Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 7, 2015 at 6:01am

Human chimerism occurs when two eggs are released by the mother and are fertilised by two sperm from the father. Normally, this would result in fraternal, non-identical twins, but on rare occasions, these eggs can overlap and fuse to develop into one person who contains two different sets of DNA.

This can cause a person to have two different blood types simultaneously, or to develop both male and female genitals. A DNA sample taken from a chimeric person’s kidney could be completely different from a sample taken from her cervical tissue - an issue that has caused much grief in women trying to prove that they are in fact their children’s biological mothers.

According to researchers at Stanford University in the US, in some cases, chimeric people will have skin made up of two different types of skin cells, encoded by two different sets of DNA. This DNA is responsible for skin tone, which is how patterns can occur. "Often the skin colour of the two types is indistinguishable, or subtle enough that it can only show up under black light”. "Sometimes, however, the two different sets of DNA code for skin types that are dramatically different, which leaves people with literal stripes on their skin in the pattern of Blaschko's lines."

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2015 at 7:00am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2015 at 6:21am

Drug-induced acute liver failure is uncommon, and over-the-counter medications and dietary and herbal supplements -- not prescription drugs -- are its most common causes, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are published in the current issue of Gastroenterology.

One of the most feared complications of drugs and medications is acute liver failure, traditionally associated with a greater than 50 percent chance of dying without a liver transplant. Drug-induced liver injury, known as hepatotoxicity, is the second most common reason drugs are withdrawn from the market, behind cardiac toxicity, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Penn authors, however, say this is based solely on abnormal liver tests, not actual liver damage. The real risk of acute liver failure that the researchers calculated was 1.61 per million people per year.
Despite hepatotoxicity being the second most common cause of drug withdrawal from the market, acute liver failure, the most severe form of liver injury, from prescription drugs was rare, the team found. They discovered that 75 percent of acute liver failure cases resulting from prescribed medication use were derived from over-the-counter products such as acetaminophen or herbal supplements. “Prescription medications are an exceedingly rare cause of acute liver failure.”
Source: University of Pennslyvania

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2015 at 6:17am

For the first time, an international research team, including a tropical forest ecologist from the University of Exeter, has provided direct evidence of the rate at which individual trees in the Amazon Basin ‘inhale’ carbon from the atmosphere during a severe drought.

The team measured the growth and photosynthesis rates of trees at 13 rainforest plots across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, comparing plots that were affected by the strong drought of 2010 with unaffected plots. They found that while growth rates of the trees in drought-affected plots were unchanged, the rate of photosynthesis – by which trees convert carbon into energy to fuel their activities – slowed down by around 10 percent over six months.

The paper, published in the journal Nature, concludes that trees may be channelling their more limited energy reserves into growth rather than maintaining their own health. Computer simulations of the biosphere have predicted such responses to drought, but these are the first direct observations of this effect across tropical forests.
"Drought impact on forest carbon dynamics and fluxes in Amazonia"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7541/full/nature14213.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 5, 2015 at 7:42am

The ‘Second Moon’ You Didn’t Know Earth Had
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/03/02/earth-second-moon...
http://www.firstpost.com/living/earths-mysterious-second-moon-nobod...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 4, 2015 at 7:54am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 3, 2015 at 7:35am

Emulsifiers in Food Linked to Obesity in Mice
The common food additives altered mice microbiomes to encourage gut inflammation and overeating.
Inside our guts is a diverse ecosystem of bacteria: the microbiome. But the makeup of the community can depend on what we eat. Emulsifiers are food additives that extend the shelf life of processed foods. And now research with mice finds that consuming emulsifiers may throw off the microbiome’s delicate balance and thereby contribute to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14232...
Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 3, 2015 at 7:31am

New in preservation science:
Using bio-polymers like carbohydrates (sodium alginate, chitosan, starch, xanthan gum etc) and proteins (soy protein, gelatin etc) to increase shelf life of these fruits and vegetables by 40% is latest news.
You may not require refrigerating costly fruits and vegetables. A mango can stay fresh more than 10 days while a jamun's shelf life has got almost doubled.

In a breakthrough in post-harvest crop preservation, researchers at Vallabh Vidyanagar-based Sardar Patel University (SPU) have developed an emulsion that provides an eco-friendly 'shield' to perishable fruits and vegetables. Generally, fruits, mostly apples in supermarkets, have a eco-friendly wax coating on them that keeps them fresh. This coating technology reduces post-harvest losses.
By using bio-polymers, SPU's team has successfully increased shelf life of fruits like banana, mango, papaya, strawberry, grapes, jamun, sapota, carambola, phalsa, guava, custard apple, pear and plum, apart from vegetables like tomato, capsicum and broccoli.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 2, 2015 at 7:23am

Chronic fatigue is a biological illness
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has now been confirmed to be a biological illness. These immune signatures represent the first robust physical evidence that CFS is not a psychological disorder and the first proof that it has distinct stages.

Doctors have for long known the symptoms of CFS - constant exhaustion, mental fogginess, sleep disorders, muscle/joint pain, impaired memory, inability to concentrate and depression. Lack of physical determinants has caused the debilitating illness to go undiagnosed in most patients across the world.

Scientists say that they have discovered distinct immune changes in patients diagnosed with CFS, known medically as myalgic ence8phalomyelitis, in which symptoms range from extreme fatigue and difficulty concentrating to headaches and muscle pain.Researchers at the Centre for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health used immunoassay testing methods to determine the levels of 51 immune biomarkers in blood plasma samples collected through two multicenter studies that represented a total of 298 CFS patients and 348 healthy controls.They found specific patterns in patients who had the disease three years or less that were not present in controls or in patients who had the disease for more than three years. Short duration patients had increased amounts of many different types of immune molecules called cytokines. The association was unusually strong with a cytokine called interferon gamma that has been linked to the fatigue that follows many viral infections. Cytokine levels were not explained by symptom severity.

"We now have evidence confirming what millions of people with this disease already know that CFS isn't psychological," states lead author Mady Hornig, director of translational research at the Centre.

"Our results should accelerate the process of establishing the diagnosis after individuals first fall ill as well as discovery of new treatment strategies focusing on these early blood markers".

There are already human monoclonal antibodies on the market that can dampen levels of a cytokine called interleukin-17A that is among those the study shows were elevated in early-stage patients.Before any drugs can be tested in a clinical trial, Dr Hornig and colleagues hope to replicate the current study that follows patients for a year to see how cytokine levels, including interleukin-17A, differ within individual patients over time, depending on how long they have had the disease.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 2, 2015 at 6:55am

What is the 'fire-ball' that was seen in the Kerala sky recently?

A day after it blazed across the sky creating a shock wave, the district administration attributed the fireball to a meteorite that entered the earth’s atmosphere.

“Samples have been collected from two sites–one each in Mazhuvannur and Karumaloor villages from where reports of objects falling out of the sky emerged. Preliminary assessments point to the possibility of a meteorite activity,” according to them.

Further scientific examination was required to ascertain if samples collected contained any extra terrestrial matter.  

Meanwhile, scientific experts also pointed to the likelihood of a space debris re-entry given the slow pace of the object.

“A similar group of slow moving fireballs were reported in the US during the two days from February 23. Further, the reports suggest the object was moving across the sky very slowly, which again raises the possibility of a space debris re-entry,” pointed out Prof. K. Indulekha, School of Pure and Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University and a contributor to the SKA India consortium at the TIFR-National Centre of Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune.

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