noises, which paves the way to make devices that would mimic it for remote sensing underwater, ship-to-ship communications, rescue operations and other applications.

Scientists carefully analyzed the physical properties of the cicada using lasers to measure the vibration of the insect’s “tymbal,” which is the exoskeleton on the insect responsible for its sound. Their analysis shows that the insects manage to produce their unmistakable sound because they have a unique anatomy that combines a ribbed membrane on the torso that vibrates when they deform their bodies.

Derke Hughes, a researcher at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, said that to understand how the cicada makes its sound, you would have to imagine pulling your ribs to the point of buckling collapse, releasing them and then repeating that cycle.

If humans had bodies like cicadas, then we would have a thick set of muscles on either side of our torso that would allow us to cave in our chests so far that all our ribs would buckle inward one at a time into a deformed position. When the muscles release, it would allow the ribs to snap back to their regular shape and then pulling the muscle again would repeat this. Cicadas repeat this cycle for its left and right sides about 300 to 400 times a second.

Replicating the cicada’s sound is difficult because it involves multiple moving parts, the buckling is not a uniform process, and the tymbal surfaces vibrate out of phase with each other and then somehow combine to make a sound that drowns out even the noisiest summer barbecues.

Cicadas make this sound to attract nearby females, who respond by snapping their wings. When males hear the wings snapping, they move in closer. As the males approach the female, the sound gets softer. Hughes and colleagues were able to trick the male cicadas into creating this noise by making a snapping sound that mimics the female.

Billions of cicadas emerged to create a chorus throughout the east coast this month. The Brood II cicadas are one of seven different species of periodical cicadas. The group only emerges every 17 years to mate when the ground temperatures are just right. After mating is done, the offspring return back to the ground and will not reemerge until 2030.

Brood II cicadas tend to swarm more than other species, sometimes getting as dense as 1.5 million cicadas per square acre. Females of this species are able to lay as many as 600 eggs before they die. The cicada storm allowed scientists like Hughes the opportunity to further their research on these bizarre yet fascinating insects.

Apple’s Two-Step iCloud Authentication Deemed Unsecure By Third-Party Security Firm

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Apple recently rolled out two-step authentication check for iCloud to protect users from having their account info changed without an additional, one-time password. They were a tad late to the game, however, as companies like Dropbox, Google, Facebook, Twitter and others have already implemented this additional security step for their users.

Now that security researchers have had enough time to scour Apple´s methods for this two-step authentication and give it a test drive, it´s been found to be less secure than the others. ElcomSoft, a Russian security software company, claimed in a blog yesterday that Apple´s security measures only protect users from having account info like passwords and billing address from being accessed or changed. If this information is already compromised, or if a hacker is able to gain physical access to your iPhone, however, this two-step measure could be essentially worthless. ElcomSoft even went so far to say that Apple´s two-step authentication process, as it currently exists, is not a “finished product.”

Vladimir Katalov with ElcomSoft put Apple´s security measures to the test and found it lacking. To begin, Katalov takes issue with the optional nature of this two-step authentication, especially considering the incredibly important information stored in iCloud. As Mat Honan discovered last year, an iCloud hack could give cyber thieves access to nearly all of your digital life.

Going further, Katalov found that even when a user chooses to turn on two-step authentication, this doesn´t protect iOS backups or iCloud data, like calendars, mail or photos.

“In its current implementation, Apple´s two-factor authentication does not prevent anyone from restoring an iOS backup onto a new (not trusted) device,” writes Katalov.

“In addition, and this is much more of an issue, Apple´s implementation does not apply to iCloud backups, allowing anyone and everyone knowing the user´s Apple ID and password to download and access information stored in the iCloud.”

This is frighteningly easy to verify, unfortunately. Any user can log into the iCloud website and see their data, and if the login credentials have been compromised, this means any hacker can have access to the same information. During their tests, ElcomSoft was able to gain access to iCloud data without ever running into any two-step authentication barriers. Even when this feature is turned on, Apple sends the unlock PIN to the iPhone´s lock screen rather than sending it through an iMessage or text message. This means any hacker with physical access to the phone only needs the login credentials to have complete control of an iCloud account.

“In ElcomSoft´s opinion, this is just not the right way to do this from a security point of view. iCloud has been exploited in the past and will be exploited in the future,” says ElcomSoft.

To be fair, any Apple ID or iCloud account is as secure as its password. It´s also true that one must trade some convenience to gain some security. Any two-step measure is more complicated by its very nature.

The most secure way to lock down an iCloud account is to simply change passwords every few weeks or so, using strong and secure passwords each time. Yet as this is likely a little too inconvenient for most (and very hard to remember), measures like two-step are a helpful way to keep users protected. It seems Apple´s method, however, isn´t doing much to protect users at all.

Are Sharks Worth More Alive Than Dead?

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Economically-speaking, sharks are worth more to society alive than they are dead, according to a new report in Oryx — The International Journal of Conservation.

While the deadly fish are prized for their fins as an exotic delicacy, an international team of researchers has found that the money brought in by shark-related ecotourism is expected to surpass the revenue made by catching and killing them over the next 20 years.

“The emerging shark tourism industry attracts nearly 600,000 shark watchers annually, directly supporting 10,000 jobs,” explained study co-author Andres Cisneros-Montemayor, a doctoral candidate with the University of British Columbia´s Fisheries Economics Research Unit. “It is abundantly clear that leaving sharks in the ocean is worth much more than putting them on the menu.”

According to Cisneros-Montemayor and his colleagues from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur in Mexico, shark ecotourism currently generates over $314 million annually around the world and is expected to more than double to $780 million over the next two decades. Meanwhile, global shark fisheries currently generate $630 million, but that figure has been in decline for the past decade, the study said.

The joint research team examined shark-related fisheries and ecotourism data across 70 sites in 45 countries. They found that about $124 million in shark-related tourism dollars were generated annually in the Caribbean, providing more than 5,000 jobs. In Australia and New Zealand, shark ecotourism generated almost $40 million in tourism annually.

While the study didn´t examine the negative impacts of sharks associated with ecotourism, it said approximately 38 million sharks were killed in 2009 to support the global shark fin trade.

“Sharks are slow to mature and produce few offspring,” says co-author Rashid Sumaila, UBC´s Fisheries Centre. “The protection of live sharks, especially through dedicated protected areas, can benefit a much wider economic spectrum while helping the species recover.”

Sharks join manta rays as sea creatures that are economically more valuable alive than dead. Prized for their gill plates as an ingredient in Chinese medicine, the manta ray trade is reportedly worth about $11 million per year.“¯However, they have been estimated to be worth between $65 and $100 million in ecotourism dollars.

Ecotourism can be a huge financial engine, especially for developing countries that need the money the most. According to The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), 83 percent of developing countries rely on ecotourism as a major export, and world trade organizations say that the ecotourism industry is experiencing steady annual growth.

While ecotourism has a reputation for being a luxury activity, its steady growth means a wider range of clientele.

“Eco-tourism is such a broad and often misleading term, which can encompass everything from a conservation-based adventure travel program to vacations in high-end luxury hotels that use recycled toilet paper and avoid washing towels every day,” Jason Halal, manager of Sierra Club Outings, told CNBC.

“One thing is for sure — travel companies and services are all beefing up their eco credentials in order to attract the rising number of customers seeking a ℠green´ experience.”

CFCs, Not CO2, Key Driver Of Global Warming: Study

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[ Watch the Video: What is Global Warming ]

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published Thursday in the International Journal of Modern Physics B.

Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry at the University of Waterloo, arrived at this conclusion after conducting an in-depth statistical analysis of CFCs, which are already known to deplete ozone.

“Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry in Waterloo´s Faculty of Science.

“In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming.”

“Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What´s striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined — matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere,” Lu said.

“My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline.”

The study´s findings are based on exhaustive statistical analyses of observed data from 1850 up to the present time, along with Lu´s cosmic-ray-driven electron-reaction (CRE) theory of ozone depletion and his previous research into Antarctic ozone depletion and global surface temperatures.

“It was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer was depleted by the sun’s ultraviolet light-induced destruction of CFCs in the atmosphere,” he said.

“But in contrast, CRE theory says cosmic rays — energy particles originating in space — play the dominant role in breaking down ozone-depleting molecules and then ozone.”

Lu said ongoing observations of cosmic ray, CFC, ozone and stratospheric temperature data over several 11-year solar cycles confirms his theory.

“CRE is the only theory that provides us with an excellent reproduction of 11-year cyclic variations of both polar ozone loss and stratospheric cooling,” he said.

“After removing the natural cosmic-ray effect, my new paper shows a pronounced recovery by ~20% of the Antarctic ozone hole, consistent with the decline of CFCs in the polar stratosphere.”

By proving the link between CFCs, ozone depletion and temperature changes in the Antarctic, Lu was able to draw nearly perfect correlation between rising global surface temperatures and CFCs in the atmosphere.

“The climate in the Antarctic stratosphere has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO2 impact. The change in global surface temperature after the removal of the solar effect has shown zero correlation with CO2 but a nearly perfect linear correlation with CFCs – a correlation coefficient as high as 0.97.”

Data recorded from 1850 to 1970, before any significant CFC emissions, show that CO2 levels increased dramatically as a result of the Industrial Revolution, although global temperatures, excluding the solar effect, remained nearly constant.

The conventional warming model of CO2 suggests the temperatures should have risen by 0.6°C over the same period, similar to the period of 1970-2002, Lu said.

The study´s analyses indicate the dominance of Lu´s CRE theory and the success of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

“We´ve known for some time that CFCs have a really damaging effect on our atmosphere and we´ve taken measures to reduce their emissions,” Lu said.

“We now know that international efforts such as the Montreal Protocol have also had a profound effect on global warming but they must be placed on firmer scientific ground.”

Terry McMahon, dean of the faculty of science at University of Waterloo, said Lu´s analysis underscores the importance of understanding the basic science behind ozone depletion and climate change.

“This research is of particular importance not only to the research community, but to policy makers and the public alike as we look to the future of our climate.”

Lu´s peer-reviewed paper also predicts that global sea level will continue to rise for some years as the hole in the ozone recovers and increasing amounts of ice melt in the polar regions.

“Only when the effect of the global temperature recovery dominates over that of the polar ozone hole recovery, will both temperature and polar ice melting drop concurrently,” says Lu.

Lu said his analysis provides a new understanding of the ozone hole and its relationship with global climate change, and offers superior predictive capabilities compared with the conventional sunlight-driven ozone-depleting and CO2 warming models.

Rural Indonesian People Have Big Foot Fetish

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editor

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study appearing in the journal Human Nature suggests that a group living in rural Indonesia has a bit of a big foot fetish.

Geoff Kushnick, a University of Washington anthropologist, wrote that the Karo Batak men in Indonesia prefer women with big feet. He says that culture helps play a role in deciding what makes a mate attractive, and in the case of Karo Batak people, it´s a foot fetish.

The Indonesia group’s preference for big feet is linked to the society’s ecological context and limited exposure to Western media.

“Universal features of physical attractiveness are typically thought to suggest that mate choice criteria are hard-wired in humans and that they evolved tens of thousands of years ago,” Kushnick said. “This new research supports that idea that cultural transmission of mate preferences allows humans to adapt to local environments, and this may trump hard-wired preferences.”

Kushnick showed 159 Karo Batak adults five drawings of barefoot woman with her long hair pulled back and dressed in a shirt and a skirt reaching mid-calf. The drawings were all the same except the differences in foot size. He found that both male and female participants in the study said the woman with the largest feet was the most attractive, and the one with the smallest feet was least attractive.

Previous studies have found that people in Iran, Lithuania, Brazil, the US and India prefer women who have small feet, while those from Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania prefer women with big feet. Kushnick was interested in finding out why small-foot preferences were not universal.

The researcher compared his results with earlier studies and looked for an association between societies’ foot-size preferences and three potential causes, including patriarchal values, rural versus urban ecology, and exposure to Western media. He found that both rural ecology and less exposure to Western media showed a statistical association with the preference for women with larger feet, whereas small feet were more desirable in urban societies with more exposure to Western media.

“My analyses support the notion that culturally transmitted preferences that allow people to adapt to local environments can trump evolved preferences,” Kushnick said. “Cultural and social influences play a stronger role in mate choice than some evolutionary psychologists are willing to accept.”

He found that Karo Batak residents prefer women with big feet because it shows strength and greater productivity in the rice fields. This study shows how humans continue to evolve.

“The study adds more evidence of the potential for culture to drive human evolution,” Kushnick said. “Since mating preferences drive sexual selection, it is possible that male-female differences in relative foot size are the product of recent evolution.”

Any Karo Batak women who are unhappy with their feet could try and sucker a man into getting her pregnant. Scientists have long known that pregnant women’s feet tend to grow, and researchers writing in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation got to the bottom of it back in March. They found that first-time mothers saw the most significant changes in their foot size. However, this change could help explain why women are at a higher risk for pain or arthritis in their feet, knees, hips and spines, according to the study.

Image 2 (below): A study volunteer judges foot sizes in an experiment similar to the one described in this study. Credit: Geoff Kushnick, University of Washington

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Curiosity Finds More Evidence Of Past Water On Mars – The Daily Orbit

Written By: Sam Savage

More on Mars’ watery past.

Who’s the most likely to text and drive? Not who you think!

When did turtles get their shell?

And a little THC for the brain on today’s Daily Orbit!

Hello and welcome to the Daily Orbit. I’m Emerald Robinson.

I feel like we should have an on-going segment entitled—“Was there ever water on Mars?” Well, here’s more evidence on the “yes” side. The Curiosity rover captured images of pebbles in an area on Mars named “Hottah.” These pebbles were worn flat, smooth and round as seen with rocks shaped by flowing water. Rocks weathered by wind become angular. Scientists say that in order to have “moved and formed these pebbles, there must have been flowing water with a depth of between 10 cm and 1 meter and a flow rate of about 1 meter per second.” I have to say I’m on team “yes” in the Mar’s water debate.

And with the summer heat and humidity comes the dreaded mosquito bites. But researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute say they’ve genetically modified some mosquitoes to lose their sense of smell. Hallelujah! They targeted the “orco” gene, which is linked to smell using a genetic engineering tool called zinc-finger nucleases. Once the mutated individuals matured, they studied the role of this gene and found that these mosquitoes had diminished activity in neurons linked to odor-sensing and a reduced preference for the smell of a human. Even when swarming around an arm slathered in the repellant Deet, they couldn’t smell it until they landed, at which time they quickly flew away. Researchers said this research provide insights on existing repellants and provide ideas about future repellants. I wish they could genetically modify all mosquitoes—they obviously love my perfume.

And from mosquitoes’ sense of smell to turtles and their shells. Just when did turtles get their hard covering? Researchers are now saying it was 40 million years earlier than they previously thought! The turtle is the only animal that forms a shell on the outside of its body by fusing ribs and vertebrae. Studying the recently discovered fossil of a 260 million year old African species, scientists were able to pinpoint this as the beginning of the evolution of the turtle shell. They say that like all complex structures, the shell evolved over millions of years to reach its current shape, which includes 50 bones in the turtle’s body. So modern turtles meet your great, great, great—well million times—Great-Grandpa.

So the Mayhem Man commercials makes it look like it’s a 16 year old in a pink SVU that you have to worry about texting and driving, but new research says that’s not so. In fact, researchers found that it’s college-educated, middle-aged men that are most likely to text and drive. A survey showed that men in general were 10% more likely than women to be on their phones while driving and those who earned more than $100,000 a year were top offenders. Also interesting, looks like a little religion keeps you off the phone as non-religious drivers were more likely to whip out their phones their religious peers. Hmm. Ironically it’s always the older man in the Mercedes or Lexus that rolls down his window to yell at me to get off my cell phone! Go figure.

And while it might seem that a little THC kills brain cells, turns out it can protect the brain before and after an injury. Researchers found that a small dose of THC seven days before or three days after an injury protects the brain cells from cognitive damage. THC signals brain cells to begin growing and even prevents cell death. In small doses, THC conditions the brain to prepare for injury and builds up its resistance. But that’s a small dose… as in 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than the average joint. So they’re not saying to smoke a doobie a day. Also, how can you plan for an injury?

Well that’s all for the Daily Orbit. See you next week kiddos!

Just When Did Turtles Get Their Shells?

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editor

Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

While there are several species that have shells, the turtle is the only animal to form such a shell on the outside of its body through a fusion of modified ribs, vertebrae and shoulder girdle bone. This makes the turtle´s shell a unique modification, one that has fascinated and confounded biologists for more than two centuries.

How and when it originated has remained mostly conjecture.

However, a team of researchers led by a Smithsonian scientist recently discovered that the beginnings of the turtle shell began some 40 million years earlier than previously thought. The findings of this research, titled “Evolutionary Origin of the Turtle Shell,” were published in the May 30 issue of Current Biology.

To date, the oldest known fossil turtle dates back about 210 million years, but this example features a fully formed shell. This provided little insight into the early shell evolution.

“The turtle shell is a complex structure whose initial transformations started over 260 million years ago in the Permian period,” explained Tyler Lyson of Yale University and a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian. “Like other complex structures, the shell evolved over millions of years and was gradually modified into its present-day shape.”

However, in 2008 the 220 million-year-old fossil remains of an early turtle species, Odontochelys semitestacea, were discovered in China. This fossil suggested that the turtle had a fully developed plastron, which is the belly portion of the shell, yet only had a partial carapace made up of distinctively broadened ribs and vertebrae on its back.

This knowledge led the researchers to recently discovered specimens of the Eunotosaurus africanus, a South African species 40 million years older than O. semitestacea. This other specimen also had distinctively broadened ribs, and this indicated to the researchers that it shared many features only found in turtles.

This included no intercostal muscles that run in between the ribs, paired belly ribs and a specialized mode of rib development. To the researchers, this indicated that Eunotosaurus represents one of the first species to form the evolutionary branch of turtles. This further takes the turtle and its shell back another 40 million or years.

Lyson noted that Eunotosaurus fills an approximately 30-55 million year gap in the turtle fossil record, and that there are several anatomical and development features that indicate that this could be an early representative of the turtle´s linage. However, he added this morphology is intermediate between the specialized shell found in modern turtles to those primitive shells found in other vertebrates. In this way the Eunotosaurus could help bridge that gap between turtles and other reptiles.

If a shell works so well for turtles, the question then becomes why other animals don´t have shells?

“The reason, I think, that more animals don´t form a shell via the broadening and eventually suturing together of the ribs is that the ribs of mammals and lizards are used to help ventilate the lungs,” Lyson added. “If you incorporate your ribs into a protective shell, then you have to find a new way to breathe!”

Lyson and his colleagues will next look to investigate various other aspects of turtles´ respiratory systems, which allows the creatures to manage with their ribs locked up into a protective outer shell.

“It is clear that this novel lung ventilation mechanism evolved in tandem with the origin of the turtle shell,” Lyson noted.

Marijuana May Help Protect, Heal The Brain

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editor

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
A new study from Tel Aviv University has found that THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, can protect the brain from cognitive damage, especially following injury. Medical marijuana has been found to be beneficial in treating pain, insomnia and lack of appetite, but this study has found that THC also helps the brain protect itself before and after an injury.
Professor Yosef Sarne at Tel Aviv University’s Adelson Center for the Biology of Addictive Diseases at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine discovered this as he was performing experiments to discover the biological makeup of marijuana and tested his hypothesis on lab mice. His results are published in the journals Behavioural Brain Research and Experimental Brain Research.
According to Professor Sarne, only a very small dose of THC is needed to protect the brain from long term cognitive damage brought on by injury, seizures, or even damage from toxic drugs. Without this barrier of protection, brains are susceptible to cognitive defects and neurological damage.
This isn´t the first time THC has been found to protect brain cells. Previous research observed that, when administered 30 minutes before or after a brain injury, the psychoactive chemical could create a protective effect on the brain´s cells. Professor Sarne´s research, however found that the same benefits could be achieved if small doses of THC can be administered up to seven days before an injury or three days after. Only a small amount of THC is needed, which is about 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than the amount found in a joint.
The basis of this discovery lies in cell signaling. The research team discovered that when administered, THC signals the cells to begin growing and even prevents cell death. To test their theory, Professor Sarne and team injected lab mice with very low doses of THC both before and after subjecting them to brain trauma. One group of mice was used as a control and was subjected to the trauma without any THC.
Three to seven weeks later, the researchers ran tests on the mice as they looked for signs of brain damage. Those mice that received a low dose of THC performed much better in these tests than the control group of mice that received no treatment. What´s more, the THC group of mice also had more neuroprotective chemicals in their system brought on by their treatment than the control group.
This treatment almost acts as an immunization to brain damage, although the drug has been found to cause minute brain damage. In small doses, THC conditions the brain to prepare for injury and build up its resistance. When used in the long term, this treatment could continue to protect the brain from any cognitive damage.
While it may sound difficult to predict when a person might experience brain trauma, Professor Sarne says there are several practical ways in which this treatment could be used to protect the brain. For instance, Sarne discovered this treatment protects the brain from injuries that occur due to lack of oxygen.
The machines used during open-heart surgery carry the risk of interrupting the supply of blood and oxygen to the brain. According to Professor Sarne, THC could be administered before this invasive surgery as a preventative measure. It´s long-term effects could also make it useful for those who have encountered a head injury in sports or vehicle accidents, and it´s low dosage is safe for people at high risk for heart attacks or even epileptics.

Science

Faster Disease Diagnosis With New Single Virus Detection Techniques

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The Optical Society

To test the severity of a viral infection, clinicians try to gauge how many viruses are packed into a certain volume of blood or other bodily fluid. This measurement, called viral load, helps doctors diagnose or monitor chronic viral diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. However, the standard methods used for these tests are only able to estimate the number of viruses in a given volume of fluid. Now two independent teams have developed new optics-based methods for determining the exact viral load of a sample by counting individual virus particles. These new methods are faster and cheaper than standard tests and they offer the potential to conduct the measurements in a medical office or hospital instead of a laboratory. The teams will present their latest results at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2013), to be held June 9-14, in San Jose, Calif.

One research group, led by electrical engineer and bioengineer Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA, is working to directly image single virus particles using holographic microscopy. The other, led by electrical engineer Holger Schmidt of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), is detecting single particles tagged with fluorescent labels on a microfluidic chip. Both teams expect to use their work to develop commercial instruments useful for on-site diagnosis and monitoring with rapid results and fast turnaround.

Ozcan’s UCLA team has demonstrated the ability to capture optical images of single viruses and nanoparticles over a comparatively large field of view — about the size of a postage stamp — using nanolenses that self-assemble around the virus particles like little magnifying glasses.

“Because viruses are very small–less than 100 billionths of a meter–compared to the wavelength of light, conventional light microscopy has difficulty producing an image due to weak scattering of sub-wavelength particles,” Ozcan says. When lighted, the team’s new nanolens-nanoparticle assembly projects a hologram that can be recorded using a CMOS imager chip (a type of semiconductor-based light detector) and digitally reconstructed to form an optical image of the particle. “The resulting image improves the field-of-view of a conventional optical microscope by two orders of magnitude,” says Ozcan.

This wide field of view allows the device to form images of many nanoparticles in a single photograph and provides a high-throughput platform for a direct and accurate viral load count. The instrument can be made sufficiently compact and lightweight for field applications and, attached to a cell phone, could become useful even in remote locations.

The UCSC researchers will present the results of a collaborative effort between UCSC, Liquilume Diagnostics Inc., and the groups of infectious disease clinician and virologist Charles Chiu at University of California, San Francisco, and engineer Aaron Hawkins at Brigham Young. While Ozcan’s group visually counts individual viruses, Schmidt’s counts them by detecting their nucleic acids–the genetic makeup of the viruses. The nucleic acids are labeled with a fluorescent dye, and light from the fluorescence is detected as they pass through a channel in a microfluidic chip about the size of a thumbnail.

Current tests for determining viral load generally rely on a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which amplifies a small sample of nucleic acid, such as DNA, and makes it easier to detect. “The gold standard for viral load detection is PCR, due to its sensitivity and specificity,” Schmidt says, but PCR is limited to merely estimating the number of viruses. In contrast, the new method counts real particles as they pass through the fluorescence detector on the chip. “We have demonstrated actual virus counts of specific nucleic acids in less than 30 minutes with minimal sample workup,” Schmidt says. So far, the group has collected reliable data on samples diluted to a point well within the range required for clinical detection.

Unlike direct visualization techniques, Schmidt’s chip-based method requires that the targeted virus particles be labeled. The labeling technique would allow clinicians to target specific viruses while ignoring unlabeled background material. This makes the process potentially useful in situations where clinicians already know what they are looking for — often the case for viral load tests.

The chip is currently housed in an instrument about one foot square, making the device portable. Along with rapid analysis turnaround, this portability should make the technique useful for point-of-treatment tests. In addition to detecting viruses, the device may also find uses as a sensor for cancer biomarkers, for environmental analyses of chemicals, and even in industrial production monitoring.

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Obesity Higher For Kids Whose Schools Are Near Fast Food Chains

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Obesity is an epidemic that affects millions around the world. What´s worse, children are often particularly vulnerable to the dangers that come with being significantly overweight. In the US, studies show that race and socioeconomic status is a major factor in childhood obesity, with African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans being the most likely to be obese.

A new study from Baylor University has found that these groups are especially at risk when fast food restaurants are located near their schools. Minority students were also found to be less active than students who attended a school without fast food options so readily available.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

“Our study demonstrates that fast food near schools is an environmental influence that has magnified effects on some minority children at lower-income urban schools,” explains Brennan Davis, assistant professor of marketing at Baylor who co-authored the paper with Sonya Grier, associate professor of marketing at American University.

Children in low income and urban schools have been found to have higher body mass index (BMI) than those students who attend schools in a more affluent area. Unhealthy food choices, such as fatty burgers and sugar-rich sodas, contribute to a high BMI. To make matters worse, an unpublished study has also found that students who are more likely to engage socially are more likely to visit these nearby restaurants to meet their friends.

Davis and Grier´s study found that having a fast food chain so close to school can cancel out the benefits of one day´s worth of exercise for any student, regardless of their socioeconomic status. However, this factor is much more prevalent for students who attend schools in lower income areas. For these students, the easy accessibility of a burger and soda so near school may cancel out the healthy benefits of three day´s worth of exercise.

Grier says this study is important because these lower-income students are the fastest growing demographic in the country in addition to being the most likely to be obese.

“As mobile geodemographic location targeting increases, fast-food promotions will likely target those adolescents nearest to fast-food outlets and who are at greatest risk for obesity. Voluntary industry actions, or policies that support healthier food near schools, can contribute to healthier school food environments,” said Davis in a statement.

When students leave school for the day, they´re no longer in the care of the district. While they may have received plenty of healthy food and exercise during school hours, poor choices during the remaining 16 hours of their day could undo all this effort. When fast food chains are located so near the school, they present youngsters with an easy opportunity to make poor food choices.

An earlier study by researchers at UCLA found that, when left to their own devices, students are more likely to skip over any of the “healthy” alternatives offered by these restaurants, even if they´re dining at a health-conscious establishment. The UCLA researchers asked 97 teenagers to dine at either Subway or McDonalds after school and keep their receipts. The researchers then recorded what the students ate and the total calorie intake of their meals. Those students who ate at subway only ended up eating 83 calories less than those who ate at McDonalds, and both groups ate more calories than the 850 calories that The Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggests should be contained in a school lunch.

QE2 Asteroid Makes Near-Earth Flyby This Week

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Brett Smith and Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

[ Update: May 30, 2013 – Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has A Moon ]

Radar data taken on Wednesday has revealed that asteroid 1998 QE2 has an orbiting moon. NASA said that about 16 percent of asteroids are binary or triple systems. The 1.7 mile wide asteroid will be passing by Earth at a safe distance of about 3.6 million miles on Friday. [ Watch the Video: Radar Reveals Asteroid 1998 QE2 has a Moon ]

[ Update: May 30, 2013 – How To Watch ]

NASA has announced that members of the public can participate in both online and televised events on May 30 and 31 surrounding the space agency’s asteroid program and the impending near-Earth flyby of the 1.7-mile-long asteroid known as 1998 QE2.

On May 30, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will show live telescope images of the approaching asteroid and host a discussion with experts from JPL and the asteroid trackers at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex on NASA Television at 1:30 pm EST.

On May 31, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will participate in a White House “We the Geeks” discussion hosted on Google+ at 2pm EST. Topics scheduled for the discussion include “asteroid identification, characterization, resource utilization, and hazard mitigation,” according to a statement from the space agency.

The 1.7-mile wide asteroid will hurtle past Earth at a distance of 3.6 million miles about two hours after the conclusion of the Google+ event. While that distance is far enough for the asteroid to be considered non-threatening, it is close enough to excite NASA astronomers.

Slooh Space Camera has also announced plans to follow the asteroid’s approach.

Slooh will cover its closest approach on Friday, May 31st, live on Slooh.com, free to the public, starting at 1:30 p.m. PDT / 4:30 p.m. EDT / 20:30 UTC. Viewers can watch live on their PC/Mac or by downloading the free Slooh iPad app in the iTunes store and touching the broadcast icon.

[ Original: May 16, 2013 ]

On May 31, a 1.7-mile-wide asteroid called QE2 will hurtle past Earth at a distance of 3.6 million miles. While that distance is far enough for the asteroid to be considered non-threatening, it is close enough to excite NASA astronomers.

The space agency is expected to use the radar antennas at the Goldstone Observatory in California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to track the passage of QE2 and capture detailed images of its surface.

“Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be an outstanding radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo and we expect to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could reveal a wealth of surface features,” said Lance Benner, a lead investigator for Goldstone. “Whenever an asteroid approaches this closely, it provides an important scientific opportunity to study it in detail to understand its size, shape, rotation, surface features, and what they can tell us about its origin.”

“We will also use new radar measurements of the asteroid’s distance and velocity to improve our calculation of its orbit and compute its motion farther into the future than we could otherwise,” he added.

The asteroid, which was discovered on Aug. 19, 1998, will make its closest approach to Earth for at least the next two hundred years on May 31 at 1:59 PM PST. The radar antennas are expected to generate images that could resolve detail on the asteroid´s surface as small as 12 feet across from 4 million miles away.

“It is tremendously exciting to see detailed images of this asteroid for the first time,” Benner said. “With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own unique set of characteristics. In a real sense, radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids is a fundamental form of exploring a whole class of solar system objects.”

NASA prioritizes the tracking of near-Earth objects (NEO) like QE2 for both scientific and protective purposes, utilizing a robust and productive survey program in the process. In 2012, the space agency set aside $20 million for its NEO program. NASA also collaborates with other government agencies and research institutions around the country that are working to track and understand these objects.

In 2016, NASA will take a pro-active approach toward one of the more hazardous looking NEOs, the asteroid known as (101955) Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx mission will send a probe to perform reconnaissance on the object and bring a sample back to Earth. Besides analyzing a potential threat, NASA said in a statement that the mission “enables a valuable opportunity to learn more about the origins of our solar system, the source of water on Earth, and even the origin of organic molecules that lead to the development of life.”

The space agency also recently announced plans to identify and capture an asteroid for human exploration. If it were to be successful, the mission would be an unprecedented technological achievement for space exploration and human history. It will require groundbreaking technology from America’s most innovative scientists and engineers.

Small Dams On Chinese River Threaten Environment More Than Expected

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American Geophysical Union
A fresh look at the environmental impacts of dams on an ecologically diverse and partially protected river in China found that small dams can pose a greater threat to ecosystems and natural landscapes than large dams. Although large dams are generally considered more harmful than their smaller counterparts, the research team´s surveys of habitat loss and damage at several dam sites on the Nu River and its tributaries in Yunnan Province revealed that, watt-for-watt, the environmental harm from small dams was often greater–sometimes by several orders of magnitude–than from large dams.
Because of undesirable social, environmental, and political implications, the construction of large dams often stirs controversy. Current policies in China and many other nations encourage the growth of the small hydropower sector. But, “small dams have hidden detrimental effects, particularly when effects accumulate” through multiple dam sites, said Kelly Kibler, a water resources engineer who led this study as part of her PhD research while at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “That is one of the main outcomes of this paper, to demonstrate that the perceived absence of negative effects from small hydropower is not always correct.”
She and Desiree D. Tullos, also a water resources engineer at Oregon State and Kibler´s PhD advisor, report their findings in a paper accepted for publication in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. Kibler now works as a researcher at the International Centre for Water Hazard & Risk Management in Tsukuba, Japan, and as an Associate Professor at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
To compare the impacts of small and large dams, Kibler investigated 31 small dams built on tributaries of China´s Nu River and four large dams proposed for the main stem of the Nu River. She assessed the environmental effects of these dams in 14 categories, including the area and quality of habitat lost, the length of river channel affected, the amount of conservation land impacted, and the landslide risk. Because information regarding large dams is restricted under the Chinese State Secrets Act, Kibler modeled the potential effects of the four large dams using publically-available information from hydropower companies, development agencies, and academic literature.
After evaluating data from the field, hydrological models, and Environmental Impact Assessment reports about the small dams, Kibler and Tullos concluded that impacts of the small dams exceeded those of large dams on nine of the 14 characteristics they studied.
One particularly detrimental impact of the small dams observed in this study is that they often divert the flow of the river to hydropower stations, leaving several kilometers of river bed dewatered, Kibler explained.
From its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, the Nu River flows through China, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. “While the number of small hydropower dams in operation or planned for tributaries to the Nu River is unreported,” the authors note in this study, “our field surveys indicate that nearly one hundred small dams currently exist within Nujiang Prefecture alone.”
Thirteen large hydropower dams are proposed for the main stream of the Nu River in Tibet and Yunnan Province in China. “No large dams have been built, but there have been reports that site preparations have begun at some proposed dam sites,” Kibler said.
Environmental, social, and economic factors make the Nu River basin extremely sensitive to hydropower installations. In addition to supporting several protected species, the region is home to a large proportion of ethnic minorities and valuable natural resources, the authors report in the study. Parts of the Nu River are also designated as a World Heritage site and the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International have delineated stretches of this river and its tributaries as biodiversity hotspots. But proposed hydropower projects are threatening these statuses, according to Kibler.
While large hydropower projects are managed by the central government, and both large and small hydropower projects undergo environmental impact assessments, decisions about small hydropower projects are made at a provincial or other regional level and receive far less oversight, Kibler and Tullos state in their paper.
Small dams in China “often lack sufficient enforcement of environmental regulations” because they are “left to the jurisdiction of the province,” said Guy Ziv, lead scientist for the Natural Capital Project, an organization which develops tools to assess and quantify natural resources, and a researcher for the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. This study, he added, is “an important contribution to the field of natural resource management.”
The lack of regulation paired with a dearth of communication between small dam projects in China allows for the impacts to multiply and accumulate through several dam sites, the study authors write.
In order to mitigate the detrimental effects of small dams, there is a “need for comprehensive planning of low-impact energy development.” Kibler and Tullos note.
Policies supporting growth in the small hydropower sector are often crafted at the national or international level, Kibler noted. For example, many of the small dams investigated in the new study were supported by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“The lack of comprehensive analysis regarding cumulative impact of small hydropower,” Kibler said, “is a significant research gap with important policy implications.”
The National Science Foundation funded this work.
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FDA Approves Two New Melanoma Drugs

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editor

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two new medicines used to treat the most dangerous form of skin cancer, as well as a genetic test developed alongside those drugs.

The two new medications, both of which are manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are dabrafenib (which will be marketed as Tafinlar) and trametinib (which will be sold under the name Mekinist). They will be used to treat patients with advanced (metastatic) or unresectable (cannot be removed by surgery) melanoma, the FDA said.

According to Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times, The BRAF inhibitor Tafinlar would be used to treat patients whose tumors express a gene mutation known as BRAF V600E. The MEK inhibitor Mekinist can also be used to treat those individuals, as well as melanoma patients whose tumors express the BRAF V600K gene mutation.

“A genetic test developed alongside those drugs, and also approved by the FDA on Wednesday, will help physicians identify patients who could benefit most from the BRAF-inhibitor drugs,” Healy said. “The test is called the THxID BRAF test and is manufactured by BioMerieux of Grenoble, France.”

The two drugs have been approved for individual use and not as a combined treatment. However, Reuters reporters Ben Hirschler and Bill Berkrot note that GSK is conducting additional trials which they hope will demonstrate additional benefits from the drugs if they are taken together.

“After decades with virtually no progress in the fight against advanced melanoma and little to offer patients facing a virtual death sentence, Tafinlar and Mekinist mark the third and fourth new drugs approved by the FDA for metastatic melanoma in the past two years,” Hirschler and Berkrot said, adding that the approval of the two new medications is “a further step forward in targeted cancer care and will be used in patients with a specific genetic profile — an approach that will limit the number of people who get them.”

The FDA reports that Tafinlar was studied in 250 patients with BRAF V600E gene mutation-positive metastatic or unresectable melanoma. Study participants randomly received either the BRAF inhibitor or the chemotherapy drug dacarbazine, and those who took Tafinlar showed a 2.4 month delay in tumor growth versus those receiving dacarbazine.

Likewise, 322 skin cancer patients with the BRAF V600E or V600K gene mutation were randomly assigned to receive either Mekinist or chemotherapy during the trial. Patients receiving Mekinist had a delay in tumor growth that was 3.3 months later than those on chemotherapy.

“The most serious side effects reported in patients receiving Tafinlar included an increased risk of skin cancer (cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma), fevers that may be complicated by hypotension (low blood pressure), severe rigors (shaking chills), dehydration, kidney failure and increased blood sugar levels requiring changes in diabetes medication or the need to start medicines to control diabetes,” the FDA said in a statement.

“The most common side effects reported in patients receiving Tafinlar included thickening of the skin (hyperkeratosis), headache, fever, joint pain, non-cancerous skin tumors, hair loss and hand-foot syndrome,” they added. “The most serious side effects reported in patients receiving Mekinist included heart failure, lung inflammation, skin infections and loss of vision. Common side effects included rash, diarrhea, tissue swelling (peripheral edema) and skin breakouts that resemble acne.”

Tooth Decay Still A Major Problem For Billions Around The World

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Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

As anyone who has had one will admit, a toothache is not something pleasant, and billions of people around the world could be at risk as a result of untreated dental problems. The health concerns related to tooth decay could also be worse than oral discomfort.

A new report led by Professor Wagner Marcenes of the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary shows that oral conditions may affect as many as 3.9 billion people worldwide — more than half the total global population. Together with an international research team investing oral health as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 study, Marcenes found that untreated tooth decay or cavities in permanent teeth — also known as dental caries — were the most common of all 291 major diseases and injuries included in the study.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study began in the spring of 2007. It included nearly 500 scientists carrying out a complete systematic assessment of global data on all diseases and injuries. Tooth decay alone, the report noted, affects some 35 percent of the world´s population.

The findings of the report were published in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR), a peer-reviewed scientific journal dedicated to the dissemination of new knowledge and information on all sciences relevant to dentistry. The Global Burden of Oral Conditions 1990-2010: A Systematic Analysis was led by Professor Marcenes, along with colleagues at the University of Washington and the University of Queensland in Australia.

The GBD 2010 study noted that oral conditions accounted for an average health loss of 224 years per 100,000 people, and the study further estimated that disability associated with severe tooth loss was between those reported for moderate heart failure or stroke.

“There are close to four billion people in the world who suffer from untreated oral health conditions that cause toothache and prevent them from eating and possibly sleeping properly, which is a disability,” noted Professor Marcenes in a statement. “This total does not even include small cavities or mild gum diseases, so we are facing serious problems in the population’s oral health.”

The global burden of oral disease is shifting from severe tooth loss towards severe periodontitis and untreated caries the study found. The global burden of oral diseases increased 20 percent between 1990 and 2010, while a reduction of 0.5 percent was observed for all conditions together. The study´s authors contend that this increase can likely be attributed to an aging population.

“Tooth loss is often the final result when preventive or conservative treatments for tooth decay or gum disease fail or are unavailable,” Marcenes added. “It is likely that current dental services are coping better to prevent tooth loss than in the past but major efforts are needed to prevent the occurrence and development of gum diseases and tooth decay. Ironically, the longer a person keeps their teeth the greater the pressure on services to treat them.”

The developing world is where tooth decay continues to be a major problem. The study noted that the largest increases in the burden of oral conditions were in Eastern (52 percent), Central (51 per cent) and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania (48 per cent).

“Our findings are set to shake up the setting of health priorities around the world, providing an unparalleled amount of up-to-date, comparable data on the diseases, risk factors, disabilities, and injuries facing populations,” he noted. “The findings of the GBD 2010 study highlighted that an urgent organized social response to oral health problems is needed. This must deal with a wide array of health care and public health priorities for action.”

Fossil Find Gives Ancient Bird Back Its Heritage

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

A new discovery made by paleontologists digging in China has put Archaeopteryx back on the map as one of the earliest birds.

Archaeopteryx was first discovered in 1861 and, at the time, was professed to be the world’s earliest bird. However, in 2011 researchers carried out a phylogenetic analysis and determined that the Archaeopteryx was actually just another feathered dinosaur. If this team was right, it would mean flight evolved at least four times in vertebrates. The team even cautioned back then, though, that the next feathered fossil unearthed in China could restore the status of the ancient creature. They were right.

Scientists writing in the latest edition of Nature are putting Archaeopteryx back on the map as being one of the world’s first true birds with the discovery of Aurornis xui. This fossil animal is dated about 160 million years old and actually predates Archaeopteryx.

Aurornis, which means “dawn bird,” was about the size of a chicken and emerged about 10 million years earlier than Archaeopteryx. It had claws and a long tail, with front and hind legs similar to Archaeopteryx. The Aurornis fossil was preserved in sedimentary rock and had traces of feathers along the animal’s tail, neck and chest. The scientists said the absence of larger feathers suggests the bird was actually not able to fly.

“It’s an important fossil,” Gareth Dyke, a senior paleontologist involved in the study at Southampton University told The Guardian. “Aurornis pushes Archaeopteryx off its perch as the oldest member of the bird lineage.”

The researchers’ study doesn’t just re-classify Archaeopteryx as a bird; it also re-shuffles the Troodontidae, which is a family of bird-like dinosaurs.

“What we’re arguing over here is actually very small, esoteric features of the anatomy,” Dr. Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, London told the BBC. “We’re looking at a nexus of animals around bird origins – birds themselves and a bunch of dinosaurs that are almost, but not quite, birds.”

He said just one or two changes across a huge body of data can make the difference between an animal being on one side of this bird-dinosaur divide or the other.

“The beginnings of the bird line is all about fine-tuning parts of their anatomy – of their wings, of their hips, of their chest muscles and shoulder girdles, and so on – to make them flight-ready,” he told BBC News.

New CO2 Removal Technique Produces Green Fuel, Offsets Ocean Acidification

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide has been demonstrated by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The new technique also generates carbon-negative hydrogen and produces alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification.
At laboratory scale, the team demonstrated a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution. The system simultaneously produces hydrogen fuel and other gases. The electrolyte solution that results shows a significant elevation in hydroxide concentration that in turn proved strongly absorptive and retentive of atmospheric CO2. The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of PNAS.
The carbonate and bicarbonate produced in the process could be used to mitigate ongoing ocean acidification, the researchers suggest, much like how an Alka Seltzer neutralizes excess acid in the stomach.
“We not only found a way to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while producing valuable H2, we also suggest that we can help save marine ecosystems with this new technique,” Greg Rau, an LLNL visiting scientist, senior scientist at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), said in a statement.
As carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, a significant fraction is passively taken up by the ocean. This fraction forms carbonic acid that makes the ocean more acidic. Many species, including corals and shellfish, are harmed by this acidification.
The Earth will likely warm by at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of this century, and the oceans will experience a more than 60 percent increase in acidity relative to pre-industrial levels. The new process produces an alkaline solution that could be added to the ocean to help neutralize this acid and help offset its effects on marine biota. Further research is needed, however, according to the team, which included LLNL scientists Susan Carroll, William Bourcier, Michael Singleton, Megan Smith and Roger Aines.
“When powered by renewable electricity and consuming globally abundant minerals and saline solutions, such systems at scale might provide a relatively efficient, high-capacity means to consume and store excess atmospheric CO2 as environmentally beneficial seawater bicarbonate or carbonate,” Rau explained. “But the process also would produce a carbon-negative ‘super green’ fuel or chemical feedstock in the form of hydrogen.”
Previously described chemical methods of atmospheric carbon dioxide capture and storage are costly. Most use thermal/mechanical procedures to concentrate molecular CO2 from the air while recycling reagents, a process that is cumbersome, inefficient and expensive.
“Our process avoids most of these issues by not requiring CO2 to be concentrated from air and stored in a molecular form, pointing the way to more cost-effective, environmentally beneficial, and safer air CO2 management with added benefits of renewable hydrogen fuel production and ocean alkalinity addition,” Rau said.
Further research is also needed to determine optimum designs and operating procedures, cost-effectiveness, and the net environmental impact/benefit of electrochemically mediated air CO2 capture and H2 production using base minerals, the team said.

Probiotics Found In Yogurt Affects Brain Function In Women

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans has been found by a group of researchers from the Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress (CNS) and the Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, both of which are research arms of the UCLA.
The scientists conducted an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, finding that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics, found in yogurt, showed altered brain function. This alteration showed both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.
The research team says that the discovery that changing the microbiota, or bacterial environment, of the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could highlight dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function. The results of their study were published in a recent issue of Gastroenterology.
“Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways,” said Kirsten Tillisch, MD, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘gut feelings’ take on new meaning.”
Scientists have long known that the brain sends signals to the gut. This is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. Until now, researchers have suspected, but been unable to prove except in animal models, that signals travel the opposite way as well.
“Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut,” Tillisch said in a statement. “Our study shows that the gut—brain connection is a two-way street.”
The study sample was small; 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55 were divided into three groups. One group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics twice a day for four weeks. The second group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt, but contained no probiotics. The final group ate no product at all.
The team conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans before and after the four-week study period, looking at the women´s brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task.
The task, which involved looking at a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces, and matching them to other faces showing the same emotion, is designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to visual stimulus. The team chose this particular test because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors.
The women who consumed the probiotic yogurt showed a decrease in activity in both the insula – which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those from the gut – and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task. This decrease was not noted in the women who did not consume the yogurt.
The women who ate the probiotics also had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. Both of the other groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.
The probiotics group showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex during the resting brain scan. The group that ate no product at all exhibited greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions. The group that ate the non-probiotic dairy product demonstrated results in between the other two groups.
The results surprised the research team, who didn´t expect to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion, Tillisch said.
Emeran Mayer, MD, a professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said that the knowledge that signals are sent from the intestine to the brain and that these signals can be modulated by dietary changes is likely to lead to an expansion of research targeted at finding new techniques to prevent or treat digestive, mental and neurological disorders.
“There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora – in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates,” Mayer said. “Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function.”
The team is seeking to pinpoint particular chemicals produced by gut bacteria that may be triggering signals to the brain. They are also planning future research into whether people with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and altered bowel movements have improvements in their digestive symptoms which correlate with changes in brain response.
Other teams, according to Mayer, are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety.
The current study raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some studies have speculated. Extensively used in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, antibiotics might have long-term consequences on brain development as well.
Researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and autism as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain becomes better understood.

Bumblebees Use Their Buzz To Scare Birds Out Of Nests

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Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Bumblebees like to make their nests in holes insulated with plant materials. Freshly built bird nests can provide the perfect homes for bees, and they frequently invade newly made bird nests and take them over as their own. But how does a tiny bumblebee scare away a bird many times its size, and how does it choose which nest to invade? Piotr Jablonski and his colleagues from the Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology and Evolution at Seoul National University in South Korea published a study in Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology researching these questions.

Bumblebees are prey for many types of birds. Yet some prey send signals to potential predators to warn them of the presence of their defenses using bright colors or noises. These signs warn predators to keep their distance or else suffer from poisonous stings or other unpleasant defenses.

Jablonski´s team was interested to find out if the buzzing sound that bees make was enough to scare birds away from their nests. They also wondered if bees preferred freshly built nests over other suitable nesting places.

Jablonski´s team focused on the interactions between bumblebees and two different bird species known as Oriental and Varied tits. Outside of Seoul National University Campus in the slopes surrounding Gwanak Mountain, bumblebees occupied 21 percent of freshly built tit nests in nesting boxes. Interestingly, empty nest boxes attracted no bumblebees, providing evidence that they prefer to invade freshly built nests.

To determine if the bumblebee´s buzzing sound is what scares away the birds, Jablonski´s team glued a dead bumblebee to a toothpick that was attached to a miniature speaker. They then placed the bumblebee buzzing device in a nest while the bird was away. When the bird returned they played a recorded buzzing sound through the speaker, and the bird´s response was observed by a tiny camera. As a control, the researchers also placed a second device into nests that played common bird calls.

When the buzzing sound was played through the miniature speaker, the research team observed that the birds became noticeably distressed and often flew away from their nest. The bird calls, however, did not produce the same distressed response as the buzzing noise.

“The bumblebees’ buzz appears to help them oust birds from their freshly built nests. We have provided evidence that a warning signal, known to help deter predatory attacks on a potentially harmful prey, may also help the prey to win ecological competition with its predator,” concluded the authors.

France Reports First Death From Coronavirus, WHO Raises Global Concerns

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Three weeks after French health officials reported the first case of novel coronavirus (nCoV) showing up in France, the man who contracted the disease while on a recent trip to the Middle East has died, according to the country´s Health Ministry.

The 65-year-old man becomes the 24th person to succumb to the stranglehold of nCoV. He is the third confirmed death from the virus in Europe; the others occurring in Britain and Germany. A spokesman for the Directorate General for Health said the man died on May 28, more than a month after being hospitalized from digestion problems shortly after returning from a nine-day trip to the Middle East.

Another man in France who shared a hospital room with the former for three days was later diagnosed with the nCoV virus as well, sparking fears that the disease, which had initially leapfrogged from animals to humans, was now spreading between humans. The second man, who is in his 50s, has been hospitalized since May 9 and has since been isolated. He remains in “serious but stable condition,” according to officials.

French Health Minister Marisol Touraine expressed sadness over the death of the Frenchman. He also said in a statement to the AFP: “Authorities remain on alert but … there is no new situation in our country regarding the epidemic.”

The virus, which is similar to SARS, appears to cause an infection deep in the lungs, leading to coughing and breathing difficulties. But unlike SARS, nCoV also causes rapid kidney failure.

The virus, which has previously gone by the name nCoV-EMC, has now been redubbed Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

As the virus continues to spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) is upping its involvement. Previously only taking a monitory stance, the WHO is now looking to respond to the health crisis that is sweeping through the Middle East like wildfire.

At the sixty-sixth annual World Health Assembly conference on Monday, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, sounded the alarm over the Middle Eastern virus, calling it a “threat to the entire world.”

“Looking at the overall global situation, my greatest concern right now is the novel coronavirus. We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat. Any new disease that is emerging faster than our understanding is never under control,” Dr Chan said. “These are alarm bells and we must respond. The novel coronavirus is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself. The novel coronavirus is a threat to the entire world.”

The virus has so far infected 49 people and has killed 27, a mortality rate of about 55 percent. To try and combat the growing number of cases, researchers have been looking to develop a vaccine. However, Dutch scientists may hamper that progress after taking an unusual step to patent the killer virus.

Erasmus Medical Center researchers Albert Osterhaus and Ron Fouchier were among the first to receive a sample of the virus from a Saudi physician who was stumped by the first known case, reports New York Daily News.

Shortly after receiving the sample, the Dutch scientists patented it, angering the WHO and Saudi officials, who said such a selfish move has likely impeded critical research for a viable treatment option. With a patent in hand, the Dutch team may now control the research into the virus and possible drugs to treat it.

Chan, outraged by the move, said in Monday´s speech: “Making deals between scientists because they want to take out IP and be the first to publish in scientific journals, we cannot allow that. No intellectual property should stand in the way of you protecting your people.”

The Dutch researchers said they patented the virus in order to get drug companies to take interest in developing a vaccine and are denying that they are keeping the virus all to themselves.

“We´re still sharing this virus with everyone who wants to do public health research,” Osterhaus told Bloomberg´s Simeon Bennett last week.

As cases continue to climb and spread beyond the Middle East, health experts are struggling to pinpoint the main cause of the virus. It is similar to one found in bats, but experts have speculated this particular strain may have derived from camels or goats. A source will likely be needed before any real effective treatment can be produced to protect against infection from MERS-CoV.

“We do not know where the virus hides in nature,” Chan said. “We do not know how people are getting infected. Until we answer these questions, we are empty-handed when it comes to prevention.”

The WHO is now calling for the world to come together, pool its resources and tackle this virus head-on.

Prof. Ian Jones, a virologist at University of Reading, has taken a stance to play down the fears of human-to-human infection from MERS-CoV.

“Apart from the unusual circumstances of very close containment with already hospitalized persons, it does not seem to transfer among people,” he told AFP. “As a result, the overall risk remains very low and the most pressing need is to identify where the virus is coming from so that these occasional infections can be prevented.”

Since the virus was first reported last September, cases have surfaced in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

What Drives Kids To Abuse Prescription Drugs?

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Non-medical prescription drug abuse is on the rise in young people, and a new study from the University of Cincinnati could shed light on what could increase or lower the risk of such abuse.

The research team, led by Keith King, professor of health promotion, focused on 54,000 students — 7th through 12th grade — in the Greater Cincinnati area, including the Tristate regions of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. The data they used was from the 2009-2020 Pride Survey on Adolescent Drug Use in America, collected by the Coalition for a Drug Free Greater Cincinnati.

The researchers found that 13.7 percent of the students reported using prescription drugs without a doctor´s prescription during their lifetime. They found that males were more likely to abuse the drugs than females, and high school students more likely than junior high students. Hispanic students were found to be more likely to use nonmedical prescription drugs compared with white or African-American students.

Pro-social behaviors, including strong connections with parents, teachers and peers who disapproved of substance abuse, were found to reduce the risk of prescription drug abuse as well. “Students at every grade level who reported high levels of parent and peer disapproval of use were at decreased odds for lifetime nonmedical prescription drug use,” according to the study.

Conversely, the researchers found that relationships with drug-using peers increased the odds of youth substance abuse. Use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana among peers were associated with increased use of nonmedical prescription drugs for all students.

“While much research has examined factors associated with overall substance use among youth, relatively few studies have specifically investigated risk factors, protective factors and sex/grade differences for youth involvement in nonmedical prescription use,” write the authors. “Identifying specific risk and protective factors for males, females, junior high and high school students would help to clarify prevention needs and enhance prevention programming.”

According to the study, national research indicates that young people are turning to prescription drugs in the mistaken notion that they are safer than street drugs. Even short-term abuse of prescription drugs, however, can cause cardiovascular and respiratory distress, seizures and death. The researchers suggest that future research should focus on young people´s use of specific prescription drugs.

The findings were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Primary Prevention.

Science

Intelligent Street Lights Adapt To Conditions In Finland

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VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a dimmable LED street light that consumes significantly less energy than current lighting systems, while improving the lighting characteristics. The street lights were tested in Helsinki with user experiences collected.

Traditional street lights work on full power when turned on, and the amount of light is not usually adjusted. The new LED street lights developed by VTT adapt to the ambient conditions with the help of sensors and wireless control, allowing them to be dimmed on the basis of natural light, environmental conditions (for example light reflected from snow) and the number of pedestrians. In order to maintain comfort, several characteristics important to road users, such as the amount and colour of light and the shape of the light beam, are considered in the luminaire design. Particular attention was paid to glare control, light distribution and sufficient lighting of road shoulders.

The intelligent street lighting system stores information on energy consumption, temperature, lighting level, and number of pedestrians, among others. According to laboratory measurements, the new LED street light is 50 per cent more energy-efficient than traditional lights on the market — without the intelligence factored in. With lighting levels adjusted according to the number of users or to natural lighting conditions, an additional energy saving potential of 40 per cent with added intelligence has been observed. The developed lighting method is based on available components (for example, LEDs and sensors).

The street lights were tested along a pedestrian road in Helsinki, where initially a total of 20 reference street lights were installed. These represented five different luminaires on the market, three of which were LED luminaires and two others a traditional high pressure sodium and a metal halide lamp luminaire. Aalto University carried out a user survey in the pilot installation area, based on which VTT designed the new LED street light. Demo lights were installed at the end of 2012 as an extension of the first test installation, after which Aalto University carried out another survey on the experiences of the people using the road. The demo street light received the best feedback in the survey.

The AthLEDics project, funded by Tekes — the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, research institutes and companies, is implemented by VTT and Aalto University, partnered by Alppilux, Helsingin Energia, the City of Helsinki, the City of Jyväskylä, Enerpoint, Ensto Finland, Hella Lighting Finland, Helvar, Herrmans, LumiChip, MTG-Meltron, Oplatek, Sabik, Senate Properties, Valopaa and YIT.

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Patient Participation In Decision Making Associated With Increased Costs, Services

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A survey of almost 22,000 admitted patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center found patient preference to participate in decision making concerning their care was associated with a longer length of stay and higher total hospitalization costs, according to a report published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Hyo Jung Tak, Ph.D., and colleagues examined the relationship between patient preferences for participation in medical decision making and health care utilization among patients hospitalized between July 1, 2003 and August 31, 2011 by asking patients to complete a survey. The survey data were then linked with administrative data, including length of stay and total hospitalization costs. Nearly all of the patients indicated they wanted information about their illnesses and treatment options, but just over 70 percent preferred to leave the medical decisions to their physician. “Preference to participate in medical decision making increased with educational level and with private health insurance,” the authors note. ““¦patients who preferred to participate in decision making concerning their care had a 0.26-day longer length of stay and $865 higher total hospitalization costs.”

In conclusion the authors write: “That patient preference for participation is associated with increased resource use contrasts with some perspectives on shared decision making that emphasize reductions of inappropriate use. However, in the presence of physician incentives to decrease use, such as exist for hospitalized patients and are likely to increase under health reform, increased resource use may occur. Future studies related to patient participation in decision making should examine effects on both outcomes and costs.”

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Stem Cells Help Explore Brain Development In Down Syndrome Patients

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

By reengineering skin cells from individuals with Down syndrome, scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison were able to learn how stem cells develop into dysfunctional brain cells when they contain an extra copy of chromosome 21, the genetic cause of the disorder.

“Even though Down syndrome is very common, it’s surprising how little we know about what goes wrong in the brain,” said Anita Bhattacharyya, a stem cell researcher and co-author of a paper based on the research that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These new cells provide a way to look at early brain development,” she added.

The Wisconsin researchers began by transforming two Down syndrome patients´ skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, which can then be converted into brain cells.

Bhattacharyya said she noticed something unique about the neurons as they were developing.

“They communicate less, are quieter,” she said. “This is new, but it fits with what little we know about the Down syndrome brain.”

The team found that developing neurons in the study had only about 60 percent of the usual number of synapses compared to healthy brain cells. Synapses are the junctures where nerve cells connect with each other and which allow for communication via the transmission of electrical signals.

“This is enough to make a difference,” Bhattacharyya said. “Even if they recovered these synapses later on, you have missed this critical window of time during early development.”

When looking at the genetic activity in the developing cells, the scientists discovered that genes on the extra chromosome 21 were 150 percent more active, yet consistent with the input of an extra chromosome.

However, Bhattacharyya and her colleagues noticed a higher output from 1,500 genes elsewhere in the genome. These genes are responsible for reacting to the oxidative stress that occurs when molecular fragments called free radicals harm cells.

“It’s not surprising to see changes, but the genes that changed were surprising,” she said. “We definitely found a high level of oxidative stress in the Down syndrome neurons.”

“This has been suggested before from other studies, but we were pleased to find more evidence for that,” she continued. “We now have a system we can manipulate to study the effects of oxidative stress and possibly prevent them.”

Bhattacharyya believes that this genetic activity could explain one of the symptoms of Down syndrome — accelerated aging.

“In their 40s, Down syndrome individuals age very quickly,” she said. “They suddenly get gray hair; their skin wrinkles, there is rapid aging in many organs, and a quick appearance of Alzheimer’s disease. Many of these processes may be due to increased oxidative stress, but it remains to be directly tested.”

Bhattacharyya suggested that the evidence of oxidative stress could be especially important because it occurs right from the start in the stem cells.

“This suggests that these cells go through their whole life with oxidative stress,” Bhattacharyya said. “And that might contribute to the death of neurons later on, or increase susceptibility to Alzheimer’s.”

The scientist concluded by noting that, “we could potentially use these cells to test or intelligently design drugs to target symptoms of Down syndrome.”

Rat’s Move Their Eyes In Opposite Directions When Running For Unique View

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Max Planck Institute (MPG) scientists have found that rats move their eyes in opposite directions in both the horizontal and the vertical plane when running. This gives the rats a unique perspective on the world around them.

The team discovered that each rat eye moves in a different direction, depending on the change in the animals’ head position. They analyzed both eyes and found that one of the eye movements exclude the possibility that rats fuse the visual information into a single image, but instead move in a way that enables the space above them to be permanently in view. This unique adaptation helps them deal with the major threat from predatory birds that rodents face in their natural environment.

A rat’s eye position enables it to have a very wide visual field, but making it tougher to acquire three-dimensional vision. The visual system of these animals needs to meet two conflicting demands at the same time, including maximum surveillance and detailed binocular vision. The Max Planck Institute researchers observed and characterized the eye movements of freely moving rats to get a better understanding of this vision system.

The team fitted minuscule cameras weighing only about one gram to the animals’ heads, which could record the lightning-fast eye movements with great precision. The scientists also measured the position and direction of the head to help them reconstruct the rats’ exact line of view at any given time.

The scientists found that although rats process visual information from their eyes through very similar brain pathways to that of other mammals, their eyes move in a totally different way.

“Humans move their eyes in a very stereotypical way for both counteracting head movements and searching around. Both our eyes move together and always follow the same object. In rats, on the other hand, the eyes generally move in opposite directions,” Jason Kerr, from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, explained in a statement.

Kerr and his colleagues also discovered that the eye movements largely depend on the position of the animal’s head.

“When the head points downward, the eyes move back, away from the tip of the nose. When the rat lifts its head, the eyes look forward: cross-eyed, so to speak. If the animal puts its head on one side, the eye on the lower side moves up and the other eye moves down.” Kerr added.

Human eyes must move in the same direction in order to properly see. If there is a deviation measuring less than a single degree in the human eye, it causes double vision. In rats, the opposing eye can vary by as much as 40 degrees in the horizontal plane and up to 60 degrees in the vertical plane.

A rat’s unusual eye movements could have evolved to adapt to the animals’ living conditions. The scientists believe that permanent visibility in the direction of potential airborne attackers increases the animals’ chances of survival.

Another unique trait rats have is their ability to communicate through sniffing.

Scientists from Case Reserve University School of Medicine found that when two rats approach each other, dominance is communicated by more frequent sniffing. The subordinate rat signals its role by sniffing less in the interaction. They said if the subordinate rat sniffed more than it was supposed to, it would evoke an aggressive response.

Decoded Camel Genome To Unveil Secrets Of Evolutionary History

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Researchers have sequenced the genome of a Bactrian camel named Mozart, laying down the foundation for future scientific work on these large desert mammals.
Camels consist of two species, which include the one-humped dromedary and the two-humped Bactrian camel. The animals have the ability to carry heavy loads in harsh desert environments over long distances. They can survive weeks in hostile environments without food or water. Researchers at the Vetmeduni Vienna wanted to learn a bit more about the genetic code of the camel.
Researcher Pamela Burger, who heads one of the few research groups to study camel genetics, was interested in learning about the domestication of camels which took place around 3,000 to 6,000 years ago. Burger and her colleagues believe that the animal´s DNA code could provide clues on the breeding strategies and selection processes that were applied by humans at that time.
The scientists found 116,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genetic sequence of the Bactrian camel. SNPs are single base-pair changes found in a DNA strand that provide the basis for studying relationships among species and between single animals. The genetic relationship between the Bactrian camel and the dromedary camel is a close one. They found that 85 percent of the genomic sequence expressed in the dromedary can be found in the Bactrian camel as well.
“Mozart℠s genome provides us with the basis for further comparative research on other camelids such as dromedary, lama and alpaca,” said Burger, who also authored the study which appeared in the Journal of Heredity.
The lack of basic genetic data on camel species has hampered researchers like Burger from studying the animal’s genome. These genomes will also help scientists understand more about the evolution of the camel and its predecessors, such as how one recently discovered 3.5-million-year-old fossil may have played into its evolutionary family tree.
In March, researchers discovered the fossilized remains of a giant prehistoric species of camel in the far northern regions of Canada. The discovery implies that modern camels are descendants from ancestors which lived within the Canadian Arctic Circle. The paleontologists found 30 fossil fragments of a leg bone that dates back to the mid-Pliocene Epoch period. They believe the creature would have been similar in appearance to current camels, but with a thicker coat to keep it warm.
“We now have a new fossil record to better understand camel evolution, since our research shows that the Paracamelus lineage inhabited northern North America for millions of years, and the simplest explanation for this pattern would be that Paracamelus originated there,” explained paleontologist Dr. Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature.
“So perhaps some specializations seen in modern camels, such as their wide flat feet, large eyes and humps for fat may be adaptations derived from living in a polar environment.”

Breakthrough In Use Of Stem Cells To Treat Spinal Cord Injuries

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
For years, stem-cell based therapies have been described as a potential way to treat spinal cord injuries in humans, and a new study published in the journal Stem Cell Research and Therapy describes an exciting step forward in that pursuit.
According to the report, a single injection of human stem cells was able to induce neuronal regeneration and improved mobility in rats that were afflicted with a severe spinal cord injury.
“This is exciting, especially because, historically, there has been very little to offer patients with acute spinal cord injury,” said co-author Dr. Joseph Ciacci, chief of neurosurgery for the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
The research team observed as the injected rats regained motor skills and experienced a loss of the uncontrollable muscle spasms typically associated with traumatic spinal cord injury.“¯The stem cell therapy also improved the integrity of the spine, allowing for signals to pass through the injury location.
“The primary benefits were improvement in the positioning and control of paws during walking tests and suppression of muscle spasticity,” said Dr. Martin Marsala, a medical doctor and professor at the University of California, San Diego and a specialist in treating spinal injury-related disorders.
In the study, the researchers sorted 42 three-month-old female rats with recently induced spinal compression injuries into one of three groups. The first group received a stem cell injection, the second group received a placebo injection, and the third group was left alone.
Weekly assessments were performed on the three groups over eight weeks following the treatment using a combination of tests. The rats´ motor and sensory functions, presence of muscle spasticity and rigidity were all tested. Using MRI images, visual inspections, and staining techniques, the team also assessed how well the grafted cells had integrated into the rat spines.
The team found that the stem-cell treated mice experienced a progressive improvement in their walking ability, a reduction in muscle spasticity, and improved sensitivity to mechanical and thermal stimuli. The researchers also saw lasting improvements in the structural reliability of previously injured spinal cord sections.
According to Marsala, the grafted cells appear to be both stimulating the rodents´ neuronal regeneration and partially replacing the neurons that were lost.
“Grafted spinal stem cells are rich source of different growth factors which can have a neuroprotective effect and can promote sprouting of nerve fibers of the host neurons,” he explained.
“We have also demonstrated that grafted neurons can develop contacts with the host neurons and, to some extent, restore the connectivity between centers, above and below the injury, which are involved in motor and sensory processing.”
The scientists conducted their experiments using a line of human embryonic stem cells that have been approved for human trials. Marsala said scientists need to develop neural precursors from stem cells, which would eliminate the need for immunosuppression treatments that prevented the rats´ bodies from attacking the foreign cells in his team´s study.
According to the scientists, the next step will be to conduct a small phase 1 trial in order to test for safety and effectiveness with patients who have suffered a thoracic spinal cord injury within the previous one or two years, and who have no motor or sensory function at or below the spinal injury site.

H7N9 Virus Found Resistant To Tamiflu Antiviral Medicine

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Last week the United Nations reported that the 2013 H7N9 bird flu outbreak was under control in China, stating that closures of live poultry markets likely helped in the decline of cases seen since the beginning of May. The report was welcoming news for a disease that has infected more than 130 people and killed at least 36 since first being detected at the end of March.

But now, on a darker note, a newly released paper is suggesting that an antiviral drug used to treat bird flu patients may not be as effective as health officials had hoped, leaving the door open for further illness and possible death. Publishing the paper in The Lancet, the researchers found that the H7N9 virus has become resistant in three out of 14 patients treated with Roche´s Tamiflu at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre.

The resistance was discovered after a gene mutation known to make flu viruses resistant was identified in two patients infected with the 2013 H7N9 flu strain, according to the study. The gene mutation was first discovered in two patients who became the most severely ill out of 14 treated with Tamiflu. The third case of resistance was only spotted after the patient developed the initial infection, suggesting to the report authors that treatment with antivirals may have brought on the mutation.

Tamiflu, which is given in pill form, belongs to a class of medicines known as neuraminidase inhibitors. This class of drug is the only known treatment option for patients with bird flu. Relenza, an inhaled antiviral developed by GlaxoSmithKline, offers the same mode of action.

“The apparent ease with which antiviral resistance emerges in A/H7N9 viruses is concerning; it needs to be closely monitored and considered in future pandemic response plans,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

This is the first official confirmation of resistance to Tamiflu, said the researchers. In the other 11 patients treated with the antiviral drug, throat swabs showed a significant reduction in the amount of virus found, leading to a speedy recovery, according to Zhenghong Yuan of Fudan University, one of the researchers conducting the clinical trials.

“Rates of Tamiflu resistance remain low globally, although Roche takes the issue of resistance very seriously and collaborates with international organizations and authorities to monitor the situation,” Silvia Dobry, a spokeswoman for the Switzerland-based Roche, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

The World Health Organization said in an earlier report that there have been no new cases of bird flu in China since about May 8, but it is continuing to monitor the situation closely.

Studies into the cause of the virus have established it had been transmitted from birds — most likely chickens — to people. But experts have yet to identify the “reservoir” source of the circulating virus that has led to chickens contracting it and periodically passing it on to humans, reports Reuters.

Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer at the UN´s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said last week that the “economic impacts of H7N9 have been astounding.”

“Over $6.5 billion has been lost in the agriculture sector because of prices, consumer confidence and trade. So poultry industry losses in China have been high,” she said, citing information released by China´s Agriculture Ministry.

Science

New Way To Model Biological Molecules Caught With A Flash Of X-rays

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

To learn how biological molecules like proteins function, scientists must first understand their structures. Almost as important is understanding how the structures change, as molecules in the native state do their jobs.

Existing methods for solving structure largely depend on crystallized molecules, and the shapes of more than 80,000 proteins in a static state have been solved this way. The majority of the two million proteins in the human body can´t be crystallized, however. For most of them, even their low-resolution structures are still unknown.

Their chance to shine may have come at last, thanks to new techniques developed by Peter Zwart and his colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy´s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), working with collaborators from Arizona State University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and DOE´s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The new method promises a more informative look at large biological molecules in their native, more fluid state.

The researchers describe their results in two recent papers in Foundations of Crystallography and in Physical Review Letters.

Diffraction before destruction

A key factor in new ways of looking at biomolecules is the data created by free-electron lasers (FELs) such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, whose powerful x“‘ray pulses are measured in quadrillionths of a second. These pulses are faster than a molecule can rotate, and the experimental data reflects the state of the molecule frozen in time.

“It´s a technique called ℠diffract before destroy,´ because the data is collected before the particle literally blows apart,” says Zwart, a member of the Lab´s Physical Biosciences Division, and the science lead for the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology at the Advanced Light Source. “FELs have shown they can derive structures from single particles, each hit with a single pulse, but there are major challenges to this approach.”

Instead of single particles, Zwart and his colleagues include many particles in each shot. When analyzed by computer programs, the data from the different diffraction patterns can be combined to provide detailed insights into the structures the molecules adopt in solution.

The technique is called fluctuation x-ray scattering (fXS), and Zwart and his colleagues have shown that data obtained this way with free-electron lasers can yield low-resolution shapes of biomolecules in close to their natural state, with much greater confidence than is currently possible with less powerful synchrotron light sources.

“Our algorithm starts with a trial model and modifies it by randomly adding or subtracting volume until the shape of the model achieves the optimum fit with the data,” Zwart says. This trial-and-error optimization technique, tested on known configurations at the LCLS, can resolve the shapes of individual macromolecules with fXS data alone.

It´s not only the structures of molecules taken one at a time that can be solved this way. Zwart and his former postdoc Gang Chen, working with Dongsheng Li of PNNL, have shown that data from mixtures of different kinds of molecules can be untangled to provide clues on the structure of the individual components, forming a basis for understanding the dynamic behavior of large biological molecules working together in solution.

By understanding their structural changes, Zwart and his colleagues are developing fluctuation x-ray scattering as an indispensable tool for determining how mixtures of different proteins behave independently or in concert.

—

On The Net:

UN Warns Of Decline In Farm Biodiversity

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Conservationists have been warning about the loss of biodiversity in the wild for years, but according to“¯Zakri Abdul Hamid, head of the United Nations´ new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), diversity loss is also occurring under the watchful eyes of the world´s farmers.
In Zakri´s first public remarks as head of the new panel, the Malaysian science official told a conference of 450 experts in Trondheim, Norway that farmed plants and bred livestock are experiencing sizable losses in biodiversity.
“The loss of biodiversity is happening faster and everywhere, even among farm animals,” Zakri said.“¯”The good news is the rate of decline is dropping but the latest data classify 22 percent of domesticated breeds at risk of extinction.”
Some older breeds of cows or goats have become unpopular because they produce less milk or meat than newer breeds. Some breeds unintentionally become scarce because farmers aren´t able to discern the characteristics of a rare breed. Experts consider a livestock breed rare and endangered when its population drops below 1,000 animals.
Zakri noted that 75 percent of the genetic diversity among crops was lost in the last century as farmers around the world switched to mass-produced high-yielding and genetically-uniform varieties. While there are 30,000 edible plant species, only 30 crops account for 95 percent of what humans consume. About 60 percent of these crops include grains such as rice, wheat, maize, millet and sorghum.
“The decline in the diversity of crops and animals is occurring in tandem with the need to sharply increase world food production and as a changing environment makes it more important than ever to have a large genetic pool to enable organisms to withstand and adapt to new conditions,” Zakri said.
In his speech, Zakri expanded his remarks to include biodiversity on a larger scale and acknowledged the value of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, a UN-adopted framework that contains five strategic priorities and 20 specific targets for biodiversity to be achieved by 2020. He said the targets would be a valuable start in developing the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that would follow the UN´s Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which are set to expire in 2015.
“The Aichi Targets are an important contribution to the SDG process and it is up to us to ensure that they are fully considered,” he said. “I would argue, though, that advancing towards equity and sustainable development requires us to go beyond.”
“We need to meet the fundamental challenge of decoupling economic growth from natural resource consumption, which is forecast to triple by 2050 unless humanity can find effective ways to do more and better with less,” Zakri added. “There are no simple blueprints for addressing a challenge as vast and complex as this but it’s imperative we commit to that idea.”
“We need to urge more economists to do the hard but valuable work of pricing the seemingly priceless. Ensuring these ideas are properly reflected in the SDGs could provide the type of support and encouragement needed,” he concluded.

Early Recognition Important When Diagnosing Motor Skill Delays In Children

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Delays in motor skills are common among children; but, according to a new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), early recognition of delays, such as sitting, standing and speaking, can help optimize positive outcomes.

Publishing the report in the Jun 2013 print issue of Pediatrics (online May 27), experts are encouraging pediatricians to evaluate young children who are suspected of having motor delays during recommended developmental screenings at nine, 18 and 30 months of age, and also at four years.

With early recognition, children have a substantially better outlook and parents have more support available to them.

“Identifying children with delays and motor abnormalities, theoretically or hopefully would set them on a better trajectory,” Meghann Lloyd, motor development researcher at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), told Genevra Pittman of Reuters Health in an interview.

This is “a really big step forward for the field,” added Lloyd, who was not involved with the report.

The report calls for a variety of motor skills that should be observed during screening, such as rolling over, crawling, walking, climbing, grasping objects and scribbling. The report authors said that both parents and their pediatrician should be involved in looking for signs of developmental motor skill delays, and that it is important for pediatricians to address concerns of the child´s family.

During exams, pediatricians should measure head size and look at muscle tone, reflexes and eye movements, which can be signs of motor skill delays. Children who are diagnosed with a developmental disorder should have access to early intervention and special education resources.

“The AAP“¦ recognized that we as a profession weren’t necessarily doing a good job screening for motor problems,” Garey Noritz, MD, FAAP, report coauthor from Nationwide Children´s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told Pittman.

Diagnosing developmental delays early on is key to positive outcomes in the future. The longer a child goes before being diagnosed, the harder it is for them to overcome their problems. Noritz noted that two quite common motor-related diseases — cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy — can be picked up and treated earlier than they are now.

“We’re hoping that people can get to a specialist more quickly and thus get diagnosed more quickly, but that primary care clinicians at the same time as they’re looking for a diagnosis, will refer (kids) to therapy,” he said.

“This report provides pediatricians with a quick and easy approach to the detection of motor delays in children,” said Nancy Murphy, MD, FAAP, co-author. “By watching kids move and play during physical examinations, you can quickly detect those who need a bit more attention, and early recognition can lead to medical and functional interventions that optimize outcomes.”

As kids develop it is important for parents to know the difference between normal growth and developmental delay.

Lloyd told Pittman that if a child is a few months behind in learning to walk, for example, parents shouldn´t be too overly concerned. But longer delays, or when other motor problems are also noticed, it may be a good time to visit the pediatrician, she said.

Having poor motor skills in general “sets you on a trajectory for low levels of physical activity, which of course is related to obesity,” she told Reuters Health. “The prevention of these delays or the promotion of motor ability can actually impact your health for your lifespan.”

People Maintain Healthy Habits Even When Tired And Stressed

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Bad habits are easy to fall into when we are stressed and tired, but a novel study has shown that a stressed mind and exhaustive body can also cause people to retain good habits.

Researchers from University of Southern California (USC) have provided important evidence that we do not always fall into a negative routine where it becomes harder to “take control of our actions when we´re already stressed and tired.” Publishing a paper in the June issue of the American Psychological Association´s (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers found that it is just as easy for us to default to positive habits when we become tired and stressed out.

Wendy Wood and David Neal of USC found that people are just as likely to eat a healthy breakfast or go to the gym when they are down and out as they are to “self-sabotage.”

“When we try to change our behavior, we strategize about our motivation and self-control. But what we should be thinking about instead is how to set up new habits. Habits persist even when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to exert self-control,” said Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC,

Wood, who holds joint appointments in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Marshall School of Business, is an expert on habits (automatic behaviors that make it possible for people to function). Without habits, people would have likely have to relearn things each new day, such as brushing their teeth or finding their way to work.

Habits play a significant role in our health, said Wood, who is also vice dean for social sciences at USC Dornsife. Bad habits, like being idle, overeating and smoking are significant risk factors for major disease. Habits such as these are what drive disease prevention efforts and studies, but the research from Wood and Neal shows that it may be more important to know how to let go.

“Everybody gets stressed. The whole focus on controlling your behavior may not actually be the best way to get people to meet goals,” Wood said. “If you are somebody who doesn’t have a lot of willpower, our study showed that habits are even more important.”

To put their theory to the test, Wood and her colleagues conducted several experiments, including healthy and unhealthy eating, exercise and reading.

In these experiments, the researchers followed students for a semester, even during exams. They found that during testing periods, when students became more stressed and sleep-deprived, it seemed they were likely to stick to old habits, rather than dispense more energy to try something new.

Students who generally snacked on unhealthy foods during regular school, did so even more during exams. But the same was true of healthy snackers: those who habitually ate a healthy breakfast or snack during the semester tended to stick to that routine when under pressure.

Similarly, students who had a habit of reading the morning paper or editorials each day during the semester were more likely to continue performing this daily habit during testing — even when they were constrained for time. The same was true for regular gym-goers.

People may assume that when students are stressed or short on time, they are likely to fall into unhealthy habits most of the time. But the research indicates that they are more likely to continue to do what they always have done, be it good or bad. “Habits don’t require much willpower and thought and deliberation,” explained Wood.

So it makes sense that those who generally stick to healthy habits to begin with, will continue to maintain their healthy habits even when they become stressed and tired, just as those who typically follow unhealthy lifestyle habits continue to do the same.

“So, the central question for behavior change efforts should be, how can you form healthy, productive habits? What we know about habit formation is that you want to make the behavior easy to perform, so that people repeat it often and it becomes part of their daily routine,” Wood concluded.

A study published last year in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that children can learn healthy eating habits from their parents. Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) found that when parents show by example, rather than by ordering, they are more likely able to integrate healthy eating into their child´s diet.

Such measures may also work well for instilling other healthy habits, such as exercise. It may be more important to start teaching our kids now about positive healthy habits instead of letting them find and build their own habits once they fly the coop.

Amphibian Populations Declining More Rapidly Than Previously Reported

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The number of frogs, toads and salamanders in the US could be falling at an even more severe and widespread rate than previously believed, and even amphibian populations thought to be stable are actually on the decline, according to new research for the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The study, which was published earlier this week in the journal PLOS ONE, is believed to be the first-ever estimate of how quickly amphibians across the country are disappearing from their habitats. In the study, USGS scientists and their colleagues found dropping numbers of amphibians in populations everywhere, from the swamps of the southeast to high mountain ranges like the Rockies and the Sierras.

“Amphibians have been a constant presence in our planet’s ponds, streams, lakes and rivers for 350 million years or so, surviving countless changes that caused many other groups of animals to go extinct,” USGS Director Suzette Kimball said in a statement Wednesday. “This is why the findings of this study are so noteworthy; they demonstrate that the pressures amphibians now face exceed the ability of many of these survivors to cope.”

Furthermore, the USGS study reports that the frogs, toads and lizards population numbers are even dropping in supposed safe-havens — locations like wildlife refuges and protected national parks.

“The declines of amphibians in these protected areas are particularly worrisome because they suggest that some stressors — such as diseases, contaminants and drought — transcend landscapes,” added USGS ecologist and lead author Michael Adams. “The fact that amphibian declines are occurring in our most protected areas adds weight to the hypothesis that this is a global phenomenon with implications for managers of all kinds of landscapes, even protected ones.”

According to the USGS, populations of all amphibian types examined disappeared from their habitats at an average annual rate of 3.7 percent. If that rate remains unchanged, the researchers believe that those species would vanish from half of their current habitats in approximately two decades.

The news is even bleaker for amphibians facing the possibility of extinction. Amphibian types on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species have disappeared from their studied habitats at a rate of 11.6 percent each year, the agency reported, and would disappear from half of their currently occupied habitats in about six years.

“Even though these declines seem small on the surface, they are not,” Adams explained. “Small numbers build up to dramatic declines with time. We knew there was a big problem with amphibians, but these numbers are both surprising and of significant concern.”

The scientists behind the research analyzed a total of nine years worth of data involving 48 different amphibian species at 34 different locations. They studied the rate of change in the number of ponds, lakes and other habitat features occupied by amphibians, but did not examine possible causes of the decreasing populations.

The study was conducted under the auspices of the USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI), which was formed in order to research amphibian trends and causes of decline. It discovered that amphibians appeared to be experiencing the most severe declines among vertebrates, but that all major groups of freshwater animals were having similar issues.

Potatoes Provide One Of The Best Nutritional Values Amongst Vegetables

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editor

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

When it comes to produce, potatoes are actually one of the best nutritional values on the market, according to a new study published in the latest edition of the journal PLOS ONE.

Dr. Adam Drewnowski, Director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington, and colleagues reported their findings after creating an “affordability index” of 98 different vegetables and five vegetable subgroups, including dark green, orange/red, starchy, legumes (beans and peas) and “other” vegetables.

They used a combination of nutrient profiling methods and national food price data in order to create their affordability index, and found that dark green vegetables had the highest nutrient density scores, but that starchy vegetables (including potatoes) and beans provided better nutritional value once cost was accounted for.

Dr. Drewnowski´s team also reported that potatoes were the second most affordable source of potassium amongst the most frequently consumed types of vegetables, behind only beans. Furthermore, they reported that potatoes provided one of the lowest cost options for fiber, vitamin C and magnesium — and that potatoes and beans were said to be the lowest-cost sources of potassium and fiber, which have been called nutrients of concern by the USDA.

“The ability to identify affordable, nutrient dense vegetables is important to families focused on stretching their food dollar as well as government policy makers looking to balance nutrition and economics for food programs such as the school lunch program and WIC,” Dr. Drewnowski said in a statement. “And, when it comes to affordable nutrition, it’s hard to beat potatoes.”

The research was funded by the United States Potato Board (USPB), and in a statement the group said that the report´s findings add to “the growing database of nutrition science that supports potatoes in a healthful diet“¦ one medium-size (5.3 ounce) skin-on potato contains just 110 calories per serving, boasts more potassium (620g) than a banana (450g), provides almost half the daily value of vitamin C (45 percent), and contains no fat, sodium or cholesterol.”

Back in April, research presented at the annual Experimental Biology 2013 conference in Boston, Massachusetts points to a link between consuming white potatoes and an increased intake of potassium.

The study revealed that, for each additional kilocalorie of white potatoes consumed by adults 19 years of age and older, there was a corresponding 1.6 mg increase in potassium intake as well as a 1.7 mg increase among children and teenagers between the ages of two and 18.

“Very few Americans get enough potassium, which is a key nutrient that helps control blood pressure,” explained Maureen Storey, president/CEO of the Alliance for Potato Research and Education (APRE) and co-author of that study. “Our study shows that the white potato is a particularly nutrient-rich vegetable that significantly increases potassium intake among adults, teens and children.”

App Turns Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Mini Lab

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editor

[WATCH VIDEO: Smartphone Biosensor Demonstration]

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Smartphones are increasingly becoming more beneficial as tools for uses other than what they were originally intended for. While people can still be found talking and texting more than ever, many have found that pushing a few buttons on their mobile devices helps them do much more than checking their e-mail or finding specific information over the Web.

Researchers have previously developed apps that turn your smartphone into a remote that can control everything from your TV to your alarm system. While there are particularly hundreds of other apps on the market that can do similar things, one development team has created an app that can turn your phone into a miniaturized mobile laboratory.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new cradle and app for the smartphone, specifically the iPhone, which uses the phone´s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other organisms.

Such a system could enable researchers to conduct on-the-spot tracking in the field, allowing for instant measurements of ground contamination, combine GPS and biosensing data to map the spread of pathogens, and even provide immediate medical diagnostic tests and food contaminant checks.

Study leader Brian Cunningham, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering at U of I, said his team is interested in external biodetection methods — meaning tests that are not performed in the lab setting.

“Smartphones are making a big impact on our society — the way we get our information, the way we communicate. And they have really powerful computing capability and imaging. A lot of medical conditions might be monitored very inexpensively and non-invasively using mobile platforms like phones. They can detect molecular things, like pathogens, disease biomarkers or DNA, things that are currently only done in big diagnostic labs with lots of expense and large volumes of blood,” said Cunningham in a statement.

The cradle contains a series of smaller versions of the optical components found in much larger and more expensive lab devices. The wedge-shaped cradle holds the phone´s camera in alignment with the optical components. A photonic crystal at the heart of the biosensor acts like a mirror and only reflects one wavelength of light while the rest of the spectrum passes through. When biological matter attaches to the crystal, the reflected color will shift from a shorter wavelength to a longer one.

The iPhone biosensor also contains a normal microscope slide coated with photonic material. The slide is primed to react to a specific target molecule. The photonic crystal slide is inserted into a slot on the cradle and the spectrum measured. The reflecting wavelength shows up as a black gap in the spectrum. After exposure, the spectrum is re-measured. The degree of shift in the reflected wavelength then tells the app how much of the target molecule is a sample.

The test takes just a few minutes and the app can walk the user through the process step by step. Although the cradle only holds $200 worth of optical components, it is just as accurate as $50,000 models in the lab, making the device not only portable, but affordable and effective. The team notes it will work well for fieldwork, especially for researchers in developing nations who otherwise do not have the means to utilize expensive lab equipment.

In a paper published in the journal Lab on a Chip, the team demonstrated how the cradle and app work on an immune system protein. They maintained that the slide could be primed for any type of biological matter easily. The team is working to improve the manufacturing process and is working on a cradle and app for other phones, such as those running Android OS. The team hopes to begin making the cradles available by next year.

The group is also working with other groups across the I of U campus to explore other uses for the iPhone biosensor. Cunningham and his colleagues received a grant from the NSF to expand the research and range of experiments that can be performed with the software and smartphone.

The team is working closely with Steven Lumetta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and of computer science at the U of I and food science and human nutrition professor Juan Andrade to further develop the biosensor technology.

“It´s our goal to expand the range of biological experiments that can be performed with a phone and its camera being used as a spectrometer,” Cunningham said. “In our first paper, we showed the ability to use a photonic crystal biosensor, but in our NSF grant, we´re creating a multi-mode biosensor. We´ll use the phone and one cradle to perform four of the most widely used biosensing assays that are available.”

Spectacular Triple Conjunction This Weekend

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editor

[ Watch the Video: ScienceCasts: Sunset Triangle ]
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
Fans of stargazing are in for a treat this weekend. Over the next several days the planets, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury will approach each other in the fading sunlight to form a triple conjunction — where three bodies appear to converge in the sky.
The events will culminate on the evening of the 26th, and will appear to form a triangle just above the horizon. The best time to see it will be about 30 — 60 minutes after the Sun sets below the horizon, while the orange glow still hangs in the sky.
The easiest of the planets to see is Venus, as it is very bright, visible even before the Sun is completely set. If you can identify that planet first, then its companions should be relatively easy to pick out, as they emerge from darkness once the Sun´s light fades.
The three worlds will appear in a region of the sky less than three degrees apart. (For comparison the Moon is about half a degree in diameter.) You don´t have to wait until Sunday to see the planets approaching, as they have already begun their trek, so be on the lookout each sunset and watch them converge.
On the 27th the planets will begin to move apart from their tightest compactness, but Venus and Jupiter will continue to approach each other and on the evening of the 28th, the two will pass within one degree of each other.
This is the first such conjunction since May 2011, and won´t occur again until October 2015. So if you are a fan of stargazing, this will be your last chance for a while.

New Visual IQ Test Eliminates Cultural Bias Of Intelligence

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Testing for intelligence can be a tricky proposition, with the tests themselves often being the product of cultural or intellectual biases.

Researchers from the University at Rochester believe they have found a simple, context-free visual test that can determine a person´s IQ regardless of cultural background, according to their report in the journal Current Biology.

“Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t really track it back to one part of the brain,” said senior author Duje Tadin, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent.”

The team began their work by asking volunteers to watch a series of videos showing black-and-white bars moving either left or right on a computer screen. The bars were shown in three sizes, from a thumb-sized central circle to an area about the size of an outstretched hand.

As the volunteers were asked to determine which direction the bars were moving, the researchers recorded how long it took the individual to correctly perceive the bars´ motion. Participants also took a standard intelligence test.

As they hypothesized, the researchers found that individuals with a high IQ were able pick up the movement of small objects faster than individuals with a low IQ.

“Being ‘quick witted’ and ‘quick on the draw’ generally go hand in hand,” said Michael Melnick, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

However, when tests involved the larger images of moving bars, those with higher IQ scores were the slowest to respond.

“From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse,” Melnick said.

“There is something about the brains of high-IQ individuals that prevents them from quickly seeing large, background-like motions,” Tadin added.

According to the scientists, the inability to perceive large moving images is a marker for the brain’s ability to suppress background motion. In most scenarios, suppressing background movement is essential for processing visual information.

“We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion,” said Tadin. “This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs.”

The scientists stressed that their results were consistent, even after switching to a second set of volunteers and a more comprehensive IQ test. While the first set of experiments found a 64 percent correlation between background suppression and IQ, the larger and more comprehensive second set produced a 71 percent correlation.

“In our first experiment, the effect for motion was so strong,” recalls Tadin, “that I really thought this was a fluke.”

According to the researchers, the results show this vision test could remove some of the cultural limitations associated with standard IQ tests.

“Because the test is simple and non-verbal, it will also help researchers better understand neural processing in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” said co-author Loisa Bennetto, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

Archaeologists Discover Several Thousand Ancient Cave Paintings In Mexico

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Archaeologists have discovered several thousand paintings in caves and ravines of the Sierra de San Carlos, Municipality of Burgos, Tamaulipas. The 4,926 paintings found were made by at least three groups of hunter-gatherers in the region. The paintings are anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, astronomical and abstract.

Archaeologist Gustavo Ramirez, who led the team, said the paintings are important because it documents the presence of pre-Hispanic groups in Burgos, where before it was said that there was nothing living there.

Ramirez said the team still needs to analyze the cultural component of the paintings. In the Indian Cave the team found depictions of weapons used for hunting, which have not been found in the rock art at Tamaulipas.

Gustavo said the images offer up a look at nomadic activities focused on hunting, fishing and gathering. Some of the images also hint at the culture practicing religion and understanding astronomy. Other images represent the vegetation in the region, as well as some animals such as deer and lizards.

“First, the site is identified, then limited by panels are divided into sets and finally recorded the figures. Most of these paintings have an amazing degree of conservation,” Ramirez said in a statement.

He said the nomadic groups used colors such as yellow, red, white and black. They were able to create these colors using organic dyes and materials. The team will need to perform a chemical study to determine the precise components of the colors. Ramirez said sampling these pigments would allow the team to approximate ratings through chemical analysis or radiocarbon.

Archaeologist Martha Garcia said they researched archives, chronicles and reports from colonial time to try and identify the potential authors of the cave paintings. However, they found “no records of these nomadic groups.” She added that groups that inhabited the mountains in this region are only known by the nicknames they were given by the conquistadors, friars and other Indians who accompanied them.

“These groups escaped the Spanish rule for 200 years because they fled to the Sierra de San Carlos where they had water, plants and animals to feed themselves,” she told BBC.

A team of international researchers who investigated about 50 cave paintings in 11 different caves in northern Spain said last year that the art could have started as early as 40,000 years ago, making Neanderthals the first possible cave painters. They found the oldest of the paintings was at least 40,800 years old.

Images Below: The archaeologist Martha Garcia Sanchez announced this research during the Second Colloquium of Historical Archeology. The images suggest that the activities of the nomadic focused on hunting, fishing and gathering. Credit: Mexican National Institute of Anthropology (NIAH)

Schools Should Be Doing More To Get Students Physically Active

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Public schools who feel the pressure to perform academically at a level to hit certain testing targets are often tempted to shift their focus from extracurricular activities to the core subjects.

Unfortunately, many school systems see physical education as an extracurricular activity and therefore have reduced the amount of time students are given to not only be active during the day, but learn valuable lessons about healthy lifestyles.

Today a new report from the Institute of Medicine calls for all schools to offer 60 minutes of physical activity every day to their students. As these students spend several hours a day at school, this could provide them with enough activity to carry through the week and begin building healthy habits to carry on through adulthood.

According to the report, only half of America´s students receive the proper amount of physical activity each day. This could be corrected by daily physical activities, breaks, classroom exercises, after school events or simple recess. The report calls upon the US Department of Education (ED) to enact these changes in America´s schools.

“Schools are critical for the education and health of our children,” Harold W. Kohl III, professor of epidemiology and kinesiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health (SPH) and chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

“They already provide key services such as health screenings, immunizations, and nutritious meals. Daily physical activity is as important to children´s health and development as these other health-related services, and providing opportunities for physical activity should be a priority for all schools, both through physical education and other options.”

According to Kohl III and report authors, schools should think of physical education as a core academic subject and therefore give it the attention it deserves. There are some states which have a daily physical activity requirement, but no nationwide policy exists to ensure school-aged children are being active. This report recommends schools offer 30 minutes of activity to elementary students and 45 minutes to middle and high school students. This time shouldn´t only be spent in the classroom learning about physical education; at least half of this time should be spent in moderate to vigorous activity, says the report. Additionally the report claims students should be given ample opportunity to be active in other aspects of school life, be it extra curricular activities or in school events. In other words, no child should find themselves wanting for physical activity.

As a corollary, the report cites research which found that being active can even improve academic performance, thereby increasing test scores on which schools are so intently focused.

For instance, last March a report from the GENYOUth Foundation, National Dairy Council (NDC), the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the American School Health Association (ASHA) found that students who were physically active and ate nutritious meals performed better at standardized testing, particularly in math and reading.

Today´s report suggests students be given a variety of physical activities to engage in, including aerobic and resistance exercises. These activities can be in short bursts or longer durations, so long as the students are up and active. The report also calls for frequent breaks in class to get students moving and keep them focused. Furthermore, the report says recess should never be revoked as a form of punishment or replaced with extra classwork or homework.

Science

Determining How Nature’s Benefits Link To Human Well-being

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Michigan State University

What people take from nature — water, food, timber, inspiration, relaxation — are so abundant, it seems self-evident. Until you try to quantitatively understand how and to what extent they contribute to humans.

In today’s world, where competition for and degradation of natural resources increases globally, it becomes ever more crucial to quantify the value of ecosystem services — the precise term that defines nature’s benefits, and even more important to link how different types of ecosystem services affect various components of human well-being.

Scientists at Michigan State University’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), in two parallel papers published in this week’s journal PLOS ONE, develop an entirely new integrated approach to quantify human dependence on ecosystem services and human well-being so as to promote the understanding of the linkages between them — an important step toward improved understanding, monitoring and management of coupled human and natural systems.

Understanding how human and natural systems interact is enormously important,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and CSIS director. “Climate change, energy and food insecurity, biodiversity loss and water shortages all have raised the stakes. If we can’t quantify the complex relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being, both ecosystems and humans will suffer and will not be sustainable.”

Wu Yang, a CSIS doctoral student, went beyond the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by creating two novel index systems for quantifying human dependence on ecosystem services and human well-being from ecosystem services. The trick on one hand, he said, was to come up with ways to represent the benefits people gained from these resources, as well as any socioeconomic benefits that are not gained specifically from nature. On the other hand, it was to design a reliable instrument to quantify different components of human well-being that could be linked and integrated with the index of dependence on ecosystem services in models.

“If you don’t understand the linkages, you’re not going to be able to sustain the flow of those benefits to human society,” Yang said. “Thus, we’ve developed and empirically validated our new methods, and made these methods as general as possible so they can be applied to many other coupled human and natural systems across the globe.”

Wolong Nature Reserve in the southwestern Sichuan Province of China, the center’s “excellent laboratory” to study coupled human and natural systems, was particularly suited for testing the new methods because it was close to the epicenter of the catastrophic 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which dramatically changed local households’ dependence on ecosystem services and human well-being in a short time. Because CSIS scientists had studied the area for almost two decades, they had rich long-term data and local knowledge to evaluate the relationships between people and ecosystem services.

The methodologies are presented in two interrelated papers.

The first paper is “Going beyond the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: An index system of human-dependence on ecosystem services,” by Yang, CSIS member Thomas Dietz, professor of environmental science and policy, sociology, and animal studies;, Wei Liu, former CSIS doctoral student now a postdoctoral fellow at IIASA in Laxenburg, Austria; Junyan Luo, CSIS research associate; and Jack Liu.

The second paper is “Going beyond the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: An index system of human well-being” by Yang, Dietz, Daniel Kramer, associate professor in fisheries and wildlife and James Madison College; Xiaodong Chen, former CSIS doctoral student now on faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Jack Liu.

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Dog Owner Homes Are Bacteria-Ridden – And That’s Not Necessarily A Bad Thing

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Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Man´s best friend could be his immune system´s worst enemy, suggests a new report in the journal PLOS ONE. Or maybe not.

According to a recently published study from researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Colorado, Boulder, people who live with a pet dog harbor more types of bacteria in their homes than those who do not — and that includes species of bacteria that are rarely found in dog-free households.

“We wanted to know what variables influence the microbial ecosystems in our homes, and the biggest difference we’ve found so far is whether you own a dog,” said co-author Rob Dunn, an associate professor of biology at NC State.

“We can tell whether you own a dog based on the bacteria we find on your television screen or pillow case,” Dunn said. “For example, there are bacteria normally found in soil that are 700 times more common in dog-owning households than in those without dogs.”

While a massive influx of bacteria may seem like a nightmare to the compulsive cleaners among us, some research suggests that it may actually hold benefits for canine lovers. For example, pregnant women who have a pet dog are less likely to have children with allergies. This phenomenon hasn´t been proven as a cause-and-effect relationship, but some researchers speculate that it may be due to the pregnant woman’s exposure to a wider range of microbes.

In the study, 40 volunteers sampled nine common surfaces in their home using sterile swabs: a television screen, kitchen counter, refrigerator, toilet seat, cutting board, pillow case, an exterior door handle, and the door frames on both interior and exterior doors. The team then used DNA sequencing techniques on the swabs to determine which microorganisms were present.

After finding over 7,700 types of bacteria in the homes, researchers grouped the sampled surfaces into three categories: surfaces we touch, food surfaces and places that gather dust. Each category tended to have its own specific set of bacteria. For example, refrigerators, kitchen counters and cutting boards all had similar food-related bacteria species, while doorknobs, pillow cases and toilet seats had microorganisms more closely related to human skin.

“We leave a microbial ‘fingerprint’ on everything we touch,” Dunn explained. “Sometimes those microbes come from our skin, sometimes they’re oral bacteria and — as often as not — they’re human fecal bacteria.”

According to the authors´ conclusion, the different ℠habitat´ categories showed much more variation than different homes.

“This makes sense,” Dunn said. “Humans have been living in houses for thousands of years, which is sufficient time for organisms to adapt to living in particular parts of houses.”

“We know, for example, that there is a species that only lives in hot-water heaters,” he added. “We deposit these bacterial hitchhikers in different ways in different places, and they thrive or fail depending on their adaptations.”

The team is currently processing another 40 homes and preparing for a national survey of 1,300 homes across the United States.

“The larger sample size will help us better understand the range of variables that influence these microbial ecosystems,” Dunn said. “Does it matter if you have kids or live in an apartment? We expect the microbial populations of homes in deserts to be different from the populations of homes in Manhattan, but no one knows if that’s true. We want to find out.”

Groundbreaking 3D-Printed Device Saves Baby’s Life

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editor

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Using 3D printing technology and a little ingenuity, doctors at the University of Michigan´s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital were able to help an infant with a collapsed bronchus to breathe by constructing a life-saving device.

“Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive,” April Gionfriddo said about her now 20-month-old son, Kaiba. “At that point, we were desperate. Anything that would work, we would take it and run with it.”

Kaiba had a blockage of the airway to the lungs, called tracheobronchomalacia. The rare condition affects about 1 in 2,200 babies born in the US. Many infants grow out of the condition by the time they become two or three years old.

However, Kaiba reportedly stopped breathing every day and doctors told his parents to expect the worst.

Glenn Green and Scott Hollister, two doctors at the UMich, had already been designing plans for a synthetic trachea using a 3D printer. After receiving emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the team used high-resolution imaging and computer-aided design to make a custom splint for Kaiba.

“We were all a little nervous,” Green told NPR´s affiliate in Ann Arbor. “Scott Hollister made a whole bunch of different sizes (of the splint) in case something unexpected happened or something fell on the floor, because there was no other box that you could go to for more.”

After the procedure, Green said the team was surprised by the effectiveness of the tiny splint.

“It was amazing,” he remarked. “As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time and we knew he was going to be OK.”

“There have been patients before that have had similar problems that have died on us, so it´s been a very scary problem to deal with,” Green said. “We had done a fair amount of preliminary work in devising the splint, and so when an opportunity came for a child that had this problem, we were ready to go with it.”

The split is designed to support Kaiba´s air passages long enough for his body to grow the natural structures around it. According to the doctors, the splint will naturally dissolve into the body after serving its purpose.

According to the doctors, the process can readily be adapted to design and create other medical devices. Green and Hollister said they have built and tested patient specific ear and nose structures in pre-clinical trials. Hollister has also used the technology to model bone structures.

“Our vision at the University of Michigan Health System is to create the future of health care through discovery,” Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, CEO of the U-M Health System, said in a statement. “This collaboration between faculty in our Medical School and College of Engineering is an incredible demonstration of how we achieve that vision, translating research into treatments for our patients.”

The doctors´ groundbreaking and lifesaving design and procedure are detailed today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

To April Gionfriddo, the doctors´ innovations can be summed up very simply.

“It means the world to me — just knowing that something actually worked and was able to save our son´s life,” she said. “It just means everything to me.”

European Space Agency Opens Center To Watch For Near-Earth Objects

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editor

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Strengthening Europe´s contribution to the global hunt for asteroids and other natural objects that may strike Earth, the European Space Agency (ESA) inaugurated the NEO Coordination Center this week.

Asteroids or comets — ranging in size from meters to tens of kilometers — that orbit the Sun and whose orbits come close to that of Earth are known as Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs. Over 600,000 asteroids are currently identified in our Solar System, and nearly 10,000 of those are NEOs.

On February 15th of this year, we received dramatic proof that some of these NEOs can strike Earth when an unknown object thought to be 55 -65 feet in diameter exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia. The explosion had 20-30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, with a resulting shockwave that caused widespread damage and injuries. This NEO was the largest known natural object to have entered the atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event.

A network of European NEO data sources and information providers being established under ESA´s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Program will use the NEO Coordination Center as a center access point. The SSA also opened the Space Weather Coordination Center in Brussels last month.

Thomas Reiter, Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations, joined with Augusto Cramarossa, Italian Delegate to the ESA Council, and Claudio Portelli, Italian Delegate to the SSA Program, both of ASI, the Italian space agency to formally inaugurate the Center, which is located at ESRIN, ESA´s center for Earth observation.

The center will federate new and existing European assists, systems and sensors to create a future NEO system, which will support the integration and initial operation of ESA´s NEO information distribution network.

The Center will also serve as a focus point for scientific studies aimed at improving NEO warning services and providing near-realtime data to customers, including scientific bodies, international organizations and decision-makers.

Global Obesity Epidemic Due To Love Affair With Junk Food

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Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
The world is apparently filled with “junk food junkies.” Those are the findings of new research presented today that suggests high-fructose corn syrup could cause behavioral reactions in rats. These reactions are reportedly similar to those produced by drugs of abuse such as cocaine, and could help explain, at least partly, the current global obesity epidemic.
The results were presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting by addiction expert Francesco Leri, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Guelph.
Leri´s “Food Addiction” hypothesis suggests that individuals could be addicted to food just as one is addicted to drugs. He tested his hypothesis by studying the response of rats to foods that contained unnaturally high concentrations of sugar, fats and taste enhancers, including high-fructose corn syrup.
“We have evidence in laboratory animals of a shared vulnerability to develop preferences for sweet foods and for cocaine,” Dr. Leri said in a statement.
He suggests that the increased availability of highly-palatable foods could explain the high incidence of obesity around the world. Yet he noted that simple availability does not explain why some individuals are obese while others are not when given the same amount of food.
Instead Leri has suggested that one important factor could be individual differences in a vulnerability to addiction. The study noted that consumption of cocaine suggests that while many individuals may try these narcotics only a small percentage actually become addicted.
Leri´s research looked at the behavioral, chemical and neurobiological changes induced by consumption of “addictive foods” in the bodies and brains of rats.
“We are not rats, but our children do not think too much about the impact of sweets on their brain and behavior,” Leri added. “There is now convincing neurobiological and behavioral evidence indicating that addiction to food is possible. Our primary objective is to discover biological predictors of vulnerability to develop excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup.”
Leri´s research study could lead to pharmacological interventions, which could be used by obese individuals to aid them in selectively reducing the intake of unhealthy foods. Moreover this knowledge could help increase the general understanding of the effects of unhealthy food choices.
One suggestion is that an effective strategy to combat obesity could be to educate people about the causes and consequences of their food intake choices.
Obesity poses several major health risks including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and stroke and certain forms of cancer are all more prevalent in obese individuals.
A previous study by the University of South California (USC) and the University of Oxford revealed that countries that included high-fructose corn syrup in their food had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes as compared to those that didn´t include the sweetener.
Another study from Yale University School of Medicine, which was published in JAMA earlier this year, also examined possible factors regarding the association between fructose consumption and weight gain.
As of 2008, more than 1.4 billion people were classified as overweight, and of those 500 million were considered obese, whilst the worldwide incidence of obesity has more than doubled since 1980. The World Health Organization (WHO) now uses the term “globesity” to qualify this epidemic, which is present in all parts of the globe, and not only in industrialized societies.

Asthma Patients May Breathe More Easily Thanks To Game Changing Drug

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Researchers said on Tuesday that a new type of asthma drug could be a potential game changer for patients with moderate to severe respiratory disease.

The injectable drug, known as dupilumad, slashed asthmatic episodes by 87 percent in a mid-stage trial of 104 patients. The team wrote about the latest trial’s results in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

“Asthma that is difficult to treat is increasingly recognized as comprising different phenotypes,” lead author Sally Wenzel, MD, director of the University of Pittsburgh Asthma Institute said. “With this study, we wanted to see whether dupilumab would reduce a surrogate index for asthma exacerbations when given with ICS and LABA and when those two therapies were withdrawn.”

Dupilumad is a fully human monoclonal antibody that thwarts activation of the Th2 immune response implicated in asthma by blocking two cytokines, interleukin-4 and interleukin-13. Researchers performed a 20-week study on patients who had received weekly injections of the drug.

Patients in the study received either dupilumad or a placebo twice a day. During the fourth week, patients were instructed to withdraw LABA, and between weeks six and nine they tapered off ICS. They found that dupilumad provided an 87 percent reduction in protocol defined asthma exacerbations. Moreover, they saw significant improvements for other relevant asthma outcomes like lung functions and morning peak expiatory flow.

“Intriguingly, dupilumab showed substantial efficacy in objective and patient-reported endpoints when added to ICS and LABA and when those therapies were discontinued,” said Dr. Wenzel.

The study found no clear change in blood eosinophils with dupilumad, but other biomarkers decreased, such as fractional exhaled nitric oxide, thymus and activation regulated chemokine.

Wenzel said the study showed a “magnitude and breadth” of efficacy that exceeded other studies of cytokine inhibition in asthma. The team speculates that the stronger outcome came as a result of blocking two cytokines rather than a single one. The researchers want to perform another study to confirm their findings and better define the target population, dosing regimen, and long-term efficiency.

For those who do not have time to wait for this next-generation asthma treatment to come out, researchers from another study suggest trying ginger to help breathe easier. The team presented a new study at the“¯American Thoracic Society´s 2013 International Conference in Philadelphia that claims ginger could help enhance the relaxing effects asthma medications have.

Wildfires May Strengthen Long-Term Climate Change, Warns US Forest Service

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online
The US Forest Service voiced its concern on Tuesday over the atmospheric effects of wildfire emissions on climate change, saying the issue is of great importance to scientists and policymakers alike.
The warnings are particularly important given recent projections of an average 50-percent increase in wildfires across the US — and over 100 percent in some areas of the West — by 2050, the Service said.
The agency pointed to a recent study by Forest Service scientists published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, which synthesized the latest findings on the interactions between fire and climate. Authored by research meteorologists Yongqiang Liu and Scott Goodrick from the Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS), and Warren Heilman from the Northern Research Station, the analysis focused on the effects of emissions from wildfires on long-term atmospheric conditions.
“While research has historically focused on fire-weather interactions, there is increasing attention paid to fire-climate interactions,” said Liu, a team leader with the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science.
“Weather, the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region, influences individual fires within a fire season. In contrast, when we talk about fire climate, we´re looking at the statistics of weather over a certain period. Fire climate sets atmospheric conditions for fire activity in longer time frames and larger geographic scales.”
Wildfires impact atmospheric conditions through emissions of gases, particles, water and heat.“¯Some of the Forest Service study focuses on ℠radiative forcing´ from fire emissions, which refers to the change in net irradiance at the tropopause, the top of the troposphere where most weather takes place. Irradiance refers to the power of electromagnetic radiation per a specified unit of area.
Smoke particles can generate radiative forcing mainly by scattering and absorbing solar radiation (known as direct radiative forcing), and by modifying the lifetime and concentration of cloud droplets. The change in radiation can cause further changes in global temperatures and precipitation.
“Wildfire emissions can have remarkable impacts on radiative forcing,” said Liu.
“During fire events or burning seasons, smoke particles reduce overall solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere at local and regional levels. At the global scale, fire emissions of carbon dioxide contribute substantially to the global greenhouse effect.”
Liu said wildfires could also trigger land surface changes that could play into future effects.
“Wildfire is a disturbance of ecosystems,” he explained.
“Besides the atmospheric impacts, wildfires also modify terrestrial ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, grazing value, biodiversity, and tourism. The effects can in turn trigger land use changes that in turn affect the atmosphere.”
The authors of the study outlined several factors that lead to uncertainties in understanding fire-climate interactions, and suggest areas where future research is need to address these issues.