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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2025 at 7:17am

Don't feed the animals: Researchers warn of risks tied to wildlife interactions

A study by  scientists  offers new warnings on the dangers of human interactions with wildlife.

The researchers study endangered Asian elephants and has previously reported on their shrinking habitats, a downturn that has resulted in territorial conflicts between people and elephants.

The new study now provides fresh evidence in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence on the serious consequences of humans supplying food to wild animals. The report indicates that such provisioning can lead wildlife to become habituated to people, causing the animals to become bolder and more prone to causing problems. Even for those who live in areas without native elephant populations, the new study provides cautionary information about interactions with any wildlife species living among us.

In Sri Lanka, they studied 18 years of elephant-tourist interactions at Udawalawe National Park. They found that the elephants congregating near tourists at the park's southern boundary have developed "begging" behaviour and have become habituated to sugary foods, sometimes breaking through fences to continue being fed.

As a result of elephants being drawn to the fence, several people have been killed or injured, and at least three elephants have been killed, while others have ingested plastic food bags and other contaminants. Such close human-wildlife encounters, including tourists feeding animals from sightseeing vehicles, also increases the risk of disease transmission to animals.

In India's Sigur region, study co-authors observed feeding interactions with 11 male Asian elephants, four of whom died from suspected human causes. One elephant was successfully rehabilitated and returned to natural foraging behaviour.

Many people, especially foreign tourists, think Asian elephants are tame and docile, like domestic pets, the researchers say, that they don't realize these are formidable wild animals and try to get too close in order to take photographs or selfies, which can end badly for both parties.

Of the 800 to 1,200 elephants estimated to live in Udawalawe National Park, the study found that 66 male elephants, or 9–15% of the local male population of Asian elephants, were observed begging for food. Some elephants, including a popular male named Rambo, became local celebrities as they solicited food from tourists over several years.

"Food-conditioned animals can become dangerous, resulting in the injury and death of wildlife, people or both," the researchers note in their paper. "These negative impacts counteract potential benefits."

Since wild elephant feeding cannot be adequately regulated as an ongoing activity, the authors of the study recommend that feeding bans should be strictly enforced.

Such interactions  can change animals' movement patterns and possibly force them to lose knowledge of natural food sources if they become too dependent on handouts.

With rare exceptions, people should avoid feeding wild animals, the researchers urge, and encourages people to engage in responsible tourism.

Don't Feed The Elephant: A Critical Examination of Food-Provisioning Wild Elephants, Ecological Solutions and Evidence (2025). DOI: 10.1002/2688-8319.70060

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2025 at 8:38am

New research says it is okay to eat eggs 

Researchers clear eggs of heart disease blame

From poached to panfried, when it comes to eggs, it's all sunny side up, as new research  confirms that this breakfast favorite won't crack your cholesterol.

Long blamed for high cholesterol, eggs have been beaten up for their assumed role in cardiovascular disease (CVD). Now,  researchers have shown definitively that it's not dietary cholesterol in eggs but the saturated fat in our diets that's the real heart health concern.

In a world-first study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers examined the independent effects of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat on LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind), finding that eating two eggs a day—as part of a high cholesterol but low saturated fat diet—can actually reduce LDL levels and lower the risk of heart disease.

CVD is the leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for nearly 18 million deaths each year.

Eggs have long been unfairly cracked by outdated dietary advice, the researchers  say, 

They're unique—high in cholesterol, yes, but low in saturated fat. Yet it's their cholesterol level that has often caused people to question their place in a healthy diet.

In this study, the researchers separated the effects of cholesterol and saturated fat, finding that high dietary cholesterol from eggs, when eaten as part of a low saturated fat diet, does not raise bad cholesterol levels.

Instead, it was the saturated fat that was the real driver of cholesterol elevation.

Sharayah Carter et al, Impact of dietary cholesterol from eggs and saturated fat on LDL cholesterol levels: a randomized cross-over study, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.05.001

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2025 at 8:19am

Scientists discover genetic condition that causes paralysis following mild infections

Doctors and genetic researchers  have discovered that changes in a gene leads to severe nerve damage in children leading to paralysis following a mild bout of infection.

The paper, "Acute-onset axonal neuropathy following infection in children with biallelic RCC1 variants: a case series," is published in The Lancet Neurology.

Researchers have now discovered that changes in a gene called RCC1 led to this severe nerve damage. In over half of the children, doctors suspected the diagnosis of a different severe nerve condition that can develop after infection called Guillain Barré syndrome.

The researchers performed laboratory studies on skin cells taken from patients and in specially genetically engineered fruit flies to show that the damage to nerves can be caused by certain chemicals.

Skin cells from patients when looked at under special microscopes have changes very similar to those seen in the cells of patients with motor neuron disease where muscles, including those controlling breathing and swallowing, become weak.

As children are well before they develop nerve damage following an infection, this gives us an opportunity to treat at risk children before problems occur.

J Robert Harkness et al, Acute-onset axonal neuropathy following infection in children with biallelic RCC1 variants: a case series, The Lancet Neurology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/S1474-4422(25)00198-X

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2025 at 6:57am

Extremely severe obesity is on the rise in kids—along with a barrage of health problems

Obesity rates in children have been on the rise for decades, having quadrupled from 1990 to 2022, and along with the rise in obesity, comes a rise in health risks. However, obesity can be broken down further into categories based on severity.

In children, obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) above 95% of kids of a similar age and sex. This differs from the way adult obesity is defined, which uses a simple BMI number of 30 or higher. Currently, childhood obesity is separated into three categories defined by BMI, with class 1 at or above the 95th percentile, class 2 at 120% to 140% and class 3 (severe obesity) at 140% or higher of the 95th percentile.

A new study by researcher published in the JAMA Network Open, suggests breaking up these categories even further by adding a class 4 and 5, defined as a BMI from 160% to 180% of 95th percentile and a BMI over 180% of 95th percentile, respectively. This further refinement seeks to differentiate the health risks involved with these "extremely severe" categories of obesity.

The study highlights how the health risks of children at these levels of obesity become increasingly dangerous when compared to children in lower obesity classes or to children with healthy weights.

The researchers found a startling increase of 253% in the prevalence of extremely severe obesity in children from 2008 to 2023. In addition, all other categories of obesity increased over this time period, although at lower rates. They found the increase was particularly dramatic in adolescents from the ages of 16 to 18 and in non-Hispanic black children.

The analysis of health complications in these children revealed an increased risk of multiple diseases with increasing classes of obesity. In particular, diabetes, prediabetes, metabolic disease—which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke—and liver diseases were common.

Insulin resistance, a precursor to many of these health problems, was found in 100% of the class 4 and 5 participants, compared to 81% in classes 1–3 and 27% in those without obesity. Across the board, all diseases were more prevalent in higher classes of obesity than in lower classes and the lower classes of obesity were associated with increased risk compared to healthy BMI risks.

The study authors point to the need for action on this increasingly severe problem.

Eliane Münte et al, Prevalence of Extremely Severe Obesity and Metabolic Dysfunction Among US Children and Adolescents, JAMA Network Open (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.21170

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 17, 2025 at 10:15am

Eight babies born after mitochondrial donation treatment to reduce transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease

Every year, around one in 5,000 children is born with mitochondrial DNA mutations that can cause devastating disease. Mitochondria produce the energy required for life and contain a small piece of DNA that only encodes some of the instructions required for energy production.

Harmful mutations in mitochondrial DNA can result in reduced availability of energy, particularly affecting tissues that have high energy demands—for example, heart, muscle and brain.

Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited, and these diseases are therefore passed from mother to child. Although males can be affected, they do not pass on the disease.

In the absence of a cure for mitochondrial DNA diseases, attention has focused on IVF-based technologies to reduce the risk of disease by limiting transmission of disease-causing mitochondrial DNA mutations from mother to child.

The new IVF-based mitochondrial donation technology, pronuclear transfer, which was legalized in the UK in 2015, is designed to reduce the risk of mitochondrial DNA disease in children born to women who carry high levels of disease-causing mitochondrial DNA mutations.

The pioneering licensed IVF technique to reduce the risk of mitochondrial diseases carried out in Newcastle has seen eight babies born, research shows.

All eight babies show no signs of having mitochondrial DNA disease. The babies, four girls and four boys, including one set of identical twins, were born to seven women at high risk of transmitting serious disease caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA.

The findings, reported by the Newcastle team who pioneered mitochondrial donation using fertilized human eggs, indicate that the new treatment, known as pronuclear transfer, is effective in reducing the risk of otherwise incurable mitochondrial DNA diseases.

Published in two papers in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the findings describe the reproductive and clinical outcomes of pronuclear transfer treatments performed to date. All babies were healthy at birth, meeting their developmental milestones, and the mother's disease-causing mitochondrial DNA mutations were either undetectable or present at levels that are very unlikely to cause disease.

The technique, known as pronuclear transfer, is performed after the egg is fertilized. It involves transplanting the nuclear genome (which contains all the genes essential for our individual characteristics, for example, hair color and height) from an egg carrying a mitochondrial DNA mutation to an egg donated by an unaffected woman that has had its nuclear genome removed. The resulting embryo inherits its parents' nuclear DNA, but the mitochondrial DNA is inherited predominantly from the donated egg.

Mitochondrial Donation and PGT to Reduce Risk of Mitochondrial DNA Disease. New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2415539

Mitochondrial Donation in a Reproductive Care Pathway for mtDNA Disease, New England Journal of Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2503658

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 17, 2025 at 7:01am

Research finds chromosomes are covered in liquid-like coating to prevent stickiness and DNA damage

New research into mitotic chromosomes has found that they are covered in a liquid-like coating that could allow them to bounce off one another, like bumper cars, protecting them from being damaged during cell division.

Researchers  looked into the coatings of mitotic chromosomes, the highly condensed and organized structures that DNA morphs into during cell division. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The mitotic chromosome periphery (MCP) is a poorly understood "coat" that covers all chromosomes. This latest work  showed an unexpected finding—that the coat is actually liquid-like.

This work is an important step towards understanding how chromosomes and cells divide normally during mitosis and how a liquid-like coat helps this.

The research also highlights the significant role of the chromosome coating in maintaining chromosome stability and function during cell division. Understanding these mechanisms could provide insights into diseases, including cancer, where cell division processes are often disrupted.

Tania Mendonca et al, The mitotic chromosome periphery modulates chromosome mechanics, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61755-5

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 16, 2025 at 9:13am

Tool use declines with age in wild chimpanzees

Wild chimpanzees use tools during some of the most cognitively and physically demanding foraging behaviors observed in non-human animals. While the behavioral changes that occur with aging have been widely studied in humans and some captive primates, exceptionally little is known about how growing older affects the lives of elderly wild apes. This includes how the capacity to address technical, real-world tasks changes as chimpanzees become progressively older.

Researchers have found that old age likely impacts the habitual tool-use behaviours of some wild chimpanzees—although the extent to which different individuals are affected appears to be highly variable. The findings have been published this week in the journal eLife.

The wild chimpanzees showed reduced participation and performance in their tool-use behaviors as they grew older, according to the long-term video observations used in the new study. This provides solid evidence that old age leads to gradual withdrawal from tool use, and is a contributing factor to lower efficiency in chimps' stone tool selection and use.

The findings also indicate that chimpanzees mirror human beings in how the aging process affects their ability to carry out dexterous and cognitively-challenging daily tasks. Similar to humans, the effects of old-age varied considerably between individuals, with some chimpanzees struggling to use tools, while others maintained excellent performance into later life.

Tool use is uncommon among animals, possibly because it requires a suite of physical and cognitive abilities, such as planning, fine motor coordination, understanding causal relationships, and identifying physical properties of objects in the environment. Given many of these faculties can be impacted by aging, animals' tool-use behaviors could be vulnerable to decline with old age.

Elderly chimpanzees also showed changes in their efficiency when selecting tools (with some taking noticeably longer in later years), and when using tools to crack open nuts. Nut-cracking efficiency declined across several metrics, including increases in the time taken and the number of actions required to process each nut.

 Elliot Howard-Spink et al, Old age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use, eLife (2025). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.105411.3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 16, 2025 at 9:02am

Scientists discover a simple set of rules that may explain how the body's tissues stay organized

Every day, your body replaces billions of cells—and yet, your tissues stay perfectly organized. How is that possible?

A team of researchers think they've found an answer. In a study published in Biology of the Cell, they show that just five basic rules may explain how the body maintains the complex structure of tissues like those in the colon, for example, even as its cells are constantly dying and being replaced.

This research is the product of more than 15 years of collaboration between mathematicians and cancer biologists to unlock the rules that govern tissue structure and cellular behavior.

Just like we have a genetic code that explains how our genes work, we may also have a 'tissue code' that explains how our bodies stay so precisely organized over time.

The researchers used mathematical modeling—essentially, creating a computer simulation of how cells behave—to see if a small number of rules could account for the highly organized structure of the lining of the colon. That's an ideal place to study: cells in the colon renew every few days, but the overall shape and structure stays remarkably stable.

After running many simulations and refining their models, the team identified five core biological rules that appear to govern the structure and behavior of cells:

1. Timing of cell division.
2. The order in which cells divide.
3. The direction cells divide and move.
4. How many times cells divide.
5. How long a cell lives before it dies.

These rules work together like choreography. They control where cells go, when they divide and how long they stick around—and that's what keeps tissues looking and working the way they should.

The researchers think these rules may apply not just to the colon, but to many different tissues throughout the body—skin, liver, brain and beyond. If true, this "tissue code" could help scientists better understand how tissues heal after injury, how birth defects happen and how diseases like cancer develop when that code gets disrupted.

Your tissues don't just grow and shrink randomly. They know what they're supposed to look like, and they know how to get back to that state, even after damage. That level of precision needs a set of instructions. What  has been found now is a strong candidate for those instructions.

Bruce M. Boman et al, Dynamic Organization of Cells in Colonic Epithelium is Encoded by Five Biological Rules, Biology of the Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1111/boc.70017

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 16, 2025 at 7:04am

Obesity more likely caused by high calorie diet than lack of exercise

It's common knowledge that obesity is a global epidemic, particularly in industrialized countries, and that it is a major cause of disease and poor overall health. However, there has been a tug-of-war in the debate of whether the main cause of obesity is diet or a lack of exercise.

Calories consumed must be expended as energy, whether through physical activity or basal activity—the inherent processes within the body that use up energy, such as breathing or digesting food. When it comes to obesity, it has been unclear if too many calories are being consumed on average to be used by normal activity or if there is not enough activity to expend a reasonable amount of calories.

A new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on the problem of diet vs. exercise. Researchers analyzed data from 4,213 adults, aged 18 to 60, across 34 populations in six continents. The sample is impressively diverse and covers people from hunter-gatherer groups, pastoralists, farmers, and industrialized societies. This includes people with a wide range of diets and activity levels.

The results initially found TEE, AEE and BEE to be higher in more developed populations, along with body mass, BMI and body fat, meaning obesity was more prevalent in more economically developed countries, but it appeared that they were also expending more energy overall. However, this is not the total picture.

The researchers acknowledged that body size in general, like height, was overall larger in industrialized places. There are also fluctuations in weight and energy expenditure due to age and sex. The researchers further refined their data by adjusting for these factors.

The results then showed that TEE and BEE decreased slightly, by around 6–11%, with economic development. After adjusting for age, sex and body size, AEE was still higher overall in more economically developed populations, indicating that it is not likely to be a lack of exercise that is causing higher BMI or body fat.

The researchers found that total energy expenditure is only weakly associated with obesity, accounting for about 10% of the increased incidence of obesity in more economically developed countries. Instead, they indicate that a higher consumption of ultra processed foods (UPF), like processed meats, ready-made meals and snack cakes, is to blame, noting that "the percent of UPFs in the diet was positively correlated with body fat percentage."

Despite exercise not being the main driver of obesity, the study authors encourage regular exercise, as it is still known to be key in preventing disease and maintaining better mental health.

Amanda McGrosky et al, Energy expenditure and obesity across the economic spectrum, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2420902122

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 16, 2025 at 6:56am

Built-in extinguishers can prevent battery fires and explosions

Researchers have designed a working prototype of a lithium metal battery equipped with a built-in fire extinguisher, which is activated if the battery overheats.

Lithium metal batteries are currently in limited use but have huge potential because they can store ten times as much energy as lithium-ion batteries. They deliver high energy density, which means they can store large amounts of energy relative to their size. This makes them ideal for electric vehicles, portable electronics and plenty of other energy-hungry devices.

However, there is a problem. These types of batteries use lightweight lithium metal anodes and high-voltage nickel-rich oxide cathodes, a setup that can produce flammable gases. If these gases build up in a battery, they can cause fires or explosions.

To tackle this,  researchers incorporated a flame-retardant polymer into the cathode of their prototype lithium metal battery.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers exposed the prototype battery and a standard lithium metal battery to gradually increasing temperatures, starting at 50 °C. When temperatures exceeded 100°C, both batteries began to overheat.

However, in the prototype, the special polymer started to break down and release chemicals (flame-inhibiting radicals) that acted like mini fire extinguishers. Specifically, they suppressed reductive reactions at the anode that are responsible for generating flammable gases.

When temperatures rose beyond 120 °C, the standard battery overheated to 1,000 °C within 13 minutes and burst into flames. Meanwhile, under the same experimental conditions, the prototype with the flame-retardant polymer reached a peak temperature of 220 °C and did not catch fire or explode.

"This smart gas management strategy enhances both thermal safety and electrochemical stability, offering a transformative pathway to fire-safe Li metal batteries for advanced energy storage applications," explained the researchers in their paper.

Jun-Chen Guo et al, A fire-safe Li metal battery via smart gas management, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2501549122

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