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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 12, 2024 at 10:20am

Gender-based heat map images show where men tend to look and where women tend to look on a path at night. Women focused significantly more on potential safety hazards—the periphery of the images—while men looked directly at focal points or their intended destination. Credit: Violence and Gender (2023). DOI: 10.1089/vio.2023.0027

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 12, 2024 at 10:19am

Study visually captures a hard truth: Walking home at night is not the same for women

An eye-catching new study shows just how different the experience of walking home at night is for women versus men.

The study provides clear visual evidence of the constant environmental scanning women conduct as they walk in the dark, a safety consideration the study shows is unique to their experience.

Researchers showed pictures of campus areas at four Utah universities—Utah Valley University, Westminster, Brigham Young University and University of Utah—to participants and asked them to click on areas in the photos that caught their attention. Women focused significantly more on potential safety hazards—the periphery of the images—while men looked directly at focal points or their intended destination.

The resulting heat maps represent perhaps what people are thinking or feeling or doing as they are moving through these spaces.

While men tended to focus on the path or a fixed object (like a light, the walking path or a garbage can), the women's visual pattern represented a scanning of the perimeter (bushes, dark areas next to a path).

The researchers say the findings provide some insight into what it is like to walk home as a woman, which could be multiplied through years or a lifetime of experiences.

The researchers said the data suggests that because environment is perceived and experienced differently by women and men, decision-makers in building campus and community environments should consider the varied experiences, perceptions and safety of both. Why can't we live in a world where women don't have to think about these things? , they ask!

Yes, why?!

Robert A. Chaney et al, Gender-Based Heat Map Images of Campus Walking Settings: A Reflection of Lived Experience, Violence and Gender (2023). DOI: 10.1089/vio.2023.0027

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 10, 2024 at 9:12am

Industrial pollutants found in Mediterranean corals for the first time

Pollutants from burning fossil fuels have been found embedded in corals, for the first time, offering scientists a potential new tool to track the history of pollution, finds a new study by researchers.

The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, identified carbon particles emitted by burning fossil fuels embedded in the corals of Illa Grossa Bay, off the Columbretes Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Finding this type of pollution—known as fly-ash or spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs)—contaminating natural deposits is seen as an indicator of the presence of human influence on the environment, and an historical marker of the beginning of the proposed Anthropocene epoch.

Corals are a commonly used natural archive for paleoclimate studies because of their measurable growth rates. Akin to tree rings, their long life and slow and regular growth can provide scientists with annual, monthly or even weekly, environmental data going back years.

Up to now, they've largely been used to gauge past climatic conditions like water teperatures and chemistries, but this is the first time that pollutant particles—other than microplastics—have been recovered from corals.

The discovery of these pollutants embedded in coral skeletons extend over decades and paint a clear picture of how extensive human influence is on the environment. It's the first time we've been able to see this kind of contaminant in corals, and its appearance in these deposits parallels the historic rate of fossil fuel combustion in the region.

Corals, which are small invertebrates that tend to dwell in expansive colonies, ingest the SCP pollutants from the surrounding waters, incorporating them as they grow their calcium carbonate skeletons.

As it becomes clearer that humans have altered the natural environment to an unprecedented level, these pollutants act as indelible markers, indicating the start of the Anthropocene epoch. This is valuable to researchers trying to better understand the history of human impact on the natural world and serves as a powerful reminder of how extensive human influence is over the environment.

L.R. Roberts et al, First recorded presence of anthropogenic fly-ash particles in coral skeletons, Science of The Total Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170665

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2024 at 11:51am

Ocean Color Countdown

The color of our oceans, lakes and rivers can tell us a lot about what's going on just beneath the surface. With the new hyperspectral capabilities of the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, we'll know more about the health of aquatic ecosystems and those impacts on human health and climate studies. Scientists explore just five different ocean colours around the globe and find out what those colours tell us.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2024 at 11:36am

Common Plastic Chemicals Linked to 10% of Premature Births, Major Study Finds

One in 10 premature births in the United States have been linked to pregnant women being exposed to chemicals in extremely common plastic products, a large study sowed recently. The chemicals, called phthalates, are used to soften plastic and can be found in thousands of consumer items including plastic containers and wrapping, beauty care products and toys. Phthalates have been known for decades to be "hormone disruptors" which affect a person's endocrine system and have been previously linked to obesity, heart disease, some cancers and fertility problems. Because they affect hormones, these chemicals "can precipitate early labour and early birth. By analysing the level of phthalates in the urine of more than 5,000 pregnant women in the United States, the researchers were able to examine how exposure to the chemicals could have affected how early the babies were born. The 10 percent of mothers with the highest levels of phthalates had a 50-percent increased risk of giving birth before week 37 compared to the lowest 10 percent, according to the study in The Lancet Planetary Health. Extrapolating their findings across the US, the researchers said that nearly 56,600 preterm births could have been linked to phthalate exposure in 2018 alone, roughly 10 percent of the country's premature births that year. Babies born prematurely or at a lower weight tend to have more health problems later in life. Researchers say that more than three quarters of exposure to phthalates was due to plastic.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00270-X/fulltext

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2024 at 10:15am

Telescopes Show the Milky Way's Black Hole is Ready for a Kick

Astronomers found the giant black hole in the Milky Way is spinning very fast. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the VLA show that it is warping spacetime. As the black hole spins, it pulls matter and spacetime with it. This leads to the black hole looking more like a football from some angles.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2024 at 9:59am

Researchers identify potential way to treat genetic epilepsy by replacing 'lost' enzyme

Scientists  have found a new treatment target for CDKL5 deficiency disorder (CDD), one of the most common types of genetic epilepsy.

CDD causes seizures and impaired development in children, and medications are limited to managing symptoms rather than tackling the root cause of the disease. The disorder involves losing the function of a gene producing the CDKL5 enzyme, which phosphorylates proteins, meaning it adds an extra phosphate molecule to alter their function.

Following recent research from the same lab showing that a calcium channel could be a target for therapy for CDD, the team has now identified a new way to potentially treat CDD by boosting another enzyme's activity to compensate for the loss of CDKL5.

In research published in Molecular Psychiatry, the scientists studied mice that don't make the CDKL5 enzyme. These mice show similar symptoms to people with CDD, such as impaired learning or social interaction.

The researchers first identified that CDKL5 is active in nerve cells in mice but not in another type of brain cell called an astrocyte. In the nerve cells, they measured the level of phosphorylation of EB2, a molecule known to be targeted by CDKL5, to understand what happens when CDKL5 isn't produced.

Interestingly, even in mice that don't produce CDKL5, there was still some EB2 phosphorylation taking place, which suggested that another similar enzyme must also be able to phosphorylate it.

By looking at enzymes similar to CDKL5, the researchers identified that one called CDKL2 also targets EB2 and is present in human neurons. In mice without both CDKL5 and CDKL2, the remaining EB2 phosphorylation almost fully dropped off.

The researchers concluded that although most activity comes from CDKL5, about 15% is from CDKL2, and the remaining < 5% from another enzyme yet to be identified.

Their research suggests that increasing the level of CDKL2 in people who are deficient in CDKL5 could potentially treat some of the effects on the brain in early development.

Margaux Silvestre et al, Cell-type specific expression, regulation and compensation of CDKL5 activity in mouse brain. Molecular Psychiatry. (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41380-024-02434-7

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 9, 2024 at 8:54am

Patterns of brain connectivity found to differ between pre-term and term babies

A new scanning study of 390 babies has shown distinct patterns between term and pre-term babies in the moment-to-moment activity and connectivity of brain networks.

This is the first study to analyze how the communication between brain areas changes moment-to-moment in the first few weeks of life.

Published in Nature Communications, the study also found that these dynamic patterns of brain connectivity in babies were linked to developmental measures of movement, language, cognition, and social behavior 18 months later.

There is increasing awareness that conditions such as ADHD, autism, and schizophrenia have their origins early in life and that the development of these conditions may be linked to neonatal brain connectivity and its fluctuations over time.

The study identified six different brain states: three of these were across the whole brain, and three were constrained to regions of the brain (occipital, sensorimotor, and frontal regions). By comparing term and pre-term babies, the researchers showed that different patterns of connectivity are linked to pre-term birth; for example, pre-term babies spent more time in frontal and occipital brain states than term babies. They also demonstrated that brain state dynamics at birth are linked to various developmental outcomes in early childhood.

Dafnis Batallé et al, Neonatal brain dynamic functional connectivity: impact of preterm birth and association with early childhood neurodevelopment, Nature Communications (2024). www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44050-z

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 8, 2024 at 6:47am

Chronic jet lag leads to human liver cancer in a mouse model

When asked about what could cause cancer, people most likely think of chemicals like tobacco or radiation such as UV light in sunshine, but chronic jet lag probably does not come to mind. Human epidemiological studies have linked chronic jet lag, also known as chronic circadian dysfunction, to increased liver cancer risk. However, direct evidence that it leads to liver cancer has been lacking.

A recent study  by researchers  published in the Journal of Hepatology is the first to experimentally demonstrate that chronic circadian dysfunction is indeed a human carcinogen.

They worked with a humanized mouse model that was developed by one of the researchers. This animal model has both human and mouse liver cells in the animals' livers, which allowed them to study the effect of disrupting the circadian rhythm on cancer development in human cells.  

Circadian rhythm is the 24-hour internal timekeeper in our brain that regulates cycles of alertness, sleepiness and practically all functions of the body by being in sync with the planet's day-and-night cycle. Recent studies have uncovered that when the internal clock goes out of sync, disease has a better chance of developing.

Humanized mice were exposed to two different conditions. One group of animals was maintained in sync with the natural day-and-night cycle. For the other group, the researchers changed the light and dark periods the animals were exposed to, to create the equivalent of the changes a person experiences when flying back and forth from San Francisco to London every week for many weeks.

 They found that compared to mice kept in normal light/dark cycles, mice in the jet-lagged group had a shorter lifespan as well as increased cirrhosis, jaundice (when skin or the white of the eyes turns yellow) and also developed cancer in both mouse and human liver cells. Importantly, chronic jet lag also induced metastasis from humanized livers.

Blood analyses and microscopy studies of the livers revealed multiple commonalities between humanized mice and patients with liver cancer, including glucose intolerance, abnormal fat accumulation in the liver, inflammation and fibrosis. This supports the validity of this model to study the human condition.

The study showed that as the tumor progresses, biomarker profile and genetic expression patterns in the cells change.

Chronic jet-lagged humanized mice spontaneously developed liver cancer in human liver cells following the same process and molecular pathways as those in humans. Gene expression studies reveal that spontaneous cancer development in this model is driven by changes in the expression of thousands of genes which depend on cell type, time and disease stage.

One of the important findings of the paper is that once the tumors spontaneously develop in response to chronic circadian disruption, returning the mice to a normal circadian clock slows tumor development and prevents metastasis.

When the animals reenter normal circadian rhythm, the gene expression pattern is restored to what it was before.

Jennifer Padilla et al, Circadian dysfunction induces NAFLD-related human liver cancer in a mouse model, Journal of Hepatology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhep.2023.10.018

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 8, 2024 at 6:37am

Can an experimental cell phone app screen coughs for TB? Scientists say 'yes'

What telltale features—many inaudible to the human ear—separate one kind of cough from another? Scientists are on the verge of finding out with a new machine learning tool aimed at identifying the signature sounds of tuberculosis.

Cough is a leading symptom of respiratory infections. And because the pattern and frequency of cough episodes differ from one disease to the next, an effort is underway to develop a smartphone app that is sensitive enough to accurately discern coughs associated with TB.

An international team of researchers is testing the hypothesis that TB's unique pattern and frequency of coughing can provide sufficient data to screen for the highly infectious bacterial disease using technology engineered into a smartphone app.

Currently in the investigational phase, the app is not yet ready for distribution. At present it is a machine-learning tool called TBscreen, but given the rising numbers of TB cases around the globe, its development couldn't have arrived at a more opportune time.

The research team includes engineers and computer scientists as well as physicians and experts in infectious diseases.

When they entered audio of coughs through various microphones into TBscreen, the team found that TBscreen—the investigational app—and a smartphone mic identified active TB more accurately than when cough audio was fed through expensive microphones.

The machine-learning tool is being "trained" to recognize pattern and frequency in coughs caused by TB. The investigational app also is being trained to distinguish TB-related coughs from those caused by other respiratory disorders.

Researchers have found that there are numerous factors affecting the basic patterns of coughing, nuances—some inaudible to the human ear—that the tool must discern as a way to accurately screen for TB.

The mechanism of cough production varies according to mucus properties, respiratory muscle strength, mechanosensitivity, chemosensitivity of airways, and other factors resulting in diverse cough sounds.

Manuja Sharma et al, TBscreen: A passive cough classifier for tuberculosis screening with a controlled dataset, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi0282

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