Attention Spans, Cognitive Ability Tied To Physical Activity, Health

Written By: editor

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
A new study published this week in the journal PLoS ONE explains that active and healthy people are more likely to have better attention spans than those with sedentary lifestyles.
Researchers from the University of Granada carried out the study and found that physical activity, such as running or playing sports, can improve the functions of the central nervous system (CNS) and autonomic nervous system (ANS). In addition to a longer attention span, active people were also found to have better cognitive abilities than their less active peers. To reach this conclusion, the University of Granada researchers compared cognitive performance by testing the sustained attention, time oriented attention and time perception of their subjects.
A group of 28 young males comprised the study´s subjects, many of them University of Granada students. These students, aged 17 to 23, showed a “low level of physical aptitude” and represented the less active portion of the study. The remaining 14 young men were aged 18 to 29 and were much more active than their counterparts. As a way to prove the second group´s high level of physical aptitude, the researchers have said 11 of these men belonged to a cycling federation while the other three were studying physical activity at the University.
Previous research claims that physical activity can be beneficial to the central nervous system and autonomous nervous system. For instance, an increase in physical activity has been shown to improve vagal tone, or improve the efficiency of the ANS and CNS. For example, staying active can prevent neuro-degeneration as well as help nerves and blood vessels grow and stay strong.
Building from this prior knowledge, the University of Granada researchers discovered that the bicycling, physically adept group of men were able to stay focused on a task for longer periods of time, as well as respond more quickly to different stimuli. Though the researchers saw results in these areas, the active men did not outperform the less active men in any other test.
The researchers were shocked to see how differently the ANS was affected during the cognitive tests. For instance, when testing temporary perception, the young subjects´ heart rates decreased. Yet, when testing sustained perception there was almost no change to the young men´s heart rates. In fact, as the researchers moved from test to test, the heart rate of the active group remained mostly steady. The sedentary group of young men, on the other hand, saw drops and rises in heart rate between tests.
After compiling and analyzing their data, the principal author of the study, Antonio Luque Casado of the Department of Experimental Psychology said the benefits to staying active and healthy have become even more clear than they had been before.
“It is important therefore to highlight that both the physiological and behavioral results obtained through our study suggest that the main benefit resulting from the good physical condition of the cyclists who participated in the study, appeared to be associated with the processes implicated by sustained attention,” said Casado in a statement.
Casado and his team of researchers also warn that this is only a preliminary study, noting that future investigations are necessary in order to confirm these initial findings.”
The team is also evaluating how these results might be displayed in different population groups as well as different methods to collect data during future tests.

Science

Why Do Koalas Get Chlamydia?

Written By: Aaron Deter-Wolf
Christopher Pilny

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Blame it on their small stature. Blame it on their soft fur. For what could be a myriad of reasons, Koalas would almost certainly win the “Most Cuddly” award amongst all of the familiar marsupials.

Sadly, like all other creatures — cute and ugly alike — Koalas also have a tendency to get sick from time to time. According Dr. Adam Polkinghorne and a host of researchers with Queensland University of Technology (QUT), these small creatures are even susceptible to diseases such as Chlamydia and the Koala Retrovirus, or KoRV.

For years it has been a mystery why some Koalas catch these diseases and some do not. Now, Dr. Polkinghorne and a team of researchers have discovered what they´re calling the “holy grail” of genetic data which explains the immune system of these beloved marsupials. The research was carried out in conjunction with The Australian Museum and is the world´s first project to map the Koala genome.

Professor Peter Timms, another QUT researcher, says discovering the koala interferon gamma (IFN-g) gene could both explain why some koalas become vulnerable to these diseases.

“We know koalas are infected with various strains of Chlamydia, but we do not know why some animals go on to get severe clinical disease and some do not,” said Professor Timms in a statement explaining their findings.

“We also know that genes such as IFN-g are very important for controlling chlamydial infections in humans and other animals. Identifying these in the koala will be a major step forward in understanding and controlling diseases in this species.”

Before the QUT team could begin mapping out the Koala´s genes, they first needed access to several tissues from a specimen.

The researchers found this tissue in Birke, a Koala who had recently been put down after an unfortunate run-in with a local dog. It was in Birke´s tissues that the researchers found the so-called genetic holy grail. In addition to locating the IFN-g gene, they were also able to uncover the sequences of some 390 other immune-related genes, providing them with a wealth of data.

These immune related genes only made up about 1.8 percent of the total tissue samples from Birke but were still able to shed light on how koalas are able to protect themselves against pathogens.

“Virtually nothing is known about the immune system of the koala and the absence of information has been a major hindrance to our efforts to understand how Chlamydia and KoRV infections lead to such debilitating disease in this native species,” said Dr. Polkinghorne.

Now that they have this information at their disposal, the research team has created a molecular test that can measure the expression of IFN-g in a Koala´s blood stream. With this test, scientists will be able to understand which koalas are more likely to stand up to diseases like Chlamydia and KoRV. Dr. Polkinghorne and professor Timms have already begun to test the koalas in the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital who are suffering from ocular and reproductive health issues.

Professor Timms is already putting their findings to good use working on a Chlamydia vaccine. This vaccine will be sent out to koalas in South East Queensland.

This wealth of data will also benefit a number of other creatures from Down Under. The wolverine, for instance, shares many of the same genetic sequences with koalas. Professor Timms has said that while this isn´t surprising, it is good news for biologists working in the field who want to protect as many animals as possible.

“This promises to benefit gene discovery and the development of immunological tools that will help us to fight diseases in our other threatened and endangered wildlife species.”

Dr. Polkinghorne, Professor Timms and the rest now plan to hold a workshop to discuss the best ways to analyze this new data and better protect the cute and cuddly koala.

Health

Genetic Biomarker May Help Identify Neuroblastomas Vulnerable To Novel Class Of Drugs

Written By: editor

An irregularity within many neuroblastoma cells may indicate whether a neuroblastoma tumor, a difficult-to-treat, early childhood cancer, is vulnerable to a new class of anti-cancer drugs known as BET bromodomain inhibitors, Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center scientists will report at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington, April 6-10.

The findings (abstract 4622) will be discussed in a minisymposium on Tuesday, April 9, 3:50 – 4:05 p.m., ET, in Room 147, in the Washington Convention Center. The work was published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association of Cancer Research, on Feb. 21, 2013.

In studies with laboratory samples of neuroblastoma cells and mice with the disease, the researchers found that tumors with excess copies, or “amplification,” of the gene MYCN were highly sensitive to BET bromodomain inhibitors. The findings may lead to clinical trials of the drugs in patients whose neuroblastoma tumors carry this amplification.

“BET bromodomain inhibitors are a class of drugs that, many researchers hope, may offer a new therapeutic option for treating patients with certain cancers,” says Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center researcher and clinician Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, who will be presenting the research. “The challenge has been identifying biomarkers that can help direct clinical translation of these drugs by pinpointing those patients with the highest likelihood of response.”

Stegmaier and her colleagues screened more than 600 cancer cell lines, each with a known set of genetic abnormalities, to see which would succumb to a prototype BET bromodomain inhibitor. They found the most susceptible cells were those with a MYCN amplification.

“Neuroblastoma is a devastating childhood cancer — the most common extracranial tumor of early childhood — and only a minority of children with aggressive forms of the disease are cured with currently available treatments,” Stegmaier remarks. “Although prior research has shown that MYCN amplification is common in neuroblastoma, it has been an elusive drug target.”

Working with Dana-Farber’s James Bradner, MD, Stegmaier found that the BET bromodomain inhibitor reduced the levels of MYCN protein in lab-grown neuroblastoma cells, resulting in impaired cell growth and induction of cell death. In studies of mice with MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma — including animals with a form of the disease that doesn’t respond to many standard therapies — the drug had anti-tumor effects and prolonged survival.

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On the Net:

Extinct Moa Females Up To Three Times Larger Than Males

Written By: admin

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Sexual dimorphism, in which male and females of the same species differ significantly in appearance, is fairly common among birds. Typically, the male of the species either towers over the female or is equipped with elaborate plumage, as in the case of the peacock. However, for New Zealand´s extinct, flightless giant moa, the roles were reversed, with the female often weighing three times as much as her male suitors.

According to a new report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the moa´s environment and lack of competitive large herbivorous mammals probably allowed for the evolution of larger females within the species.

“A lack of large land mammals — such as elephants, bison and antelope — allowed New Zealand’s birds to grow in size and fill these empty large herbivore niches,” explained study co-author Samuel Turvey, a research fellow at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

“Moa evolved to become truly huge, and this accentuated the existing size differences between males and females as the whole animal scaled up in size over time.”

To investigate this unusual phenomenon, Turvey and his ZSL colleague Valérie A. Olson examined the physiological remains of moas and their closest relatives, including other ratites — large, flightless bird species such as emus and cassowaries. Using the known lengths of femur specimens from these birds, the researchers were able to calculate an approximate body mass of the birds.

The team was looking to determine whether the pronounced sexual dimorphism was unique to the giant moa or if its nearest relatives also exhibit this species feature, but the dimorphism is less obvious due to their smaller scale.

They found that evolutionary pressures allowed the moa to get larger over the course of generations, with the females unusually being disproportionately more affected. Meanwhile, the moa´s closest relatives experienced sexual dimorphism much closer to those expected of their evolutionary group.

“We compared patterns of body mass within an evolutionary framework for both extinct and living ratites,” Turvey said. “Females becoming much larger was an odd side-effect of the scaling up of overall body size in moa.”

In their conclusion, the authors noted that the male moa of New Zealand evolved on a path much closer to other members of their phylum.

“In contrast to male“¯Dinornis, female Dinornis body masses, therefore, evolved at least slightly independently of phylogeny, indicating that there has been some adaptation of female body size to ecological conditions,” they wrote.

The researchers also noted the moa´s slow growth rate as a clue to why the females became larger than the males.

“Intraspecific competition was, therefore, probably a major factor in moa evolution, with selection for increased investment to produce competitively fit offspring probably more intense among females than males,” the report said.

Because the moas´ experienced such a relatively long transition into adulthood, they most likely need a mother that was capable of protecting them and providing nourishment over a longer period of time. Hence, the larger female body size, the research team said.

Several different moa species inhabited New Zealand until about 700 years ago when they were hunted to extinction by the first Polynesian settlers. According to archeological records, the“¯indigenous MÄori“¯peoples still hunted them at the beginning of the 1400s, often driving them into pit traps and pillaging their nests.

Eggs Found To Lower Blood Pressure, Further Rebounding Their Reputation

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Once derided as an unhealthy indulgence, the reputation of the “incredible edible egg” has been on the rebound in recent years with the release of numerous studies showing its health benefits.

One of those studies, presented at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in New Orleans, showed that a component of egg whites can actually lower blood pressure.

“Our research suggests that there may be another reason to call it ‘the incredible, edible egg,'” said study leader Zhipeng Yu, from Jilin University in China.

“We have evidence from the laboratory that a substance in egg white — it’s a peptide, one of the building blocks of proteins — reduces blood pressure about as much as a low dose of Captopril, a high-blood-pressure drug.”

For years the high-cholesterol content of egg yolks were linked to cardiovascular disease. This new study reinforces the benefits of eating only the egg white, something health conscious individuals have been doing for years.

In the study, Yu and colleagues from Clemson University examined an egg-white peptide called RVPSL. Previous research had shown that the substance is an angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, which is an active ingredient in blood pressure medications such as Captopril, Vasotec and Monopril. ACE is produced in the body naturally and constricts blood vessels, effectively raising blood pressure.

To examine RVPSL’s effects, the research team used laboratory rats with high blood pressure. The rats were orally administered RVPSL and their blood pressure was evaluated using a tail-cuff device. Both the systolic blood pressure and the diastolic blood pressure were measured before and after administration of various doses of the peptide.

The results of the experiments were generally positive, showing that RVPSL is non-toxic and capable of lowering blood pressure in small doses by the same degree as low doses of Captopril.

“Our results support and enhance previous findings on this topic,” Yu said. “They were promising enough to move ahead with further research on the effects of the egg white peptide on human health.”

In his presentation, Yu said that the research was performed with RVPSL that was heated to almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit during preparation, which is slightly lower than the temperatures at which eggs are typically cooked. However, he also cited evidence from previous research that showed egg whites have positive effects on blood pressure even after they are fully cooked.

For example, a study published in the ACS’“¯Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, indicated that fried egg protein demonstrated greater capacity to lower blood pressure than eggs cooked at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yu said he thinks that egg white peptides could become valuable as a supplement to blood-pressure drugs. He added that people with hypertension should check with their physician before making any adjustments to their diet.

Yu also noted that his team´s study adds to the recent rehabilitation of eggs´ reputation. Other recent studies have found that many people can include eggs in their diet without raising their blood cholesterol levels, while benefiting from their low-cost protein, vitamins and other nutrients.

What Did The Big Bang Sound Like?

Written By: editor
editor

[ Watch the Video: The Sounds of the Big Bang in High Fidelity ]

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

“If the Universe started with a bang, and no one was alive yet to observe it, would it still make a sound?”

It sounds like the start of a really cliché joke, but the answer, surprisingly, is yes.

Scientists believe the expanding early Universe produced waves of sound that echoed through the dense plasma and hydrogen that filled it at the time. Obviously, these sound waves are no longer audible, but using information on cosmic background radiation collected by NASA probes it is possible to simulate the sound.

This colossal sound wave shaped cosmic background radiation so that some areas remain hotter or colder. In 2003, University of Washington physicist John Cramer mapped those hot and cold variations to produce a sound file; a 100-second “recording” of the Big Bang.

Cramer wrote a science-based column for Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine in 2001, describing the likely sound of the Big Bang based on cosmic microwave background radiation observations taken from balloon experiments and satellites. A few years later, the mother of an 11-year-old boy working on a science project read the article and asked if the sound of the Big Bang had actually been recorded anywhere. It hadn’t been yet, but this had Cramer thinking maybe it should be.

Using data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) on cosmic background radiation temperature fluctuations in the early Universe, Cramer fed the wavelength changes into a computer program called Mathematica to convert them to sound. The resulting 100-second recording represented the sound from approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang until about 760,000 years after.

“The original sound waves were not temperature variations, though, but were real sound waves propagating around the universe,” he said.

The 2003 data lacked high frequency structure, Cramer noted in a recent statement. This year, he used new data to re-master his recording.

The Verge reports that the data for the new recording came from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planck satellite mission. Planck has detectors so sensitive that they can distinguish temperature variations of only a few millionths of a degree in the cosmic microwave background. In March of this year, the Planck mission released a new and more precise map of cosmic microwaves that allowed Cramer to create the new sound file based on temperature fluctuations mapped onto an ESA graph.

Cramer manually recorded each of the data points, and then created a monaural sound wave following the frequency spectrum. The sound wave was adjusted to account for how the sound would have changed as the Universe stretched, “becoming more of a ‘bass instrument.'” As the wavelengths are stretched farther, the sound becomes lower and at first louder, eventually fading out. In fact, the sound was so “bass” that Cramer had to boost the frequency 100 septillion times to put it into the human hearing range.

Cramer has been part of a research group working on what the Universe might have been like moments after the Big Bang using collisions between heavy ions, such as gold, in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

“It was an interesting thing to do that I wanted to share. It´s another way to look at the work these people are doing,” he concluded.

Strong Friendship Network Can Help Boost Self-Control

Written By: editor
editor

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Self-control is a trait too many people lack. Whether it is summoning the strength to get to the gym for a workout or abstaining from snacks between meals, the drive to simply satisfy a basic desire is too strong in too many. However, new research out of Duke University shows surrounding one´s self with friends and intimates who possess a stronger sense of self-control can aid in strengthening the trait in themselves.
The study, conducted by psychological scientists Catherine Shea, Gráinne Fitzsimons and Erin Davisson has recently been published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
“We all know how much effort it takes to overcome temptation,” says Shea, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in Fitzsimons´s lab. “People with low self-control could relieve a lot of their self-control struggles by being with an individual who helps them.”
In order to test their hypothesis, Shea and colleagues employed three studies on different populations. The first two studies were laboratory based. The third focused on real-life romantic partners and how they assist one another in maintaining a stricter self-control.
The first study involved presenting a video to study participants. One group was instructed by the researchers to avoid reading certain words that flashed up on the screen during the video. This, according to the team, was an exercise in manipulating the participants´ self-control. The second group was given no such instructions.
Immediately following the video presentation, each of the participants were asked to read a scenario about one of three office managers. The first demonstrated low self-control behavior. The second exhibited high self-control behavior. And the third presented both low and high self-control behaviors. The participants were then asked to rate the office managers on their perceived leadership abilities.
According to the team, the results of this particular study were clear. The participants whose self-control had been depleted (those instructed to not read the flash words in the video), rated the manager who had high self-control more positively than the other two managers. The researchers state this higher rating was an example of compensation for the self-control the participants lacked by valuing it in others.
The second laboratory based study confirmed the results. In this study, the participants were asked to complete a standard self-control task. Those who exhibited low trait self-control, like those manipulated in the first study, showed a preference for the manager with high self-control.
After having completed the two laboratory-based studies, the team tested their hypothesis further by culling over survey data collected by 136 romantic couples.
Once again, claim the researchers, their hypothesis was confirmed. Individuals in these relationships who self-reported having a diminished level of self-control also reported a greater dependence on their partner if that partner happened to have high self-control.
“Self-control, by its name and definition, is a ℠self´ process – something that we do alone, as individuals,” observes Shea. “Yet, when we order food on a menu or go to work, we´re often surrounded by other people.”
These studies and their findings are divergent from previous research, which typically focused on the negative aspects associated with low self-control, such as poorer academic achievement and health outcomes. The team contends their study suggests individuals who lack self-control, however, may have a unique skill set. The team states low self-control individuals are uniquely suited to pick up on self-control cues in others, using those cues to form adaptive relationships.
“What we have shown is that low self-control individuals seem to implicitly surround themselves with individuals who can help them overcome temptation – you get by with a little help from your friends,” says Shea.
The research was supported in part by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

Teenage Smoking Curbed By Half Hour Of Exercise

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

According to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, taking a short daily walk may help teenagers quit smoking.

For the study, researchers tracked 233 teenagers from 19 high schools in West Virginia, where nearly 13 percent of West Virginia teenagers are smokers. They found that those who increased their exercise to just 20 minutes a day were able to cut down on their habit, while spending 30 minutes of doing physical activity enticed them to quit altogether.

“This study adds to evidence suggesting that exercise can help teenagers who are trying to quit smoking,” says lead author Kimberly Horn, EdD, the Associate Dean for Research at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS).

“Teens who boosted the number of days on which they engaged in at least 20 minutes of exercise, equivalent to a short walk, were more likely than their peers to resist lighting up a cigarette.”

All of the participants in the study were daily smokers that reported being involved in other risky behaviors as well. The average teen in the study smoked a half a pack on weekdays, and a pack a day on weekends.

During the study, some teens went through an intensive anti-smoking program combined with fitness intervention while others just got the smoking cessation program and listened to a short anti-smoking lecture. The team found that all of the teens increased their exercise activity to some degree, but teens who reported increasing the number of days they exercised were more likely to cut back on the number of cigarettes they smoked.

“We don’t fully understand the clinical relevance of ramping up daily activity to 20 or 30 minutes a day with these teens,” Horn said. “But we do know that even modest improvements in exercise may have health benefits. Our study supports the idea that encouraging one healthy behavior can serve to promote another, and it shows that teens, often viewed as resistant to behavior change, can tackle two health behaviors at once.”

She also said that more research is needed to help confirm key findings in the study and determine whether they apply to all teen smokers, not just those in West Virginia.

A survey released in December 2012 shows that smoking rates among teens declined from 11.7 percent to 10.6 percent. This study also found that the proportion of students who have ever tried smoking has also fallen dramatically.

Another study released at the end of last year highlighted the dangers of teenage smoking. This study found that teenage girls who smoke accumulate less bone during a critical growth period, causing a higher risk of developing osteoporosis later in life.

For College Freshmen, Meditation Could Assist In Performance

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editor

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Too many allow the pressures and stresses of life to consume them, leaving them to feel adrift in a current they cannot control. It would appear this sentiment is no truer for anyone than it is for the college freshman. And there is little doubt as to why. For many this is the first time they have struck out on their own. The overwhelming feeling of sink or swim often results in the former.
Could there be a better way? According to a new experimental study conducted by George Mason University associate professor of psychology Robert Youmans, along with University of Illinois doctoral student and practicing Buddhist Jared Ramsburg, the answer to that question is a qualified yes.
In a series of three classroom experiments at a California university, the team sought to determine if the use of meditative techniques might be beneficial in helping students to attain better focus and achieve a greater overall retention of information.
The researchers randomly selected students to follow basic meditation instructions prior to a lecture while others were selected as a control group with no guidance on meditative techniques. After the lecture a quiz was administered. The control group, it was found, did more poorly on the quiz than the students who engaged in meditation beforehand. In fact, in one experiment, the meditation even predicted which students passed and which students failed the quiz.
Of particular interest, the team noted the effect of the meditation was stronger in classes containing a higher percentage of freshmen students. As they claim, this may show meditation may be more beneficial to members of a freshmen class as courses geared to this class will more likely contain students for whom the benefit of meditative training is greater.
“One difficulty for researchers who study meditation is that the supposed benefits of meditation do not always replicate across different studies or populations, and so we have been trying to figure out why. This data from this study suggest that meditation may help students who might have trouble paying attention or focusing. Sadly, freshmen classes probably contain more of these types of students than senior courses because student populations who have difficulty self-regulating are also more likely to leave the university,” says Youmans.
According to Youmans, the act of self-reflection could yield significant results in these freshmen seminars or in institutions with high attrition rates. With the students of their study receiving only six minutes of written meditation exercises, the improvement achieved was noteworthy. The team contends with more extensive training and coaching of these freshman populations, the results of their study could be improved upon.
“Personally, I have found meditation to be helpful for mental clarity, focus and self-discipline,” says Ramsburg, lead author of the study. “I think that if mindfulness can improve mental clarity, focus and self-discipline, then it might be useful in a variety of settings and for a variety of goals.”
Youmans believes the meditation techniques presented to the students in their study are not the only path these students could take to achieving better academic results. Namely, he offers examples of other forms of active self-reflection such as prayer, taking long walks or even just taking the time to mindfully plan out your day in the morning could have some of the same positive effects as the meditative techniques employed in their study. “Basically, becoming just a little bit more mindful about yourself and your place in the world might have a very important, practical benefit — in this case, doing better in college.”
The results of this study were recently published in the journal Mindfulness.

Purple Sea Urchins Evolve To Cope With Climate Change

Written By: editor
editor

[ Watch the Video: Ocean Babies on Acid – The Time Machine ]

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists have uncovered some surprising abilities in sea urchins living along the coast of California and Oregon.

A group from Stanford discovered that some purple sea urchins have the ability to rapidly evolve in acidic ocean water, which is a skill that could come in handy as climate change increases. This ability allows urchins to have healthy growth in water with high carbon dioxide levels.

“It´s like bet hedging,” Stephen Palumbi, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment who co-authored the study, said. “Betting on multiple teams in the NCAA playoffs gives you a better chance of winning. A parent with genetic variation for survival in different conditions makes offspring that can thrive in different environments. In an uncertain world, it´s a way to have a stake in the Final Four.”

Scientists are worried about what increasing acidification could do for those who depend on the ocean for their sustenance and livelihoods. They also wonder what kinds of sea creatures will be able to survive or adapt to the changing ocean chemistry in the future. The team wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that other marine species that have dealt with environmental stresses may have similar adaptive capacity as the sea urchins.

The scientists examined how purple sea urchins react to the acidification levels predicted for 2100. For the study, they sampled larvae at early and later stages in life and then used new DNA-sequencing and analytical tools to determine which elements of the urchins’ genetic makeup changed through time in these conditions. By looking at the function of each gene, they were able to pinpoint which types of genes were critical for survival under future conditions.

“The high CO2 larvae showed almost no negative effects, and that was a surprise,” said Melissa Pespeni, the study´s lead author and a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow. “They didn´t suffer because among them were some individuals with the right genes to be able to grow well in those harsh conditions.”

Purple sea urchins live in cold water that wells up along the coast, which tends to bring seasonally higher CO2 levels. The team’s findings suggest that this long-term environmental mosaic has led to the evolution of genetic variations enabling purple sea urchins to regulate their internal pH level.

“There are hundreds of West Coast species that similarly evolved in these conditions. Maybe some of these have the genetic tools to resist acidification, too,” Palumbi said. “We need to learn why some species are more sensitive than others.”

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden have created huge plastic containers to help study ocean acidification. The team developed ten huge plastic containers called mesocosms as an experiment to determine the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems. Each mesocosm will enclose 55,000 liters of seawater, containing organisms from the winter waters of the Gullmar Fjord in Sweden.

The Swedish team plans to study the effects of different acidity levels on marine plants and animal plankton by monitoring the plankton over many generations.

Do Your Genes Make You Lazy?

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
If you´ve ever had a hard time getting motivated to go to the gym or get off the couch and head outside for a jog, it could be your genetics.
According to a new study in the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, a team of Missouri researchers were able to selectively breed rats that had either an active or lazy disposition.
“We have shown that it is possible to be genetically predisposed to being lazy,” said study co-author Frank Booth of the University of Missouri in a statement. “This could be an important step in identifying additional causes for obesity in humans, especially considering dramatic increases in childhood obesity in the United States.
“It would be very useful to know if a person is genetically predisposed to having a lack of motivation to exercise, because that could potentially make them more likely to grow obese,” Booth added.
To select for one of the two dispositions, the team put rats in enclosures with exercise wheels and recorded how much each rat willingly ran on their wheel over the course of a six-day period. The researchers then selectively bred the top 26 most active with each other and did the same for the 26 laziest. After 10 generations of breeding, they found the more active rats chose to run 10 times more than the descendents of “lazy” rats.
The researchers also performed a biological and genetic analysis of each line of rats. They examined the levels of mitochondria in the rats´ muscle cells, compared body types, and conducted an RNA analysis of each rat.
“While we found minor differences in the body composition and levels of mitochondria in muscle cells of the rats, the most important thing we identified were the genetic differences between the two lines of rats,” said study co-author Michael Roberts, Professor of Animal Science and Joint Professor of Biochemistry at MU.
“Out of more than 17,000 different genes in one part of the brain, we identified 36 genes that may play a role in predisposition to physical activity motivation.”
The results of the study could have a significant impact, especially for the 97 percent of American adults studies show get less than 30 minutes of exercise a day — the minimum recommended by federal guidelines.
According to the researchers, they plan on continuing their work to identify the effects each gene has on the motivation to exercise.

Two New Species Of Worm Discovered In Gobi Desert

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Pensoft Publishers

The ‘Mongolian Death Worm’, called olgoi-khorkhoi by the local population is a legendary animal with an unconfirmed existence that has preoccupied the imagination of the inhabitants and travelers in the region. It is said to inhabit the southern Gobi Desert where it terrorizes travelers with its deadly abilities to project acid that, upon contact, turns anything it touches yellow and corroded.

Two new sub-species of earthworms, Eisenia nordenskioldi mongol and E. n. onon, are reported from the same region. Although neither of them possesses the fatal characteristics of olgoi-khorkhoi, the sibling species exhibit the ability to partly regrow body parts when cut in two. Relatives of the sub-species are found in habitats as diverse as high mountains, deserts and geothermal hot-springs. They demonstrate extreme temperature tolerances and survival ranges thriving in environments from as little as -30°C up to +40°C.

E. nordenskioldi mongol has its name derived from the region of discovery. The name E. n. onon bears more romantic connotations, being inspired by the Onon River in Outer Mongolia, where Genghis Khan was born and grew up. The region is also supposed to be the resting place of this historical figure that inspires stories of great conquests, victories and brutality.

Earthworms as a group organisms have other more tangible, importance from an ecological point of view. Charles Darwin, for example, spent 50 years of his working life studying these humble worms. They are key organisms for monitoring and maintaining soil fertility. Earthworms are also the basis of food-chains as the Early-bird and any fishermen knows.

Whether olgoi-khorkhoi really exists, and whether the two new sub-species of the Siberian E. nordenskioldi species-complex are in any way related to it, is yet to be confirmed and in the meantime, can continue to inspire the romantic mind and stories.

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Help Lower Your Blood Sugar With Green Coffee Bean Extract

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

A study funded by a company which produces an extract from green coffee beans has found that this substance can help lower and even control blood sugar levels. This extract is taken from green and unroasted coffee beans and is sold as a powerful antioxidant to regulate blood sugar levels and improve other body functions.

Joe Vinson, PhD, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, Scranton, conducted the study which has supported these claims and found that larger doses of the extract correspond to more significant drops in blood sugar levels. The results of this study are expected to be presented at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in New Orleans.

Dr. Vinson and a host of other officials have agreed that Type 2 diabetes is becoming a growing health problem all over the world. There are pills currently available which will adjust or regulate blood sugar levels to stimulate or reduce insulin productions, while controlling one´s diet and watching one´s weight can also help to curb the advancement of the disease. With positive research results in hand, Dr. Vinson says a single pill which can do both of these things may help stem the tide of this growing epidemic.

“A simple natural pill or capsule that would both help control blood sugar and foster weight loss at the same time would be a major advance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Vinson in a statement.

“Our own research and studies published by other scientists suggest that such a treatment may, indeed, exist. There is significant epidemiological and other evidence that coffee consumption reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes,” he added.

Dr. Vinson and colleagues studied 30 men and women of normal weight who did not have any form of diabetes. These participants were then given between 100 milligrams and 400 milligrams of the green coffee extract each day. The researchers followed up with glucose tolerance tests at several points throughout the study.

Once completed, Dr. Vinson and his team discovered that the green coffee extract was successful in bringing down blood sugar levels in each participant. What´s more, those who took a larger, 400 milligram dose of the extract saw their blood sugar levels drop more significantly.

“This study had strictly normal [participants], but it has a lot of potential for diabetes [control],” Vinson said, according to US News. “It’s a fairly cheap intervention and might cost less than a dollar or two per day — less than a coffee at Starbucks.”

While a similar study has shown similar results in people who drink coffee every day, green and unroasted coffee beans have a more profound effect.

Green coffee beans fresh from the cherry contain a high concentration of chlorogenic acids. Roasting the coffee beans removes some of these elements. While Dr. Vinson is ready to say this extract could be useful in controlling Type 2 diabetes, Dr. John Anderson with the American Diabetes Association (ADA) believes there must be more research conducted first.

“To say that something can prevent or delay diabetes is almost impossible to prove unless they’re willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research,” said Dr. Anderson in an interview with US News. “This is only [30] people, and all they did was look at a glucose tolerance test. I think it’s interesting, but I don’t think we really know any more than that.”

Science

Polluting Plastic Particles Invade The Great Lakes

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Floating plastic debris – which helps populate the infamous “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the Pacific Ocean – has become a problem in the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world. Scientists reported on the latest findings from the Great Lakes here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
“The massive production of plastic and inadequate disposal has made plastic debris an important and constant pollutant on beaches and in oceans around the world, and the Great Lakes are not an exception,” said Lorena M. Rios Mendoza, Ph.D., who spoke on the topic at the meeting. It continues here through Thursday, with 12,000 presentations on new advances in science and other topics.
Fish and birds could be harmed from accidentally eating the plastic particles, or absorbing substances that leach out into the water, Rios said. Her team knows from analyses of fish stomachs that fish are consuming the plastic particles. Fish also could pass such substances to consumers, but Rios said research on that topic is just beginning.
Much of the plastic pollution in the oceans and Great Lakes goes unnoticed by the casual observer because it is so small. In the samples Rios’ team collected in Lake Erie, 85 percent of the particles were smaller than two-tenths of an inch, and much of that was microscopic. Her group found between 1,500 and 1.7 million of these particles per square mile.
Fish, however, often mistake these bits of plastic for food. “The main problem with these plastic sizes is its accessibility to freshwater organisms that can be easily confused as natural food and the total surface area for adsorption of toxins and pseudo-estrogens increases significantly,” Rios said. It is not yet understood whether these toxins enter the food chain in harmful amounts.
Rios also pointed out that the problem of ocean plastics is quickly growing. Plastic production has increased 500 percent since 1980, and plastics now account for 80 to 90 percent of ocean pollution, according to Rios. Some of this comes from plastic bags, bottles and other trash, or from fishing lines. Another source is household products like abrasive facial cleaners or synthetic fibers shed by clothes in the washing machine. The researchers also found large numbers of plastic pellets, which are shipped around the world to be melted down and molded into everything from plastic milk jugs to parts for cars.
The plastic pollution problem may be even worse in the Great Lakes than in the oceans, Rios said. Her team found that the number of microparticles – which are more harmful to marine life because of their small size – was 24 percent higher in the Great Lakes than in samples they collected in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. With a volume equal to 1.65 million Olympic swimming pools, the Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, and this is the first time that scientists have looked there for plastics.
The problem of plastic pollution in the oceans, however, has been widely known since at least 1988, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration first described the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” an area in the North Pacific Ocean where currents have concentrated plastics and other pollution. The patch varies in dimensions, but estimates indicate that at times it has been twice the size of the state of Texas.
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Expect Bumpier Flights As Climate Change Progresses

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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

““¦ And as a reminder, the captain recommends that you keep your seatbelt fastened while seated throughout the flight.”

The above was once regarded as overly cautious advice. However, new research from the University of Reading indicates that keeping your seatbelt fastened may become a strict and necessary requirement for those crossing the Atlantic in the coming decades. Their analysis of climate change has presented models showing a marked increase in bumpier flights caused by increased mid-air turbulence.

According to the research team, the increase in turbulent flights will be a direct result of the effects of climate change on jet streams, the fast-moving, mile-wide winds that surge around the planet at about the same altitude as jet aircraft. In addition to the expected increase in turbulent activity, European scientists have also attributed the change in the jet stream to the ℠wash-out summer´ of 2012 and frozen spring this year in the UK.

According to lead researcher Paul Williams of the University of Reading, “Air turbulence does more than just interrupt the service of in-flight drinks. It injures hundreds of passengers and aircrew every year. It also causes delays and damages planes, with the total cost to society being about £100m ($153 million) each year.”

In order to arrive at their results, the team employed turbulence models used by air traffic controllers every day. Their findings, they report, show that the frequency of turbulence for many flights between Europe and North America will double by the year 2050, while the intensity of the turbulence will see an increase of somewhere between 10 and 40 percent.

“Rerouting flights to avoid stronger patches of turbulence could increase fuel consumption and carbon emissions, make delays at airports more common, and ultimately push up ticket prices,” said Williams.

The team published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. Their study looked solely at clear-air turbulence rather than the buffeting caused by major storms. However, the researchers contend that storm-caused turbulence will likely increase as well in a warming world.

“Clear-air turbulence is especially problematic to airliners because it is invisible to pilots and satellites,” claimed study collaborator Manoj Joshi of the University of East Anglia.

This is not the first time an increase in clear-air turbulence has been observed. In fact, there is evidence that this form of turbulence has seen a 40 to 90 percent increase over Europe and North America since 1958. According to this new study, global warming is expected to cause a further increase in the number of flights experiencing pronounced bumpiness.

To understand this phenomenon, Williams explains the mechanics of the jet stream, stating that the air flow is driven by the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics. As climate change heats the Arctic faster than lower latitudes due to the rapid loss of reflective sea ice, the temperature difference is growing.

This leads to stronger and more turbulent jet streams. The modeling performed by Williams and Joshi assumed that carbon dioxide levels will likely double from pre-industrial levels by 2050. A doubling falls squarely in the mid-range of current projections for future emissions.

For passengers and crew who are caught unaware by clear-air turbulence, the most common injury suffered is due to not wearing seatbelts, which commonly causes them to hit their heads on the aircraft´s ceiling.

Williams claims that his findings — which happen to be the first ever to assess the impact of climate change on turbulence — have already led him to change his own behavior when flying.

“I certainly always keep my seatbelt fastened now, which I didn´t used to do.”

The Pros of Genetic Engineering: Why ‘Playing God’ Could Help The Human Race

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Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Despite the frequently encountered argument that scientists are ℠playing God´ with nature, the pros of genetic engineering are numerous and significant.

When discussing genetically modified organisms (GMO), it is important to note that the FDA and the World Health Organization have both deemed that the food products created with the technology are considered safe.

GMO produce has several genetically altered advantages over non-GMO fruits and vegetables, including increased resistance to pests, disease and drought.

These benefits of genetic engineering translate directly into cheaper prices. A recent Iowa State University study found that prices would be at least 10 percent higher for soybeans and 6 percent higher for corn worldwide without biotechnical modifications.

Some GMOs have even been found to taste better than their conventional counterparts. In a study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers found that as many as 60 percent of the people they surveyed actually preferred the taste of a genetically modified tomato.

The study focused on a particular modified tomato that had the genetically engineered advantage of a rose-scented compound that was coded into the tomato genome. The researchers said their study proves that food products can not only be made more resilient through biotechnology, but that they can also be made more flavorful.

The pros of genetic engineering can also be seen in fields besides agriculture. Scientists at the Department of Energy revealed that they have created a modified virus capable of generating electrochemical energy. Using the genetically modified viruses, they were able to create a device that is powered simply by applying pressure.

Cancer researchers and patients are also constantly reaping the benefits of genetic engineering. Many experimental treatments use genetically modified viruses to target and destroy cancer cells. A recent study showed that oncologists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York were able to effectively treat a specific form of acute leukemia using genetically engineered viruses.

Finally, it should be noted that one of the earliest critics of the anti-GMO movement is now one of the greatest advocates of the advantages of genetic engineering technology. British writer Mark Lynas railed against genetically modified crops throughout the 1990s and early part of the last decade. However, Lynas recently had a change of heart and now he openly defends the technology.

In January, Lynas spoke to Oxford Farming Conference about genetic engineering pros, including use of the technology to feed the world´s poorest people.

“As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counterproductive path. I now regret it completely,” he said.

Entertaining TV Affects BMI Levels In America’s Youth

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A lot of research has focused on how TV affects today´s youth. One recent study has suggested that what´s on TV makes children antisocial, while another claimed there was no link between a child´s negative social development and sitting in front of the tube for too long.

When it comes to obesity, previous research has also suggested that TV in the bedroom may be a factor in ballooning waistlines of young children. A 2009 study had also found that not just TV shows, but the commercials in between those shows, were adding to the obesity epidemic in children.

Following on all the latest research surrounding television influences on children, findings from a new study by researchers at Harvard University indicate that children who are engrossed in what´s on TV are experiencing higher body mass index (BMI) ratings than those who do not find TV that entertaining.

Compared with teenagers who didn´t pay much attention to what was on TV, teens who gave it the highest level of attention had an estimated 2.4-point higher BMI rating, according to David Bickham, PhD, of Harvard, and colleagues.

The researchers, however, found no association between other forms of screen media and an increased BMI rating. This included playing video games, surfing the net and using mobile devices. The research team also found no significant association between hours of time spent engaging with screen media and BMI. A paper on their findings is published in the current issue of Pediatrics.

The association between screen media and BMI rating may stem from advertising of unhealthy food and drink through TV, assert the Harvard team.

Unlike other forms of screen media, ads are commonplace on TV, with a bulk of commercials focusing on children and teens during peak viewing hours and across stations geared toward adolescents, such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.

“Despite dramatic shifts in how young people use media, TV, the only screen medium that consistently delivers food advertising, remains the most used,” the researchers wrote.

Bickham and his colleagues added that they did not test for specific mechanisms of action, but noted that their findings of “the importance of attention to TV is consistent with advertising effects.”

“For advertisements of energy-dense, nutritionally questionable foods to affect preferences, the viewer must receive the message by paying attention to a medium that delivers this content,” Bickham’s group explained, as cited by MedPageToday.

SELF-ASSESSMENT STUDY

For the study, Bickham and colleagues developed a data collection methodology for various forms of screen media use by relying on recall estimates, time-use diaries, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The team recruited 91 young adolescents, ages 13 to 15, from a small New England city for the research.

The participants were randomly assigned to complete a week-long self-assessment of media and 24-hour time use diaries on a random weekday and a Saturday. For validation purposes, the subjects were required to redo the task for another week and day.

The team measured attentiveness through a questionnaire that asked the participants to report what they were paying attention to most. Responses included, people, reading and/or doing homework, sports or activities, screen media, or something else. When media was selected, the questionnaire included subcategory responses such as computer, video games, phone, music, or TV.

More than half of the participants in the study were white (62.6 percent), but the group was equally divided by sex (45 girls and 46 boys). The median age of participants was 14.

During the EMA signaling part of the study, the researchers determined that time spent watching TV was 402.9 minutes over 48 hours. Video game and computer time over the same 48 hours was 95.1 minutes and 140 minutes, respectively. Primary attention was mostly focused on TV, compared to all other forms of screen media.

The researchers found that duration of media did not significantly affect BMI, regardless of the type of media used. They did, however, find that duration of physical activity had a significant negative impact on BMI rating.

The authors noted that the higher BMI rating could be a result of “℠unconscious eating´ while distracted by TV from physiological hunger and satiety signals,” noting that children typically consume energy-dense snacks while watching TV and are less aware of the amount of those snack foods they are eating.

Bickham and colleagues said the study was limited by cross-sectional data that cannot define the direction of effect to observed associations.

However, the results are significant, adding to the concern that America´s youth are quickly becoming obese. On a national scale, a third of adolescents between 2 and 19 years of age are obese or overweight, according to government statistics.

SIMILAR RESEARCH

Also in Pediatrics this week, another small study that focused on 41 first-graders found that when given large, adult-sized dinner plates, students served themselves larger portions of food and consumed nearly 50 percent of the extra calories on their plate.

That study, conducted by researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia, found that on average, 80 percent of kids served themselves 90 extra calories at lunch time when using the adult dinner plate than children did who used a normal child-sized plate (about the size of an adult salad plate). And when children said they liked the meal, they served themselves and additional 104.2 calories, on average.

“We know large portions have a pretty consistent effect in making kids eat more than they would if the portion sizes were smaller,” said study co-author Jennifer Orlet Fisher, an associate professor of public health at Temple. “It really seems that offering kids smaller plates could actually be potentially helpful in keeping portion size in check and maybe appetite in check.”

Another study this week in Pediatrics found that sleep also plays a significant role in BMI levels in children.

A new sleep study provides strong evidence that insufficient sleep may contribute to the rise in adolescent obesity. Sleep deprivation increasing BMI levels is based on the finding that it increases levels of a hunger hormone and decreases levels of a fullness hormone, which could lead to overeating and obesity.

Study author Jonathan Mitchell, a postdoctoral fellow in biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, used data collected every six months over a four year period from nearly 1,400 high school students.

Results of that study indicate that increasing sleep from 7.5 hours per night to a medically recommended 10 hours per night could reduce a teen´s BMI by 3 percent at age 14 and by 4-6 percent by age 18.

“It’s a prediction, not conclusive data, but the findings point to the potential public health benefits that increasing sleep duration could have for overweight and obese adolescents in the U.S.,” said Mitchell, as cited by USA Today.

Satellite Imagery Helps North Africa Fight Locust Plagues

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TechnologyNewsroom
DMC International Imaging (DMCii) is helping The Algerian Space Agency (ASAL) to predict the spread of locust plagues across North Africa as part of a pro-active approach to tackle the destructive phenomenon using satellite imagery.
Every year, North Africa is subjected to locust plagues that threaten to decimate crops and endanger countries´ food security. The satellite imagery is used to assess vegetation conditions, which helps to predict the locations of locust breeding grounds. The imagery, from the UK-DMC2 satellite, is used in conjunction with weather data to help create locust forecasts and focus the application of pesticides to prevent the spread of swarms.
Last year, in a six-month summer campaign to fight the spread of locusts, DMCii acquired monthly images of regions in Southern Algeria, Northern Mali and Northern Niger for ASAL. Now, imagery is being acquired before the summer season starts, to predict as well as monitor the threat of locusts.
Mr Karim Houari, International Cooperation Director of the Algerian Space Agency commented: “The use of satellite imagery has helped us in the past, during the invasion period, to identify and control areas at risk of locust swarms. This year, in terms of locust risk prediction in remission period, we used DMCii data for the ecological assessment of locust breeding areas (biotopes). It is an important contribution for the rationalisation of local response and to reduce damage of this destructive phenomenon.”
Paul Stephens, Director of Sales and Marketing at DMCii, said: “The ability to get timely imagery of large areas is vital because locust swarms can develop quickly and travel about 100km a day. Our 650km wide images allow large areas of land, spanning multiple countries, to be rapidly monitored, helping the local authorities combat locust swarms before they can migrate across the continent.”
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Carnitine Could Be A Hidden Killer For Regular Meat Eaters

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Red meat has often been flagged as a cardiovascular risk because of its fat and cholesterol content, but a new study published online this week in the journal Nature Medicine has uncovered a lesser known health risk associated with hamburgers and steaks.

That health risk is the compound l-carnitine, which is also a common ingredient in energy drinks. According to researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, bacteria living in the human digestive tract metabolize the compound and change it into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) — a substance which has previously been linked to atherosclerosis (clogging or hardening of the arteries).

Co-author Stanley Hazen, head of cardiovascular medicine at the Ohio health center, told Chris Woolston of Nature News that a person´s unique set of intestinal microbes could be as important to a person´s health as the dietary information included on nutrition labels.

They can create a vast array of different molecules out of the food that we eat, and those molecules can have a tremendous impact on our metabolic processes, he added. To illustrate that point, Hazen and his colleagues recruited 77 volunteers — 26 of whom were vegetarians or vegans — and gave them l-carnitine as either a supplement or as a natural ingredient in red meat food products.

“Tests showed that consuming l-carnitine increased blood levels of trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a compound that, evidence suggests, can alter the metabolism of cholesterol and slow the removal of cholesterol that accumulates on arteries’ walls,” Woolston said.

However, even when taking supplements of the compound, vegans and vegetarians produced “far less TMAO than meat eaters,” and fecal studies revealed that “meat eaters and non-meat eaters“¦ had very different types of bacteria in their guts.”

Hazen concluded that eating red meat on a regular basis likely encourages the growth of bacteria that transform l-carnitine into TMAO. To double-check those findings, he and his colleagues tested both the l-carnitine and TMAO levels in the blood of nearly 2,600 individuals who were having elective heart-related check-ups.

Alone, the compound was found to have little impact, but individuals who had a combination of high l-carnitine and TMAO levels were found to be candidates for cardiovascular disease. The findings, Bloomberg´s Elizabeth Lopatto explains, demonstrates that using l-carnitine as a dietary supplement could be risky. Individuals doing so should be studied closely in order to make sure that the bacteria responsible for elevating TMAO levels remain in check.

And for those who love a good steak every now and again, fear not — “the study does not mean that red meat is entirely bad or that it is best to avoid it entirely,” said Gina Kolata of the New York Times.

Hazen explains that meat is a good source of both protein and B vitamins, both of which are “essential for health,” Kolata said. However, it does demonstrate that saturated fat and cholesterol might not be the only risk factors involved in eating beef and other types of red meat.

Adding Fruit Juice To Chocolate Could Reduce Fat By 50 Percent

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Chocolate lovers rejoice — researchers from one UK university have discovered a way to infuse the popular confection with fruit juice, thus reducing its fat content by as much as 50 percent.

Lead researcher Dr. Stefan A. F. Bon of the University of Warwick, who presented his work Sunday as part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in New Orleans, explained that the technology could also be used with vitamin C water or diet cola.

In addition to replacing up to half of the fat, the juice can help chocolate retain its texture because it is in the form of micro-bubbles. It also prevents the white film known as “sugar bloom,” which coats the candy´s surface after it has spent a specific amount of time on store shelves.

“We have established the chemistry that’s a starting point for healthier chocolate confectionary,” Bon said in a statement. “This approach maintains the things that make chocolate ‘chocolatey’, but with fruit juice instead of fat. Now we’re hoping the food industry will take the next steps and use the technology to make tasty, lower-fat chocolate bars and other candy.”

While chocolate contains antioxidants and bioflavonoids, making it a healthy snack when consumed in moderation, it also tends to be high in fat and sugar, Bon explained. A two-ounce serving of premium quality dark chocolate can contain up to 13 grams of fat, or one-fifth of the total recommended daily allowance for a person on a 2,000 calorie diet. Furthermore, much of that fat content is of the unhealthy saturated variety.

Adding fruit juice or similar substance could reduce not only that fat content, but could also cut the sugar content of the candy. Bon and his colleagues report that the technology works with dark, white and milk chocolate, and that they have successfully created chocolate infused with apple, orange and cranberry juice.

“Fruit-juice-infused candy tastes like an exciting hybrid between traditional chocolate and a chocolate-juice confectionary. Since the juice is spread out in the chocolate, it doesn’t overpower the taste of the chocolate,” Bon explained. “We believe that the technology adds an interesting twist to the range of chocolate confectionary products available. The opportunity to replace part of the fat matrix with water-based juice droplets allows for greater flexibility and tailoring of both the overall fat and sugar content.”

He and his associates used fruit juices and other types of ingredients to form what is known as a Pickering emulsion. This type of emulsion was named in honor of British chemist Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering, who in 1907 discovered a new way to stabilize combinations of liquids which do not normally blend together.

Chocolate itself is an emulsion of cocoa butter and water or milk combined with cocoa powder, with the fatty substance lecithin used as an emulsifier in the process. By using Pickering´s method, Bon´s team used solid particles instead of that emulsifier, thus eliminating lecithin as an ingredient.

Supposedly Extinct Turtle Never Actually Existed, Researchers Claim

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Researchers at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Dresden have discovered that a freshwater turtle species declared extinct has not died out as experts had previously believed — in truth, it never existed.

The Seychelles mud turtle Pelusios seychellensis was originally described in 1906 as a species endemic to Mahe island, but despite an exhaustive search by scientists, living members of the species had not been discovered since the 19th century. As a result, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared it extinct in 2003, according to AFP reports published last week.

Now, however, a team of German and Austrian researchers has examined DNA evidence and discovered that there never had been such a species. What was mistakenly believed to be the new species Pelusios seychellensis was a widespread West African turtle called Pelusios castaneus, which may have been brought to Mahe island many years ago and mistaken as a native to the archipelago.

Furthermore, dried museum specimens of the now-discredited species were incorrectly labeled as having originated from the Seychelles, they told the French news organization. Scientists had long been “puzzled” over the similarities between P. seychellensis and P. castaneus, but came to the conclusion that they must be two separate and distinct species due to the immense geographical distance separating them, the AFP added.

“It was assumed the species had been exterminated, [but] we have examined the DNA of the original specimen from the museum in Vienna and discovered that these turtles are not a separate species,” Professor Uwe Fritz, the director of the Museum of Zoology at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden, explained in a statement.

“The species Pelusios seychellensis has therefore never existed,” he added. “In fact, for a long time researchers were amazed that the supposed Seychelles turtles looked so deceptively similar to the West African turtles. But due to the great geographic distance, it was thought this had to be a different species, which is why the assumed Seychelles turtles were also described as a new species in 1906.”

P. castaneus is native to the western coast of Africa from Senegal to Angola, according to reports. Due to the tremendous amount of land and ocean between that region and the Seychelles, it is unlikely that the approximately hand-sized turtle would have been able to make the journey through natural means.

While the researchers believe that it could have been transported from West Africa to the Seychelles by humans during the late 1800s, the study authors believe that it is more likely a museum labeling error is to blame.

“This would not be the first time that a museum labeling error gave the world a non-existing turtle species,” the report said, according to AFP. “A New Guinea species described in 1905 turned out to be a North American snapping turtle for which the data had been confounded. And a Vietnamese species described in 1941 was later found to have been an escaped pet tortoise from Madagascar.”

Their findings have been published in the journal PLoS One.

Kaspersky Lab Discovers Bitcoin-Mining Malware That Targets Skype Users

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

A new spam message campaign being transmitted via Skype contains malware capable of using an infected computer to mine for Bitcoins, researchers from multi-national security software firm Kaspersky Lab have discovered.

Bitcoins, which Lucian Constantin of IDG News Service describes as “a decentralized digital currency” that has seen its popularity soar since the beginning of the year, are generated according to special algorithms on a computer using their CPU and GPU resources — Bitcoin mining, as it has been dubbed.

The digital currency is currently trading for more than $130 per unit, “making it an attractive investment for legitimate currency traders, but also cybercriminals,” Constantin added.

Hackers have been using botnets and are starting to develop malware capable of generating Bitcoins, and a new campaign was detected by Kaspersky Lab security personnel on Thursday. This new method targets Skype users, using messages like “this is my favorite picture of you” to trick them into clicking on a rogue bit.ly URL.

Clicking on that link begins a malware download which does several different things, including turning the infected computer “into a slave of the Bitcoin generator,” Kaspersky Lab Expert Dmitry Bestuzhev told Ted Sampson of Infoworld. Once the harmful program, which was identified by Constantin as skype-img-04_04-2013.exe, is on an individual´s machine, it begins leeching the computer´s processing power to mine Bitcoins.

The download comes from the Hotfile.com service, and the malware itself connects to its C2 server located in Germany, Bestuzhev said. Sampson said that most of the potential victims reside in Italy, followed by Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, and the Ukraine. In addition, VentureBeat reports that the Trojan is receiving nearly 2,000 clicks per hour.

“The bad guys are also going after Bitcoin exchanges and storage services,” Sampson said. “On Wednesday, online Bitcoin storage service Instawallet revealed that its database has been fraudulently breached and perpetrators made off with an unspecified number of Bitcoins.

“The company said it plans to open a claims process for balance holders to recover stolen funds. In the meantime, the company is suspending its service indefinitely until it can develop an alternative architecture,” he added. “Separately, Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox issued a statement Wednesday that it has been targeted with ongoing DDoS attacks, which resulted in trading lags, 502 errors, and users being unable to access their accounts.”

Building Blocks For Life May Be Found On Jupiter’s Moon Europa

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The building blocks of life are strewn across the galaxy on or beneath many planetary surfaces and new evidence from NASA suggests that the necessary cocktail for life could be sitting right on one of Jupiter´s moons.

According to the study, Jupiter´s moon Europa has enough hydrogen peroxide on its surface to potentially support life if it were to somehow mix with the ocean trapped beneath the moon´s icy surface. The scientists said that the peroxide is created by the interaction between Europa’s surface ice and the radiation generated by Jupiter’s strong magnetic field.

“Life as we know it needs liquid water, elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, and it needs some form of chemical or light energy to get the business of life done,” explained NASA´s Kevin Hand, the lead author of the study, which is published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement. The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life.”

The study´s findings are based on imagery collected in the near-infrared range of light from Europa by the Keck II Telescope in Hawaii during September 2011. The researchers found that the greatest concentration of peroxide, 0.12 percent relative to water, is located on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around the gas giant. This concentration is about 20 times weaker than the hydrogen peroxide that is used as a disinfectant. On the opposite or trailing side of Europa, the concentration of peroxide drops off to nearly zero.

While the discovery is significant, it´s not the first time that scientists have discovered peroxide on Europa. When NASA’s Galileo mission explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003, it was the first to notice the presence of peroxide, but Galileo observations were only on a limited scale.

The new observations show that hydrogen peroxide is spread across much of Europa, with the highest concentrations located where Europa’s ice is almost pure water with very slight sulfur contamination.

In their report, the authors noted that high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide could be located at the moon´s poles, which are not readily visible from here on Earth.

“The Galileo measurements gave us tantalizing hints of what might be happening all over the surface of Europa, and we’ve now been able to quantify that with our Keck telescope observations,” said co-author Mike Brown, of Caltech in Pasadena. “What we still don’t know is how the surface and the ocean mix, which would provide a mechanism for any life to use the peroxide.”

Because hydrogen peroxide releases oxygen when mixed with water, the scientists added that life as we know it could exist on Europa.

“At Europa, abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean,” said Hand.

Crocodiles’ Super-Sensitive Face Offers Insight Into Evolutionary History

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The ultra-sensitive nerves in the faces of crocodilians could help biologists understand how both modern and ancient animals interact with their environment, according to a new study in this month´s edition of The Anatomical Record.

These nerves are so sensitive that they can detect changes in a pond when a single droplet of water hits the surface several feet away. Alligators, crocodiles and other members of this reptilian order use these so-called “invisible whiskers” to detect prey while hunting, explained researchers from the University of Missouri (MU).

“The trigeminal nerve is the nerve responsible for detection of sensations of the face,” Casey Holliday, assistant professor of anatomy in the MU School of Medicine, said Thursday in a statement. “While we’ve known about these sensitive nerves in crocodiles, we’ve never measured the size of the nerve bundle, or ganglion, in their skulls, until now. When compared to humans, this trigeminal nerve in crocodiles is huge.”

Holliday explains that the trigeminal nerve mechanism known as “face-touch” is basically a way for a creature to communicate with its environment. The animals receive stimuli from the environment that tell them about danger, food and other important information.

Now, Holliday and co-author Ian George, a doctoral student at the MU, are looking at the trigeminal nerve to help determine how its function has evolved over the years. They hope to eventually be able to measure this fiber in other contemporary and historical species in order to learn more about animal behavior.

To do so they will have to focus on a specific hole in the skull. The trigeminal nerve is rooted inside the head of crocodilians, but it must travel through a large hole before it branches out and reaches the skin on the creature´s face. Holliday and George plan to examine the relationships between the sizes of the skull, brain and ganglion in the hopes that they can use that data to learn exactly how sensitive the face is.

“Currently, we rely on alligators, crocodiles and birds to provide us with information about how ancient reptiles, such as pre-historic crocodiles and dinosaurs, functioned. However, the first thing we have to do is to understand how the living animals function,” Holliday explained.

When comparing the size of the trigeminal nerve hole of alligators with those of certain dinosaurs, George said that the hole in the far-larger dinosaur skull is similar in size to — or perhaps even smaller than — those of its modern-day cousins. That knowledge could give scientists more information about how well or poorly dinosaurs could detect small sensation on the face, which in turn could allow them to trace the evolution of this biological mechanism.

“Some species of ancient crocodiles lived on land and they probably wouldn’t have a use for a sensitive face that can detect disturbances in the water,” he explained. “So our next step is to trace back and determine when the nerve got bigger and see how that might have paralleled the animals’ ecology.”

Stem Cells Could Build Better Blood Vessels, Boost Tissue Engineering

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[Watch the Video: Engineering Blood Vessels ]

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Researchers from the University of Michigan (UM) have reportedly discovered a way to overcome one of the primary obstacles to growing replacement hearts, lungs, kidneys and other new organs.

Those replacement organs often fail because of the difficulties associated with building blood vessels in order to keep their tissues alive. Now UM associate biomedical engineering professor Andrew Putnam said he has discovered why one of the main techniques used to build blood vessels does not work on a consistent basis, as well as how to correct the problem.

“It’s not just enough to make a piece of tissue that functions like your desired target,” Putnam said in a statement obtained by redOrbit. “If you don’t nourish it with blood by vascularizing it, it’s only going to be as big as the head of a pen. But we need a heart that’s this big,” he added, displaying his fist as an example.

Currently, there are two primary methods that biomedical researchers use to build new capillaries, which are the smallest of the blood vessels and are responsible for exchanging oxygen, carbon dioxide and nutrients between blood and muscles or organs.

One group is working on drug compounds that would encourage existing blood vessels to branch into new tributaries, while the other is using a cell-based method. The second group includes Putnam´s team, and they are using cells to encourage blood vessel growth. That technique involves injecting cells with a scaffolding carrier known as fibrin near the exact location where new capillaries are supposed to form.

The latter method does not always work out well, though, and Putnam and his colleagues set out to discover why. They analyzed the cells that form blood vessels and found that the identity of the supporting cells was critical to the quality of the blood vessels that are formed.

Putnam and his colleagues found that if they used adult stem cells from bone marrow or fat, they wound up with “very robust vasculature that is that is very high quality,” but using more generic, readily-available connective tissue cells, the vessels that formed tended to be “leaky.” Their findings have been published online in Tissue Engineering Part A, and will also appear in a forthcoming print edition of the medical journal.

“The cells know what to do. You can take these things and mix them and put them in an animal,” the Michigan professor explained. “Literally, it’s as easy as a simple injection and over a few days, they spontaneously form new vessels and the animals’ own vasculature connects to them.”

“The adult stem cells from fat and bone marrow both work equally well. If we want to use this clinically in five to 10 years, I think it’s crucial for the field to focus on a support cell that actually has some stem cell characteristics,” Putnam added. He hopes that eventually doctors will be able to obtain these support cells from the patients themselves and then inject them right at the site where the new blood vessels are required.

Method To Cure Cocaine Addiction Through Prefrontal Cortex Being Developed

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

New hope for the estimated 1.4 million Americans addicted to cocaine could come in the form of a laser-inspired treatment that could effectively turn off their craving for the illicit drug, claims research published in this week´s edition of the journal Nature.

According to HealthDay News, scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) used laser light to stimulate the prefrontal cortex of genetically-modified, cocaine-addicted rats.

The researcher implanted special light-sensitive proteins known as rhodopsins into neurons in the rats´ prefrontal cortex, essentially transforming those neurons into a switch, CBS News explained. Doing so allowed them to “switch off” the addictive behavior in the rodents — or conversely, “switch on” cocaine cravings in rats that showed no signs of addictive behavior.

“When we turn on a laser light in the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex, the compulsive cocaine seeking is gone,” Antonello Bonci, scientific director of the intramural research program at NIDA as well as also an adjunct professor of neurology at UCSF, said in a statement obtained by redOrbit. He and his colleagues believe their work could lead to a new drug-treatment therapy that could be tested immediately in humans.

However, HealthDay News points out the therapy would probably not use lasers in people. Rather, it would likely utilize an electromagnetic stimulation technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in order to achieve similar results in the prefrontal cortex.

TMS has been used to treat depression, they said, and in clinical trials it would be utilized during a few sessions each week in an attempt to reduce the desire for the drug — re-stimulating activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is dulled as a result of habitual cocaine use.

According to the researchers, cocaine abuse is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke for adults under the age of 35, and was responsible for more than 480,000 emergency room visits in 2008. The researchers also point out that use of the illicit substance has a large impact on society in other ways, including loss of on-the-job productivity, lost earnings, crime and incarcerations, and treatment and prevention programs.

The article, which is entitled “Rescuing cocaine-induced prefrontal cortex hypoactivity prevents compulsive cocaine seeking,” was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature. In addition to Bonci, co-authors on the paper were Billy T. Chen, Hau-Jie Yau, Christina Hatch, Ikue Kusumoto-Yoshida, Saemi L. Cho and F. Woodward Hopf.

New System Takes High-Resolution 3D Images From Half Mile Away

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists writing in the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express say they have created a new camera system that creates high-resolution 3D images from over half a mile away

The technique, known as time-of-flight (ToF), is already being used in machine vision, navigation systems for autonomous vehicles, and other applications, but many of these systems have a short range and struggle to image objects that do not reflect laser light. The researchers, led by Gerald Buller, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, say they have overcome these limitations.

Buller says the ToF imaging system can gather high-resolution, 3-D information about objects that are typically very difficult to image up to 0.6-mile away. The system works by sweeping a low-power infrared laser beam rapidly over an object. After this, it records the round-trip flight time of the photons in the beam as they bounce off the object and arrive back at the source. The system can resolve depth on the millimeter scale over long distances using a detector that counts individual photons.

Heriot-Watt University Research Fellow Aongus McCarthy, the first author of the paper, said that although other approaches can have exceptional depth resolution, the new system is able to image objects like items of clothing that do not reflect laser pulses easily.

“Our approach gives a low-power route to the depth imaging of ordinary, small targets at very long range,” McCarthy says. “Whilst it is possible that other depth-ranging techniques will match or out-perform some characteristics of these measurements, this single-photon counting approach gives a unique trade-off between depth resolution, range, data-acquisition time, and laser-power levels.”

The researchers say the primary use of the system will be used for scanning static, man-made targets like vehicles, which could be used to determine speed and direction.

One key characteristic of the system is the long wavelength of laser light the researchers chose, at 1,560 nanometers. This wavelength is longer than visible light and travels more easily through the atmosphere.

The team says the scanner is good at identifying objects hidden behind clutter, but not human skin. However, it would be able to detect humans if they were sweating, according to McCarthy.

He says the device could eventually scan and image objects as far away as six miles away.

“It is clear that the system would have to be miniaturized and ruggedized, but we believe that a lightweight, fully portable scanning depth imager is possible and could be a product in less than five years,” McCarty said.

Next, the team needs to work on the lag time, because it currently takes about five to six minutes from the onset of scanning until a depth image is created. Most of the lag is due to the slow processing time of the team’s computer resources.

“We are working on reducing this time by using a solid-state drive and a higher specification computer, which could reduce the total time to well under a minute. In the longer term, the use of more dedicated processors will further reduce this time,” McCarthy said.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) demonstrated its own ToF technology at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. The new 3D ToF image sensor chipset integrates SoftKinetic´s DepthSense pixel technology and runs SoftKinetic’s iisu middleware for finger, hand and full-body tracking. The chipset is inside 3D cameras that control a laptop and a smart TV to access and navigate movies, games and other content.

A Growing Trend: Couples Choosing To Shack Up Before Marriage

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Nearly half of all women moved in with a romantic partner prior to getting married, according to statistics released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Forty-eight percent of the more than 12,000 15- to 44-year-old females interviewed by the NCHS between 2006 and 2010 chose cohabitation as their first union, without marriage. That´s an increase from just 38 percent in 1995, the agency revealed in their new report.

The study also revealed that marriages themselves made up less than one-fourth of all “first unions” (meaning first marriages or cohabitations) during that span. In 2002, 30 percent of those were marriages, reported Jason Koebler of US News and World Reports.

Furthermore, 75 percent of American women had moved in with a partner other than a spouse by the age of 30, and 40 percent of all unmarried partners were joined in wedlock within three years´ time. One-third of all relationships involving non-married cohabitation remained intact without marriage, while 27 percent crumbed, reported Bloomberg´s Elizabeth Lopatto.

The study found that the median duration of initial cohabitation was 22 months — two months longer than in 2002 and nine months longer than in 1995, according to the NCHS report. Nearly one out of every five women became pregnant and gave birth in the first year of a first premarital cohabitation, they added.

“The United States has long had the shortest cohabiting relationships of any wealthy nation and now these relationships are lengthening,” Johns Hopkins University (JHU) sociologist Andrew Cherlin told Sharon Jayson of USA Today.

“What we’re seeing here is the emergence of children within cohabiting unions among the working class and the poor,” he added. “They have high standards for marriage and they don’t think they can meet them for now, but increasingly, it’s not stopping them from having a child. Having children within cohabiting unions is much more common among everybody but the college educated.”

Seven out of ten women without a high school diploma cohabitated before getting married, while only 47 percent of those with at least a bachelor´s degree did so, the NCHS report said. Caucasian women spent the least amount of time living with a romantic partner out of wedlock (19 months), while Hispanic women born outside of the US spent the most time cohabitating with a significant other (33 months).

“The percentage of first unions that were cohabitations rather than marriages increased 57 percent for Hispanic women, 43 percent for white women, and 39 percent for black women in 2006 through 2010, compared to a similar survey from 1995,” reported Lopatto. “Only Asian women weren´t more likely to cohabitate before marriage.”

Health

Prostate Cancer Treatment Study Changing The Way Doctors Practice

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Despite menopause-like side effects, continuous hormone treatment is superior to intermittent therapy

A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine recommends a dramatic shift in the way doctors treat metastatic prostate cancer.

“These results have changed the way I treat patients,” said Ian M. Thompson Jr., M.D., director of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and senior author on the international study.

Hormone therapy in hormone-sensitive prostate cancer has been shown to help extend the lives of patients, but it causes a range of unpleasant side effects in men like moodiness, hot flashes, bone loss and sexual dysfunction. To give patients relief, doctors have, in some cases, “pulsed” the therapy – giving it to men for a time and then stopping it until the signs of prostate cancer activity reappear, then starting the hormone therapy again until the cancer appears to be under control.

The study shows that the continuous therapy helps men more. Men with less advanced metastatic prostate cancer who received the “pulse” or intermittent hormone therapy died an average of two years sooner than those on continuous therapy. The study results first drew attention when they were announced last summer at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

After that, prostate cancer survivor Floyd Balter switched from pulse to continuous therapy.

“Last year Dr. Thompson told me about the study results,” said Balter, 78. “I said, ‘Let’s do it.'”

Surviving 17 years beyond a diagnosis where he’d been given two years to live, Balter said he’s determined to watch his grandchildren grow for as long as possible.

“I want to live as long as I can,” he said. “I can live with the side effects. They’re a pain but I can tolerate them.”

In the study results, if men with more extensive disease are included in the group, survival was more modest, extended by an average of 7 months, “which is longer than any other intervention,” said Dr. Thompson, director of the CTRC. Often advances in cancer treatments will only extend life by an average of two or three months, he noted.

“I can now give a patient the option of putting up with some side effects in order to spend several more months or even years with his grandchildren,” Dr. Thompson said. “I can tell you they are happy to have that choice.”

Also, Dr. Thompson pointed out, because of the increase in PSA testing, most men who are diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer present with disease that is still minimal.

The study followed 1,535 men with metastatic prostate cancer for a median of almost 10 years. It was led by SWOG, an international network of research institutions. The significance of the results, adding months if not years to the lives of many men, means every physician with prostate cancer patients should take them into account, Dr. Thompson said.

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Science

For Wikipedia Users, Being ‘Wikipedian’ May Be More Important Than Political Loyalties

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Community interaction likely more important than political affiliation for Wikipedia users

Wikipedia users who proclaim their political affiliations within the online community consider their identity as “Wikipedian” stronger than potentially divisive political affiliations, according to research published April 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David Laniado and colleagues from Barcelona Media, Spain, and University of Southern California.

Previous studies of blog networks have revealed that liberal and conservative blogs tend to link to others with similar political slants rather than to one another, described by researchers as “divided they blog”. In the current study, researchers analyzed how Wikipedia users displayed political affiliations and interacted with others who stated different affiliations. Unlike previous analyses of other social media, the authors found no trends indicating a preference to interact with others of the same political party within the Wikipedia community. As the authors state in their paper, “The results of our analysis show that despite the increasing political division of the U.S., there are still areas in which political dialogue is possible and happens.”

Their results suggest that Wikipedia users who declare political loyalties consider their identity as being ‘Wikipedian’ stronger than their political affiliations.

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Bald Men At Greater Risk Of Heart Disease Than Those With Full Head Of Hair

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John

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Many men who are affected by a receding hairline often face psychological issues such as insecurity, rejection and depression. But balding men everywhere may have a much more worrisome issue to face other than just how they look. A new study published online in the journal BMJ Open, suggests men with severe male-pattern baldness are nearly twice as likely to develop coronary artery disease as those with a full head of hair.

Researchers from University of Tokyo in Japan found that men who lost their hair earlier in life were at the greatest risk, with those with the greatest amount of hair loss having the highest chance of developing heart disease. The researchers cautioned that this only applied to men whose hair loss occurred on top of the head, and not with those who are affected only by a receding hairline around the temples.

The Japanese study, which involved nearly 37,000 participants, found that balding men were 32 percent more likely to have heart disease than their fully haired peers. However, the researchers acknowledged that the risks were less than for other known factors.

Dr. Tomohide Yamada, of the University of Tokyo, told the BBC: “We found a significant, though modest, link between baldness, at least on the top of the head, and risk for coronary heart disease“¦ We thought this is a link, but not as strong as many other known links such as smoking, obesity, cholesterol levels and blood pressure.”

The researchers pulled data from Medline and the Cochrane Library databases for their research, finding 850 possible studies on male pattern baldness, published between 1950 and 2012. But only six of these studies met the criteria for the Japanese research and were included in the analysis. All six of these studies had been published between 1993 and 2008.

In three of the studies, men were tracked for at least 11 years. In those studies, the researchers found that men who lost their hair were 32 percent more likely to develop heart disease, rising to 44 percent in those who became bald before the age of 60.

In the other three studies, which compared the health of balding men against those with all their hair, found that men with hair loss were 70 percent more likely to have heart disease, increasing to 84 percent in younger age groups who were balding.

Taking all six studies into account and averaging out the figures, the researchers found that extensive baldness on the crown increased heart disease risk by 48 percent, moderate baldness by 36 percent and mild baldness by 18 percent.

When the analysis was confined to men under the age of 60, the team found that balding men were 44 percent more likely to develop coronary heart disease.

The studies analyzed all assessed the degree of baldness using the Hamilton scale, a validated method in measuring male pattern baldness. The analysis of the results indicated that the risk of coronary artery disease depended on the severity of the baldness, but only if the hair loss was on the crown of the head. Men with receding hairlines showed no increased risk of heart disease.

The researchers assessed four different grades of baldness for the study: none, frontal, crown and combined.

Men with frontal and crown baldness were 69 percent more likely to have coronary artery disease than those with no hair loss. Those with only crown baldness were 52 percent more likely to have the disease; those with just frontal baldness were 22 percent more likely.

Although it remains unclear where the connection lies between baldness and coronary heart disease, the researchers suggest that baldness could be a symptom of an underlying condition which also causes heart disease such as insulin resistance, chronic inflammation or sensitivity to testosterone.

The researchers said their results showed that men with a balding crown should “probably be encouraged to improve their cardiovascular risk profile”, especially if their baldness developed early.

Doireann Maddock, a cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation, said the results of the study were “interesting.” However, for men who are balding, or who have already gone bald, she said they “should not be alarmed by this analysis.”

“Much more research is needed to confirm any link between male pattern baldness and an increased risk of coronary heart disease. In the meantime, it’s more important to pay attention to your waistline than your hairline,” Maddock told the BBC´s James Gallagher.

Last Global ‘Hot Spell’ May Help Improve Current Climate Models

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Temperature patterns during Earth´s last prolonged global “hot spell” some 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago differed markedly from those of modern times, suggesting current climate models may need to be adjusted to improve future predictions, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.

The Earth was warmer during that time – known as the Pliocene Epoch – than it is today, and had higher carbon dioxide levels than existed before the Industrial Revolution. However, the waters in the Tropics — off the coast of Peru, for example — were much warmer than they are now, resembling modern El Niño conditions. There was also little to no east-to-west temperature variation along the equator, and temperature differences between high latitudes and the Tropics were much smaller.

The researchers wanted to better understand this period, which is widely viewed as a potential analog for a future hot Earth, in hopes of improving future climate predictions.

“If we want to understand our future climate, we have to be able to understand the climate of the past,” said study co-author Alexey Fedorov, a Yale University climate scientist.

“The Pliocene Epoch attracts particular attention because of similar carbon dioxide levels to what we have had over the last few decades, but its climate was markedly different in several important ways,” he said.

“If we’re able to simulate early Pliocene climate, however, we will be more confident in our ability to predict future climate change.”

It is difficult to model the precise conditions behind the pattern of warming in the early Pliocene, since none of the proposed mechanisms — from high carbon dioxide levels to changes in global ocean circulation patterns — can explain why the ancient warm period looks the way it does, the researchers said.

Study co-author Petra Dekens, Assistant Professor of Geosciences at San Francisco State University, and colleagues wondered whether climate models for the early Pliocene might be missing key processes that could be applied to models of modern climate to improve future climate predictions.

“It’s very hard to look at a climate record from the past and say this directly applies to modern climate,” Dekens said.

“But what it does do is help us think about what the gaps might be in our models, what are the uncertainties in our current models, and whether those uncertainties could be important.”

The Earth´s climate began to change after the early Pliocene, when a pool of warm water spreading out from the equator began to shrink toward lower latitudes, and east-west differences in sea surface temperature began to develop. Overall, the planet’s climate shifted toward cooler temperatures.

The researchers were able to see this broad shift in climate by examining a wealth of published data on sea surface temperatures.

Fedorov and colleagues compiled records of sea surface temperatures going back to the early Pliocene five million years ago, which revealed fairly uniform warm temperatures in the Tropics before four million years ago — a scenario that typical climate model simulations fail to show.

These records showed that the early Pliocene climate was “structurally different” from today’s climate, Dekens said.

“It’s not just that the absolute temperature in any one location is different, it’s that the patterns are different.”

Dekens’ colleagues constructed several models to try and recreate the sea surface temperature conditions of the early Pliocene, but none of the expected “drivers” of climate that they tested could account for all the major features of the ancient climate.

For instance, increases in greenhouse gases and changes in ocean circulation could not reproduce the early Pliocene climate in their models.

Other adjustments to the models, such as reducing the reflection of sunlight by tropical clouds, did bring the models closer to matching the early Pliocene, but still fell short of explaining the full pattern.

Previous attempts to explain Pliocene climate have emphasized tectonic changes in Indonesia and Central America, but accounting for this in climate models still results in a conflict with actual temperature patterns.

The scientists proposed several factors to explain warm temperatures during the Pliocene, including ocean mixing in subtropical waters, perhaps due to widespread hurricanes and diminished cloud reflectivity. When combined in models with higher levels of carbon dioxide, they help replicate conditions of the warm Pliocene Earth.

However, these factors have not been included in climate models used to make future projections, the researchers said.

A better understanding of what drove Pliocene climate, with its nearly uniform tropical ocean temperatures, will increase our confidence in the models, said Fedorov.

“We can’t discount a possible future that has a vast pool of warm water covering the tropics, and the changes in atmospheric circulation and rainfall that would go along with that,” said study co-author Chris Brierley of the University College London.

“An important question is how much the evidence of climate evolution over the last five million years shapes our assessment of future change. From these observations, it is clear that the climate system is capable of remarkable transformations even with small changes in external parameters such as carbon dioxide,” he said.

“Therefore, explaining the discrepancy between model simulations and the early Pliocene temperature patterns is essential for building confidence in our climate projections.

“In many ways, this work on past climates is part of understanding the uncertainty of future climate. It can give us a heads-up of potential climates that we hadn’t imagined possible before.”

The study, entitled “Patterns and mechanisms of early Pliocene warmth,” was published in the April 4 issue of the journal Nature.

Dark Matter Evidence From The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

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[ Watch the Video: AMS Time Lapse Installation ]

John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

For decades scientists have wondered whether a mysterious form of matter — known simply as Dark Matter since it does not interact directly with light — makes up the majority of the “stuff” in the Universe.

Researchers have pointed to the seminal work on the Bullet Cluster of galaxies as evidence that dark matter is a real substance. But similar observations of other galaxy clusters have yielded inconclusive results.

Opponents of the theory suggest that perhaps dark matter is not really matter at all. Instead perhaps our theory of gravity — Einstein´s Theory of General Relativity — is somehow flawed or incomplete. To find the answer, research is ongoing to observe, either directly or indirectly evidence that dark matter actually exists in our Universe.

Now a new study from an international collaboration of scientists has released new, compelling data that suggests that dark matter exists throughout our Universe.

Using an instrument known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the team sorted through over 30 billion cosmic ray events — very high energy particles; mostly protons, electrons and other nuclei — that triggered the detector. They were particularly interested in the ratio of positrons to their antimatter counterpart, the electron.

Certain theories of dark matter predict that the candidate particle is of a special class of self-annihilating matter. Therefore, there is a statistical probability that dark matter collisions could release a significant amount of energy. This energy would eventually manifest itself as electron and positron pairs.

While electrons are commonly produced by several mechanisms, positrons are less prevalent — typically arising from pair production processes. If dark matter is real and theories such as supersymmetry are correct, then dark matter annihilations would cause a rise in the ratio of positions to electrons above 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV).

Using roughly 10% of the data the instrument will accumulate, the AMS sees just such a rise up to about 250 GeV. The AMS has sensitivity enough to probe even higher energies, but with fewer events in those regimes, a greater amount of data is needed to have sufficient statistics on the data.

The research also reports an isotropic distribution to the positron flux, meaning that the particles appear to come from all directions equally. This is certainly consistent with the expected dark matter distribution. However, such conclusions are rather soft, as the interstellar magnetic field can bend the bath of the particles, masking the direction from which they originated.

Therefore, researchers are not ready to call the matter closed. There is still the possibility that these particles were produced by some other mechanism, perhaps even one that we have not even imagined yet. As additional data is analyzed, the picture will hopefully come into clearer focus. But for now evidence continues to mount for the existence of dark matter.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had this to say on the matter:

“The AMS cosmic ray particle results announced today could help foster a new understanding of the fields of fundamental physics and astrophysics. I am confident that this is only the first of many scientific discoveries enabled by the station that will change our understanding of the universe. Multiple NASA human spaceflight centers around the country played important roles in this work, and we look forward to many more exciting results from AMS.

“For more than 50 years, NASA has pushed the boundaries beyond Earth to unveil the underlying architecture of the cosmos, revealing new knowledge about our place within it. The International Space Station is a gateway to the universe, teaching us how humans can live, work, and thrive in space as we endeavor to venture deeper into the solar system. It’s a remarkable testament that the orbital laboratory could play such an important supporting role in research at the very smallest scale of the physical universe. It’s proof positive the space station is humanity’s greatest achievement in low-Earth orbit.”

The AMS results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Uncategorized

What Is A Geologic Fold?

Written By: Sam Savage

Hi, I’m Emerald Robinson, and in this “What is” video, we’re going to talk about geology as we try to answer the question, “What is a fold?”

A fold is a rock formation that’s been made by flat rocks becoming deformed due to stress and pressure. Folds are created when two plates that make up the earth’s crust collide. As the plates are forced together they bend, curve, or make jagged patterns in the rock.

Although there are many types of folds, we’ll discuss three of the most basic: monoclines, anticlines, and synclines.

Monoclines are the simplest types of folds. They consist of a dip or drop in an area of flat or sloping rock, and look like a single step. Older rocks are found at the bottom of a monocline, and the newer ones on its top.

If a fold arches away from the earth, it’s called an anticline. The top of the arch is called the crest of the anticline. The oldest rocks in an anticline are found at its core, or center. Sometimes these older rocks become exposed because the crest erodes away more quickly than the slopes of the arch. If an anticline’s shape is fairly round, it’s called a dome.

Finally, if the fold bends down towards the earth, it’s known as a syncline. This kind of fold’s center is called its hinge. Unlike anticlines, synclines have their youngest rocks at their centers, and older rocks at the outsides. The depressions formed by synclines are sometimes called basins.

Structures formed by geological folding are found all over the earth, and can be of any size. The Alps in Europe, the Andes in South America, and America’s Rocky Mountains are all examples of mountains that have been formed by folding.

Ionic Wind Thrusters Future Of Lightweight Aircraft

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

MIT researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A say they found ionic wind thrusters may be a more efficient source of propulsion than conventional jet engines.

Ionic wind, or electrohydrodynamic thrust, was first identified in the 1960s. The phenomenon takes place when a current passes between two electrodes, creating a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the wind produces a thrust without the help of motors or fuel.

Past studies showed the concept of using ionic thrusters instead of jet propulsion for airplanes would be extremely inefficient. However, the MIT team’s findings found the opposite.

Researchers showed ionic wind produces 110 newtons of thrust per kilowatt, compared with a jet engine’s two newtons per kilowatt. They believe ionic wind may be used as a propulsion system for small, lightweight aircraft. Also, because the thrusters would be silent and invisible to infrared, they would be ideal for surveillance vehicles.

“You could imagine all sorts of military or security benefits to having a silent propulsion system with no infrared signature,” says Steven Barrett, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

The ionic thruster consists of a very thin copper electrode, a thicker tube of aluminum, and the air gap in between. It has a lightweight frame that supports the wires, which connects to an electrical power source. Once voltage is applied, the field gradient strips away electrons in nearby air molecules. These ionized molecules are strongly repelled by the corona wire and strongly attracted to the collector. As the cloud of ions moves towards the collector it collides with surrounding neutral air molecules to create a thrust.

The team built a similarly simple setup, and hung the contraption under a suspended digital scale. They then applied tens of thousands of volts, creating enough current to draw power to an incandescent light bulb and altered the distance between the electrodes. According to Barrett, the device was most efficient at producing lower thrust.

“It´s kind of surprising, but if you have a high-velocity jet, you leave in your wake a load of wasted kinetic energy,” said Barrett. “So you want as low-velocity a jet as you can, while still producing enough thrust.” He adds an ionic wind is a good way to produce a low-velocity jet over a large area.

He said one obstacle to overcome is thrust density, which is the amount of thrust produced per given area. These thrusters depend on the wind produced between electrodes, meaning lifting a small aircraft and its electrical power supply would require a very large air gap. Barrett says these thrusters would cover the entire aircraft.

The researchers estimate a small aircraft would need hundreds or thousands of kilovolts to take off. Barrett says power might be supplied by lightweight solar panels or fuel cells.

“The voltages could get enormous,” he said. “But I think that´s a challenge that´s probably solvable.”

One team is preparing to complete a solar-powered flight across the US. The Solar Impulse team will be flying the HB-SIA zero-fuel airplane both day and night, solely on the power of the Sun. The aircraft will be making a coast-to-coast trip across the US, making several stops in key cities along the way.

The plane has a 208 feet wingspan, weighs nearly 3,600 pounds and relies solely on 12,000 solar cells for its power.

One In Five Teenage Mothers Are Likely To Have Another Baby Before Adulthood

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that teen girls who have already given birth are more likely to have another baby in their teen years.

According to this new report, nearly one in every five children born to an American teen aged 15 to 19 also has an older sibling waiting to greet them at home. Though the national rate of teenage pregnancy has dropped over the past 20 years, the CDC claims these new findings suggest that there are “substantial racial/ethnic and geographic differences.”

In 2010, nearly 365,000 babies were born to girls aged 15 to 19 years old. The CDC found that 18.3 percent (66,761) of these babies were “repeat births,” a number which dropped by 6.2 percent between 2007 and 2010.

A total of 8,397 of these babies were the mother´s third child; 1,158 of these babies were at least the fourth child born into the family.

“Teen birth rates in the U.S. have declined to a record low, which is good news. But rates are still far too high,” said CDC director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, in a statement.

The Vital Signs report finds that there´s a wide racial gap between these pregnancies. For instance, Native Americans and Alaska natives had the highest rate of repeat births at 21.6 percent. Hispanic teenage girls came in second with 20.9 percent, followed by non-Hispanic blacks at 20.4 percent. Non-Hispanic whites had the lowest percentage of repeat births at 14.8 percent.

The report also finds that the rate of repeat births increases depending on where these mothers are from. Teenage girls from Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas are at least 20 percent more likely to have a repeat birth than other states in the US. Texas had the largest percentage of repeat births at 22 percent, while New Hampshire had the lowest percentage at 10 percent.

Many of these mothers (91.2 percent) reported using some form of contraceptive during their postpartum period to prevent repeat births. Yet, the study found that only 22.4 percent of these girls were using a contraceptive considered to be “most effective.” These methods include an implant or an intrauterine device (IUD).

The CDC makes several suggestions to keep teenage pregnancy and repeat pregnancies down. For instance, doctors and health officials could begin talking with sexually active teens about the “most effective” types of birth control and the proper ways to use other forms of contraceptives. These health officials could also begin urging teens to space their pregnancies at least two years apart to support the health of the baby. Furthermore, teens should be warned that having so many children during their young years could hinder any career or life goals they may have.

Parents and guardians are also encouraged to talk to their teens about ways to avoid repeat births. The CDC also suggests parents and guardians check their insurance policies to see which “preventive services,” such as birth control measures, are available to them under their plan.

Finally, the CDC urges teens to abstain from having sex. If they are going to have sex, the CDC suggests using contraceptive measures correctly and discussing any sexual health issues with a trusted adult or health care professional.

Apple Boasts 600K US Jobs Created By Their ‘App Economy’

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Apple´s iPhone has been credited with beginning what many now call the “App Economy.” There were apps for Windows Mobile and Palm phones before 2008 when the App Store first debuted, of course. Borrowing a few lessons from their iTunes store which made buying individual songs online as easy as entering a password, Apple´s App Store become a more or less instant hit. Some of the App Store´s most popular developers are making a significant amount of money by selling millions of copies of apps that typically cost between $.99 and $2.99.

As a part of what appears to be a shift in Apple´s marketing strategy, the iPhone maker is now claiming they are responsible for creating more than 291,000 jobs in the App Economy. The company also says that they´ve grown to more than 800,000 employees around the world.

This newly updated page on Apple.com is focused on two things: innovation and job creation. According to Apple, it´s their innovation which is responsible for creating so many jobs.

“Throughout our history, Apple has created entirely new products — and entirely new industries — by focusing on innovation,” reads the opening statement to this new page.

“As a result, we´ve created or supported nearly 600,000 jobs for U.S. workers: from the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door.”

The actual number of jobs created by Apple comes in at 598,500, with full time employees in all 50 states. And according to their stats, their iOS App Economy is responsible for 291,250 of these jobs.

There are now more than 800,000 apps in the App Store, resulting in 40 billion downloads since 2008, according to an Apple spokesperson in an email to redOrbit.

This 40-billion number is a figure that Apple bragged about back in January in a separate press release.

Apple also claims they´ve paid more than $8 billion in royalties to iOS developers. According to Apple, this is a thriving community, with more than 275,000 of these developers living in the US and over 6,000 available jobs currently listed on Indeed.com.

Though these developers depend on Apple, they aren´t directly employed by the Cupertino company. The number of those who are, however, has “more than quadrupled over the past decade,” claims Apple. In the early days of the iPod and five years before the iPhone, Apple employed only 10,000 people in the US. Since that time, this number has grown to 50,250. And the number gets even larger when one accounts for the 50,000 or so employees of vendors who directly report to Apple. These jobs include component manufacturers, retail specialists, tech support, sales and more.

Many of these people work in one of Apple´s 250 American retail stores which employ more than 100 workers each on average. Apple uses the fact that they don´t hire seasonal help as another point of pride, noting that they also give part-time employees the same benefits as their full-time employees.

These new updates are a part of a new marketing trend for Apple. Whereas the company once focused exclusively on highlighting their products, they´ve recently begun advertising like other companies, promoting their green practices, their customer satisfaction awards and, now, their positive impact on the economy.

As competitors like Google and Samsung grow increasingly competitive on Apple´s technology turf, Cupertino´s gurus of chic gadgetry have clearly found it necessary to go on the offensive and try a few tricks of their own.

Carnivorous Pitcher Plants Play Host To Complex Food Web

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

At first glance, pitcher plants appear to be simple carnivorous plants that entrap and digest hapless insects that fall into them. However, a closer look reveals a complex food web of fly larvae, rotifers, midge larvae, and bacteria that exist within the plants´ pitcher.

According to a new study by Harvard University, the predator-prey interactions among pitcher plant inhabitants provide an ideal model for understanding food webs on a larger scale.

“It´s shocking, the complex world you can find inside one little pitcher plant,” said Harvard´s Ben Baiser, the lead author of the new study, which appeared in the journal Oikos.

The organisms found within a pitcher plant´s leaves play a key role in the plant´s ability to extract nutrients. After an insect drowns in the pitcher, midge larvae feed on the carcass and break it down to smaller pieces. Bacteria eat the smaller pieces, rotifers eat the bacteria, and the pitcher plant benefits by absorbing the rotifers´ waste, according to the scientists.

The entire web can shift in seconds and can change drastically with the addition or removal of a single organism, the authors said.

According to study co-author Aaron Ellison, a senior ecologist at the university´s Harvard Forest department, the predators and prey within the plants provide a unique opportunity to study food webs in general.

“With pitcher plants, you can hold the whole food web in your hand,” he said in a statement. “The vast number of pitcher plants in one bog provide endless opportunities for detailed experiments on how food webs work, not only in pitcher plants, but also in bigger ecosystems that are harder to manipulate, like ponds, lakes, or oceans.”

To investigate the food webs found within pitcher plants, the Harvard researchers investigated food webs inside 60 different pitcher plants from British Columbia, Quebec City, and Georgia. The team was able to identify 35 different types of organisms inside; not including the various different bacteria species.

Baiser said, “We wanted to know: how did we get different food webs in individual pitchers from the same species pool? What caused these food webs to form the way they did?”

Ecologists have outlined the various factors that comprise any food web and the Harvard researchers used these standards when analyzing the various species interactions found inside their pitcher plants.

“Say you´ve got a bunch of lakes,” Baiser said. “And you´ve got a big bucket holding all the species that can live in those lakes. When you dump out the bucket, which creatures end up in which lake? What matters more: the size of the lake, or the fact that predator species X is there, too? Or is it random? Those models help us tease those factors apart.”

According to the Harvard scientists, the predator-prey interactions found within pitcher plants are highly structured and not a series of random events.

“You take out one species, and that affects everything else,” Baiser explained.

In their conclusion, the researchers noted that their approach to analyzing the pitcher plant food webs could be applied to “any well-resolved food web for which data are available from multiple locations.”

A Storm Is Coming In The Form Of The 17-Year Cicada

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Every 17 years, the Eastern seaboard plays host to millions and millions of visitors who arrive with only one purpose in mind: to mate.

The Magicicada septendecim Brood II, or periodical cicada has an unusual life cycle and spends most of its days living underground, living on the bounty of tree roots. Then, when they near the end of their life, they emerge to breed and procreate. Very shortly afterwards, they die before returning to the ground, leaving a mess for any humans who live in the area.

The cicadas are expected to return to the surface once more this year, and public radio podcast Radiolab is asking for help to predict when to expect the cicadas.

Radiolab is turning this somewhat dire occasion into an opportunity for community science. The cicadas normally only emerge once the temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting swarm is what Radiolab will be calling #swarmageddon, hashtag and all. When the temperature is just right, the cicadas will begin burrowing out of their holes 8-inches in the ground and start looking for mates.

While the cicadas are around, the males make a loud sound to attract potential partners. Once they complete their carnal tasks, they promptly die, leaving unsightly large piles of dead bodies all around.

“It can be like raking leaves in the fall, except instead of leaves, it´s dead cicada bodies,” explains Dan Mozgai, a cicada researcher with Cicadamania.com, speaking to National Geographic.

The Radiolab gang wants to know exactly when to expect #swarmageddon, so they´re asking any and all to begin tracking the ground surface temperature 8-inches below the surface. To do this, they´re sharing their plans to build an underground thermometer out of an Arduino kit, breadboard, a handful of resistors, LED lights, a thermistor, wooden dowel, and of course some tape.

The thermistor plugs into the breadboard and reports back to the Arduino board. The Arduino then triggers a series of LEDs which are also plugged into the breadboard. Civilian scientists can record their LED light patterns and feed them into the Radiolab Website to determine the temperature of the ground and report their data to the rest of the group. Radiolab will track this data and put it on a map so people around the world can see when the soil temperature finally reaches prime cicada weather.

According to Radiolab, after one week of steady 64F-and-up temperatures, the Cicadas will emerge and begin spreading their love up and down the Eastern seaboard from Connecticut to Virginia.

Some other interesting facts about periodical cicadas:

According to cicadamania.com, there are actually two types of periodical cicadas. The Brood II, which are expected this year, show up every 17 years. There are other broods, such as Brood XIX and Brood XIII which emerge every 13 years. According to Dan Mozgai, some scientists believe the cicadas emerge in 13 and 17 year cycles because these are prime numbers. This makes it difficult for predators to synchronize with the cicadas and learn to expect them on their cycles.

Cicadas also have five eyes. These insects have three ocelli, or little eyes, in between those two buggy compound eyes. It is believed that cicadas use these smaller eyes to detect light and darkness.

Finally, no creature gets to enjoy in a raucous mating free-for-all every 17 years without some consequence. Cicadas can contract a type of insect STD called the Massosporan fungus. This fungus infects and fills the cicada´s abdomen; it will then begin to grow until the cicada´s abdomen finally falls off. This fungus can infect entire colonies through mating.

Study Shows Dentist’s Bib Clips Host Dangerous Bacteria Even After Disinfecting

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Need another excuse to avoid the dentist? A recent study by researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine found dental bib clips harbor bacteria from the patient, dental clinicians and the environment even after the clips had been disinfected.

“The study of bib clips from the hygiene clinic demonstrates that with the current disinfection protocol, specific aerobic and anaerobic bacteria can remain viable on the surfaces of bib clips immediately after disinfection,” said lead author of the study Addy Alt-Holland, an assistant professor from the university´s Department of Endodontics.

“Although actual transmission to patients was not demonstrated, some of the ubiquitous bacteria found may potentially become opportunistic pathogens in appropriate physical conditions, such as in susceptible patients or clinicians.”

According to the study, which appeared in Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry, standard disinfecting procedures removed the majority of bacteria found on the bib clips immediately after treatment. However, 40 percent of the bib clips tested in the study still had one or more strains of aerobic bacteria, which can easily survive and grow in a dental office environment. The researchers also found 70 percent of bib clips that were tested after disinfection still had one or more type of anaerobic bacteria, which do not survive in the presence of oxygen.

Researchers analyzed the clips on 20 dental bib holders after a standard use. The bib clips were tested for bacteria immediately after treatment (post-treatment clips) and again after the clips were disinfected in the standard manner with alcohol wipes (post-disinfection clips).

A microbiology team led by Bruce Paster, Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Forsyth Institute, then sampled bacteria from both sets of bib clips. They found oral bacteria were found on 65 percent of the post-treatment clips. After disinfection, 15 percent of the clips still had anaerobic“¯Streptococcus bacteria and five percent of the clips still harbored at least one “¯Staphylococcus,“¯Prevotella and“¯Neisseria bacteria species.

The researchers also found at least one skin-related anaerobic bacteria on 45 percent of the clips that were tested after disinfection.

“The results of our analysis show that there is indeed a risk of cross-contamination from dental bib clips. The previous patient’s oral bacteria could potentially still be on the clip and the new patient has a chance of being exposed to infection by using that same bib clip,” Paster said.

“It is important to the clinician and the patient that the dental environment be as sterile as possible; thus it’s concerning that we found bacteria on the clips after disinfection.

“This situation can be avoided by thoroughly sterilizing the clips between each patient or by using disposable bib holders,” he recommended.

In their conclusion, the researchers said there could be three possible sources of clip bacteria: from the patient’s saliva and oral spatter produced during dental treatments, from the hands of dental practitioners, or from the patient’s hands.

According to a previous study from Tufts researchers, rubber-and-metal bib clips retain more bacteria than metal-only clips after treatment and before disinfection.

Symbiosis Between Squid And Bacteria Programs Daily Rhythms

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A new study on glowing bacteria found within Hawaiian bobtail squid could change the way scientists look at symbiotic microorganisms.
The study, which was recently published in the journal mBio, showed the Vibrio fischeri bacteria in the squid´s light organ not only camouflage the animal at night — the bacteria also influence a gene that entrains, or synchronizes, the cephalopod´s circadian rhythms.
“To our knowledge, this is the first report of bacteria entraining the daily rhythms of host tissues,” said co-author Margaret McFall-Ngai of the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
According to McFall-Ngai, other animals, including humans, could also have symbiotic bacteria that influence circadian rhythms of their host.
The researchers first became interested when they found the expression of “light entrainment” proteins (cryptochromes, or CRYs) in the squid´s light organ. These proteins set the circadian rhythms of all animals based on the levels of daylight and are typically found in the head.
“The animal uses the luminescence in the evening, so the luminescence is greatest at night. The gene (entrainment protein) escry1 cycles with the bioluminescence of the animal and not with environmental light,” McFall-Ngai said.
The researchers had to determine if the bioluminescence was synchronizing the cycling or if the bacteria were responsible for the protein expression themselves. First, the team found that squid grown without the V. fischeri bacteria do not sequence their expression of escry1. The team also mimicked the bacterial light with a blue light, which did not provoke the cycling.
The team also looked at squids with defective V. fischeri that were unable to luminesce. These squids didn’t cycle their expression of escry1 either. However, the light-defective squids did begin to cycle their escry1 expression when exposed to the blue light.
To determine how the bacteria could be signaling protein expression to the squid, the team looked at the molecules that indicate the presence of microbes to other creatures, referred to as microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs).
“In this system we have found again and again that bacterial surface molecules are active at inducing all kinds of cellular behavior in the host,” McFall-Ngai said.
In squid grown without V. fischeri, certain MAMPs could cause some cycling in the presence of light. The team theorized the squid´s response has hampered because MAMPs were only injected into their local environment and introduced directly to the light organ.
McFall-Ngai said the fact that a bacterium can control a daily rhythm in a squid is exciting for studying clock genes like escry1 in other animals, including humans.
“Recently, in two different studies, biologists have found that there is profound circadian rhythm in both the epithelium [of the human gut] and the mucosal immune system of the gut that is controlled by these clock genes. What are we missing? Are the bacteria affected by or inducing the cycling of the tissues with which they associate?” We don’t know,” says McFall-Ngai.
She added that her lab will continue to further investigate the effects of escry1 on the squid and its metabolic functions.

Science

New Clues To The Mystery Behind The Maya Blue Formula

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FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

[ Watch The Video Searching to Rediscover the Mysterious Maya Blue Formula ]

The recipe and process for preparing Maya Blue, a highly-resistant pigment used for centuries in Mesoamerica, were lost. We know that the ingredients are a plant dye, indigo, and a type of clay known as palygorskite, but scientists do not know how they were ‘cooked’ and combined together. Now, a team of chemists from the University of Valencia and the Polythecnic University of Valencia (Spain) have come up with a new hypothesis about how it was prepared.

Palace walls, sculptures, codices and pieces of pottery produced by the ancient Maya incorporate the enigmatic Maya Blue. This pigment, which was also used by other Mesoamerican cultures, is characterized by its intense blue color but, above all, by the fact that it is highly resistant to chemical and biological deterioration. Indeed, it was used centuries ago and when it is analyzed now it appears virtually unchangeable.

There is no document that verifies how this paint was prepared and so it remains a mystery. Archaeologists and scientists have sought to uncover the mystery in recent years but it seems that researchers cannot come to an agreement.

The dominant theory proposes that there is a single type of Maya Blue that was also prepared in a unique way and that a specific type of bond binds the two components: one organic component, indigo -the dye used for denim that is obtained from the Indigofera suffruticosa plant in Mesoamerica— and another inorganic component, palygorskite, a type of clay characterized by its crystal structure full of internal channels.

But the work of a team from the University of Valencia (UV) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) seem to contradict this ‘monoist’ version. “We detected a second pigment in the samples, dehydroindigo, which must have formed through oxidation of the indigo when it underwent exposure to the heat that is required to prepare Maya Blue,” stated Antonio Doménech, a UV researcher.

“Indigo is blue and dehydroindigo is yellow,” the expert explained, “therefore the presence of both pigments in variable proportions would justify the more or less greenish tone of Maya Blue. It is possible that the Maya knew how to obtain the desired hue by varying the preparation temperature, for example heating the mixture for more or less time or adding more of less wood to the fire.”

Another of the unsolved questions is how the dye molecules are distributed in palygorskite’s crystal network. According to some scientists, the indigo adheres to the exterior of the clay structure with the ‘brick’ shape although it could also form a sort of ‘cover’ on the entrance to the channels.

However, other researchers believe that the indigo penetrates into the channels. This is the theory supported by the team from Valencia that has just published a study in the “Microporous and Mesoporous Materials” journal on the reactions that could be behind the formation of the blue pigment.

Two-stage process

The results reveal that two stages occur when both components are heated to temperatures between 120 and 180 ºC. In the first and fastest of the two stages water evaporates from the palygorskite and the indigo bonds to the clay, although a part oxidizes and forms dehydroindigo.

In the second stage it would appear that the dye disperses through the channels in the clay. “The process is similar to what happens when we pour a drop of ink into a glass of water,” Doménech said, drawing a comparison, although he acknowledges that “this is a hypothesis” at present.

The researcher’s team, like other groups in other parts of the world, is also investigating the secret of the unknown chemical bonds that bind the organic to the inorganic component. These bonds are the reason behind Maya Blue’s resistance.

In addition to palaces and buildings of the Maya nobility, this pigment is traditionally associated with ritual ceremonies conducted by priests, and may even have been used during human sacrifices. Containers holding traces of the pigment found at the bottom of some natural and man-made wells on the Yucatán peninsula point to this ceremonial use.

Studies such as the one published by US anthropologists in 2008 on a bowl found in the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá led some media outlets to state that the mystery of Maya Blue had been solved. “The bowl contained Maya Blue mixed with copal incense so the simplified conclusion was that it was only prepared by warming incense,” stated Doménech.

The researcher believes that the composition and function of Maya Blue could have varied down through the centuries: “Although quite a few samples would be required, it could be possible to establish the evolution in its properties and preparation throughout the Maya culture from approximately 150 B.C. to 800 A.D., in such a way that we could establish a chronology based on analysing the pigment. This provides a far more ‘flexible’ view of this culture, breaking with that traditional monolithic view of inflexible ritualism.”

Small greenish balls in La Blanca

In support of this view, the team also recently found other pigments that are different from Maya Blue but follow the same pattern of a plant dye combined with clay. They found small greenish balls with this material in the ancient Maya city of La Blanca, modern day Guatemala, and it is assumed they were used to plaster and decorate the walls of palatial buildings.

“These materials were certainly not within the reach of the common people but they signal a more ‘everyday’ use of the pigments that would not have had to be restricted to ritual or ceremonial activities,” Doménech pointed out and said by way of conclusion: “Maya Blue can be considered a polyfunctional material as it can combine different organic components with an inorganic carrier, which, in addition, can be distributed and react differently, thereby producing functions that are also different.”

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Can’t Focus Or Concentrate? Chew Some Gum!

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editor

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
There´s a lot about chewing gum and the act of chewing gum to wonder about. Chew as we might, we never break it down, never digest it, and never receive any nutritional value from it. In many ways, it can be seen as an exercise in futility or a transformation from human to bovine.
A recent study published in the British Journal of Psychology has found some good could come from chewing gum.
According to these researchers, chewing gum may aid in concentration and overall focus. A small group of 40 volunteers were able to better remember sequences when they were chewing gum than those who were not masticating. Though chewing gum may effect concentration and focus, there are those who believe gnashing on the sticky stuff could impair the chewer´s ability to form new kinds of memory.
Last month, researchers from Cardiff University set out to determine what effects, if any, chewing had on focus and memory retention. These researchers recruited 40 volunteers and split them evenly into two groups. Each group was then asked to complete a thirty minute auditory Bakan-task, which involves listening to a sequence of numbers to be recalled later. One group was instructed to chew as they listened, while the other group was told to keep their mouths empty. The Cardiff researchers also asked these participants to rate their mood both before and after the test for extra data.
After the volunteers had been subjected to 30 minutes of numerical sequences, the researchers then asked them to recall the numbers which they had just heard. The gum-chewing group was able to recall more of these numbers and even recall them more quickly than the group which was not allowed to chew gum. The researchers also noted the gum chewers´ performance increased over time as their reactions came quicker as the 30-minute test came to a close. A 2011 study found similar results as gum-chewing participants were better able to recall pictures they had seen during another 30-minute task.
The Cardiff researchers believe this improved performance could be due to an increase in oxygen to the brain. As we chew, we get the blood in our heads pumping and increase the amount of available oxygen to the part of the brain responsible for paying attention.
A group of Japanese researchers agree. They had their volunteers chew gum as they completed several tasks while being scanned by MRI. These scans showed the gum chewers had eight parts of their brain “light up” while they masticated and completed the tasks. These regions are often used when completing these tasks, but according to Dr. Duncan Banks, the director of the British Neuroscience Association, “Those areas seem to light up more when people chew gum,” he told Cara Lee of the Daily Mail Online.
Professor Andrew Smith teaches at the Cardiff University, but is not one of the authors of the new study. He explains gum´s benefits this way: “Chewing stimulates the trigeminal nerve, which stimulates part of the brain responsible for alertness. And we know that chewing increases heart rate, which in turn increases blood flow to the brain.”
Though Professor Smith claims previous research has shown gum chewers are more productive at work, he also suggests chewing gum could affect the way someone learns. “Many aspects of memory rely on using sub-vocal rehearsal (when you repeat words to yourself in your head) and it´s difficult to do that while chewing because it´s a competing activity – but this area needs more research.”

Record-Setting 2011 Lake Erie Algae Blooms Could Become The New Norm

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editor

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Instead of being an isolated occurrence, a record-breaking 2011 algae bloom in Lake Erie could be a harbinger of things to come, researchers report in this week’s online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The hazardous algae bloom — the largest in the recorded history of Lake Erie — was likely caused by long-term changes to farming practices in combination with weather conditions expected to become more common in the near future because of global climate change.

Those conditions include extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake circulation and warmer temperatures, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research through its Water, Sustainability and Climate (WSC) Program. Furthermore, scientists from the eight institutions involved in the study warn that unless those agricultural policies are changed, the lake will continue to experience extreme blooms.

“Intense spring rainstorms were a major contributing factor, and such storms are part of a long-term trend for this region that is projected to get worse in the future due to climate change,” University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia, one of the researchers involved in the study, said in a statement. “On top of that we have agricultural practices that provide the key nutrients that fuel large-scale blooms.”

“The factors that led to this explosion of algal blooms are all related to humans and our interaction with the environment,” added NSF program director Bruce Hamilton. “Population growth, changes in agricultural practices and climate change are all part of the equation. These findings show us where we need to focus our attention in the future.”

According to the Carnegie Institution for Science, which was also involved in the study, fresh water algal blooms result when excessive amounts of phosphorous and nitrogen are added to the water — often as runoff from fertilized agriculture. The increased amount of those nutrients spurs on unusual growth of algae and aquatic plants. When the plants and algae die, decomposers feed on them, using up oxygen in the process and dropping levels of the element to levels too low for aquatic-based life forms to thrive.

The researchers used both sampling, satellite-based observations of Lake Erie, and computer simulations to study the bloom, which began in the western region of the lake in mid-July. Initially it covered an area of 230 square miles and was comprised primarily of microcytsis, an organism which produces a liver toxin and can irritate the skin. It reached its peak in October when it covered more than 1900 square miles and was three-times more intense than any bloom previously recorded by scientists, the researchers added.

“The ‘perfect storm’ of weather events and agricultural practices that occurred in 2011 is unfortunately consistent with ongoing trends,” said Carnegie Institution scientist and lead author Anna Michalak. “That means that more huge algal blooms can be expected in the future, unless a scientifically-guided management plan is implemented for the region.”

The NSF said the researchers analyzed a number of different factors which could have contributed to the bloom, including land-use, agricultural practices, runoff, wind, temperature, precipitation and circulation. They discovered there were three agriculture management practices in the area can lead to increased nutrient runoff — autumn fertilization, broadcast fertilization (uniform distribution of fertilizer over an entire cropped field), and reduced tillage. All three practices have been used with increasing frequency in the region over the past 10 years.

The conditions in the fall of 2010 were found to be ideal for harvesting and preparing fields, as well as increasing fertilizer application for spring planting. However, the following spring a series of strong storms — including rainfall of more than 6.5 inches in May alone — caused sizable amounts of phosphorus to flow into Lake Erie.

Once the bloom began, warmer water and weak currents caused it to become more productive than in past years — helping to incubate it and allowing Microcystis to remain near the top of the water column. Those conditions also kept the nutrients from being flushed out of the system, the researchers added.

“They found that severe storms become more likely in the future, with a 50 percent increase in the frequency of precipitation events of .80 inch or more of rain,” the NSF said. “Stronger storms, with greater than 1.2 inch of rain, could be twice as frequent. The researchers believe that future calm conditions with weak lake circulation after a bloom’s onset are also likely to continue, since current trends show decreasing wind speeds across the United States. That would result in longer-lasting blooms and decreased mixing in the water column.”

“This event was caused by a complex combination of factors, and I think this paper really puts all the pieces together in a very clear and systematic way. We tried to think about this problem in a much more cross-disciplinary way than I think other people have thought about it before,” added atmospheric scientist Allison Steiner, one of 18 co-authors hailing from the University of Michigan. “The models do predict an increase in extreme springtime precipitation events, and that’s driven by an increase in greenhouse gases.”

Study Finds Fish Oil May Actually Boost, Not Harm, Immune System

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

By now it´s nearly become common knowledge that fish oils carry plenty of health benefits for the body. Oils rich in DHA and EPA, for instance, have already been found to reduce inflammation, thereby preventing certain diseases.

Researching these DHA and EPA-rich oils even further, Jennifer Fenton, Ph.D., M.P.H and researcher with the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan has found evidence that fish oil can also boost the immune system by enhancing the activity of B Cells. Dr. Fenton´s new report will be in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

Dr. Fenton´s research discovered that fish oil encourages white blood cell activity and could potentially boost the immune system. Until now it had been suspected that while fish oils may be able to prevent certain diseases, it also suppresses the immune system.

However, with the results of this new study, doctors could begin prescribing fish oils to patients who have had their immune systems compromised.

In her research, Dr. Fenton and colleagues studied two groups of mice. The first group was given a diet rich in DHA and EPA-rich fish oil for five weeks. The second group of mice was only fed a control diet. After the five week study was over, the researchers harvested B cells from the mice and grew them in a culture. The B cells from the mice that had been fed a diet rich in fish oil showed more activity than the cells of those on the control diet.

B cells are part of a group of white blood cells called lymphocytes that play a key role in the body natural immune response system.

The researchers found that the membranes of the B cells changed as a result of this short five-week, fish-oil-rish diet. The study also found that mice given the DHA diet saw increased antibody production, leading the researchers to believe that fish oil may actually serve to strengthen the immune system.

A December 2012 study similarly found that fish oil can help the immune systems of marathon runners before and after the big race.

In a study published by the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, Brazilian researchers proved that fish oil could stave off the usual illnesses experienced after a long footrace.

The research team had a group of marathoners take supplements with DHA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, 60 days before a marathon. Another group of runners were not given the supplements, and the two groups were compared following the race. Both groups were found to have experienced “cell death,” a common post-marathon effect according to Runners World.

Yet those who had taken the fish oil supplements saw increased white cell growth before and after the race. Furthermore, their production of cytokines, a class of proteins thought to boost the immune system, had not declined. The runners who had not taken the fish oil saw their cytokine levels drop and experienced a higher degree of cell death.

These runners were able to see these results after taking only 3 grams of fish oil supplements every day for 60 days.

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Climate Change

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Climate change is a substantial and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time ranging from decades to millions of years. It might be a change in the average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions. Climate change is a result of factors that include oceanic processes, biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received buy Earth, volcanic eruptions, and plate tectonics, and human induced alterations of the natural world; these latter effects are presently causing global warming, and the term “climate change” is frequently used to describe human-specific impacts.

Image Caption: Satellite image of ship tracks, clouds created by the exhaust of ship smokestacks. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia

Implantable Microchip Could Be Used To Curb Appetite, Battle Obesity

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editor

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

A team of UK scientists has developed an implantable microchip which they claim is capable of suppressing appetite, potentially making it a powerful new weapon in the fight against obesity.

The microchips were designed by Imperial College London professors Chris Toumazou and Sir Stephen Bloom,  and according to FrenchTribune.com, they will soon be tested in a series of animal trials which could determine whether or not they are a good alternative to weight loss surgery.

The intelligent implantable modulators are only a few millimeters wide and will attach to the vagus nerve in the abdomen´s peritoneal cavity using cuff electrodes. The vagus nerve serves as the primary communicator between the brain and the digestive tract, explained Medical Daily´s Ansa Varughese. Once attached, the chip would be able to read electrical and chemical signals indicating appetite. It would then respond by sending a signal of its own to the brain reducing or halting the urge to eat.

“This is a really small microchip and on this chip we’ve got the intelligence which can actually model the neural signals responsible for appetite control,” Toumazou told Neil Bowdler of BBC News. “And as a result of monitoring these signals we can stimulate the brain to counter whatever we monitor. It will be control of appetite rather than saying don’t eat completely. So maybe instead of eating fast you’ll eat a lot slower.”

Bloom added that the intelligent implantable modulators could offer an alternative to “gross surgery,” that it would require only “a little tiny insert,” and that “it will be so designed as to have no side effects, but restrict appetite in a natural way.” He added that the brain “will get the same signals from the intestinal system as it normally gets after a meal, and these signals tell it don’t eat any more — the gut’s full of food and you don’t need to eat any more.”

Human trials of the device could begin in three years, according to the BBC.

The chip itself builds upon a similar, existing technology called MIMATE, which is currently being tested in children suffering from cerebral palsy and epileptic seizures, Varughese explained.

MIMATE picks up on chemical signals sent from the brain to an affected organ, then sends impulses to stimulate that organ in order to help patients gain dexterity and improved hand/eye coordination. However, the intelligent implantable modulator is different in that it does not send stimulating impulses.

New Class Of Diabetes Drug Approved By The FDA

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Invokana, the first of a new class of drugs that will treat patients suffering from type 2 diabetes, on Friday, various media outlets have reported.

Rather than impacting the body´s supply or use of insulin like many existing types of diabetes medications, Invokana, which will be sold by Johnson & Johnson, causes blood sugar to be excreted in the urine, according to the New York Times. It is to be used once daily and will carry a wholesale price of $8.77 per tablet.

“Invokana, or canagliflozin, is the first diabetes treatment approved in a new class of drugs known as sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors,” Dr. Mary Parks, director of the Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

“We continue to advance innovation with the approval of new drug classes that provide additional treatment options for chronic conditions that impact public health,” she added.

The FDA studied five postmarketing studies for the medication, including a cardiovascular outcomes trial, an enhanced pharmacovigilance program, a bone safety study and two pediatric studies, Reuters reporter Toni Clarke explained.

Those trials showed that Invokana was effective in lowering the blood sugar of patients suffering from type 2 diabetes — the most common form of the disease. However, there were some possible side effects.

“Earlier this year, an advisory committee to the FDA discussed the benefits and risks of canagliflozin with a focus on any potential increased risk of heart attack or stroke,” Clarke said.

“A clinical study of patients at especially high risk of cardiovascular disease showed that within the first 30 days, 13 patients“¦ suffered a major cardiovascular event compared with just one patient taking a placebo. After that, the imbalance was reversed,” she added. “The drug also caused a slight increase in unhealthy LDL cholesterol.”

An FDA spokesperson told the New York Times that the significance of those findings was “unclear,” and that there would be no requirement to place warnings about heart attacks or strokes required on the label.

The US health agency added that the most common side effects with Invokana were vaginal yeast infections and urinary tract infections. Furthermore, the drug is not recommended for patients suffering from severe kidney disease, as they were found to be at a higher risk for negative side effects versus those with normal renal functions.

Researchers Discover Link Between Sleep Apnea And ADHD In Children

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John

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Children who suffer from one common type of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) are more likely to suffer from ADHD and other adaptive and learning problems, according to a new study appearing in the April edition of the journal SLEEP.

The five-year study utilized data from the Tucson Children’s Assessment of Sleep Apnea Study (TuCASA) — an analysis which examined the prevalence and incidence of SDB and its neurobehavioral impact on six to 11 year old Caucasian and Hispanic children — to determine that children with different types of sleep apnea were more likely to have behavioral problems.

The TuCASA study involved 263 children, each of whom completed both an overnight sleep analysis and a battery of neurobehavioral assessments, including both self-reported and parental rating scales.

The study showed that 23 of those children had incident sleep apnea which developed during the study period, 21 children suffered from persistent sleep apnea during the course of the entire study, and that 41 youngsters originally had sleep apnea but were no longer suffering from breathing problems during sleep by the five-year follow-up.

The researchers reported that children with incident sleep apnea were four to five times more likely to have behavior problems, while those with persistent sleep apnea were six times more likely to have such issues.

In addition, compared to children who had never suffered from SDB, parents of youngsters with sleep apnea were more likely to report that their kids had issues in the areas of hyperactivity, attention, disruptive behaviors, communication, social competency and self-care.

Children with persistent sleep apnea were also reportedly seven times more likely to have parent-reported learning difficulties, and three times more likely to have average or below-average grades at school (C or lower on a letter-grade scale).

“This study provides some helpful information for medical professionals consulting with parents about treatment options for children with SDB that, although it may remit, there are considerable behavioral risks associated with continued SDB,” Michelle Perfect, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the school psychology program at the University of Arizona´s department of disability and psychoeducational studies, said in a statement.

“School personnel should also consider the possibility that SDB contributes to difficulties with hyperactivity, learning and behavioral and emotional dysregulation in the classroom,” she added. “Even though SDB appears to decline into adolescence, taking a wait and see approach is risky and families and clinicians alike should identify potential treatments.”

Oklahoma Dental Clinic May Have Infected Thousands With HIV And Hepatitis

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Thousands of patients of an Oklahoma dentist may have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis and should be tested immediately, health authorities investigating the matter said on Thursday.

Health officials with the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry on Thursday warned that nearly 7,000 patients who had received care from a Tulsa dentist should undergo testing after investigators discovered the source of one patient´s disease may have started from improperly cleaned instruments at the dental office.

The Board said state and county health inspectors probed Dr. W. Scott Harrington´s practice in Tulsa after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for hepatitis C and HIV. During the investigation the officials uncovered multiple sterilization issues, including cross-contamination of instruments and the use of a separate, rusty, set of instruments for patients who were known to carry infectious diseases.

Harrington voluntarily shut his practice down when the joint probe began, the Board said in a statement. “The dentist is cooperating with investigators through his attorney,” it said.

The Tulsa Health Department said it would begin mailing notices to the 7,000 patients under Harrington´s care alerting them of possible infections, explaining that they need to seek medical screening for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

Joyce Baylor, 69, a patient who had a tooth pulled at Harrington´s Tulsa office 18 months ago, said she thought his office looked clean enough. She said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that she plans to submit for a medical test next week to determine whether she picked up an underlying infection from the clinic.

“I’m sure he’s not suffering financially that he can’t afford instruments,” Baylor said.

State epidemiologist Kristy Bradley said it was determined that the initial patient who had been diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis had a dental procedure done about the same time as the exposure started. Upon the investigation of Harrington´s office a number of unsafe practices were uncovered.

“I want to stress that this is not an outbreak. The investigation is still very much in its early stages,” Bradley maintained.

Harrington turned in his license and is facing a hearing on April 19, which could permanently revoke his license, said Tulsa Health Department spokeswoman Kaitlin Snider.

“It’s uncertain how long those practices have been in place,” Snider said. “He’s been practicing for 36 years.”

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is consulting on the case, and has said situations involving dental clinics are rare. However, a Colorado case last year prompted health officials to alert 8,000 oral patients of possible infection. It wasn´t clear whether anyone was actually infected in that case, said the CDC.

“We’ve only had a handful of dental facilities where we’ve had notifications in the last decade,” said an agency spokeswoman.

Patients who have seen Harrington since 2007 will be notified by letter. Letters will go out to patients who were seen at both Harrington´s Tulsa and Owasso offices. The state health department said they only had information going back as far as 2007; patients before that time may not receive a letter. Testing will be done free of charge at the health department on Saturday, and then again beginning Monday. A hotline has been set up for people with questions.

“As a precaution, and in order to take appropriate steps to protect their health, it is important for these patients to get tested. It should be noted that transmission in this type of occupational setting is rare,” ABC News reported health officials as saying.

Despite this, the Oklahoma Dentistry Board lodged a 17-count complaint against Harrington, saying he was a “menace to the public health by reasons of practicing dentistry in an unsafe or unsanitary manner.”

According to the complaint, the clinic had cleaning procedures in place for the equipment, but needles were re-inserted in drug vials after initial use and the office had no written infection-protection procedure.

Harrington told officials that his staff was in control of sterilization and drug procedures. “They take care of that, I don´t,” the Board quoted him as saying.

He is also accused of letting his assistants perform tasks only a licensed dentist should have done, including administering IV sedation.

Investigators also found a drug vial at one of the clinics that had an expiration date of 1993 and a drug log kept by one assistant showed that morphine had been used in the clinic within the last year despite not receiving any morphine shipments since 2009.