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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 2, 2015 at 9:26am

Mysteries solved with the help of science and experts in the field...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 2, 2015 at 8:33am

Non-Human Primates Harbor Diverse Mammalian and Avian Astroviruses Including Those Associated with Human Infections.
A new study of nearly 900 nonhuman primates in Bangladesh and Cambodia shows that macaques harbor diverse astroviruses, which can cause infectious gastroenteritis or diarrhea in humans. The research is the first to show evidence of human astroviruses in animals, and among the earliest to demonstrate that astroviruses can move between mammalian species, according to the report, published in PLOS Pathogens. “If you are a bat, you have bat astrovirus, but if you are a monkey, you could have everything,” said Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, a research scientist at the University of Washington National Primate Research Primate Center and a co-author of the study. Astroviruses from a number of species, including human, bovine, bird, cow and dog, were detected in monkeys, “challenging the paradigm that AstV (astrovirus) infection is species-specific,” the authors wrote. It is still unknown whether these viruses are two-way and can be transmitted to humans. They did find evidence that, in monkeys, two species of astrovirus recombined.
Astroviruses are most commonly associated with diarrhea. They can also cause clinical diseases such as nephritis, hepatitis and encephalitis. However, astroviruses also can be asymptomatic, depending on the species. Currently, the only treatment is oral rehydration.
The researchers said more study is needed to determine if astrovirus infections in nonhuman primates are associated with clinical disease, or whether such infections are asymptomatic. They said none of monkeys sampled in the study appeared to have clinical disease (e.g., diarrhea) at the time of sampling.
http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.p...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 2, 2015 at 8:25am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 2, 2015 at 8:20am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 30, 2015 at 8:00am

Rain forests create their own rain clouds, replete with microscopic spores, pollen and fungi, or “smells”. How?
On a typical sunny day in the Amazon, 20 billion metric tons of water flow upward through the trees and pour into the air, an invisible river that flows through the sky across a continent.
“This river of vapor that comes up from the forest and goes into the atmosphere is greater than the Amazon River.
Every tree is a silent geyser. Through a process called transpiration, a large tree in the Amazon can release 1,000 liters of water into the atmosphere in a single day. There is a frantic evaporation taking place there.
trees only need to bask in the sunlight to release their invisible steam. Plus, they have the sheer force of numbers; hundreds of billions of trees in the jungle release as many as 20 billion metric tons of water into the atmosphere every day. That means that while the Amazon, which pours 17 billion tons of water into the Atlantic Ocean a day, may be the largest river on earth — it’s still exceeded by the airborne river drifting above the canopy of the trees.
The airborne river turns into rain, which replenishes the forest.
These smells are critical for the lifecycle of the jungle, as the steam from the trees condenses around these microscopic particles, forming clouds, which eventually release torrential rain. This process is unique to the jungle; oceans, for instance, rarely create heavy clouds like the Amazon’s, because sea air is not so richly seeded with plant life. “This relation between a living thing, which is the forest, and a nonliving thing, which is the atmosphere, is ingenious in the Amazon.
Without the Amazon, much of South America would likely have been a desert.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 30, 2015 at 7:50am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 30, 2015 at 7:49am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 28, 2015 at 7:54am

A new study from researchers at the Nanjing University in China and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found that cooking with chloraminated tap water and iodized table salt can produce harmful toxins in food. To disinfect the water, people add chlorine (chlorination) or chloramines (chloramination), if ammonia is added, too. These processes affect the water's chemical make-up.
When iodized table salt is added to tap water containing chloramines or chlorine during cooking, it reacts and creates hypoiodous acid. When this acid reacts to other organic matters in the tap water and food, it creates iodinated disinfection byproducts (I-DBPs). Some of these molecules have not been discovered yet and are completely new to engineers, toxicologists and environmental chemists. In the study, the researchers tested the toxicity of the molecules by simulating the cooking process and adding iodized salt and wheat flour to the various types of tap water heated at various lengths and temperatures.
The team identified 14 new molecules, nine of which got toxicity level test, and found that several of them are 50 to 200 times more toxic compared to others. The presence of molecules during the simulated cooking ranged between 0.72 to 7.63 micrograms per liter.
"Considering that these molecules could have an adverse effect on our health, we need to study them more to determine exactly what effects they might have," said study author and Nanjing University assistant professor Dr. Yang Pan.
The research team suggested that reducing the time and changing the type of salt and water used in cooking can limit the formation of molecules. Using chlorinated tap water instead of chloraminated tap water can also limit the formations, added associate professor and co-author Dr. Xiangru Zhang from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Switching to potassium iodate-fortified table salt, cooking at lower temperature and reducing cooking time can also reduce I-DBP formation.
Zhang added that the discovery is relevant not just researchers who study drinking water, but also to the general public. If people are worried about the quality of water they drink every day, they should also worry about the quality of water we use for cooking.

The study was published in the Water Research journal.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 25, 2015 at 10:14am

A good diet for you may be bad for me
Eating the same foods can lead to different blood sugar spikes in different people
A sweet can give one person a sugar rush while barely affecting another person, a new study finds, indicating that a food’s glycemic index is in the eater.

People’s blood sugar rises or falls differently even when they eat the exact same fruit, bread, deserts, pizza and many other foods, researchers in Israel report November 19 in Cell. That suggests that diets should be tailored to individuals’ personal characteristics.

The researchers made the discovery after fitting 800 people with blood glucose monitors for a week. The people ate standard breakfasts supplied by the researchers. Although the volunteers all ate the same food, their blood glucose levels after eating those foods varied dramatically. Traits and behaviors such as body mass index, sleep, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and the kinds of microbes living in people’s intestines are associated with blood glucose responses to food, the researchers conclude.

Those findings indicate that blood sugar spikes after eating depend “not only on what you eat, but how your system processes that food,” says Clay Marsh, an epigenetics researcher at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
Similarly, eating bread produced a post-meal blood sugar level rise of 44 milligrams per deciliter on average in other studies. But some people’s blood sugar rose as little as 15 mg/dl, while others had a spike as high as 79 mg/dl after eating the same amount of bread.
A team led by Elinav and Weizmann computational biologist Eran Segal created a computer algorithm that used 137 personal measurements to predict how much a person’s blood sugar would rise or fall after eating a certain food. When tested on a new group of 100 people, the algorithm correctly predicted the response about 70 percent of the time.

A third group of 26 participants were then given personalized meals. The computer algorithm analyzed each person and then picked diets for 12 of them. A nutritionist chose a “good” and “bad” diet for the remaining participants. Good diets were ones that that minimized blood sugar spikes after eating. Bad diets sent blood sugar skyrocketing. The diets contained the same amount of calories.

It turned out that foods on the “good” diet for one person were sometimes on another participant’s “bad” list, Segal says. For instance, one woman’s blood sugar spiked when she ate tomatoes. But tomatoes were on other people’s healthy list.
The data suggest is that relying on population averages is not only inaccurate, but may even be dangerous in some cases.
For 10 of the 12 people, the computer algorithm correctly predicted responses to the good and bad foods. Nutritionists were equally good at predicting how a person would fare on a given diet, the team found. But the computerized approach could reach more people, the researchers say.

Mixes of microbes living in people’s guts, known as the gut microbiome, also changed with the good and bad diets. Bacteria help break down food and have been implicated in causing obesity and diabetes. This study can’t distinguish whether the microbiome is causing differences in blood sugar responses or being influenced by how a person responds to certain foods, says Peter Turnbaugh, a microbiome researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

While Turnbaugh agrees that personalized diets would be better than blanket recommendations for improving health, he sees some caveats. “The frustrating thing about all this is that we can learn how to optimize the diet for a given person, but ultimately, you have to stick to that diet.”
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2901481-6?_return...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 25, 2015 at 9:28am

People here argue that herbal medicines are based on wise knowledge originated in ancient times and spread from generation to generation and therefore cannot have any side effects. This is quite contrary to what has been observed several times by medical practitioners. Here is another proof...

Chinese Herb Suspected To Have Caused Severe Heart Disorder : A 45-year-old Chinese woman experienced severe heart arrhythmia after consuming an extract from the Aconitum plant, also known as devil’s helmet or monkshood.

Chinese physicians have reported a case of potentially lethal cardiovascular symptoms induced by a traditional Chinese medicine component, aconitine, in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. Based on the case of a woman who presented with aconitine-induced cardiovascular symptoms, the report warns that the use of the natural ingredient may lead to severe poisoning. A 45-year-old Chinese woman was diagnosed with a severe heart-rhythm disorder, bidirectional ventricular tachycardia (BVT), associated with aconitine poisoning. BVT is a rare form of tachycardia (characterized by a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute) and a distinct pattern of ECG waves on presentation. The patient’s husband reported that she had drunk about 50 milliliters of a medicinal liquid about 30 minutes before she developed a sudden drop in blood pressure and then lost consciousness. The woman had no history of previous heart-rhythm problems and there was no family history of unexpected sudden death or fatal accidents. On examination she had a heart rate of 150 beats per minute and her blood pressure was 50/30. Her skin was cool, moist, and cyanotic. Treatment with the anti-arrhythmic agents amiodarone, metoprolol, lidocaine, and potassium chloride was ineffective. An abdominal ultrasound showed marked gastric retention. A gastric tube was used to suction out the contents of her stomach. After two hours, the patient’s BVT ceased and her circulation improved. Investigation revealed that the patient’s blood was positive for aconitine, a substance produced by the Aconitum plant, also known as devil’s helmet or monkshood. Although well-known for its highly toxic properties, aconitine is the primary ingredient of the traditional Chinese medicine known as Fuzi, a remedy made from the processed lateral roots of Aconitum carmichaeli Debx. It is widely distributed in the southwest provinces of China and is used in small doses for its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects.

http://www.onlinecjc.ca/article/S0828-282X%2815%2900480-8/abstract

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