New Drug To Treat Breast Cancer Approved By US Regulatory Agency

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a brand new type of breast cancer medication this week that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy surrounding tissues. In U.S. women, breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year alone, the National Cancer Institute reports.

Kadcyla, from Roche, is a combination of a powerful chemotherapy drug, the established drug Herceptin, and a third chemical to link the first two together. The chemical maintains the coherence of the cocktail until it binds itself to a cancer cell to deliver a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Kadcyla is seen as an important step in the fight against breast cancer because it delivers more medication while reducing the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.

“This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it’s very kind and gentle on the patients — there’s no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting,” Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center, said in a HuffPost interview. “It’s a revolutionary way of treating cancer.”

According to Forbes, traditional chemotherapy is akin to a nuclear weapon- it indiscriminately destroys massive amounts of healthy cells along with the cancerous ones. The new drug, and other targeted treatments are more like cruise missiles — programmed to detonate only when they reach a specified target.

The new drug has been approved by the FDA for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients — those with a form of the disease typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. The tumors present in these patients overproduce a protein known as HER-2.

Herceptin (trastuzumab) targets HER-2 positive cells, reports MedPage Today, allowing the chemotherapeutic molecule — DM1 — to attack the cancerous cells.

“This provides a significant leap to a whole other group of drugs, not only for HER2 because this adds a new drug for people who’ve already seen their tumor grow through trastuzumab as well as some of the other antibodies such as pertuzumab or … the tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as lapatinib,” said Jennifer Litton, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDAnderson) in Houston.

Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) is the fourth approved therapy meant to target HER-2 proteins. Two of the other three, Herceptin and Perjeta, are Genentech products as well. The fourth drug, Tykerb, is marketed by GlaxoSmithKline.

The approval of Kadcyla will build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin for Roche’s Genentech unit. Herceptin has dominated the breast cancer marketplace, with sales of approximately $6 billion last year.

Kadcyla will be expensive, with a cost of $9,800 a month. That’s more than double the cost of Herceptin, which is $4,500 a month. A full course of Kadcyla, the company estimates, will run about nine months at a cost of $94,000.

The FDA’s approval was based on company studies showing Kadcyla delays the progression of the disease by several months. Last year, researchers reported that patients treated with Kadcyla lived an average of 9.6 months before death or the disease spreading. Patients treated with two standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda, live an average of 6.4 months before death or the spread of the disease.

Overall, study participants treated with Kadcyla lived approximately 2.6 years, compared to 2 years for those taking other drugs.

The drug has been specifically approved for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy treatment.  Doctors, however, are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines.

Cancer researchers say Kadcyla could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer.

Kadcyla is not without side effects, however. The packaging will carry a boxed warning — the most severe kind — to alert doctors and patients alike that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. Severe birth defects are also side effects of Kadcyla. It should not be used by pregnant women.

Other forms of targeted therapy are in development as well. Scientists have been working on the concept of anti-cancer drug “delivery” to targeted tumors for well over 20 years, but in the last few years the technologies have seen exceptional progress. The next phase of research will probably involve nanoparticle technology. Nanoparticles are smaller-than-microscopic transport vehicles injected into the body. They would then deliver their payload of toxic anti-cancer chemicals only to the cancerous cells.

Different materials have been considered to create nanoparticles since the 1990s. Lipids — naturally occurring molecules that include fats and waxes — were the first promising candidates. Lipids proved to be too large to penetrate tumors effectively, as well as being removed from the body too quickly.

Current candidates are polymers, or synthetic molecules, that can be tailored to the type of medication they are meant to deliver.

Dr. Juntoa Luo, a researcher working on polymer nanoparticles at the Upstate Medical University of New York, says, “The general concept is that one nanoparticle may not be able to deliver different types of medications. You may need to design a nanoparticle for each medication.”

He adds that “nanoparticles may need to be further tailored to individual patients, who may respond differently to medications depending on the stage and markers of their cancer. Polymer nanoparticles carry the medication to the tumor site within 24 hours. Remnants of the nanoparticles are flushed from the body through the kidneys. While they are designed to work most effectively in solid tumors, nanoparticles may also help fight some cancers of the blood.”

Polymer delivery vehicles are not the only nanoparticles being explored. AstraZeneca recently announced significant advances in using gold as a payload vehicle for targeted cancer treatments. Gold flecks are durable and can carry a large amount of a given drug. They are also incredibly tiny, with 5000 flecks fitting on the width of a human hair.

The upshot of all of this is that we may have reached a turning point in our war with cancer. With FDA approval of targeted drug therapies like Kadcyla, and human trials of nanoparticle delivery technology in the offing, mankind might just have gained the upper hand with cancer.

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From Running Roaches to Robots

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University of Michigan engineers are analyzing the reflexes of cockroaches to aid in developing steadier robots. Professor Shai Revzen is recording the reaction of running cockroaches being shoved sideways, discovering that their body kicks in before their dawdling nervous system can tell it what to do.

These new insights on how biological systems stabilize could one day help engineers design steadier robots and improve doctors’ understanding of human gait abnormalities.

credit: University of Michigan

Endometriosis Awareness Month Starts March 1st

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Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
March may be known as the month of St. Patrick´s Day and the luck of the Irish, but it also has important health awareness days, as well. In particular, during the month, there is increased awareness and promotion about endometriosis. Here are a few tidbits about endometriosis to clarify what the disease is all about.
What is endometriosis?
Often stigmatized as merely “killer cramps,” endometriosis is a poorly-understood disease characterized by pelvic pain, painful menstruation, infertility and pregnancy loss, pain with sexual activity, gastrointestinal and urinary tract difficulties and more. Primarily affecting the abdominopelvic organs, endometriosis is also sometimes found in locations like the lungs or diaphragm. The disease may also be linked to other painful concerns including autoimmune disorders, Interstitial Cystitis, Pudendal Neuralgia, and rarely, certain malignancies.
Endometriosis is tissue that somewhat resembles the lining of the uterus (endometrium), found outside the womb where it doesn´t belong. This tissue is not identical to normal endometrium, which is shed during menstruation. The disease often results in severe, debilitating and even chronic pain, as well as sexual dysfunction and impairment of the reproductive, bowels, bladder and nearby organs. Surgical confirmation is required for accurate diagnosis, though symptoms may be predictive.
What symptoms are related to endometriosis?
According to the World Endometriosis Research Foundation, the illness affects an estimated 176 million women and girls — one in ten during their reproductive years, which begins at the start of having a period and ends at the start of menopause. However, even with these numbers, the lack of awareness is one of the reasons why there is delayed diagnosis of the disease.
“Even now, hundreds of years after it was first described in the medical literature, endometriosis remains poorly understood, under-diagnosed and inadequately managed – despite remaining one of the leading causes of hysterectomy, infertility and pelvic pain in women and girls around the world,” commented Michelle E. Marvel, the Executive Director of the ERC, in a prepared statement. “The average delay in diagnosis still hovers around a decade, and patients are often told their symptoms are ℠normal´ or part of ℠being a woman´.”
They note there are a number of common symptoms such as significant menstrual pain, pelvic pain at any given moment during the menstrual cycle, pain related to bowel or urinary disorders, pain during intercourse or any sexual activity, infertility, and pregnancy loss. The cause of endometriosis is still unclear, but it cannot be sexually transmitted and is not contagious.
According to the Center for Endometriosis Care (CEC), laparoscopy is the only way of diagnosing the disease. In the past, diagnosis of endometriosis has been difficult as there are other conditions with similar symptoms.
Though definitive causes remain under debate, recent data implies that metaplasia, genetics, stem cell pathophysiology or possible immune dysfunction may play an important role. The disease can affect a woman or girl from any race or socioeconomic background, with symptoms appearing in adolescence and ranging past menopause.
What treatments are available for those suffering from endometriosis?
There is no known cure for endometriosis, but there are treatments to help alleviate the symptoms and boost a patient´s quality of life. The solution is to speak to a doctor to find out the right treatment for the individuals. Treatments include surgery, hormonal therapy, oral contraceptives, painkillers, and gonadotropin-release hormone analogue (gnRH analogue).
“It is not unusual for a woman or girl to undergo repeat, failed surgeries and ineffective hormonal and medical therapies” said Heather C. Guidone, the Surgical Program Director of the Center for Endometriosis Care and an ERC Executive Board Member. “Too often, emphasis is placed on “treating” infertility and symptom management, versus quality surgery to actually remove the disease,” said Guidone. “It´s imperative that early and effective intervention are offered to any woman or girl who may be suffering in order to prevent long-term effects and negative impact,” she said. “There are valid treatments, particularly Laparoendoscopic Excision (LAPEX), which can drastically improve the quality of life of those affected; this is not a hopeless illness.”

Human Heart Develops Slower Than Other Mammals

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

The walls of the human heart develop slower than other mammals, according to a new study published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focus.

Researchers developed the first comprehensive model of human heart development using observations of living fetal hearts. Human hearts have walls that are a disorganized jumble of tissue until late in pregnancy, despite having the shape of a fully functioning heart.

During the study, they saw four clearly defined chambers in the fetal heart from the eighth week of pregnancy and they did not find organized muscle tissue until the 20th week.

Developing a simulation of the fetal heart is critical in helping researchers understand normal heart development in the womb. This simulation could eventually open up new ways of detecting and dealing with some functional abnormalities in early pregnancies.

The researchers used scans of healthy fetuses in the womb for the study, including a mother who volunteered to have detailed weekly electrocardiography scans from 18 weeks until just before delivery.

Data gathered during the research was used for a 3D computerized model built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart from two types of MRI scans of dead fetuses’ hearts.

Results from the study show the human heart may develop on different timeline from other mammals. While the tissue in the walls of a pig heart develops a highly organized structure compared to the early stage of a fetus’ development, the scientists say there is little organization of the human heart’s cells until 20 weeks into pregnancy.

A pig’s pregnancy lasts about three months, and the organized structure of the walls of the heart come up during the first month of pregnancy. The University of Leeds researchers detected similar organized structures well into the second trimester of the human pregnancy.

“For a heart to be beating effectively, we thought you needed a smoothly changing orientation of the muscle cells through the walls of the heart chambers. Such an organization is seen in the hearts of all healthy adult mammals,” said Dr. Eleftheria Pervolaraki, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds’ School of Biomedical Sciences.

She said fetal hearts in other mammals like pigs show an organization even early in gestation. However, they saw this organization was not detectable in a human fetus before 20 weeks into pregnancy.

“The development of the fetal human heart is on a totally different timeline, a slower timeline, from the model that was being used before. This upsets our assumptions and raises new questions,” Professor Arun Holden, also from Leeds’ School of Biomedical Sciences, said in a statement. “Since the wall of the heart is structurally disorganized, we might expect to find arrhythmias, which are a bad sign in an adult.”

Holden said it may be the early stages of development of the heart arrhythmias are not necessarily pathological, and there is no need to panic if we find them.

“Alternatively, we could find that the disorganization in the tissue does not actually lead to arrhythmia,” he said.

A computer model of the activity and architecture of the heart will make sense of the limited information doctors are able to obtain about the fetus using non-invasive monitoring of a pregnant woman.

“It is different from dealing with an adult, where you can look at the geometry of an individual’s heart using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or CT (Computerised Tomography) scans,” said Holden. “You can’t squirt x-rays at a fetus and we also currently tend to avoid MRI, so we need a model into which we can put the information we do have access to.”

He said textbook descriptions of the development of the human heart are founded on animal models, and 19th century collections of abnormalities in museums.

“If you are trying to detect abnormal activity in fetal hearts, you are only talking about third trimester and postnatal care of premature babies. By looking at how the human heart actually develops in real life and creating a quantitative, descriptive model of its architecture and activity from the start of a pregnancy to birth, you are expanding electrocardiology into the fetus.”

Scientists recently published findings regarding adult hearts back in January about how they were able to reprogram scar tissue from damaged hearts into healthy muscle through gene therapy. This finding may be able to help strengthen hearts harmed due to cardiovascular events.

Women More Talkative Than Men Because Thier Brain Is Designed That Way

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

We´ve all heard the oft-repeated statistics about women talking more than men. And to back up those statistics, one previous study has shown that a part of the brain responsible for processing communication is simply larger in a woman than a man. Now, a new study adds to those claims by moving a step further, showing that the female brain is actually designed with communication in mind.

Performed by doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, this study has linked being talkative with a particular protein found in the brain called FOXP2. Women have been found to have more of this protein in their brains, leading the researchers to believe this is why women are more vocal than men.

The results of this study have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals,” explained the study´s co-author Margaret McCarthy, PhD, in a prepared statement. “The findings raise the possibility that sex differences in brain and behavior are more pervasive and established earlier than previously appreciated.”

Science, it seems, has been forever curious about a female´s tendency to be more communicative and has been looking for this answer for years. The link between FOXP2 and speech was first discovered at the turn of the century and was found to connect vocalization in a host of different animals, such as bats, mice and rats. This latest study started off by observing this correlation in rats before moving on to young children.

First, the researchers recorded the levels of FOXP2 in four-day-old rat pups, both female and male. Next, the researchers separated these newborn rats from their mothers and compared the sounds between the females and males. When they were pulled away from their mother, the male rats made the most noise, crying twice as much as their female siblings. The researchers also noticed that the FOXP2 levels were higher in the part of the brain associated with cognition, emotion and vocalization.

To put this finding to the test, the researchers switched the amount of communication protein between the female and male rat pups. Once switched, the female rat pups sounded just like the males when taken away from their mother, and vice versa. Even the mother rat was fooled, rushing to take care of the female pups first.

With this data, Dr. McCarthy and co-author Dr. Bowers studied the amount of this protein in 4- and 5-year old children. According to their data, girls have more FOXP2 in the language portion of their brain than boys – about 30 percent more. This, says Dr. Bowers might be the first step in explaining why women tend to be more talkative than men.

“We can´t say that this is the end-all-be-all reasoning. But it is one of the first avenues with which we can start to explore why women tend to be more verbal than men,” explained Dr. Bowers said in an interview with NBC´s Today.

Of course, there´s other evidence out there which not only finds that men and women talk about the same as one another, but that those claims about women speaking 20,000 words a day on average may not have any actual literature to back them up.

So, while women may be better wired for communication than men, there are still those who believe we use about the same number of words. Perhaps the entire debate comes down to quality versus quantity, though I won´t be making any assumptions about which gender belongs to which category.

Your Brain Is Lazy, And You Know It

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Jedidiah Becker for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

As a species, humans generally tend to be lazy. We like low-hanging fruit — and from an evolutionary perspective, why shouldn’t we? In the early history of man, when food was dangerously scarce and the unnecessary expenditure of energy potentially fatal, it paid to be judiciously lazy and cut corners wherever you could afford to.

For years, researchers have known that this innate indolence applies to our intellectual life as well. We tend to opt for easy explanations and shoot off facile answers to challenging questions that we haven’t really thought through. In fact, this habit of mind is so widespread that brain scientists refer to humans as “cognitive misers,” Homo ignavus.

But much like physical exertion, this too makes evolutionary sense. The grey matter in our brains – the stuff responsible for most higher-order cognitive processes – is the biological equivalent of a gas-guzzling Hummer. Though it only makes up about 2 percent of our body weight, it gobbles up an astonishing 20 percent or so of our daily energy intake. When humans made the strategic evolutionary switch to surviving by brains rather than brawn, it came with a hefty price tag. From a survival perspective, thinking is expensive, so it pays to only throw our brains into full throttle when we really need to.

This much has been clear for years. What researchers have struggled to understand, however, is the degree to which we are aware that we are being intellectually lazy and recognize that we have probably made a mistake. For years, many researchers have worked under the assumption that we are blissful fools, entirely unaware that we are offering easy and incorrect answers to complex questions.

Now, however, a French study recently published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review challenges this assumption and claims that we often know we’re taking the intellectually easy way out and, what’s more, that it makes us a little uneasy.

By tweaking a classic psychological test known as the ‘bat-and-ball’ problem, researcher Wim De Neys and his colleagues at the prestigious French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) took a fresh look at the question of cognitive carelessness.

In its most basic form, the ‘bat-and-ball’ problem goes something like this: A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The intuitive answer — that is, the one that pops into your mind before you’ve really thought about it — is probably 10 cents. However, a bit of mind-bending basic algebra brings you to the correct answer, which is 5 cents.

But in order to study how people perceive the accuracy of their own answer, the research team wanted to develop a neutralized version of the question that avoids the relative statement (“The bat costs $1 more”). The reason is that this relative element in the sentence triggers the brain to substitute a complex question for a simpler one. So they devised the following dumbed-down control question to accompany the traditional version: “A magazine and a banana together cost $2.90. The magazine costs $2. How much does the banana cost?” The answer to this more straightforward version of the question is 90 cents.

The researchers asked 248 French university students to answer both versions of the problem. After jotting down their response to each question, they were asked to write down how confident they were with their responses on a standard numerical scale.

While 98 percent of the students answered the banana-magazine version of problem correctly, a scant 21 percent were able to get the trickier bat-and-ball version right. Even more important, however, was that the 79 percent of participants who answered incorrectly to the bat-and-ball question indicated that they were significantly less confident of their answer than they were for the simplified control version.

The researchers say that this is a clear indicator that the students were aware that their quick-and-easy answers were likely incorrect and that they were — at least on some level — not entirely oblivious to the fact that they were taking a dubious short cut. It´s as though the brain sends out a little signal to the subconscious saying, “Careful, I´m about to fudge this one — Hope there´s not too much riding on it.”

For de Neys and his colleagues, this minor observation could potentially offer major insights into understanding our brain´s different modes for problem-solving and how these interact with the conscious mind.

“Although we might be cognitive misers, we are not happy fools who blindly answer erroneous questions without realizing it,” concluded the authors. While we may be hard-wired by evolution to conserve our mental energies by cutting corners — a strategy that may often lead us into error — we are not, it seems, blissfully ignorant of our brain´s lazy little tricks.

Disruptions In Circadian Clock Have Health Consequences

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Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Researchers from Vanderbilt University recently found that disruptions in the body´s circadian rhythm are associated with increased risks of developing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Past studies have looked at the relationship between the body´s metabolism and the operation of the body´s biological clock. This study is the first to definitively prove that the body´s circadian biological clock controls insulin activity.

A hormone produced in the body´s pancreas, insulin helps in controlling the body´s fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Carbohydrates are broken down during the digestive process into simple sugars called glucose; the glucose is then absorbed into the bloodstream. Insulin also works on transferring glucose into the body´s cells, allowing excess glucose to be removed from the blood. When insulin´s ability in removing glucose from the blood is diminished, it is known as insulin resistance. Researchers found that, during inactive phases, the body is more sensitive to insulin than high activity periods. As such, glucose is changed into fat during inactive phases and engaged in tissue building or other forms of energy during active phases.

“That is why it is good to fast every day…not eat anything between dinner and breakfast,” commented Carl Johnson, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, in a statement.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the circadian rhythm, otherwise known as the “internal body clock,” manages the body´s 24-hour cycle of biological processes and is found in both plants and animals.

Science Daily writes that circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, but can also be modulated by external factors such as sunlight and temperature.

The researchers believe this study shows that in addition to the certain eating habits which lead to obesity and diabetes, explanations are also found for such conditions having a positive correlation to disrupted sleep schedules and late work shifts.

The results of the study were recently published in the journal Current Biology.

“Our study confirms that it is not only what you eat and how much you eat that is important for a healthy lifestyle, but when you eat is also very important,” explained Shu-qun Shi, a postdoctoral fellow who conducted the study with research assistant Tasneem Ansari in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center, in a prepared statement.

The team of investigators utilized mice, as their circadian rhythm mirrors that of humans. While humans work and play during the day, mice sleep during the day and are active at night. Apart from the different wake times, the scientists discovered that the internal timekeeping system of humans and mice operate almost identically at the molecular level. Found in the brain´s hypothalamus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain has a master circadian clock that manages cells, many of which have their own molecular clocks.

“People have suspected that our cells’ response to insulin had a circadian cycle, but we are the first to have actually measured it,” noted Owen McGuinness, a professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt, in the statement. “The master clock in the central nervous system drives the cycle and insulin response follows.”

The researchers used different approaches to disrupt the circadian clocks of individual mice. Measurements were taken at different hours to better understand whether there was a pattern. In one experiment, mice were placed in an environment that was constantly lit. The light disrupted their circadian cycles and the mice were stuck in an inactive/fasting phase. They ended up developing a higher portion of body fat and gaining more weight, even though they ate less food than their counterparts. Other issues were related to weight gain, such as the increased risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease as a result of obesity.

In another experiment, they used genetically modified mice that lacked the gene needed for proper biological clock function. These mice were stuck in an insulin-resistant mode that was similar to being in an inactive/fasting phase. When they consumed a high-fat diet, they usually gained more weight. When given the protein that normally comes from the missing gene, the circadian rhythm was re-established thus lowering insulin resistance.

Based on the findings, the investigators believe that insulin action and blood sugar metabolism are linked to internal mechanisms that keep track of time and the different periods of the day. They also propose that it is probably better to eat a light supper and no snack before dinner.

“Mediterranean diets in which the main meal is eaten in the middle of the day are probably healthier,” concluded Johnson in the statement.

Holy Carp! Giant Goldfish Found In Lake Tahoe

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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

If you have paid any attention whatsoever to the news of late, you have no doubt heard of exotic animals being released back into the wild. One such situation is the invasion in the Everglades of the Burmese Python. Exotic animal enthusiasts, not fully understanding the necessary care or the full adult size of these animals, have released their creatures into the wild.

Another example of this was also realized in the waters of Lake Tahoe this week. Giant goldfish, some growing to a length of 18 inches, have infested the waters of Lake Tahoe and are threatening the delicate ecosystem of the lake.

It is widely believed these large fish, not a native species to the lake, were dumped into the lake by their previous owners.

Much like the pythons of the Everglades, this non-native species seems to be thriving in this freshwater lake environment. They have taken to an escalated breeding scale, increasing their numbers to a point that experts believe could adversely impact Lake Tahoe´s ecosystem.

“We know that we have a giant goldfish, the question now becomes how long has it been there and how many others are there in the lake?” Dr Sudeep Chandra, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), told Sacramento NBC affiliate station KCRA.

Also of UNR, Christine Ngai, a member of the crew that discovered the giant goldfish, said even though she had heard of these creatures, it wasn´t until she actually saw one that she was able to register just what a mesmerizing experience it was.

“It´s not your average-size goldfish. So, you´re like, is that real? Oh, it´s real,” she told KCRA.

Ngai, along with other researchers from UNR, University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the California Department of Fish and Game, utilize a specialized boat that temporarily stuns nearby fish in their regular surveys of the lake. Once the electric probes stun the fish, the research team is able to scoop the fish up with a net for the purpose of counting and examining them. Ngai, in her interview with KCRA, commented, “You can get 200 fish in one scoop.”

While the giant goldfish is now on the radar of these researchers, they are still far more concerned with the proliferation of large-mouth bass in Lake Tahoe. This is because the bass outnumber the goldfish 100 to 1. However, in pointing out the steep increase in the number of giant goldfish, the team explains how easy it is for an invasive species to take hold.

Aquarium dumping, a widespread problem both in the US and around the world, may not be the only culprit for this explosion of the goldfish population. A comment thread on the Huffington Post pointed out how goldfish are often used as a cheap bait fish for bass fishermen. These goldfish, either by wriggling off of the hook or being dumped from the bait buckets at the end of the day, could have been introduced in a few different manners.

According to the UC Davis report on California´s aquarium trade, numerous aquarium species are dumped in to the wild every year.

Sue Williams, professor of ecology at UC Davis and lead author of the report, stated, “Globally, the aquarium trade has contributed a third of the world´s worst aquatic and invasive species.”

Another report, from 2006, stated while pet fish, mollusks and other species have the ability to wreak havoc on our domestic water bodies, it is the goldfish that is the animal “most frequently released and can do some of the worst damage to native species.”

Pamela Schofield, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey, said, “Oftentimes people think, ℠Well, gee, if I just dumped in one fish, that´s not going to make a difference.´ But it can with the goldfish because of the way they eat — they root around in the sediment and that suspends the sediment up in the water.” This act of rooting in the sediment can lead to murky water, destroyed vegetation and water turbidity.

Experts agree further outreach must be done to address aquarium owners’ need to be responsible when they no longer want their live fish and other aquarium species. Williams even goes so far as to say that killing the animals would be far better than dumping them into the wild.

“People have fish in their aquariums they don´t want to kill, so they dump them into a pond, river or spring. They may save the life of one fish, but in doing so they could wipe out a whole population of native fishes,” said Tim Bonner, assistant professor of biology at Texas State University, according to a 2006 Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine report about the state’s aquarium dumping problem.

The important thing to realize is a single person´s actions can have far reaching effects. Ted Thayer, of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said, “Those small things people do can have a large impact, when you consider that it´s probably not just one person doing it.”

Much like the Everglades and other open water sources, Lake Tahoe is already facing stresses. Pollution and climate change have already had a significant impact on these ecosystems. With the introduction of non-native species, it isn´t difficult to see the balance could be tipped, creating a radically different ecosystem.

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What is an Ecosystem?

Written By: Sam Savage
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Hi, I’m Emerald Robinson, and in this “What Is” video, we’re going to investigate earth’s ecosystems.

An ecosystem is a community of living things interacting with the non-living parts of their environment.

There are two primary parts of an ecosystem. The biotic part is made of all of the living things, like plants and animals, fungi, and bacteria and viruses. The abiotic part is made of non-living things, like rocks and minerals, water, and energy.

Ecosystems can be almost any size. While many of us think of communities like a coral reef or a forest, an ecosystem can be a small pond or even the area beneath a large rock.

Ecosystems need energy. In most cases, this energy comes from sunlight. “Producers” like plants take light energy and convert it into usable sugar energy through photosynthesis. As animals consume the energy from plants, they are eaten by other animals, and ultimately decompose back into the soil, the energy moves through the ecosystem via a food web.

Two of the most important concepts in the study of ecosystems, are “niche” and “habitat.” A habitat is a place where an organism lives. Organisms must get nutrition, shelter, water, and the other things they need to survive from their habitat.

Niche is an organism’s special role in the ecosystem. What and how something eats, how it behaves, where it lives – all of these things define an organism’s niche. Two organisms cannot occupy the same niche for very long. Eventually one will out-compete the other for food and other resources, forcing the other to move, or to go extinct.

Many of the earth’s ecosystems are threatened due to climate change, pollution, and the human destruction of habitats. Scientists called ecologists study and monitor the health of ecosystems and continually work to discover new ways to protect these precious organisms and environments.

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Tropic of Capricorn

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The Tropic of Capricorn, alternately called the Southern Tropic, is a marker of the most southerly latitude on the Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs at the December solstice, when the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun at its maximum degree.

It is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It presently lies 23 degrees 26’ 16’’ south of the Equator.

Currently, the Tropic of Capricorn is drifting towards the north at the rate of almost half a second of latitude, which is roughly 15 meters per year.

The Tropic of Capricorn is the separating line between the Southern Temperate Zone towards the south and the tropics towards the north. The position isn’t fixed, but rather it varies in a complicated manner over time.

Much like the Tropic of Cancer, most places that lie along the Tropic of Capricorn have arid or semi-arid climates, though with the Tropic of Capricorn this unfavorable environmental state is aggravated by the fact that in Australia and Southern Africa, glaciation and tectonic activity have been largely absent since the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago, so that the aridity is compounded by tremendously infertile soils.

This Tropic of Capricorn is so named due to when the Sun reaches the zenith at this latitude, it’s entering the tropical sign of Capricorn. When it was named, roughly 2 thousand years ago, the sun was also in the direction of the constellation Capricornus at the December solstice.

Image Caption: World map with tropic of capricorn in SVG format. Credit: Thesevenseas/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Health

Study Advances LSUHSC Research, Shows Fish Oil Component Reduces Brain Damage In Newborns

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Research conducted by a team of scientists from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Dr. Nicolas Bazan, Boyd Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, found the novel use of a component of fish oil reduced brain trauma in newborn mice. The study reports that neonatal brain damage decreased by about 50% when a triglyceride lipid emulsion containing docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) was injected within two hours of the onset of ischemic stroke. The paper, n-3 Fatty Acid Rich Triglyceride Emulsions are Neuroprotective after Cerebral Hypoxic-Ischemic Injury in Neonatal Mice, is published in the journal, PLOS ONE, available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0056233.

The study compared the effectiveness of emulsions with two omega-3 fatty acids — DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) — as well as optimal doses and therapeutic window. The researchers found that DHA provided protection while EPA did not. The therapeutic window ranged from 90 minutes prior to several hours after with the optimal window for treatment 0 – 2 hours. There was no protective effect at hour 4.

DHA is an essential omega-3-fatty acid and is vital for proper brain function. It is also necessary for the development of the nervous system, including vision. Moreover, omega-3 fatty acids, found in cold water fatty fish, including salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines, shellfish, and herring, are part of a healthy diet that helps lower the risk of heart disease. DHA has potent anti-inflammatory effects. Since inflammation is at the root of many chronic diseases, DHA treatment has been widely demonstrated to have beneficial effects in patients with coronary heart disease, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, sepsis, cancer, dry eye disease, and age-related macular degeneration. Its potential benefit in stroke is now being documented.

EPA is also an omega-3 fatty acid found in coldwater fish. EPA can prevent the blood from clotting easily. Often paired with DHA in fish oil supplements, these fatty acids are known to reduce pain and swelling.

Ischemic strokes, representing about 87% of strokes, result from loss of blood flow to an area of the brain due to a blockage such as a clot or atherosclerosis. The damage includes an irreversibly injured core of tissue at the site of the blockage. The area of tissue surrounding the core, called the penumbra, is also damaged but potentially salvageable. The penumbra has a limited life span and appears to undergo irreversible damage within a few hours unless blood flow is reestablished and neuroprotective therapy is administered. A cascade of chemicals floods the tissue along with restored blood flow, including damaging free radicals and pro-inflammatory enzymes which can cause further damage and cell death.

Administering clot-busting drugs (thrombolysis) is currently the only treatment for ischemic stroke. But due to a narrow therapeutic window and complexity of administration, only 3—5% of patients typically benefit from thrombolysis.

Dr. Bazan´s group at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence has increasingly shown that DHA is a potentially powerful treatment for stroke for nearly ten years. His study published in 2011 found DHA triggered production of Neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1), a naturally occurring neuroprotective molecule in the brain derived from DHA and discovered by Dr. Bazan. Not only did DHA treatment salvage stroke-damaged brain tissue that would have died, its repair mechanisms rendered some areas indistinguishable from normal tissue by 7 days.

“Stroke is a brain attack that each year kills 130,000 Americans,” notes Dr. Bazan. “Strokes can occur at any age, including in newborns, with long-term and devastating consequences. DHA is already widely consumed as a dietary supplement in the US, and from a therapeutic point of view, we can now see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The researchers conclude that the findings suggest a need for further studies to determine if acute injection of these emulsions could be neuroprotective after stroke injury in humans. They also suggest that the emulsion rich in DHA will prove to be a novel and important therapy to treat stroke and could decrease mortality and increase long-term functional recovery after stroke in humans of different ages. The paper´s senior author is Richard Deckelbaum, MD, director of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia´s College of Physicians & Surgeons.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 795,000 Americans have a stroke each year, and stroke causes 1 in every 18 deaths. Stroke is also a leading cause of long-term disability. Louisiana is among the states with the highest prevalence of stroke. It has been estimated that the direct and indirect costs of stroke in the United States totaled nearly $74 billion in 2010. In addition, with an estimated incidence of 1 in 2300 to 5000 births, stroke is more likely to occur in the perinatal period than at other times in childhood. Ischemic stroke in newborns is a disorder associated with significant long-term neurologic impairment. Twenty to 60% of survivors exhibit long-term detrimental neuropsychological consequences which include mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and behavioral disorders.

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Evolution Of Bacteria Has Become Predictable

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

The principles of evolution are widely accepted, but the causes and mechanisms that drive evolution are still heavily debated.

In a new study published in the open access journal PLOS Biology, two researchers found similar or identical genetic mutations can emerge in separate populations of E. coli evolving in different environments for over 1000 generations, leading the team to conclude that evolution can be fairly predictable.

Matthew Herron, a researcher at the University of Montana, and Michael Doebeli, a professor at the University of British Columbia, looked at three different populations of bacteria in their experiment. Initially, each E. coli population consisted of generalists competing for two different food sources: glucose and acetate. After 1,200 generations, each population had evolved into two specialized coexisting types with a physiology adapted to one of the food sources.

The researchers were able to sequence each population of bacteria at 16 different points during the course of its evolution. The analysis found a significant amount of similarity in the bacteria´s evolution.

“In all three populations it seems to be more or less the same core set of genes that are causing the two phenotypes that we see,” Herron said. “In a few cases, it’s even the exact same genetic change.”

The analysis was possible because of new advances in sequencing technology and it allowed Herron and Doebeli to analyze large numbers of whole bacterial genomes. While any evolutionary process is a combination of predictable and random processes, the same genetic changes in different populations showed selection can be deterministic.

“Not only did similar genetic changes occur, but the temporal sequence in which the changes occur over evolutionary time was also similar between the different evolving populations,” Doebeli said. “This ‘parallelism’ implies that diversification is a deterministic process driven by natural selection.”

“There are about 4.5 million nucleotides in the E. coli genome,” Herron said. “Finding in four cases that the exact same change had happened independently in different populations was intriguing.”

The scientists said a particular form of selection — negative frequency dependence — was important for driving diversification in their experiment. When the bacteria specialized for the consumption of either glucose or acetate, a higher density of one type translates into fewer available resources for that type, driving the specialization of bacteria toward the alternative resource.

“We think it’s likely that some kind of negative frequency dependence–some kind of rare type advantage–is important in many cases of diversification, especially when there’s no geographic isolation,” Herron said.

In their report, Herron and Doebeli said the genetic analysis closely mirrored the evolutionary dynamics found using mathematical models “of adaptive diversification due to frequency-dependent ecological interactions.”

With additional advancement in sequencing technology, the scientists said they believe future experiments will soon be possible on larger organisms. While some plants and animals are known to diversify their populations without geographic isolation, it is unknown whether or not the evolutionary mechanisms driving these processes are similar to those found in the E. coli population.

Breakthrough Leads To World’s First Flexible, Flat, Fully Transparent Image Sensor

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Imaging sensors are typically rigid and opaque, but a team of scientists from Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria has developed a new imager based on“¯a flat, flexible, transparent and potentially disposable polymer sheet.

“To our knowledge, we are the first to present an image sensor that is fully transparent — no integrated microstructures, such as circuits — and is flexible and scalable at the same time,” said Oliver Bimber, who co-authored a report on the device that was recently published in the journal“¯Optics Express.

The imager uses a polymer film known as a luminescent concentrator, which is permeated with small fluorescent particles that can absorb a particular wavelength of light and then re-emit it at a longer wavelength. For example, it can absorb blue light and re-emit green light.

While some of the re-emitted light is scattered out of the imager, a portion of it travels to the film´s outer edges where it is captured by arrays of optical sensors. The sensors then send information to a computer that creates a gray-scale image.

For the luminescent concentrator to work, the scientists had to determine precisely how light was hitting the surface of the film. Because the polymer sheet isn´t divided into individual pixels like a smartphone camera, the team needed to find a way to determine where exactly each ray of light entered the imager.

They found they could use light attenuation, or dimming, to construct an image. Because light traveling through the polymer film becomes dimmer the longer it travels, the team found that measuring the relative brightness of light when it reached the sensor array allowed them to calculate where it entered the film.

After scaling up the light attenuation principle using the sensor arrays, the scientists were able to reconstruct the captured image by using a technique similar to the one used in medical CT scanners.

“In CT technology, it’s impossible to reconstruct an image from a single measurement of X-ray attenuation along one scanning direction alone,” explained Bimber. “With a multiple of these measurements taken at different positions and directions, however, this becomes possible. Our system works in the same way, but where CT uses X-rays, our technique uses visible light.”

The researchers believe that this new technology could have a wide range of uses, including a touch-free, transparent interface that would overlay a television, computer or smartphone. This could potentially allow users to control their devices using body gestures but without the need for built-in cameras or other motion-tracking devices.

The imaging film could also be wrapped around objects, giving them sensory and imaging capabilities. The researchers say they are also currently looking into attaching their new sensor to the front of a regular, high-resolution smartphone camera. This would allow for the capture of two images at the same time at two different exposures.

“Combining both would give us a high-resolution image with less overexposed or underexposed regions if scenes with a high dynamic range or contrast are captured,” Bimber said. “I think there are many applications for this sensor that we are not yet aware of,” he concluded.

Health

Researchers Create New Therapeutics That Could Accelerate Wound Healing

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In “before” and “after” photos from advertisements for wound-healing ointments, bandages and antibiotic creams, we see an injury transformed from an inflamed red gash to smooth and flawless skin.

What we don’t appreciate is the vital role that our own natural biomolecules play in the healing process, including their contribution to the growth of new cells and the development of new blood vessels that provide nutrients to those cells.

Now, UCLA researchers led by Heather Maynard, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a member of UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute, are working to take advantage of our body’s ability to heal itself by developing new bio-mimicking therapeutics that could be used to treat skin wounds.

Among the key players involved in natural wound-healing is a signaling molecule known as basic fibroblast growth factor, or bFGF, which is secreted by our cells to trigger processes that are involved in healing, as well as embryonic development, tissue regeneration, bone regeneration, the development and maintenance of the nervous system, and stem cell renewal.

bFGF has been widely investigated as a tool doctors could potentially use to promote or accelerate these processes, but its instability outside the body has been a significant hurdle to its widespread use, Maynard said.

Now, Maynard and her team have discovered how to stabilize bFGF based on the principle of mimicry. Relying on the growth factor’s ability to bind heparin – a naturally occurring complex sugar found on the surface of our cells – the team synthesized a polymer that mimics the structure of heparin. When attached to bFGF, the new polymer makes the protein stable to the many stresses that normally inactivate it, rendering it a more suitable candidate for medical applications.

The research is published Feb. 17 in the online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry and will appear in an upcoming print edition of the journal.

UCLA co-authors of the research include graduate students Thi Nguyen and Caitlin Decker, former postdocs Dr. Sung-Hye Kim and Dr. Darice Wong, and Joseph Loo, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

The research was federally funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Our ability to heal from wounds is essential to our survival. When those natural healing processes are compromised, serious wounds can lead to infection and other health problems. People with diabetes, for example, can have wounds that heal very slowly. The resulting chronic wounds are debilitating and can lead to loss of limbs or even death. Yet, despite the need for wound dressings that can stimulate the body to heal wounds, very few are curative.

“This very important clinical need is the motivation behind our research,” Maynard said.

The importance of fibroblast growth factor was recognized in 1973, when biologist Hugo Armelin discovered that this previously unknown chemical, extracted from the pituitary gland, successfully caused cells to divide. Since then, researchers have applied fibroblast growth factor to wounds such as foot ulcers resulting from diabetes, but the treatments have not been very effective. What scientists now recognize, Maynard said, is that these growth factors typically lose their activity quickly in storage.

Knowing that other key biomolecules have been stabilized before with the help of polymers, Maynard and her team developed a strategy to maintain bFGF activity by taking advantage of its known structure and binding capabilities. Their new polymer, p(SS-co-PEGMA), mimics heparin’s natural ability to stabilize the growth factor.

After showing that p(SS-co-PEGMA) was non-toxic to human cells important in wound healing, they used it to conjugate bFGF and demonstrated that they could keep the growth factor active outside of the body for extended periods of time, even after it is exposed to heat, cold, enzymes that would normally break it down, and acidic conditions like those found in the wound injury setting. Moreover, they showed that this bound bFGF functions just like normal bFGF to trigger the same signaling pathways involved in the healing process.

The advance is an important step in the use of growth factors for therapy. The ability to stabilize bFGF means that it can be potentially stored, shipped and made available for use by doctors and patients when needed any time and anywhere, Maynard said.

The group is testing their new material with dermatologists Dr. Lloyd Miller, an associate professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Jenny Kim, an associate professor of clinical medicine and dermatology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, a member of the CNSI, and chief of dermatology for the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. The group is also researching ways to stabilize other proteins involved in wound healing and ways to make bFGF more active.

“This stable bFGF—polymer conjugate may also be useful in diseases other than wound healing – for example, vocal chord repair, cardiac repair and bone regeneration,” Maynard said. “More generally, we think that this idea of making polymers that mimic natural stabilizers is useful in a wide range of fields.”

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Fear, Anger Or Pain? Understanding Why Babies Cry

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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Researchers focus a lot of attention on the youngest among us. Through different studies, attempts have been made to understand just how infants communicate and what their motivations are for offering up their cryptic little messages.

The cognitive development of infants — and the challenge of understanding it — stems to the fact infants are endowed with only a very limited ability to communicate. For the youngest infants, their communication abilities might best be described as employing only a binary subset of language skills. They smile when they are happy, and they cry when they are displeased. In between these two polar opposites is an untapped trove of communication options.

RedOrbit´s own Jedidiah Becker previously wrote about a large UK-based study on the dynamics of infants´ cognitive development and how it is reflected in their ability to laugh. In that study, a research team led Dr. Caspar Addyman of Birbeck University of London studied the laughter of hundreds of babies. As Addyman explained in an interview with redOrbit, his team´s goal was to gain a “social and cognitive perspective” on infant laughter and to understand how it changes as they mature.

As Addyman pointed out at the time: “Much work is undertaken on infants´ social and emotional development but up until now laughter has been strangely neglected, with most studies focusing on moments of stress and confusion.”

It would seem that Addyman is absolutely correct in stating that other researchers tend to train their focus on the more caustic forms of communication coming from infants. That doesn´t mean there isn´t much to learn from understanding the motivations behind crying, however.

HOW WELL DO WE READ BABIES?

A new collaborative study out of Spain led by Mariano Chóliz Montañés of the University of Valencia, along with colleagues from the University of Murcia and the National University of Distance Education (UNED), is looking into the adult caregivers´ accuracy in recognizing the emotions that cause a baby to cry.

The team sampled 20 infants ages 3 to 18 months in the hopes they might be able to describe the different crying patterns of the infant subjects. Their findings allowed them to zero in on three characteristic emotions: fear, anger and pain.

For the first-time parent, one of the more frustrating things to encounter is a crying baby who is unable to tell you exactly why they are crying. The primary reasons why most infants offer up a sob are hunger, pain, anger and fear. However, adults are not usually able to easily recognize which of the above is the cause for the tears.

“Crying is a baby’s principal means of communicating its negative emotions and in the majority of cases the only way they have to express them,” explained Chóliz.

The research team also made a priority of observing the adult caregiver and their accuracy in recognizing the emotion responsible for making the baby cry. This was achieved by analyzing the affective reaction of the caregiver just before the crying commenced.

The team published their findings in The Spanish Journal of Psychology. In their report, they state the main differences between an infant´s motivations for crying are distinguishable by studying their eye activity as well as the dynamic of the cry.

“When babies cry because of anger or fear, they keep their eyes open but keep them closed when crying in pain,” explain the authors.

The dynamic of the cry refers both to gestures made by the infant as well as the intensity of the cry. For instance, the intensity of the cry will gradually increase if the baby is crying because of anger. On the other hand, if a child is crying out of pain or fear, the intensity of the cry starts out at a very high level and is maintained until either the pain or fear subsides.

Among the caregivers being observed, the team noted that adults often had difficulty in properly identifying — especially in cases of anger or fear — which emotion was responsible for the outburst.

Chóliz points out: “Although the observers cannot recognize the cause properly, when babies cry because they are in pain, this causes a more intense affective reaction than when they cry because of anger or fear.”

This seemed an important point for the research team. They claim the fact that pain is the most easily recognizable emotion and can have an adaptive explanation. This is because an infant´s cry is meant to be a warning of a potentially serious threat to both their health and survival. As such, it typically requires the caregiver to respond with some urgency.

ANGER, FEAR AND PAIN

Chóliz and colleagues were able to observe various facial cues that are associated with different emotions that lead to crying in infants. When an infant cries, the facial muscles typically contract, presenting an increase in tension in the forehead, eyebrows and lips. Infants also tend to open their mouths and raise their cheeks. This study was able to observe different patterns of facial muscle activity associated with each of the three negative emotions they were focused on.

According to Chóliz, anger led infants to keep their eyes half-closed. The stare of the infants through their half-opened eyes may fix in no apparent direction, or they may stare intently at one point in the distance. Angry infants also tended to keep their mouths fully open or half-open. Moreover, the cry associated with anger gradually increases in intensity until the caregiver attempts to mollify the child.

Fear, on the other hand, finds the infants leaving their eyes open wide for almost the entire episode. The gaze from the infant is often characterized by an intense, penetrating look. This is commonly paired with a backward movement of their head as well. After only a gradual increase in tension associated with fear, the cry of the child is emitted in an explosive fashion.

By contrast, when infants are in pain, they usually keep their eyes tightly closed. If a baby in pain does open its eyes, it is typically only for a few moments and in that time a distant look is held. During a response to pain, infants maintain a high level of muscle tension around their eyes, and the forehead remains furrowed. The cry associated with pain usually begins at the highest intensity, commencing suddenly and immediately after the pain stimulus is recognized.

In Becker´s article on laughing in infants, he cites the American philosopher and psychologist William James who, in the late 1800s, made an almost heretical assertion that flew in the face of contemporary psychological theory. Namely, he claimed that infants did not enter the world as ℠blank slates´ as most believed. His contention — and this latest research only further bolsters his prescient insight — that infants come into this world pre-programmed with a whole suite of cognitive hardware, stood squarely against the conventional wisdom of the day which held that infants passively absorb information from their environment.

This latest research out of Spain could be the first step in helping both first-time parent as well as adults employed in the field of infant caregiving to recognize the specific emotions behind an infant´s cry. Understanding the motivating emotion can be a valuable insight for a parent or caregiver that allows them to accurately address the root of the problem and thereby quickly alleviate the distress of both baby and the caregiver.

Those Special Fat Additives In Your Beauty Cream Do Not Work

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Many beauty products that make their way onto store shelves come added with liposomes. The beauty industry states that these liposomes, or small fat capsules, are capable of transporting active ingredients deep into the skin where they release the active ingredients so that they can alter the skin’s structure by rejuvenating and smoothing the skin.

However, a new study from the University of Southern Denmark, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (JID), reveals that liposomes are not capable of transporting themselves deep into the skin. This means they are also not capable of transporting active ingredients into the deep skin tissues either.

“We have shown that liposomes are destroyed before they enter the skin or very soon after. When a liposome is destroyed, it spills its cargo of active ingredients. Liposomes are therefore not efficient carriers for transdermal delivery”, says professor Luis Bagatolli from Membrane Biophysics and Biophotonics Group/MEMPHYS Center for Biomembrane Physics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark.

The research team labeled liposomes with two fluorescent colors using a technique called Raster Imaging Correlation Spectroscopy (RICS) to investigate how they move once they are applied to the skin.

“Concerted movement of the two colors should provide evidence that the liposomes are intact when they reach their destination under the skin. We did not observe concerted movement after applying the liposomes to the skin”, says Bagatolli.

Prior studies, conducted using other techniques, indicated that liposomes are efficient carriers.

“Previous research done with a different technique provide some hints, but not conclusive evidence, that liposomes are capable of penetrating the skin. Therefore some scientists have concluded that liposomes are efficient carriers. Now for the first time we have conclusive evidence that this is not the case”, explains Luis Bagatolli.

Bagatolli, an expert in biological membranes, advises beauty product consumers not to trust the claims that liposomes can carry active ingredients into the skin.

“The human skin is designed to prevent external components to enter the human body. It is natural, that it also prevents liposomes to enter”, he explains.

New Chronic Sinusitus Treatment Developed From Bacteria Found On Seaweed

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

By studying a common marine bacterium, a team of international scientists may have found an important treatment for chronic sinusitis, a condition that plagues millions of people every year.

Led by researchers from Newcastle University, the team isolated an enzyme from Bacillus licheniformis, a bacterium found on the surface of seaweed capable of dispersing the extracellular DNA in biofilms that protect the bacteria responsible for sinus inflammation.

According to the team´s recently published report in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, in vitro tests showed the enzyme, dubbed NucB, dispersed about 58 percent of targeted biofilms.

“In effect, the enzyme breaks down the extracellular DNA, which is acting like a glue to hold the cells to the surface of the sinuses,” said co-author Nicholas Jakubovics, from the School of Dental Sciences at Newcastle University. “In the lab, NucB cleared over half of the organisms we tested.”

Data shows sinusitis is one of the most common reasons people consult their physician and the condition affects over 10 percent of adults in the U.K. and Europe.

“Sinusitis is all too common and a huge burden on the [British healthcare system],” said co-author Mohamed Reda Elbadawey, Consultant of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, at Newcastle´s Freeman Hospital. “For many people, symptoms include a blocked nose, nasal discharge or congestion, recurrent headaches, loss of the sense of smell and facial pain.

“While steroid nasal sprays and antibiotics can help some people, for the patients I see, they have not been effective and these patients have to undergo the stress of surgery,” he added. “If we can develop an alternative we could benefit thousands of patients a year.”

For the study, the team collected mucous samples and sinus biopsies from 20 sinusitis patients. They were able to isolate between two and six different species of bacteria from each patient.

The team investigated 24 different bacteria strains in the laboratory and all produced biofilms containing considerable amounts of extracellular DNA. They were successfully able to disperse the biofilms formed by 14 bacteria strains via treatment with the novel bacterial deoxyribonuclease, or NucB.

The research effort that positively identified the novel use for the enzyme originated when one of Dr. Elbadawey´s patients, a student, mentioned a lecture on the discovery of NucB. The doctor contacted the Newcastle University researchers who had been working with the enzyme.

In previous studies of Bacillus licheniformis, Newcastle University scientists found when the bacteria want to move on from their seaweed, they release an enzyme capable of breaking down external DNA. The result is the breaking up the biofilm that once held the bacteria to the plant. The scientists found when the enzyme was purified and added to other biofilms, it quickly dissolved the slime, exposing the bacterial cells and leaving them vulnerable.

Elbadawey and the Newcastle University researchers are currently working together to explore the enzyme´s medical potential. They said they plan to conduct further tests in an effort to develop a product and eventually set up collaboration with industry.

Uncategorized

Tropic of Cancer

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The Tropic of Cancer, which is also referred to as the Northern tropic, is the circle of latitude on the Earth that serves as a marker for the most northerly position at which the sun may appear directly overhead at its zenith. This event happens once per year, at the time of the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun to its maximum degree.

Its Southern Hemisphere counterpart, marking the most southerly position at which the Sun might appear directly overhead, is the Tropic of Capricorn. These tropics are two out of five major degree measures or major circles of latitude that mark the maps of the Earth, besides the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and the Equator. The locations of these circles of latitude are determined by the tilt of the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the plane of its orbit.

It is named the Tropic of Cancer due to when the Sun reaches the zenith at this latitude, it’s entering the tropical sign of Cancer.

This Tropic of Cancer presently lies 23 degrees 26’ 16” north of the Equator. The position isn’t fixed, but it varies in a complicated manner over time. Currently, it is drifting southwards at the rate of almost half a second of latitude per year.

The climate of the Tropic of Cancer, excluding the cooler highland regions in China, is mostly hot and dry except for easterly coastal areas where orographic rainfall has the potential to be very heavy. The majority of the regions on the Tropic of Cancer experience two distinct seasons: an extremely hot summer with the temperatures frequently reaching 113 degrees F and a warm winter with the maximum at approximately 72 degrees F. Most land that is on or near the Tropic of Cancer is part of the Sahara Desert, while eastwards, the climate is torrid monsoonal with a short wet season from June to September with very little rainfall for the rest of the year.

Image Caption: World map with equator in SVG format and with a small red line so that it doesn’t hide Taiwan. Credit: WikiLaurent/Wikipedia  (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Health

5-ALA Fluorescence Guides Resection Of Recurrent Glioblastoma Multiforme

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Neurosurgeons from UC San Francisco describe the use of 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA) fluorescence in guiding resection of recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Ingestion of 5-ALA by a patient before surgery leads to fluorescence of tumor cells intraoperatively in response to certain wavelengths of light. This can provide information not necessarily available through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the standard mode of imaging used to detect primary and recurrent GBMs. The additional information provided by 5-ALA fluorescence can guide surgeons in the treatment of individual cases.

The case of a 56-year-old man is described in the article “Subependymal spread of recurrent glioblastoma detected with the intraoperative use of 5-aminolevulinic acid. Case report,” by Tene A. Cage, M.D., Melike Pekmezci, M.D., Michael Prados, M.D., and Mitchel S. Berger, M.D., published today online, ahead of print, in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The patient presented with frequent transient visual disturbances. Seven years earlier, he had undergone gross-total (maximum) resection of a GBM located in the right occipital lobe. A new MRI study was performed and the images showed three distinct, new sites of tumor in the man’s right temporal lobe. There was no evidence of recurrent tumor at the site where the original tumor had been located.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common primary tumor of the brain. It is extremely aggressive and is usually treated with resection followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Even using this treatment, patient survival is not long: on average 1 to 2 years. The authors note that the best way to lengthen survival is to remove as much tumor as possible. This holds for recurrent GBM as well as for the initial tumor.

The patient in this case was scheduled for surgery to remove the three new lesions. To aid in visualization of the lesions intraoperatively, the neurosurgical team, led by Mitchel S. Berger, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC San Francisco, administered 5-ALA to the patient four hours prior to surgery. During surgery, a blue light was used to activate 5-ALA fluorescence of tumor cells and thus differentiate tumor from other brain tissue. Using the blue light, the surgeons were able to detect tumor cells along the lining of the right lateral ventricle, in the ependymal and subependymal regions. Although the appearance of the three lesions on preoperative MRI had indicated distinct sites of recurrent disease (multicentric tumor recurrence), the fluorescence of tumor cells during surgery mapped out the spread of disease from the original GBM site in the right occipital lobe to three sites in the right temporal lobe through a pathway along the wall of the right ventricle. This showed that the GBM recurrence was not multicentric at all. The fluorescence also made it possible for the surgeons to identify and resect additional tumor tissue along the pathway between the original and recurrent lesions.

According to the authors, MRI is unable to clearly delineate diffuse tumor infiltrating the ependyma and subependymal zone lining the lateral ventricle. Addition of 5-ALA fluorescence during surgery revealed the pathway of tumor spread through these regions.

With recurrent GBM, it is valuable to distinguish whether the recurrence is multicentric disease or infiltrative disease extending from the original tumor. According to Dr. Berger, “Multicentric disease can add a worse prognosis. Finding it during surgery is important and can influence the extent of resection.” Addition of 5-ALA fluorescence has been identified as substantially increasing the success of achieving maximum resection. Dr. Berger says that intraoperative use of 5-ALA “could be useful in all GBM cases.”

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Is The Universe Infinite? Not Likely, Say Physicists

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) told reporters the universe may not be infinite after all.

Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist with FNAL in Batavia, Illinois, spoke to reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston, saying recent calculations show its “bad news” for the future of the universe.

“It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it’s all going to get wiped out,” Lykken, who is also on the science team at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, told Reuters.

Last year, physicists at CERN say they discovered the elusive subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson (God particle). If this discovery gets confirmed, it could help resolve how the universe came into existence about 13.7 billion years ago.

Lykken said the calculations show that tens of billions of years from now, there could be a catastrophe in the universe.

“A little bubble of what you might think of as an ℠alternative’ universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us,” Lykken said.

Scientists still have about a third of the collision data from the Higgs boson particle observation to sift through. For now, the scientists say they have found a “Higgs-like” particle, rather than outright claiming it to be the particle, since there is still more work to do to confirm it.

Currently, the LHC is in shutdown, going through a few years of repairs, and it will not be running again until late 2014. The shutdown began last Thursday morning, and now engineers will be working to get it running at 14 TeV by the end of next November.

A concept known as vacuum instability could be the demise of our own universe, as a new one erupts to replace the one we know. This concept depends on precise calculations related to the Higgs, so the idea of our own universe’s end depends on scientists’ ability to pin down the Higgs Boson.

Scientists theorized the idea of the universe’s long-term stability before the Higgs discovery, but new calculations of mass settling in at about 126 million electron volts hints at a critical number for determining the fate of the universe. In order to know the calculations, scientists must understand the mass of the Higgs to within one percent, as well as the precise mass of other related subatomic particles.

“You change any of these parameters to the Standard Model (of particle physics) by a tiny bit and you get a different end of the universe,” Lyyken said.

Regardless of the future of the universe, it’s well known the Earth wouldn’t survive that long anyways, due to the inevitable demise of the sun. Physicists believe the sun will burn out in 4.5 billion years, expanding out into a supernova and destroying the Earth in its path.

New Coronavirus Strain Adapted To Humans, Replicates Faster Than SARS

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editor

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new strain of coronavirus, which has already infected 12 people and killed six in the past several months, has been found to breed in the human body much faster than SARS and can evade the immune system just as easily as a common cold. While health experts feel they may be able to develop immunotherapy to prevent the spread of the disease, they do not yet know how readily it does spread.

Publishing their findings in the February 19 issue of the online open-access journal mBio, researchers from the St. Gallan Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland, said the new strain (HCoV-EMC) is related to the pathogen that killed more than 750 people ten years earlier (2002/03), and has been found to penetrate cells that line the entry to the lungs and reach its peak ability to replicate in under 48 hours, compared to SARS, which takes up to four days.

The findings also show the virus is susceptible to treatment with interferons that have successfully treated other viral diseases, giving hope they can fight back against a large-scale outbreak.

So far, twelve cases have been confirmed this year, with eight from the Middle East and four in the UK, where three members of the same family were diagnosed last week. Because of this, researchers believe the disease is transmissible between humans.

However, the researchers, led by Volker Thiel, said just because the virus can get into respiratory cells so easily doesn´t mean it can easily get out again and spread to others.

“We don´t know whether the cases we observe are the tip of the iceberg, or whether many more people are infected without showing severe symptoms,” Thiel said in a statement.

One of the patients diagnosed in the UK last week died Sunday (Feb 17), said health officials at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where the patient was being treated. The officials, without revealing age or gender, said the patient was receiving treatment for another long-term health condition and had a compromised immune system.

Thiel and colleagues do not see the virus as being particularly contagious, given the limited number of cases seen since the virus was discovered in June of last year. However, it is still unsettling to know that the pathogen can adapt to the human body so easily and replicate much faster than SARS, they noted.

Coronaviruses typically cause upper respiratory diseases and the new strain has been shown to also cause severe kidney problems, breathing difficulties and fever.

Thiel said the new data indicate that HCoV-EMC made a recent jump from animals to humans–the human strain has been found very similar to one found in bats.

HCoV-EMC was first discovered last June when it was isolated from a man in Saudi Arabia who died from a severe respiratory infection and kidney failure. Since then, 11 more cases have been confirmed and a total of six deaths have occurred due to complications associated with the virus.

To get a clearer picture of the new coronavirus strain, Thiel and his team tested how well it could infect and multiply in the entryways to the human lung using cultured bronchial cells manipulated to mimic the airway lining. The lung´s lining (epithelium) is an important barrier against respiratory infections, but the team found it doesn´t do well in blocking HCoV-EMC, which easily and quickly replicates once it gains a foothold.

Thiel said his team also discovered that like SARS and the common cold, HCoV-EMC doesn´t provoke immune response. This is an indication the new strain is already well-adapted to the human host and that it uses the same strategy as other coronaviruses for evading non-specific immune mechanisms.

However, the team was able to boost immune response with lambda-type interferons, proteins that are released by host cells in response to infection and enable communication between cells to mount an immune response. Pre-treatment with interferons significantly reduced the number of infected cells. This finding is very encouraging, note the authors, since interferons have shown a good deal of promise in treating patients with SARS and Hepatitis C.

Thiel noted the work would not have been possible without efforts from several different sources from Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and The Netherlands. He added further collaboration is crucial to continue the research in a positive direction. Future research into HCoV-EMC and other emerging diseases will require extensive cooperation among scientists and health agencies.

The future of this virus remains uncertain, but Thiel noted access to samples from a wider range of patients could help answer some fundamental questions, such as where the virus came from and what the true prevalence of the virus is.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement on Saturday (Feb 16) testing for HCoV-EMC should also be considered in patients with unexplained pneumonia.

Thiel´s research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the 3R Research Foundation Switzerland, the German Ministry of Education and Research, the German Research Foundation, the Danish Cancer Society and the Danish Council for Independent Research.

Science

Meerkat Study Helps To Understand How Animals Cope With Novel Man-made Threats

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ETH Zurich

In their environment, wild animals are exposed to countless threats, be they predators, diseases or natural obstacles to get over, such as gorges or rivers. In the course of evolution, they have developed specific behavioral responses to allow them to deal with these risks. In recent times, numerous man-made threats have been added to the naturally-existing ones, such as dangerous roads to cross. On the evolutionary time scale, it is excluded that the animals have evolved a whole new repertoire of adaptive responses to these risks. Simon Townsend is a behavioral biologist at the University of Zurich, and Nicolas Perony is a systems scientist at ETH Zurich. They teamed up to understand how animals cope with novel man-made threats by studying groups of wild meerkats, a species of socially-living mongooses.

The leader gives way when crossing the road

To this end, Townsend observed several meerkat groups in the Kalahari Desert. Through the reserve runs a rather heavily-frequented road, which effectively cut the animals’ home range in half. On their way from one burrow to another, the meerkats are often forced to cross the road. Based on field observations, the researchers discovered that in most cases it was the highest-ranked animal – the dominant female – who led her group to the road. However, upon reaching the road she yielded to a lower-ranked individual, who took up the role of «guinea pig» to cross the road first.

Reorganization at the front

From the observational data collected in the Kalahari, Nicolas Perony could develop a relatively simple computer model to simulate for the first time the behavior of a meerkat group, in which there are distinct social roles. By constructing this model, the researchers were aiming to better understand what they had observed in the field. The model simulates a group of eight meerkats, one of which Perony assigned the role of leader.

In the simulations the eight agents encounter a virtual barrier, which has an effect similar to the road’s. The scientists could then vary the height of the barrier – the level of the risk it represents – for each individual. The model clearly showed the reorganization taking place at the front of the group. The ETH researcher thus concluded that the dominant female and the subordinate individuals have a markedly different appreciation of the danger presented by the road. This difference in risk perception may be enough to explain how the leading individual falls back to a less exposed position upon reaching the road, and leaves it to a subordinate individual to take the lead.

A «test individual» to minimize the risk

The dominant female’s highly risk-averse behavior appears selfish. However, it makes a lot of sense for the long-term survival of the group and the closely-related individuals in it. Meerkats in fact minimize the threat to the whole group, even though it may imply for the «test individual» to lose its life: the survival of all the group members may depend from that of the alpha individual. Observations from other researchers indeed show that the predation of the dominant female can lead to the destabilization of the whole group.

Perony and Townsend interpret the observed behavior at the road as the adaptation of a phylogenetically-old behavioral response, transposed to the context of a danger hitherto unknown to them. The animals can thus apply innate behavioral mechanisms to a novel, man-made threat. It is however unclear whether the meerkats really perceive the traffic on the road as a risk. A road is above all an open area in the animals’ environment, in which there is no shelter to flee from predators such as eagles or jackals, says Townsend. By nature, the animals tend to avoid open areas in dangerous situations. «In case of an imminent threat, meerkats use the cover provided by bushes and other elements of their environment», explains Perony. This study raises hopes that wild animals can adapt to a certain extent to the increasing perturbation of their natural environment.

Meerkats

Meerkats have long been studied at the Kalahari Meerkat Project, located within the Kuruman River Reserve (South Africa). Animals from the study groups are dye-marked to allow for individual identification. They are habituated to the presence of human observers. Meerkats live in groups of up to 40 members. Each group is dominated by a pair of alpha individuals, who are the only ones allowed to reproduce. The other individuals help the dominant pair to care for the young, which are often related to them. The meerkats’ group structure is highly complex und has long fascinated behavioral scientists.

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Health

Understanding Women’s Cancer: Types, Symptoms And Prevention

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Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Nowadays almost everyone has been affected by women´s cancer, whether personally or through a family member or friend. Women´s cancer touches so many people in so many different ways. Breast cancer is by far the most well known type of women´s cancer, but women suffer from other kinds of cancers as well.

According to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), some other forms of women´s cancer include cervical, endometrial, gestational trophoblastic tumors, ovarian, uterine sarcoma, vaginal and vulvar cancer. Each one of these cancers affects women specifically. While breast cancer is most commonly associated with women, it also occurs in men, albeit in far fewer cases.

According to the Mayo Clinic´s Women´s Cancer Program, nearly forty-five percent of all cancer diagnoses in women originate in the breasts or reproductive system. This is enough to demand attention. Although breast cancer is a serious and growing threat that demands ample attention, the other seven types of women´s cancer deserve focus as well. These other cancers take the lives of hundreds of thousands of women each year. Though breast cancer certainly affects the most, these others need more exposure and more research funds.

What is even more concerning about the types of women´s cancer is that many women — specifically young women — tend to ignore, deny or simply do not understand some of the telltale symptoms of cancer. WebMD explains that women most often do not seek medical attention for the following common cancer symptoms:

  1. Unexplained weight loss
  2. Bloating
  3. Breast changes
  4. Between-period bleeding
  5. Other unusual bleeding
  6. Blood in urine or stool
  7. Skin changes
  8. Difficulty Swallowing
  9. Gnawing abdominal pain
  10. Depression
  11. Indigestion
  12. Pain
  13. Fever
  14. Fatigue
  15. Persistent cough

The problem is that many of these symptoms are easy to overlook because they are commonly associated with other more or less harmless conditions. Take bloating, for instance. Women bloat at different times during their menstrual cycle, when they eat too much sodium, and even when they are dehydrated. Because it is such a common and usually innocuous phenomenon, the vast majority of women would not think of chronic bloating as a symptom of cancer.

Furthermore, because of the lack of education about the different types of women´s cancer, many women are not even aware that these symptoms could be a result of cancer. The safest plan is to ignore nothing. Women must take control of their medical destinies and seek the best medical advice and planning.

Women´s cancer is not something to ignore. We must be proactive. We must be knowledgeable. We must spread the word about women´s cancer. Today.

Senior Citizens Who Use Facebook Have Improved Cognition

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Social networking giant Facebook has become the tool of choice for many researchers who are studying everything from child psychology to cognitive decline. On the cognitive end, one new study has shown adults over the age of 65 may get an intellectual boost if they learn to use the popular social site.

When it comes to sharpening those cognitive skills, University of Arizona graduate student Janelle Wohltmann says Facebook may be the way to go. The department of psychology researcher set out to see whether teaching older adults to use the social network could help improve cognitive performance and make them feel “more socially connected.”

Sharing her findings at the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) Annual Meeting in Hawaii this month, Wohltmann showed the over-65 group performed about 25 percent better on tasks designed to measure ability to continuously monitor and quickly add or delete the contents of their working memory (known as updating) after they learned to use Facebook.

Wohltmann facilitated the Facebook training for 14 older adults who had either never used the social networking site or only used it less than once a month. The study participants were asked to become friends only with the other participants in the study and were asked to post status updates at least once per day.

In a second group, Wohltmann taught 14 seniors who had not previously used Facebook to use an online diary (Penzu.com) to keep a private record of their daily activities. They were also asked to keep entries short (no more than five sentences) to emulate the typical length of updates generally posted on Facebook.

Wohltmann then told a third group of 14 seniors they were on a “wait-list” to receive Facebook training, but were only used as a control for the study and never received training.

The adults in all three groups ranged in age from 68 to 91 (average age 79) and completed a series of questionnaires and neuropsychological tests to evaluate social variables, including loneliness, social support, and cognitive abilities. After the eight-week-long study, these questions and tests were repeated.

Wohltmann and colleagues, whom included research adviser Betty Glisky, professor and head of the department of psychology at Arizona, found, through the follow-ups, those who had learned to use Facebook performed about 25 percent better than they did at the start of the study on their updating abilities; she found no significant change in either of the two other groups.

The preliminary findings offer a plausible link between social connectedness and cognitive performance.

“The idea evolved from two bodies of research,” said Wohltmann in a statement. “One, there is evidence to suggest that staying more cognitively engaged — learning new skills, not just becoming a couch potato when you retire but staying active — leads to better cognitive performing. It’s kind of this ‘use it or lose it’ hypothesis.

“There’s also a large body of literature showing that people who are more socially engaged, are less lonely, have more social support and are more socially integrated are also doing better cognitively in older age,” she said.

Wohltmann acknowledged further research was needed to determine whether the use of social networking made these older adults feel less lonely or more socially connected. She added further analysis was also needed to determine whether Facebook´s social aspect contributed to improvements in cognitive performance, and if so, by how much.

For the most part, Wohltmann believes Facebook´s complex interface, compared to the online diary site, is largely responsible for the improved performance seen in the study group.

There´s a big difference between Facebook and Penzu.com, Wohltmann explained. For instance, “when you create a diary entry, you create the entry, you save it and that’s all you see, versus if you’re on Facebook, several people are posting new things, so new information is constantly getting posted.”

On Facebook, when updates stream in, users “need to focus on the new information and get rid of the old information, or keep it in mind if [they] want to go back and reference it later, so [they] have to constantly update what’s there in [their] attention,” she explained.

Wohltmann stated there is very little research into how social networking affects seniors, particularly in cognitive ability. With Facebook such a “huge phenomenon in our culture,” she noted such studies can be potentially significant, especially since older adults are a growing presence in social media.

With some 75+ million Baby Boomers approaching older age, there exists more need to study cognitive abilities in the US population. The US is facing a huge health crisis, with cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer´s disease, set to triple by 2050, as reported in an earlier redOrbit story.

And with one in three online seniors now using social networks like Facebook, according to Pew Internet, it is more important than ever to conduct research to find out if social media can improve cognitive function on a wider scale.

While Facebook can be a positive boost for seniors and cognition, Wohltmann admits it is not for everyone.

“One of the take-home messages could be that learning how to use Facebook is a way to build what we call cognitive reserve, to help protect against and stave off cognitive decline due to normal age-related changes in brain function. But there certainly are other ways to do this as well,” she said.

“It’s also important to understand and know about some of the aspects of Facebook that people have concerns about, like how to keep your profile secure,” she said.

In conclusion, Wohltmann said she doesn´t suggest most seniors who haven´t used social networking previously just go out a get an account right away, unless of course there is someone they know who can show them the ropes and “provide the proper education and support “¦ so that they can use it in a safe way.”

Healthy Body Weight: What Is It And How Do You Find Yours?

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Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

In the last few decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on having and maintaining a healthy body weight. Yet as the trend towards skyrocketing obesity in the US indicates, this is a struggle for many people, in part because maintaining a healthy body weight requires great effort, but also because many simply don´t know what exactly their healthy body weight is.

The first step toward finding a healthy body weight is to understand and know your BMI, or body mass index. The BMI is a number calculated using a person’s height and weight, and can provide a reliable — although imprecise — indicator of body fatness for most people. It is also used by many health professionals to screen for weight issues that can lead to health problems.

To calculate your body mass index, simply do the following:

Weigh yourself to determine your weight in pounds, and measure yourself (or have someone else measure you) to determine your height in inches. Multiply your weight by 703. Then take this number and divide it by your height squared. The number that comes out is your BMI.

If you prefer equations, the formula looks like this:

BMI = (Weight x 703) / Height ^2

So for a person who weighs 145 pounds and is 72 inches tall, the formula for BMI would look like this:

BMI = (145 x 703) / 72^2 = 19.66

(Warning: Be aware that the formula is different if you are using the metric system.)

If you don´t care for math or would like to double-check your own calculation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention´s (CDC) website offers a free online BMI calculator. It is completely accurate and the website offers supplemental information about BMI, as well.

For all women and men, if the BMI is less than 18.5, a person is considered underweight. People with a BMI between 19 and 24.9 are considered to have a healthy weight, while a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight. Any BMI over 30 is considered obese.

Once you know your BMI and the category into which you fall, it is important to figure out what the proper course of action is for someone in your BMI category. If you fall into the underweight, overweight or obese categories, you may want to consider contacting a doctor/nutritionist to help you devise a plan for getting back to your healthy body weight.

The Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid provides another valuable tool. By providing just a little bit of information (e.g. height, weight, gender, weight goal), the Mayo Clinic provides some great advice about how to lose or maintain weight by suggesting food portions and options, as well as exercises and activity choices.

The good news about learning how to live healthy and have a healthy body weight is there are now more online tools and valuable information to help you reach your goals than ever before. While you may find it particularly motivating to pay to see a nutritionist or personal trainer, they certainly aren´t necessary for you to start working toward your ideal body weight. With just a click you can start down the right path toward a fitter, healthier you. And if you find you do need more support than a website can offer or simply feel that you aren´t making any progress, you can always make an appointment with a health professional for guidance, advice and motivation.

Finally, what is important to understand is a healthy body weight and BMI for one person may not be the same for another. This is not about how much we weigh alone. It´s about taking a balanced, holistic approach to understanding health that includes not just height and weight, but also physical activity, eating and sleeping habits and stress. A healthy body weight is complicated, so we must stop comparing ourselves to others and focus on what is healthy for each one of us as individuals. Finding a healthy body weight starts with a healthy approach.

Ozone Not Only Bad For Climate, But Also Bad For The Heart

Written By: editor
editor

Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Ever since the “ozone scare” that began in the 1970s, when it was reported that there was a hole in the ozone over the South Pole, there has been a great misunderstanding about ozone. In the past decade in fact it has only come out that ozone is actually not really good for people.

Most recently researchers at Rice University in Houston have found a direct correlation between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and levels of air pollution and ozone. While the effects of air pollution have long been understood, ozone has only recently gotten attention for being a toxin.

The American Lung Association had ranked Houston eighth in the United States for high-ozone days, and the Rice researchers looked to find any links between ambient ozone levels and cardiac arrests.

Ozone is also known as trioxygen, a triatomic molecule that consists of three oxygen atoms.

The EPA has noted that ozone is “good up high, bad nearby.” While it acts as a protective layer high above the earth, it is actually harmful to breathe, thus being ground level or “bad” ozone that is not emitted directly into the air. Rather it is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight.

It was established in the past decade that ozone air purifier devices — those that operate by electrostatic or “ionic” means — don´t actually remove asthma triggers from the air, but in fact produced ozone. Inhaled ozone has long been known to make asthma worse. The EPA has noted the effects that ozone can have on patients with asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases, and deemed it a toxin.

Now the Rice research, announced this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Boston, has found a link between cardiac arrests and ozone.

The work by Katherine Ensor, chair of Rice´s Department of Statistics, and Loren Raun, professor in the Department of Statistics, is due to be published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

Rice environmental engineer Daniel Cohan also discussed at AAAS how uncertainties in air-quality models could impact efforts to achieve anticipated new ozone standards by the EPA.

For this study, which was funded by Houston Endowment and the city of Houston, the researchers analyzed eight years worth of data drawn from Houston´s network of air-quality monitors, and looked at more than 11,000 concurrent out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA), logged by Houston Emergency Medical Services. With this, Ensor and Raun found a positive correlation between OHCAs and exposure to both fine particulate matter — airborne particles that are small then 2.5 micrograms — and ozone.

The researchers also looked at the effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) levels, and none were found to impact the occurrence of OHCAs.

This work could help Houston EMS prepare for those times where weather and/or incidents may warrant an alert for high ozone levels in specific areas. Houston is already acting upon those results.

“The city has targeted educational resources to at-risk communities, where they’re now doing intensive bystander CPR training,” said Raun in a statement.

The next step could be in strategies to reduce ozone year-round. The standards are now set at 75 parts per billion, but the EPA is looking to set the new level at 60-70 ppb. This research could have greater implications as states aim to attain national ozone standards.

“The bottom-line goal is to save lives,” said Ensor. “We´d like to contribute to a refined warning system for at-risk individuals. Blanket warnings about air quality may not be good enough. At the same time, we want to enhance our understanding of the health cost of pollution — and celebrate its continuing reduction.”

Archeologists Study Ancient Teeth To Uncover Evolution Of Disease

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editor

Enid Burns for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Every civilization leaves clues in artifacts that can tell of how a civilization once lived, thrived, and even became extinct. Now scientists are taking a closer look into a few archeological finds to look at how diseases once thrived and evolved. Particularly, scientists are looking at the teeth of ancient skeletons.

A team of scientists led by the University of Adelaide‘s Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) published research in the journal Nature Genetics that looks at oral bacteria brought about by dietary shifts as humans became farmers and adopted technology.

Additional researchers on the international team of scientists include the Department of Archeology at the University of Aberdeen and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

“This is the first record of how our evolution over the last 7500 years has impacted bacteria we carry with us, and the important health consequences,” study leader Professor Alan Cooper, ACAD Director said in a statement about the research.

The research looked at DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on teeth of ancient human skeletons. The research shed light on health consequences of the evolving diet and behavior. The research is able to draw a line from the Stone age to modern day.

Ancient genetic records reveal the negative changes in oral bacteria that resulted in the dietary shifts as humans became farmers. The changes continue as food manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution was advanced.

“Oral bacteria in modern man are markedly less diverse than historic populations and this is thought to contribute to chronic oral and other disease in post-industrial lifestyles,” said Professor Cooper.

Researchers extracted DNA from tartar (calcified dental plaque) from 34 prehistoric northern European human skeletons, and traced the changes in nature of oral bacteria from the last hunter-gatherers all the way through the first farmers, the Bronze Age and Medieval times.

“Dental plaque represents the only easily accessible source of preserved human bacteria,” said lead author Dr. Christina Adler, who conducted the research while a Ph.D. student at the University of Adelaide, and is now at the University of Sydney.

“Genetic analysis of plaque can create a powerful new record of dietary impacts, health changes and oral pathogen genomic evolution, deep into the past,” Dr. Adler said.

Research on the project was conducted over the past 17 years. Archeologist and co-Leader Professor Keith Dobney, now at the University of Aberdeen, was part of the research.

“I had shown tarter deposits commonly found on ancient teeth were dense masses of solid calcified bacteria and food, but couldn’t identify the species of bacteria. Ancient DNA was the obvious answer,” Dobney said.

“The composition of oral bacteria changed markedly with the introduction of farming, and again around 150 years ago. With the introduction of processed sugar and flour in the Industrial Revolution, we can see a dramatically decreased diversity in our oral bacteria, allowing domination by caries-causing strains. The modern mouth basically exists in a permanent disease state,” Professor Cooper said.

While the team has been conducting research for the past 17 years, it was not able to sufficiently control background levels of bacterial contamination until 2007 when ACAD’s ultra-clean laboratories and strict decontamination and authentication protocols became available. The research team continues its work, and is expanding its studies to include longer periods of time, more geographies worldwide, and include other species such as Neanderthals.

Science

Dopants Dramatically Alter Electronic Structure Of Superconductor

Written By: editor

Findings explain unusual properties, but complicate search for universal theory

Over the last quarter century, scientists have discovered a handful of materials that can be converted from magnetic insulators or metals into “superconductors” able to carry electrical current with no energy loss-an enormously promising idea for new types of zero-resistance electronics and energy-storage and transmission systems. At present, a key step to achieving superconductivity (in addition to keeping the materials very cold) is to substitute a different kind of atom into some positions of the “parent” material’s crystal framework. Until now, scientists thought this process, called doping, simply added more electrons or other charge carriers, thereby rendering the electronic environment more conducive to the formation of electron pairs that could move with no energy loss if the material is held at a certain chilly temperature.

Now, new studies of an iron-based superconductor by an international team of scientists – including physicists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cornell University – suggest that the story is somewhat more complicated. Their research, published online in Nature Physics February 17, 2013, demonstrates that doping, in addition to adding electrons, dramatically alters the atomic-scale electronic structure of the parent material, with important consequences for the behavior of the current-carrying electrons.

“The key observation – that dopant atoms introduce elongated impurity states which scatter electrons in the material in an asymmetric way – helps explain most of the unusual properties,” said J.C. Séamus Davis, the study’s lead author, who directs the Center for Emergent Superconductivity at Brookhaven Lab and is also the J.G. White Distinguished Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University. “Our findings provide a new starting point for theorists trying to grapple with how these materials work, and could potentially point to new ways to design superconductors with improved properties,” he said.

The researchers used a technique developed by Davis called spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy to visualize the electronic properties around individual dopant atoms in the parent material, and to simultaneously monitor how electrons scatter around these dopants (in this case, cobalt).

Earlier studies had shown that certain electronic properties of the non-superconducting “parent” material had a strong directional dependence – for example, electrons were able to move more easily in one direction through the crystal than in the perpendicular direction. However, in those studies, the signal of a strong directional dependence only appeared when the scientists put the dopants into the material, and got stronger the more dopants they added.

Before this, the assumption was that dopants simply added electrons, and that the material’s properties – including the emergence of superconductivity – were due to some intrinsic characteristic (for example, the alternating alignments of electron spins on adjacent atoms) that resulted in a directional dependence.

“But the emergence of directional dependence of electronic properties as more dopants are added suggests that the strong directionality is a result of the dopants, not an intrinsic property of the material,” Davis said. “We decided to test this idea by directly imaging what each dopant atom does to the nearby atomic-level electronic structure in these materials.”

According to Davis, the current paper reports two very clear results:

1) At each cobalt dopant atom, there is an elongated impurity state-a quantum mechanical state bound to the cobalt atom-that aligns in a particular direction (the same for each cobalt atom) relative to the overall crystal. 2) These oblong, aligned impurity states scatter the current-carrying electrons away from the impurity state in an asymmetric way – similar to the way ripples of water would propagate asymmetrically outward from an elongated stick thrown into a pond, rather than forming the circular pattern produced by a pebble.

“These direct observational findings explain most of the outstanding mysteries about how the electrical current moves through these materials – for example, with greater ease perpendicular to the direction you would expect based solely on the characteristics of the parent material,” Davis said. “The results show that the dopants actually do dramatic things to the electronic structure of the parent material.”

“It’s possible that what we’ve found could be similar to an effect dopants had on early semiconductors,” Davis said. “Early versions of these materials, though useful, had nowhere near the performance as those developed after the 1970s, when scientists at Bell Labs figured out a way to move the dopant atoms far away from the electrons so they wouldn’t mess up the electronic structure.” That advance made possible all the microelectronics we now use every day, including cell phones, he said.

“If we find out the dopant atoms are doing something we don’t want in the iron and even copper superconductors, maybe we can find a way to move them away from the active electrons to make more useful materials.”

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Dirt Plays Important Part In Making Clean Water

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Rivers, lakes, and oceans may play a large role in the water cycle, but many people don´t realize that one of the biggest factors in keeping water clean lies just below their feet.

According to Henry Lin, a professor of hydropedology and soil hydrology at Penn State, the ground plays an important role in keeping the environment clean by acting as a natural water filter and purifier.

In his presentation to the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston on Sunday, Lin said that understanding how the Earth´s surface plays a fundamental part of the ecosystem can translate into better groundwater management strategies and a better conservation policy.

“We look at nature and we see all the beauty and all the prosperity around us,” said Lin, “But most people don’t know or tend to forget that the key to sustainability is right underground.”

In his presentation, Lin noted that the Earth´s surface, from the top of a forest canopy to the various layers of underground material, soaks up and purifies water by removing excess nutrients, heavy metals and other contaminants from the water supply. He added, that the ground can also store freshwater after heavy precipitation.

According to Lin, approximately 60 percent of world’s annual precipitation is stored in the ground.

“In fact, there is more water under the ground than there is in the so-called ‘blue waters,’ such as lakes and rivers,” he said.

People use large amounts of water for drinking and to irrigate agricultural fields on both large and small scales. Because of its vital role in everyday life, Lin said he hopes to foster a “blue revolution” that could lead to increased water security with systems that deliver a clean, safe water supply in locations around the globe; just as a worldwide green revolution increased awareness about food security and world hunger.

“Without water there is no life,” Lin said. “Without groundwater, there is no clean water.”

He said the current system is inadequate and threatened by poor land management practices that do not take into account how ground water is affected by construction, underground storage and agricultural operations.

Lin suggested that officials need to understand how the ground and plants in an area can affect the cleanliness and availability of water. He warned that mismanaged land development can lead to flooding or impure drinking water supplies.

Despite the potentially dire consequences, government managers and planners might not act responsibly unless the general public becomes educated on groundwater management issues, Lin warned.

“In a lot of cases, for the general public and even people from government agencies and funding agencies, it’s out of sight, out of mind,” Lin said. “But, beneath the surface lies the foundation of our sustainability.”

According to his faculty website, Lin devotes about 70 percent of his academic energies to researching topics like hydrology, soil physics, ecosystem science, and environmental modeling. He recently collaborated with researchers from the Institute of Soil Science, in Nanjing, China on the studying the effects of flooding on different types of paddy soils.

Skip The Pizza, Learn To Eat Healthier With Cooking Classes

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editor

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Those dissatisfied with their diets of unhealthy food would do well to take a few cooking classes and learn to make their meals at home, suggests a new study from the University of Glasgow.

More than just a fun activity for couples or fiercely independent singletons, these cooking classes have been proven to directly affect the lives of those who partake. A year after they took part in government-funded cooking classes, a group of parents said they were eating more fruits and vegetables at home and eating less pizza delivery and Chinese takeout.

Along with eating more vegetables (which have repeatedly been shown to be a great addition to a healthy diet), these parents also left these classes having learned a skill. When asked, the cooking class participants said they felt more confident about following a simple dinner recipe.

The University of Glasgow researchers said a few refresher courses could magnify these effects, getting the parents to eat even more fruits and veggies and have more confidence to try more complicated recipes.

This study has now been published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

“It is very encouraging that we have these positive results,” said Dr. Ada Garcia, the leader of the cooking class study, according to the BBC. “This suggests that the intervention has benefited participants’ eating habits and health not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term.”

Dr. Garcia and team sought out parents of preschool children who had previously enrolled in four- to eight-week-long cooking courses. These courses taught the parents more than basic recipes; they also learned some basic budgeting skills and nutritional facts.

Dr. Garcia´s team surveyed these parents immediately after they completed the courses and again a year later. Immediately following the courses, the parents reported having greater confidence in their cooking skills as well as a greater interest in trying out new foods and new recipes.

This confidence lasted the entire year in between the classes and the researchers follow-up questions.

Unfortunately, the researchers weren´t able to get in touch with half of the parents for final questioning. Of 100 parents who first took the classes, only 44 were available one year later.

Those 44 who did respond, however, reported eating less take-out foods, and more meals at home, consisting of more fruits and vegetables than before they had taken the classes. One year after taking the classes, these parents were eating these healthier foods daily, whereas before they only ate them a few times a week.

Former president of the Faculty of Public Health professor Alan Maryon-Davis told the BBC that more research should be done, including a controlled trial, in order to get government money to offer these classes freely to the public.

“Budgets are being cut and local authorities are not going to fund stuff unless it´s been shown to be effective. But this is pretty encouraging,” said Maryon-Davis. “It is particularly important to get these changes happening in young families.”

Recent research has also shown that children eat more fruits and vegetables than their peers when they eat home cooked meals with their family. According to the December study, eating at home even once or twice a week can boost a child´s fruits and veggies intake by 1.2 portions more than those children who don´t eat at home.

Space

Mars’ Moons Vs. Earth’s Moon: What’s The Difference?

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Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Earth has one moon, and it is considerably larger than Pluto. In fact, the relative size of Earth´s moon is quite massive compared to the moons of other planets. We have a fascination with our moon on many levels. But what if Earth had two moons as Mars does?

According to NASA, unlike Earth´s moon, Mars moons are two of the smallest in the entire solar system. Mars moons also have proper names: Phobos and Deimos. Their names come from the mythological sons of Ares, the Greek version of the Roman war god Mars. Phobos means fear or panic while Deimos means flight from defeat. Of the two, Phobos is a bit larger, but neither is particularly massive. And neither of Mars´ moons is round like Earth´s moon. In fact, Phobos has a crater on it that is almost half the width of the moon itself. This crater is 6 miles wide and is called the Stickney Crater.

Earth´s moon orbits the planet about every 27-29 days. By contrast, Phobos, the closer of Mars´ two moons, orbits the red planet three times a day, while Deimos completes an orbit every 30 hours. The difference in orbit has to do with the distances between the moons and their planets. Earth´s moon is about 240,000 miles (385,000 km) away on average, while Mars´ Phobos is only 3,700 mi (6,000 km) — the closest known moon to any planet.

One feature that the three moons have in common is that they all show the same face to their planet. The Mars moons are a bit different in composition, however. Both Phobos and Deimos are lumpy, heavily-cratered and covered in dust and loose rocks. By contrast, Earth´s moon is divided into mountainous highlands and large, roughly circular plains called maria.

The maria are flat or undulating floors covered by a thin layer of powdered rock, which makes them appear darker than the rest of the moon´s surface. The brighter areas consist of the mountainous highlands, which have rough terrain and rocky rubble. Like Phobos and Deimos, Earth´s moon also has craters.

Since the moons have very different masses, they also have very different gravitational pulls. Earth´s moon has a roughly one-sixth the gravitational pull as that found on Earth, meaning that a 150-pound human would weigh only 25 pounds on our moon. Phobos, on the other hand, has about one one-thousandth of Earth´s gravitational pull, which means that same 150-pound person would weigh two ounces or 57 grams.

Mars´ moons may be small, but they are still visible from the surface of their host planet. In fact, NASA´s Curiosity rover has snapped a few pictures of Phobos as it traverses the Martian countryside.

Both the Mars moons were discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall, who is also responsible for naming them. When the Stickney Crater was discovered on Phobos in the 1970s, astronomers named it after Hall´s wife Angelina, whose maiden name Stickney. While the Mars moons may not be as familiar to most of us as our own moon, they continue to capture the fascination of scientists, astronauts and sci-fi fans everywhere.

Meteor Explosion Over Cuba One Day After Russian Event

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Just one day after a spectacular meteor exploded over Russian skies, shattering windows and injuring more than a 1,200 people, Cubans were treated to a similar event, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Many of Cuba´s citizens watched in wonderment as a small fireball soared across the early evening skies on Friday before exploding. Startled residents described seeing the bright light in the sky just seconds before a thunderous boom sent shockwaves through the air, shaking windows and walls. While the Cuban meteor explosion was similar to the Russian event, it was by far smaller and, as a result, no injuries or damages were reported.

The Cuban event also occurred on the same day many Californians witnessed a small shooting star (meteorite) burning up in the night sky as it fell through Earth´s atmosphere over San Francisco.

According to NBC, one couple said they were surprised by the “bright, white fireball” streaking across the night sky. Around the same time residents in northern California witnessed a meteorite blazing across the skies overhead.

Jonathan Braidman, an instructor at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, told NBC that the California fireball was actually a small piece of asteroid. He said it is a fairly “common occurrence,” although they occur more commonly over sparsely-populated areas, perhaps where it is less likely that witnesses will observe them.

Several anonymous reports from citizens in Cuba said the explosion was impressive. One woman told state TV news agency CubaSi that her “home shook completely” and that she “never heard such a strange thing.”

It is not clear yet if the Cuban explosion was indeed from a meteor. Because Cuba lies so closely to the shores of southern Florida, it seems a major meteor streaking across the skies would have likely been spotted there as well, to which no reports have yet to surface. And a California-based telescope monitoring that specific area of sky had not picked up any unusual activity.

Scientists say that small meteorites hit the Earth several times per year, but larger events like the one over Russia are much rarer.

Professor Edwin Bergin, of the University of Michigan´s Astronomy department, told redOrbit on Friday that meteors like the Russian one “occur every 10 to 30 years or so.” And even larger ones, those larger than a half-mile wide, “occur once or twice every million years.”

As for the Russian event, a local scientist today recovered the first fragments of the giant meteor on the edge of a giant hole in a frozen lake near Chelyabinsk after a sizeable chunk of the exploded meteor came crashing down, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian officials had searched the lake on Friday and Saturday but had turned up no results and suggested the hole may not have actually been caused by a meteor fragment.

However, Mikhail Udovinko, who is studying metallurgy at a local university, said he had found a small stone near the edge of the hole at the lake, and believes it is part of Friday´s meteor. He said that the stone responds to magnetism and has some weak radioactive properties.

Paul Abell, a scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has compiled new data for the meteor strike and said it was traveling at 46,000 mph when it hit the Earth´s atmosphere. Earlier reports placed the top speed at around 33,000 mph.

Abell said, according to ABC News, the meteor exploded in the atmosphere because its composition is stony, rather than metallic. The famous Tunguska asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 was also stony, which is why it didn´t impact the Earth.

Metallic meteors are more likely to impact earth, leaving huge craters, much like a famous one found in Arizona.

More astonishing, was the fact that the Russian, Cuban and Californian events occurred on, or around, the same day that the 2012 DA14 asteroid made a historic close approach of Earth, flying by at nearly 17,000 miles overhead, closer than our own geosynchronous satellites, which typically orbit us at 22,000 miles.

But despite the occurrences coming on the same day as the 2012 DA14 flyby, experts said that none of the meteor events are associated with that asteroid.

However, these events are causing some level of concern about what else may be out there lurking in the dark and whether the planet can be protected from future events– ones that could possibly be ten, or even a hundred, times more destructive than the Russian event.

Members of The United Nations, The White House, and even Congress have all asked to be briefed on these events, Abell said.

One ambitious plan to take out asteroids and large meteors before they take us out has already been proposed by two California scientists on Friday as well.

The proposed system, called DE-STAR, would be designed to shift the orbit of large asteroids, possibly deflecting them away from the Earth. This system is designed to utilize the energy of the Sun, converting it into an array of lasers that can also destroy, or evaporate comets and meteors.

Another system is already in the works.

Planetary Resources, a company that has lofty ambitions to mine asteroids and meteors in space, recently announced that its Arkyd-100 Series spacecraft would assist in the assessment of potentially hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth.

EA And Zynga Agree To Settle Dueling Lawsuits

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports — Your Universe Online

Video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) and social game developer Zynga have mutually agreed to settle their respective lawsuits against each other, according to documents filed in a U.S. district court on Friday.

According to Reuters reporter Jonathan Stempel, terms of the settlement were not officially disclosed, but both electronic entertainment firms had agreed to permanently drop claims against each other that dated back to last August, when EA accused Zynga of copyright infringement.

“Electronic Arts had alleged that Zynga’s new game ℠The Ville´ ripped off EA’s ℠The Sims Social,´ which had been launched the prior August and at one point became Facebook’s second most popular game ahead of Zynga’s ℠FarmVille,´” Stempel explained.

“It said Zynga was able to clone ℠The Sims Social´ in part with the help of executives it had hired away from Electronic Arts, and who had access to critical information on how that game was developed,” he added. “Six weeks later, Zynga countersued, accusing Electronic Arts of trying improperly to stop employees from switching companies. Zynga said this violated a 2011 agreement between the companies over employee solicitations.”

Both companies were, at times, quite vocal in addressing their grievances surrounding the litigation, said Drew Olanoff of TechCrunch. EA once asserted that Zynga “doesn´t understand copyright,” and in their countersuit, the social game giant said EA was guilty of “anti-competitive” practices, he explained.

However, on Friday the accusations and legal wrangling came to a rather quiet end, with both parties agreeing to dismiss their case with prejudice, according to CNET´s Donna Tam. That means neither company will be able to file lawsuits pertaining to the same allegations in the future.

Tam said both EA and Zynga will be paying their own legal fees, and a source told Olanoff neither company agreed to pay money to the other as part of the settlement. When contacted by the media for comment, both firms released identical statements: “EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.”

UK Officials Confirm Fourth Person Has Contracted Novel Coronavirus

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports — Your Universe Online

A twelfth person has contracted the potentially life-threatening, SARS-like virus that has only recently been discovered in humans, but health officials continue to assure the general public that the risk of widespread infection remains extremely low, according to various media reports published this weekend.

The new case, which was confirmed on Friday, is in the UK, making it the fourth British person to contract the novel coronavirus (NCoV) and the third to come down with the disease in one week´s time, according to Reuters reporter Kate Kelland. Of the twelve confirmed cases worldwide, five have died as a result of the virus, she added.

Guardian Health Editor Sarah Boseley reports the latest victim is the third member of the same British family to contract NCoV. The first member of that family had traveled to Pakistan and the Middle East, and both they and a relative with a pre-existing medical condition that could have heightened their risk of infection have been hospitalized.

“The third family member to have contracted the novel coronavirus is said“¦ to be recovering from a mild respiratory illness and is well,” Boseley added. “He or she has been advised not to meet with other people who are not part of the family, but only as a precaution. Other relatives and contacts of the latest person to be diagnosed are still being tracked down and tested.”

The virus was first identified in September 2012, when the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert warning that a Qatari man in England had contracted a virus that had never before been observed in humans, Kelland said. NCoV belongs to the same family as the coronavirus SARS, which surfaced in China more than a decade ago and infected 8,000 people worldwide, killing approximately one-tenth of them.

According to BBC News Health and Science Reporter James Gallagher, five of the 15 confirmed cases and three of the reported fatalities have occurred in Saudi Arabia. Two cases, both resulting in death, have been reported in Jordan, and one non-fatal case has been reported in Germany. Both that case and the UK ones involve individuals who had recently flown to Qatar.

“Although this case appears to be due to person-to-person transmission, the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low,” John Watson, head of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) respiratory diseases department, told reporters on Friday. “If novel coronavirus were more infectious, we would have expected to have seen a larger number of cases than we have seen since the first case was reported three months ago.

“However, this new development does justify the measures that were immediately put into place to prevent any further spread of infection and to identify and follow up contacts of known cases,” he added. “We would like to emphasize that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains very low. The HPA will continue to work closely with national and international health authorities and will share any further advice with health professionals and the public if and when more information becomes available.”

FDA Targeting Internet Companies In Continuing Battle Against Fake Flu Treatments

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports — Your Universe Online

In their continuing battle against substances falsely claiming to be able to help treat or cure the flu, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now targeting producers of dietary supplements and medicines claiming to be generic versions of drugs that have been approved by regulators.

According to Reuters reporter Toni Clarke, the FDA sent letters to nine online supplement distributors warning them about making unauthorized claims their products could be used to fight the influenza virus.

The FDA has demanded the firms “cease deceptive labeling of products as flu remedies and stop selling medicines marketed as generic versions of the prescription flu treatment Tamiflu,” said NBC News Correspondent Linda Carroll.

In one of the letters, the agency warned that a drug distributor — Supplementality LLC — was “improperly offering products intended to diagnose, mitigate, prevent, treat or cure the flu virus,” Clarke said. The agency went on to demand “the company ℠immediately cease marketing´ in this way.”

She added that the warning “covers products including Resveratrol, Garlic, Echinacea, Elderberry, Ashwagandha and Astragalus Immune System Support,” and Gary Coody, the FDA´s national health fraud coordinator, emphasized there were “no over-the-counter products that shorten the duration or severity of the flu.”

Coody told Jonathan D. Rockoff of The Wall Street Journal some of the Internet retailers contacted by the FDA had already responded to the agency´s warning.

For example, he said Kosher Vitamin Express, which received the letter on Monday, had already removed the offending substances, including Zahlers Kosher Abreve Advanced Cold & Flu Formula. Others, including www.topsavingspharmacy.com and www.sundrugstore.com, had yet to respond, Rockoff said. Both websites continued marketing “Generic Tamiflu” as of Friday afternoon.

“The FDA hasn’t approved generic versions of Tamiflu or another prescription flu treatment called Relenza,” Rockoff explained. “Nor has the FDA approved any over-the-counter drugs to prevent or cure the flu, though it has green-lighted over-the-counter medicines that reduce fever and relieve muscle aches, congestion and other symptoms associated with the flu.”

Coody told The Wall Street Journal products such as these, sold online, could be counterfeit medications, the wrong drug disguised as a flu treatment, too weak or too strong. Fortunately, to date the agency has not received any reports of patients who fell ill after taking these supplements, he said.

“We want people to take effective preventive measures against the flu,” Coody told Rockoff. “Not only could they be getting something totally ineffective, they could have a false sense of protection.”

“Any time a health threat occurs, fraud emerges almost overnight,” he noted in a separate interview with NBC News. “We saw it with the avian flu and H1N1 in 2009. It´s the nature of the Internet and social media that allows firms almost instant access to consumers, so they can get their messages out there very quickly.”

The companies contacted by the agency have 15 days to take action before the FDA can pursue legal sanctions against them.

“The FDA will consider whatever means are necessary to stop the marketing of fraudulent flu products to prevent them from proliferating in the marketplace — and will hold those who are responsible for doing so, accountable,” FDA spokeswoman Sarah Clark-Lynn told Carroll. “This may include considering civil (seizure, injunction) or criminal (prosecution) enforcement action as appropriate.”

Microsoft Adds 100,000 Office 365 Users In Texas

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Last month, the city of Chicago announced they´d be adopting a “Cloud computing strategy for city wide email and applications” using Microsoft´s Office 365. Today, Microsoft has announced they´ve landed another big player for their new Office solutions, bringing more than 100,000 Texas state employees underneath their cloud.

As a part of Texas´ statewide IT modernization strategy, employees from multiple state departments will begin using Office 365´s collaboration and email tools. According to a statement from Microsoft, these departments include: The Health and Human Services System, Department of Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Information Resources, and Department of Insurance. The Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission will begin using these tools “soon,” though no specific date was given.

Texas´ director of e-government, Todd Kimbriel, led the charge to switch the state´s agencies to Microsoft´s new collaboration software in the “largest state-wide deployment of email and collaboration services in the U.S.”

“No other solution provides the rich capabilities of Office 365, including webconferencing, real-time collaboration, and document and calendar sharing,” said Kimbriel in a statement.

“Office 365 will increase efficiency and help our agencies better serve the needs of citizens without compromising on security or privacy.”

Microsoft has been pushing their new Office 365 service as of late, which includes the familiar suite of Office software, as well as collaborative tools and cloud storage for an annual subscription of $99. It was recently noticed Microsoft has even restricted the use of the non-cloud version of Office to encourage users to sign up for Office 365. According to Paul Thurrott and The Age, Microsoft has restricted the use of traditional Office software by only allowing the suite to be installed on one computer, rather than allow multiple licenses. Office 365 users, on the other hand, are allowed to install these apps on up to 5 devices.

Now, as a result of some contractual commitments, all state agencies in Texas will be able to use Office 365. Texas joins the list of other city and state agencies choosing Microsoft´s new software offerings. In addition to Chicago, Texas now joins the likes of California and Minnesota, as well as the city of San Francisco.

“We´ve worked hard to provide security and privacy solutions the State of Texas can trust,” claimed Michael Dorian, the vice president of Microsoft´s State and Local Government business.

“The familiarity of Office backed by deep investments in cloud security, privacy and compliance play an important role in how Microsoft is enabling city, state and federal agencies to move to the cloud.”

Uncategorized

Google Chrome

Written By: editor

Google Chrome is a freeware web browser that was released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and fully released on December 11, 2008 as a standalone. As of November 2012, usage share is 35 percent worldwide. A mobile version for Android was released on November 28, 2012.

When Google first thought of developing a web browser, chairman Eric Schmidt opposed, but after hiring several developers from Mozilla who built and demonstrated Chrome, he changed his mind. Google Chrome was announced through a 38 page comic and sent to journalists and made available on Google books on September 1, 2008. It was released to the public in beta form on September 2, 2008 in 43 languages.

In December 2009, Google released beta versions of Chrome for OS, X, and Linux operating systems. On May 25, 2010, Google Chrome 5 was released supporting all three platforms. It was also offered as one of the twelve browsers to European Economic Area users of Microsoft windows.

Chrome was developed by using 25 different code libraries from Google, Mozilla’s Netscape Portable Runtime, Network Security Services, NPAPI, and other open source projects. Chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine to display its web pages with unit testing, fuzz testing, and Webkit’s layout tests.

On January 11, 2011 Google announced it would remove H.264 support for the HTML5 player, but on November 6, 2012 Google released a version of Chrome on Windows using H.264 and as of December 2012 the future of H.264 has not been discussed. On February 7, 2012, a Beta version was released for Android 4.0 devices, and Chrome is the default browser on devices with Jelly Bean pre-installed. In March, 2012 Chrome was announced for both Metro and desktop versions of Windows 8.

Chrome features fast, simple, secure, and stable web browsing, that uses JavaScript processing for faster page browsing, it also merges the address bar and search bar, called the Omnibox.

The security of Chrome uses updates from two blacklists to monitor phishing and malware, and warns users if they attempt to enter a harmful site. It also has an allocation to prevent what happens on one tab to affect another tab. This is similar to a mode used by Internet Explorer 9 and 10. In December 2011, Google Chrome 12 and 13 were considered having better security the either Explorer 9 or Mozilla 5. Chrome’s security was compromised twice in 2012 at computer hacking contest and the fixes were deployed within ten hours. Chrome 23 fixed 15 other security risks with six of them being high sensitivity.

Plugins for Chrome run as an unrestricted separate process and cannot be sandboxed, and Chrome does not support ActiveX. On March 30, 2010 Adobe Flash was bundled with Chrome with automatic updates when the browser is updated. Java is also supported in Chrome 12 and above.

A private browsing feature allows users to request that no cookies or history information is stored from websites that are visited. However, Chrome sends Google details on user usage through a tracking system. Some of these can be optionally disabled or enabled at installation and in the browser’s option menu. Information typed into the Omnibox is sent to the search provider before the user hits send; this allows the search engine to quickly provide URL suggestions. At the end 2012, Google implemented Do Not Track into Chrome version 23.

Chrome uses built in DNS to speed up website lookups, called DNS Pre-resolution. It also uses SPDY protocol instead of HTTP when communicating with Google. Chrome also has a feature called process isolation which prevents tasks from interfering with each other giving better security and stability.

The user interface has back, forward, refresh, cancel, and menu buttons. The home button can be added through the settings page which is used for customizing the home page. The address bar is also used as the search box. When a user begins typing in the Omnibox, suggestions of previously entered search topics along with suggestions based on the text are displayed. It has a bookmark bar to store favorite sites visited.

Chrome web store was opened on February 11, 2011 and released with Chrome 9. It allows users to install applications to the browser with most being a link to the web page or site. Themes and extensions are part of the Chrome web store and users can search catalogs for Chrome extras. In December 2009, Chrome extension gallery offered over 300 different extensions and by February 4, 2011 more than 11,500 were available. Many of these extensions have access to the user’s data. Themes are also available from Chrome 3 and up accessible through the options menu. A translation bar was added with Chrome 4.1, currently able to translate 52 languages.

Google, on January 8, 2009 introduced new release systems, with three channels, Stable, Beta, and Developer preview (DEV). The Stable channel is updated with fixes and features once they have been thoroughly tested. The Beta channel will be updated monthly. The Dev is where the ideas get tested for the Beta and Stable versions. July 22, 2010, Google announced stable version will be released every six weeks instead of quarterly. With that, another channel was released called Canary. Google will use this channel for experimental changes in development, if the canary version is killed by the change, then it will be blocked from the DEV channel.

On January 10, 2013 Chrome beta was released for Android and it runs side by side with the stable channel.

Chrome is available for Windows service pack 2 or later, Vista, Windows 7 and 8; also for OS X 10.6 or later; Linux Ubuntu 10.4 or later; Debian 6 or later; openSUSE 11.3 or later and Fedora. It is also available on Apple’s iOS, including the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, as well as on Android 4.0 or later.

At the 2012 Google I/O developers conference it was claimed that there were 310 million active users of Chrome.

Engineers Develop More Efficient Way To Capture Light

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Engineers at the University of Buffalo have created a more efficient way to catch a rainbow than chasing leprechauns. They have created an advancement in photonics that could lead to technological breakthroughs in solar energy, stealth technology and other areas of research.

The study findings were described in a recent issue of the online journal Scientific Reports.

Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UB, and a team of graduate students developed a “hyperbolic metamaterial waveguide.” The waveguide is an advanced microchip made of alternate ultra-thin film of metal and semiconductors and/or insulators. The waveguide functions by halting and ultimately absorbing each frequency of light at slightly different places in a vertical direction to catch a “rainbow” of wavelengths.

“Electromagnetic absorbers have been studied for many years, especially for military radar systems,” Gan, a researcher within UB´s new Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics, said in a statement. “Right now, researchers are developing compact light absorbers based on optically thick semiconductors or carbon nanotubes. However, it is still challenging to realize the perfect absorber in ultra-thin films with tunable absorption band.

“We are developing ultra-thin films that will slow the light and therefore allow much more efficient absorption, which will address the long existing challenge.”

The photons that make up light move extremely fast — at the speed of light, making them difficult to tame. The research team relied upon cryogenic gases in their initial attempts to slow light, but cryogenic gases are very cold — approximately 240 degrees below zero Fahrenheit — making them extremely difficult to work with outside a laboratory.

Prior to joining the UB team, Gan helped to pioneer a method for slowing light without cryogenic gases. He was part of a team at Lehigh University that made nano-scale-sized grooves in metallic surfaces at different depths. This process altered the optical properties of the metal. The grooves worked to slow light, however, they had limitations; such as the energy of the incident light could not be transferred onto the metal surface efficiently. This hampered its use for practical applications.

Because it is a large area of patterned film that can collect the incident light efficiently, the hyperbolic metamaterial waveguide solves that problem. The wavelength is an artificial medium with subwavelength features whose frequency surface is hyperboloid. This allows it to capture a wide range of wavelengths in frequencies that include the visible, near-infrared, mid-infrared, terahertz and microwaves. This new technology could lead to advancements in an array of fields.

In electronics, for example, a phenomenon called crosstalk exists in which a signal transmitted on one circuit or channel creates an undesired effect in another circuit or channel. The on-chip absorber could potentially nullify this effect.

Solar panels and other energy collecting devices could also sport the new on-chip absorber, perhaps as a thermal absorber in the mid-infrared spectral regions for devices that recycle heat after sundown.

Because the on-chip absorber has the potential to absorb different wavelengths at a multitude of frequencies, it could have applications as a stealth coating material for stealth technology.

Backaches Evolved Once We Started To Walk Upright

Written By: editor

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
Feeling like your feet are a little sore or you have a backache after a day of shopping or walking around town? Well, scientists now say you can blame that on evolution.
Bruce Latimer, an anthropologist from the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine, says adapting to upright walking has resulted in physical challenges that affect most humans.
“If an engineer were given the task to design the human body, he or she would never have done it the way humans have evolved,” Latimer said. “Unfortunately, we can’t go back to walking on four feet. We’ve undergone too much evolutionary change for that–and it is not the answer to our problems.”
Applying Darwin’s theory of evolution to the human condition gives scientists a peak at why humans suffer from physical ailments in a way other animals do not, according to Latimer, a faculty member of the Department of Orthodontics at Case Western Reserve University.
When humans began to evolve from four-footed walking, so did issues with having flat feet and bunions, to slipped discs, hernias and fallen pelvic floors. It also helped to reshape the face and head, creating problems like wisdom teeth.
Latimer will be talking about physical problems of the spine, specifically, which developed into an S-shaped structure as humans evolved from a species who walked on all fours, to bipedal walking. However, not all the changes were bad, because those done to the spine resulted in protecting the body’s most important area, the birth canal.
As the spine developed in curves, it became stressed at certain points, which resulted in conditions as swayed backs, hunchback, and scoliosis. The spine also suffers from how we walk, one foot forward at a time with the opposite side arm swinging in step.
“This creates a twisting motion that, after millions of twists over time, the discs between the vertebrae begin to wear out and break down resulting in herniated discs. In addition, age related bone loss (osteoporosis, the brittle bone disease) also a human condition, further complicates problems,” said Latimer.
He said there are few early species of ancient human hominids who lived past 50 years, and most died between 30 and 40. The human body takes a physical beating and most people struggle with some kind of pain as the body ages.
“The original design specs for the human body were designed to last about 40 years,” he said.
According to a study published in 2010, humans first gained their upright posture and gait millions of years ago. Archaeologists unearthed fossil footprints in Laetoli, Tanzania, indicating these early hominids were walking with a human-like striding gait as long as 3.6 million years ago. To understand it, the team collected 3D models of the footprints, and examined the relative depth of footprints at the heel and toe, finding these depths are about equal when made by a person walking with an erect gait.
“What is fascinating about this study is that it suggests that, at a time when our ancestors had an anatomy well-suited to spending a significant amount of time in the trees, they had already developed a highly efficient, modern human-like mode of bipedalism,” said biological anthropologist Adam Gordon, who collected the 3D models of the footprints.

A Rewired Serotonin System May Help Medications Be More Effective With Fewer Side Effects

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

One new method may be able to lead to more effective medications, with fewer side effects, according to research published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston and the University of Houston found a new way to influence the vital serotonin signaling system. The team linked malfunctions in serotonin signaling to a range of health issues, including everything from depression and addictions, to epilepsy and obesity.

Much of the attention focused on complex proteins known as serotonin receptors, which are found in the cell membrane. Each of these receptors have “active sites” suited to bond with a serotonin molecule.

Traditional drug discovery efforts target interactions that take place at these sites, but a receptor’s behavior can be changed by additional proteins that bind to it at locations farther from the active site. This process is known as “allosteric regulation.”

“This is a whole new way of thinking about this system, targeting these interactions,” said UTMB professor Kathryn Cunningham, senior author of a paper on the research. “Basically, we’ve created a new series of molecules and validated that we can use them to change the way the receptor functions both in vitro and in vivo, through an allosteric effect.”

The group focused on the natural interaction between the 5-HT2C receptor, serotonin, and a molecule called PTEN, which controls 5-HT2C receptor function. They said that it is possible for a receptor to bind to serotonin, and PTEN simultaneously, which causes an allosteric effect where serotonin is weakened.

“We want to maintain signaling through 5-HT2C receptors to gain therapeutic benefits, and to do that we had to reduce the number of receptors that were binding to PTEN molecules,” said UH professor Scott Gilbertson, another senior author on the paper. “One way to do that is to develop an inhibitor that competes with the receptor for binding to PTEN.”

The researchers chose a fragment of the part of the receptor where PTEN attached. These sub-protein structures are known as “peptides.” The team also looked at behavioral studies in laboratory rats, which indicated that 3L4F increased 5-HT2C responses.

“We looked at both human cells and rats because ultimately we want to translate this research into therapeutics,” said UTMB postdoctoral fellow Noelle Anastasio, lead author of the paper. “The idea of targeting these interactions to produce drug and research tools is truly new and has great potential.”

With this study, the team determined that elements of peptides were important to bonding with PTEN. This information can be used to design smaller molecules with the same or better activity.

“We’ve got the basics down now, so we can use the chemistry to make new molecules that we think might be potentially useful for treatment of addictions, for example,” Cunningham said. “But there’s also an intense interest in figuring out the biology of this interaction between 5-HT2C and PTEN, what it means in terms of disease states like the addictions, alcoholism, depression and obesity and eating disorders. I think in a broader sense this is really going to help us understand the neurobiology of these disorders.”

Recently, researchers published another study in the Journal of Neuroscience about how tracking a single protein that regulates serotonin makes it possible to study the dynamics of the protein that regulates mood, appetite and sleep. The team in this research had to tag these proteins in order to follow their motion on the surface of cells in real time.

“By understanding the basic mechanisms that naturally turn serotonin transporter activity up and down, maybe we can develop medications that produce milder side-effects and have even greater efficacy,” said Randy Blakely, the Allan D. Bass Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry. “Our sights are also focused on transferring what we have learned with normal serotonin transporters to an understanding of the hyperactive transporters we have found in kids with autism.”

Low Protein Diet Slows Alzheimer’s, Improves Brain Function In Lab Mice

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Connie K. Ho for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

A study from the University of Southern California (USC) recently found that a normal, low-protein diet could slow signs of Alzheimer´s and boost memory in mice. The Alzheimer´s Association defines the disease as a form of dementia related to difficulties with behavior, memory and thinking.

In the study, mice with advanced stages of Alzheimer´s disease were put on a new diet. They were given specific amino acids every other week along with a protein-restricted diet over a four-month period. The scientists then tested the memory of the mice using mazes, and their results showed that the mice with the low-protein diet had improved cognitive function compared to the mice in the control group. They also discovered that the mice that consumed less protein had fewer abnormal levels of tau, a harmful protein found in patients diagnosed with Alzheimer´s.

In addition, the researchers studied the correlation between IGF-1, a growth hormone that is regulated by dietary protein, and Alhzeimer´s. IGF-1 is known to play a role in the development of the body during youth but has also been connected to several diseases that occur later in life. The USC team of researchers found that a protein-restricted diet lowered the levels of IGF-1 in the mice by 30 to 70 percent.

“We had previously shown that humans deficient in Growth Hormone receptor and IGF-I displayed reduced incidence of cancer and diabetes. Although the new study is in mice, it raises the possibility that low protein intake and low IGF-I may also protect from age-dependent neurodegeneration,” explained Valter Longo, a USC Professor who directs the Longevity Institute of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, in a prepared statement.

“Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of neurodegeneration are a major burden on society, and it is a rising priority for this nation to develop new approaches for preventing and treating these conditions, since the frequencies of these disorders will be rising as the population ages over the next several decades,” said Pinchas Cohen, dean of USC School of Gerontology. “New strategies to address this, particularly non-invasive, non-pharmacological approaches such as tested in Dr. Longo’s study are particularly exciting.”

The researchers believe that it is important to look into dietary solutions to the diseases instead of producing pharmaceuticals that can impact IGF-1 directly. “We always try to do things for people who have the problem now,” continued Longo in a statement. “Developing a drug can take 15 years of trials and a billion dollars.”

The researchers says that it is important for doctors or registered dieticians to monitor the health of elderly patients who do decide to engage in a protein-restricted diet in order to ensure that they do not become deficit in amino acids, lose extra weight or develop other side effects.

“Although only clinical trials can determine whether the protein-restricted diet is effective and safe in humans with cognitive impairment, a doctor could read this study today and, if his or her patient did not have any other viable options, could consider introducing the protein restriction cycles in the treatment — understanding that effective interventions in mice may not translate into effective human therapies,” remarked Longo in the statement.

Research into Alzheimer´s treatment has gained enormous traction in the last few years as public awareness of the devastating disease continues to grow. Last year President Barack Obama´s administration pledged to boost efforts to fight Alzheimer´s disease, including increasing federal funds available for Alzheimer´s research. They also placed an emphasis on improving caregiver support, public health education and data infrastructure.

“We can´t wait to act; reducing the burden of Alzheimer´s disease on patients and their families is an urgent national priority,” said US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a prepared statement.

The results of the study were published in the online edition of the journal Aging Cell last month.

Trolls Dim The Allure Of Science

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online
The Internet can be a cruel place. Nowhere else can this best be seen than the comment section of any news story or blog post. Posts about current events, gadgets, or science and scientific research are sure to evoke some colorful comments from the readers.
These off-color and often rude statements may serve to upset the author or even start a “flame war” in the comments section, but new research has proved that these comments may have much deeper impact.
According to a paper written by Ashley Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, such nasty comments can even turn other readers off to the ideas presented in the original post.
This can be particularly troubling for scientists who are working on brand new, cutting-edge technology. After all, it´s difficult enough to persuade people that this brand new thing, such as nanotechnology, is worth researching. If the general public suddenly acquires a bad taste in their mouth about these new developments, it may be even more difficult for the scientists to advance their studies.
Dominique Brossard with the University of Wisconsin-Madison addressed a gathering of scientists on Thursday, presenting these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
“It seems we don´t really have a clear social norm about what is expected online,” said Brossard in a press statement. “In the case of blog postings, it´s the Wild West.”
As a part of the research, Anderson enlisted the help of 2,338 Americans in an online experiment. These participants read “balanced newspaper blog posts” pertaining to the growing industry of nanotechnology. These blogs were tacked with comments, which were manipulated to either include negative or positive sentiments. According to the research, these participants had their perception of what they had just read influenced by negative and nasty blog comments.
Nanotechnology is already used in more than 1,300 consumer products. Yet, this new research has found that simply reading a blog post with a nasty comment can leave one feeling skeptical about this new development in technology.
“When people encounter an unfamiliar issue like nanotechnology, they often rely on an existing value such as religiosity or deference to science to form a judgment,” according to Anderson.
Brossard agrees, saying this study showed that highly religious people were much more likely view nanotechnology as very risky once they read negative comments supposedly left by other readers. Those who did not describe themselves as religious were not so prone to have their attitudes adjusted by the rude comments of others.
“Blogs have been a part of the new media landscape for quite some time now, but our study is the first to look at the potential effects blog comments have on public perceptions of science,” said Brossard.
More than simply the content of these nasty replies, any argument in the comment section of a blog can cause some to change the way they originally felt about a certain issue.
“Overt disagreement adds another layer. It influences the conversation,” said Brossard. The team hopes this study will cause scientists and science bloggers to understand the way this perception can be swayed and take this into consideration when posting these stories and studies online.

Dark Matter Rival Theory Predicts Properties Of Satellite Galaxies

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A research collaboration between Case Western University and Weizmann Institute of Science has used modified laws of gravity to closely predict a key property measured in faint dwarf galaxies that are satellites of the nearby giant spiral galaxy Andromeda.

The study centers around the property of velocity dispersion, which is the average velocity of objects within a galaxy relative to each other. Velocity dispersion is by used by astronomers to determine the accelerations of objects within the galaxy as well as to estimate the mass of the galaxy itself.

The scientists used Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) to calculate the velocity dispersion for each dwarf galaxy. MOND is a hypothesis that attempts to resolve what appears to be an insufficient amount of mass in galaxies needed to support their orbital speeds.

According to MOND, under a certain condition, Newton’s law of gravity must be modified. The MOND hypothesis is less widely accepted than the hypothesis that all galaxies contain unseen dark matter that provides needed mass.

“MOND comes out surprisingly well in this new test,” said Stacy McGaugh, astronomy professor at Case Western Reserve. “If we’re right about dark matter, this shouldn’t happen.” McGaugh teamed up with Mordehai Milgrom, professor of physics and astrophysics at Weizmann Institute in Israel. Milgrom is considered the father of MOND.

MOND theory arose from the observed fact that galaxies rotate faster than predicted by the law of gravity without flying apart, forcing astronomers and physicists to try to explain this unexpected phenomenon. In 1932, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort conceived the concept of dark matter. Researchers theorize that dark matter is gathered in and around galaxies, adding the mass needed to hold them together.

Milgrom was dissatisfied with that theory and offered MOND as an alternative theory for explaining the unusual rotational behavior of galaxies. According to MOND, Newton’s force law must be tweaked at low acceleration — eleven orders of magnitude lower than what we feel on the Earth’s surface. As Newton’s law states, acceleration above that threshold is linearly proportional to the force of gravity. Below that threshold, however, it is not. By tweaking the force law under that limitation, the mass discrepancy is resolved.

McGaugh initially subscribed to the theory of dark matter early in his career, but over time came to doubt the accuracy of the theory, believing that it came up short in a number of aspects. However, in recent years he says he has found increasing evidence that supports Milgrom´s explanation.

The research team tested MOND with dwarf spheroidal galaxies, which are very low-surface brightness galaxies that are actually satellites of other larger galaxies. As galaxies go, they are tiny, containing only a few hundred thousand stars.

“These dwarfs are spread exceedingly thin. Their light is spread over hundreds to thousands of light-years. These systems pose a strong test of MOND because their low stellar density predicts low accelerations,” McGaugh exlained.

The team used the luminosity of the galaxies — an indicator of stellar mass — and the theory of MOND to make their calculations and predict the velocity dispersions of 17 faint galaxies. In 16 of the 17, the predictions closely matched the velocity dispersions measured by other researchers. In the case of the 17th galaxy, the data from independent observers differed from one another.

“Many predictions were bang on,” said McGaugh. “Typically, the better the data, the better the agreement.” MOND was also used to predict velocity dispersions for 10 more faint dwarf galaxies in Andromeda. The team is currently awaiting additionally measurements to refute or corroborate these predictions.

The findings of this study will be published in the next edition of the“¯Astrophysical Journal and are already available online through the electronic preprint archive“¯http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0822.

Humans, Chimps Utilize Same Genetic Variants To Fight Pathogens

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new genome-wide analysis, led by the University of Chicago Medical Center, searched for evidence of long-lived balancing selection – where the evolutionary process acts not to select the single best adaptation but to maintain genetic variation in a population. The study revealed at least six regions of the genome where humans and chimpanzees share the same combination of genetic variants.

The results of this study have been published in a recent issue of Science.

The findings suggest that human variation in these regions dates back to a common ancestor with chimpanzees, millions of years ago before the species split apart. The importance of the dynamic co-evolution of human hosts and their pathogens in maintaining genetic variation is also highlighted by this study.

Keeping all hereditary options open is the function of balancing selection. A classic example of balancing selection in humans is the presence of two versions of the hemoglobin gene: a normal version and hemoglobin S.

Hemoglobin S is a mutation that distorts the shape and function of red blood cells. If a person inherits two normal hemoglobin genes, they are at high risk for malaria; a parasitic disease that infects more than 200 million people each year. A person who inherits one normal and one hemoglobin S gene is partially protected from malaria, which is a potentially life-saving benefit. A person with two copies of hemoglobin S suffers from sickle-cell anemia — a serious and life-long circulatory disease.

“When we looked for genetic clues pointing to other, more ancient, examples of balancing selection, we found strong evidence for at least six such regions and weaker evidence for another 119–many more than we expected,” said Molly Przeworski, PhD, professor of human genetics and of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago.

“We don’t yet know what their functions are,” she said.

None of the six regions codes for a protein. There are clues that they are involved in host-pathogen interactions, “but which pathogens, what immune processes,” she said, “We don’t know.”

The team, which included members from Oxford University, the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), used data on 10 West African chimpanzees and 50 sub-Saharan humans who were part of the 1,000 Genomes Project.

The scientists examined the data, looking for cases in which genetic variations that arose in the ancestor of both species have been maintained through both genetic lines. That variation in these genomic regions has persisted for so long the that they “must have been functionally important over evolutionary time,” Ellen Leffler, a graduate student in Przeworski’s laboratory, said in a statement.

The study was designed to be very conservative. “We wanted to find the cases we believed the most, rather than the most cases,” Przeworski added.

Snippets of data from humans and chimps were sorted by computer into clusters, depending on how similar the subjects were to each other. As expected, for most snippets they found a cluster of humans and a separate cluster of chimps. There were a few segments, however, in which each cluster included both chimpanzees and humans. In those regions, some humans were more closely related to chimps than to other humans.

“Instances in which natural selection maintains genetic variation in a population over millions of years are thought to be extremely rare,” the authors wrote. The oldest, and probably best-known, example of balance polymorphism shared between humans and chimpanzees is the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). MHC is a group of genes that help the immune system distinguish between the body and potential invaders like bacteria and viruses.

In a previous study last year, Przeworski and her team found that humans and gibbons shared genetic variation related to the ABO blood-group system from a common ancestor.

The six regions found in this current study appear to play a role, like the MHC, in fending off infectious disease, which requires a variety of evolutionary tools, including balancing selection. If, for example, a population moves to a new environment – such as the exodus out of Africa to northern Europe — there are many onetime adjustments that must be made, such as adjusting to less intense sunlight and decreased ultraviolet radiation. A decrease in melatonin production over many generations is a static adaptation for a static environment.

Fighting off pathogens, on the other hand, is more dynamic like a constant arms race. Chimps and humans alike may have been able to retain multiple lines of defense that can be called on when a pathogen evolves new weapons through balancing selection.

“Our results imply that dynamic co-evolution of human hosts and their pathogens has played an important role in shaping human variation,” Przeworski said. “This highlights the importance of a different kind of selection pressure in human evolution.”

Dogs Are Able To Visually Recognize Their Own Species

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

New research reported in the journal Animal Cognition claims that dogs are able to pick out faces of other dogs on a computer screen, and can group them into a category of their own.

Dr. Dominique Autier-Dérian, who led the research along with colleagues, performed the first study to test dogs’ ability to discriminate between species and form a “dog” category in spite of the variability within the dog species.

Previous research has shown that in some species, individuals are able to recognize more easily, or are more attracted by images of, individuals belonging to their own species than those belonging to another species.

The team studied this among domestic dogs, which have the largest morphological variety among all species. There are over 400 pure breeds of dogs that have been registered.

Researchers explored whether this huge diversity among domestic dogs presented a challenge for dogs being able to recognize their species, when confronted with other species.

The team showed nine pet dogs pictures of faces from various dog breeds and cross-breeds on a computer screen for the study. They simultaneously showed these faces of dogs, along with faces of other animal species, including human faces and wild animal faces. The dogs were shown more than 144 pairs of pictures to select from during the study.

Authors of the study observed whether the dogs were able to discriminate any type of dog from other species, and could group all dogs together, regardless of breed, into a single category.

Results from the study show that dogs are able to form a visual category of dog faces, and group pictures of very different dogs into a single category, despite the large diversity domestic dog breeds offer. All nine dogs in the study were able to group all the images of dogs within the same category.

“The fact that dogs are able to recognize their own species visually, and that they have great olfactory discriminative capacities, insures that social behavior and mating between different breeds is still potentially possible,” the authors wrote. “Although humans have stretched the Canis familiaris species to its morphological limits, its biological entity has been preserved.”

Back in November, redOrbit reported about how a team from the University of Lincoln found that dogs learn to associate word with objects in different ways than humans. The researchers said that although a dog might bring back the right object once asked, he thinks of the object differently than the human does.

“Where shape matters for us, size or texture matters more for your dog,” these authors wrote in the journal PLOS ONE. “This study shows for the first time that there is a qualitative difference in word comprehension in the dog compared to word comprehension in humans.”

Women At Greater Risk Than Men For Sexually-Transmitted Infections

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Yesterday (Feb 14) was a day of love for most people, celebrating that love by sending romantic cards, fragrant flowers and decadent chocolates to their significant others. But the day that so often ends up with lovers hitting the hay for a little after-hours, extra-curricular activity, may be more troublesome than what they had anticipated.

This comes thanks to a new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released just ahead of Valentine´s Day that shows that sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) are on the rise, with an estimated 20 million new cases diagnosed each year, costing taxpayers in the neighborhood of $16 billion.

Even more troubling is the fact that half of all STI diagnoses come from 15- to 24-year-olds–roughly 25 percent of the US population.

The new report shows figures for eight of the most widespread STIs, including HPV, syphilis, gonorrhea, hepatitis B, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, herpes and HIV. Overall, the CDC estimates that more than 110 million Americans are currently dealing with some form of STI, with HPV being the most widespread (79 million cases).

The number of per-year diagnoses has been steadily climbing over the last two decades, rising from 15 million new cases in 1996, to 18.9 million in 2000, and 19.7 million diagnoses today. The CDC noted, however, that data-capturing methods have changed between then and now and there could exist some discrepancy in the overall numbers.

Despite any discrepancies, the data is still alarming. In the 2013 report, the CDC data show that HPV is by far the fastest growing STI, with 14.1 million new cases. In contrast, the second most diagnosed STI, chlamydia, has only infected 2.86 million new people in the last year. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, infected about 41,400 people.

Despite HIV only contributing to a small percentage of the overall infection rate, the report authors note that the bulk of the $16 billion healthcare costs go directly to care for those patients, mainly due to the fact that HIV/AIDS patients need care for life.

But the other infections on the list, such as chlamydia, are not any less serious. Some of these STIs, if left untreated, can lead to complications and end up costing far more than treating the initial infection(s).

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, has become resistant to many forms of antibiotics over the course of the last 70+ years. The bacteria still continues to puzzle disease experts as it morphs so readily into other strains.

Experts, which often call these morphed strains “multidrug-resistant gonorrhea,” reported in a separate study published in the CDC´s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that these strains are a result of too few antibiotics in development and a lack of alternative therapies.

The report also shows that women were, and still are, slightly more at risk for developing STIs, with an estimated 51 percent of all diagnoses occurring in that group.

Catherine Satterwhite, an epidemiologist with the CDC, said a lack of insurance and limited access to healthcare services in many parts of the country are major factors in the disproportionate representation of young people, particularly women, in the findings.

This is a wake-up call for the US healthcare system, she exclaimed.

“People need to remember that all STIs are preventable, treatable, and many curable,” she told ABC News. “There´s lots of opportunity to save the nation´s health and save billions of dollars a year in healthcare dollars, especially for the younger population.”

The CDC had this to say in its report:

“Because STIs are preventable, significant reductions in new infections are not only possible, they are urgently needed. Prevention can minimize the negative, long-term consequences of STIs and also reduce healthcare costs. The high incidence and overall prevalence of STIs in the general population suggests that many Americans are at substantial risk of exposure to STIs, underscoring the need for STI prevention. Abstaining from sex, reducing the number of sexual partners, and consistently and correctly using condoms are all effective STI prevention strategies. Safe, effective vaccines are also available to prevent HBV and some types of HPV that cause disease and cancer. And for all individuals who are sexually active — particularly young people — STI screening and prompt treatment (if infected) are critical to protect a person´s health and prevent transmission to others.”

For those who are sexually active, the CDC recommends that they talk to their healthcare provider about STIs and which tests may be best for them.

The report states that all adults and adolescents should be tested at least once for HIV. It also recommends that annual chlamydia screening should be done for all sexually active women 25 and under, and with any older women who have multiple sexual partners. It recommends yearly gonorrhea screening for at-risk sexually active women, especially for those who live in communities with a high burden of disease.

Furthermore, all pregnant women should be tested for HIV, chlamydia and hepatitis B, and gonorrhea testing for at-risk pregnant women at their first prenatal visit. Trichomoniasis screening should be given at least annually for all women infected with HIV.

The report recommends screening for syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV at least once a year for all active gay men, bisexual men, and other men who have multiple sexual partners. Frequent screening for these infections should also be conducted in these men who use, or have partners who use, illicit drugs (particularly methamphetamines).

Satterwhite emphasizes the need for safe sexual practices.

“Wear a condom correctly, think about abstinence, practice monogamy, and get appropriate screening if you´re high risk,” she said.

Vestibular-Ocular Reflex Is More Sophisticated Than Previously Believed

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

Our brains are capable of doing some amazing things. Yet, there are some processes which, while sophisticated enough, are mostly thought of as common and basic. For instance: The reflex which allows us to keep our eyes focused on one point while our heads are moving about. This reflex is called the Vestibular-Ocular Reflex (or VOR), and we share it with most vertebrates.

For many years, scientists have believed that this reflex is controlled in the lower brainstem as a low-level process without much sophistication. Now, researchers from at the Imperial College in London are challenging this notion, suggesting that this reflex is controlled by higher-level functions, such as those which determine handedness. This research has resulted in a paper which has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

To better understand where this VOR process takes place, Qadeer Arshad and his colleagues sat volunteers on spinning chairs and showed them a series of optical illusions. These motorized chairs spun at a speed of 1 rotation every 4 seconds. As these subjects were spinning, researchers measured how long it took their eyes to adjust to the spinning.

The subjects were then shown a series of bistable visual phenomena. These images are optical illusions which appear to switch between 2 different images, such as the duck which also appears to be the duck or the candlestick which also looks like two people facing one another. Scientists believe a higher-level portion of the brain is responsible for detecting these images and making sense of them. Therefore, Arshad and team were not expecting to find any link between VOR and this high-level process.

These researchers were surprised, then, when the volunteers had difficulty focusing their gaze on these images as they were spinning. The direction which these subjects were looking depended on their handedness, as well. Right handed volunteers followed a rightward rotation, and vice versa.

“This is the first time that anything of this kind has been shown. Up until now, the Vestibular-Ocular Reflex was considered a low-level reflex, not even approaching higher-order brain function. Now it seems that this primitive reflex was specialized into the cortex, the part of the brain which governs our sense of direction,” explained Arshad in a statement detailing his latest work.

Arshad said this study can be used to understand why people sometimes get dizzy solely by visual stimuli, such as flickering lights or crowded aisles in a grocery store.

Professor Adolfo Bronstein, co-author of the paper, says that this study could help doctors understand why some patients experience constant dizziness.

“Most causes of dizziness start with an inner ear – or vestibular – disorder but this initial phase tends to settle quite rapidly. In some patients, however, dizziness becomes a problematic long term problem and their dizziness becomes visually induced. The experimental set-up we used would be ideally suited to help us understand how visual stimuli could lead to long-term dizziness. In fact, we have already carried out research at Imperial around using complex visual stimuli to treat patients with long-term dizziness,” explained Bronstein.

Researchers Find That Billboard Advertising Distracts Drivers

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Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

In recent years, it´s become increasingly clear just how dangerous distracted driving can be. Mobile carriers like AT&T have implemented programs to encourage drivers to stay off their phones while driving, while Verizon is working in Washington to drive legislation to get tough on these distracted drivers. Yet, while we can control the distractions inside of the vehicle, there´s still the issue of distractions outside of the car. Billboards line the roadways, pushing everything from hamburgers to surgical weight loss, alcoholic beverages to DUI lawyers.

According to a recent paper published in Accident Analysis and Prevention by University of Alberta researchers Michelle Chan and Anthony Singhai, these billboards can invoke different emotions in drivers. These emotions can then, in turn, distract us and affect the way we drive.

To test their theory, Chan and Singhai created an experiment using a driving simulator and a series of 20 billboards. Each of these billboards contained either negative words, (like cancer, killer, or stress) positive words, (such as beach, cheer or love) or neutral words, like engine, lawn or pencil.

Going into the experiment, Chan believed drivers would only react to billboards with emotionally charged words, such as those found in the negative or positive category. Once the experiment was completed, Chan and Singhai found all three types of billboards distracted drivers in some way, but those with emotionally charged words distracted drivers the most.

“Any kind of distraction is risky when you´re driving. But there would appear to be a larger risk when it comes to emotional stimuli,” said Chan in a statement.

This study has therefore concluded billboards that contain these kinds of emotionally charged words present a greater driving risk to those on the road than neutral billboards.

While participating in the driving simulation, participants were found to slow down when they saw billboards with either negative or positive words. Chan and Singhai believe this slowing down meant the drivers were having some sort of emotional response to these billboards. The negative billboards caused the drivers to swerve from side to side once they passed by. When these drivers passed by billboards with positive language, they were more likely to increase their speed. Chan and Singhai also included a few billboards with target words. When the participants passed by these billboards, they were instructed to press a button on the steering wheel. When drivers passed by billboards with these target words, they also increased their speed.

Chan says this test proves drivers have natural reactions to these billboards and, therefore, these ads distract drivers from the task at hand. She hopes this study will encourage governments to begin regulating what can be displayed on a billboard, as well as encourage marketers to carefully choose the kind of language they use for these advertisements. Chan used Australia´s billboard content laws as an example of the kinds of laws that could be adopted in other countries.

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What is a Tsunami?

Written By: Sam Savage
editor

Hi, I’m Emerald Robinson, and in this “What is” video, we’re going to discuss Earth’s most powerful waves: tsunamis.

A tsunami is a series of fast moving waves triggered by an underwater shock. Tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes or volcanic activity, but landslides or underwater explosions can also be the cause.

Tsunamis were once called tidal waves, but this name isn’t very accurate because tsunamis aren’t related to earth’s normal tides. Instead, tsunamis form when water is somehow displaced by force. Let’s look at an example.

Shifting lava beneath the earth’s crust can cause the ocean floor to bulge, and then suddenly flatten. As this occurs, energy is released into the water, creating a series of waves. In deep water, the waves have a small height, or amplitude, a very long length, and move at an extremely high rate of speed – up to 500 miles per hour. Because these waves are usually less than a foot high, tsunamis are barely noticeable at this stage.

Tsunamis gain their power when they get close to shore. As the water gets shallower, the rapidly moving waves are forced to suddenly slow down, and the energy that has been carrying the tsunami causes the wave to increase in amplitude. Most tsunamis reach heights of about 10 feet, but some can be up to 100 feet tall. When a tsunami makes landfall, it usually takes the form of a sudden and rapidly rising tide that moves at about 50 miles an hour.

Tsunamis are very unpredictable. Not all undersea earthquakes cause tsunamis, and about 75% of tsunami warnings turn out to be false alarms. Still, scientists continue to monitor areas of high earthquake or volcanic activity such as the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, where about 85% of the world’s tsunamis occur. Their studies will improve our ability to predict these natural disasters and efficiently warn areas at risk.

Humans Train Their Brain To Like Certain Music, Rather Than Rely On Nature To Do It For Them

Written By: editor

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com — Your Universe Online

A new study has shown that those who dislike a certain style of music based on the sound of it, or the use of harmonies within, simply aren´t trying hard enough. In other words, our love of music and appreciation for harmony is a product of nurture, not nature.

According to associate professor Neil McLachlan from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, people can learn to appreciate and even love different styles of music that they may not have been surrounded with when they were growing up. It had been previously theorized that people were naturally inclined to appreciate a certain style or sound of music, based on the physical properties of a person´s ear and their ability to pick out harmonies. McLachlan claims that humans are capable of training their brains to hear certain harmonies and ultimately appreciate them.

“So if you thought that the music of some exotic culture (or Jazz) sounded like the wailing of cats, it´s simply because you haven´t learnt to listen by their rules,” McLachlan said in a statement.

To arrive at this new prediction, researchers played different sounds and harmonies to 66 volunteers with varying degrees of musical training. These volunteers were then asked if they were able to distinguish the harmonies and if these harmonies were pleasing to their ear.

“What we found was that people needed to be familiar with sounds created by combinations of notes before they could hear the individual notes. If they couldn´t find the notes they found the sound dissonant or unpleasant,” said McLachlan. “This finding overturns centuries of theories that physical properties of the ear determine what we find appealing.”

Those of the 66 volunteers who were trained musicians were more likely to have a negative reaction when they heard a dissonant sound.

“When they couldn´t find the note, the musicians reported that the sounds were unpleasant, whereas non-musicians were much less sensitive,” explained co-author associate professor Sarah Wilson.

According to Wilson, this study also proves that a person can train their brain to appreciate and even love a style of music foreign to them, such as jazz or rock and roll.

These researchers also noticed that those with musical training were able to pick out pitches in sounds that were played, such as a note of an odd-sounding chord or the sound of a gong. The musicians were not only able to find these pitches, but even said they were pleasant to their ear. Those volunteers without musical training, on the other hand, had difficulty identifying the pitch and therefore said the notes were unappealing to them.

In other words, in order to appreciate a sound, one must learn it and understand it. According to associate professor Wilson, this finding proves that people are, in fact, able to learn how to appreciate styles of music.

In order to prove this theory, the researchers found 19 people without any musical training and played them a selection of western chords over 10 short sessions. In the beginning, these participants were not able to pick out the individual sounds and found them unpleasant. Through the course of these 10 short sessions, these participants quickly learned to pick out the individual notes in these odd chords. At the end, they found these same chords that had earlier sounded strange now sounded lovely.

“We have shown in this study that for music, beauty is in the brain of the beholder,” said McLachlan.