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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 10, 2022 at 11:15am

A new nanoparticle to act at the heart of cells

How can a drug be delivered exactly where it is needed, while limiting the risk of side effects? The use of nanoparticles to encapsulate a drug to protect it and the body until it reaches its point of action is being increasingly studied. However, this requires identifying the right nanoparticle for each drug according to a series of precise parameters.

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Physical theory describes movements of micro-hairs

They are only very simple structures, but without them we could not survive: Countless tiny hairs (cilia) are found on the outer wall of some cells, for example in our lungs or in our brain. When these micrometer-sized hairs coordinate their movement and produce wave-like movements together, they can cause currents on a microscale and thus pump fluid from one place to another. Paramecia—unicellular organisms with numerous cilia—also use such effects to move around.

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Greenwashing: ‘the sham must end’

A United Nations-backed report has called out businesses and financial institutions whose net-zero commitments have “loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through”. The group points to those who continue to invest in fossil fuels, offset emissions with shoddy ca... to undermine ambitious government climate policies. It also calls for public reporting and regulation to ensure companies are doing what they claim. "We must have zero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres. “The sham must end.”

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 10, 2022 at 10:10am

Fertilizers limit pollination by changing how bumblebees sense flowers

Pollinators are less likely to land on flowers sprayed with fertilizers or pesticides as they can detect electric field changes around the flower, researchers have found.

The study, published in PNAS Nexus recently, shows that chemical sprays alter the electric field around flowers for up to 25 minutes after exposure. This impact lasts substantially longer than natural fluctuations, such as those caused by wind, and causes a reduction in bee feeding effort in nature.

The researchers  noted that fertilizers did not affect vision and smell, and set out to mimic the electrical changes caused by fertilizers and pesticides in the field by electrically manipulating flowers. This showed that bumblebees were able to detect and discriminate against the small and dynamic electric field alterations that are caused by the chemicals.

Flowers have a range of cues that attract bees to promote feeding and pollination. For instance, bees use cues like flower odor and color, but they also use electric fields to identify plants.

A big issue is thus—agrochemical application can distort floral cues and modify behavior in pollinators like bees.

Furthermore, various other airborne particles such as nanoparticles, exhaust gases, nano-plastics, and viral particles may have similar impacts, affecting a wide array of organisms that use the electric fields that are virtually everywhere in the environment.

It's the first known example of anthropogenic 'noise' interfering with a terrestrial animal's electrical sense. It's much like motorboat noise that hinders the ability of fish to detect their predators, or artificial light at night that confuses moths; the fertilizers are a source of noise to bees trying to detect floral electrical cues.

This widens our understanding of the multifaceted ways in which human activity is negatively impacting the natural world. 

Synthetic fertilizers alter floral biophysical cues and bumblebee foraging behavior, PNAS Nexus (2022). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac230. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/art … 93/pnasnexus/pgac230

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2022 at 11:00am

Is DNA the Future of Data Storage?

Could the future of data storage be DNA? It’s the original format after all, storing the information needed to build every living thing. and it has a handful of qualities that would make it perfect to store all the digital information in our world. With recent advances in DNA sequencing and DNA printing, it’s technically possible. But there are a few obstacles to overcome before this sci-fi sounding tech can become a household reality.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2022 at 9:33am

The scientists aimed to understand how the brain processes the identity and order of speech sounds, given that they unfold so quickly. This is significant because your brain needs to accurately interpret both the speech sounds' identity (e.g., l-e-m-o-n) and the order that they were uttered (e.g., 1-2-3-4-5) to correctly recognize the words being said (e.g. "lemon" and not "melon").

To do so, they recorded the brain activity of more than 20 human subjects—all native English speakers—while these subjects listened to two hours of an audiobook. Specifically, the researchers correlated the subjects' brain activity in relation to the properties of the speech sounds that distinguish one sound from another (e.g. "m" vs "n").

The researchers found that the brain processes speech using a buffer, thereby maintaining a running representation—i.e., time-stamping—of the past three speech sounds. The results also showed that the brain processes multiple sounds at the same time without mixing up the identity of each sound by passing information between neurons in the auditory cortex.

They  found that each speech sound initiates a cascade of neurons firing in different places in the auditory cortex. 

This means that the information about each individual sound in the phonetic word 'k-a-t' gets passed between different neural populations in a predictable way, which serves to time-stamp each sound with its relative order.

Laura Gwilliams et al, Neural dynamics of phoneme sequences reveal position-invariant code for content and order, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34326-1

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2022 at 9:31am

Our brains 'time-stamp' sounds to process the words we hear

Our brains "time-stamp" the order of incoming sounds, allowing us to correctly process the words that we hear, shows a new study by a team of psychology and linguistics researchers. Its findings, which appear in the journal Nature Communications, offer new insights into the intricacies of neurological function.

To understand speech, your brain needs to accurately interpret both the speech sounds identity and the order that they were uttered to correctly recognize the words being said.

This new work shows how the brain achieves this feat: Different sounds are responded to with different neural populations. And, each sound is time-stamped with how much time has gone by since it entered the ear. This allows the listener to know both the order and the identity of the sounds that someone is saying to correctly figure out what words the person is saying.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 9, 2022 at 9:21am

Ultraprocessed foods linked to premature deaths

Ultraprocessed foods (UPFs), ready-to-eat-or-heat industrial formulations made with ingredients extracted from foods or synthesized in laboratories, have gradually been replacing traditional foods and meals made from fresh and minimally processed ingredients in many countries. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found that increased consumption of these foods was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019, although Brazilians consume far less of these products than countries with high incomes.

Ultraprocessed foods (UPFs), ready-to-eat-or-heat industrial formulations made with ingredients extracted from foods or synthesized in laboratories, have gradually been replacing traditional foods and meals made from fresh and minimally processed ingredients in many countries. A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found that increased consumption of these foods was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019, although Brazilians consume far less of these products than countries with high incomes.

 Premature Deaths Attributable to the Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods in Brazil, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2022.08.013

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 5, 2022 at 9:50am

Fire in the Amazon is associated more with agricultural burning and...

A Brazilian study shows that the number of fires detected in the entire Amazon region between 2003 and 2020 was influenced more by uncontrolled human use of fire than by drought. According to the researchers, burning of vegetation to prepare areas for pasture and deforestation rather than extreme water deficits were the main cause of fire in most years with large numbers of fires.

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Egg whites can be transformed into a material capable of filtering ...

Researchers at Princeton Engineering have found a way to turn your breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 5, 2022 at 8:19am

Researchers cure man who had COVID for 411 days

Researchers announced recently they have cured a man who was continually infected with COVID for 411 days by analyzing the genetic code of his particular virus to find the right treatment.

Persistent COVID infection—which is different to long COVID or repeated bouts of the disease—occurs in a small number of patients with already weakened immune systems. These patients can test positive for months or even years with the infection "rumbling along the whole time".

The infections can pose a serious threat because around half of patients also have persistent symptoms such as lung inflammation but much remains unknown about the condition.

Now thanks to scientists, this  59-year-old man finally overcame his infection after more than 13 months.

The man, who has a weakened immune system due to a kidney transplant, caught COVID in December 2020 and continued to test positive until January this year.

To discover whether he had contracted COVID numerous times or if it was one persistent infection, the researchers used a rapid genetic analysis with nanopore sequencing technology.

The test, which can deliver results in as little as 24 hours, showed the man had an early B.1 variant which was dominant in late 2020 but has since been replaced by newer strains.

Because he had this early variant, the researchers gave him a combination of the casirivimab and imdevimab monoclonal antibodies from Regeneron.

Like most other antibody treatments, the treatment is no longer widely used because it is ineffective against newer variants such as Omicron.

But it successfully cured the man because he was battling a variant from an earlier phase of the pandemic.

The very new variants that are increasing in prevalence now are resistant to all the antibodies available in most developed countries.

The researchers used several such treatments to try to save a seriously ill 60-year-old man in August this year who had been infected since April.

However none worked.

So the team crushed up two antiviral treatments not previously used together—Paxlovid and remdesivir—and administered them to the unconscious patient via a nasal tube, according to a non-peer-reviewed preprint study on the website ResearchSquare.

Miraculously he cleared and perhaps this is now the avenue for how we treat these very difficult persistent infections.

At the ECCMID conference in April, the team announced the longest-known persistent infection in a man who tested positive for 505 days before his death.

But now now there are treatment options available.

 Real-time whole genome sequencing to guide patient-tailored therapy of SARS-CoV-2 infectionб Clinical Infectious Diseases (2022). DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciac864 , academic.oup.com/cid/advance-a … /cid/ciac864/6785897

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 5, 2022 at 8:07am

 How to reduce the risk of stomach bleeding occasionally caused by regular aspirin use

A new study  has found that the risk of stomach bleeding caused by using aspirin long-term can be reduced with a short course of antibiotics, potentially improving the safety of aspirin when used to prevent heart attacks, strokes and possibly some cancers.

The results of the HEAT (Helicobacter pylori Eradication Aspirin) trial  are published in The Lancet.

Aspirin in low doses is a very useful preventative drug in people at high risk of strokes or heart attacks. However, on rare occasions, it can provoke internal ulcer bleeding. By thinning the blood, aspirin makes ulcers in the stomach bleed. These ulcers may be caused by a particular type of bacteria, Helicobacter pylori.

The HEAT (Helicobacter pylori Eradication Aspirin) Trial was a large trial conducted in 1,208 UK general practices. It was a real-life study that used clinical data routinely stored in general practitioner and hospital records, instead of bringing patients back for follow-up trial visits.

The team wrote to 188,875 patients who were taking aspirin, and 30,166 volunteered and took part in the study. Those who tested positive for H. pylori were randomized to receive antibiotics or placebos (dummy tablets) and were followed for up to 7 years.

Over the first two and a half years, those who had antibiotic treatment were less likely to be admitted to hospital because of ulcer bleeding than those who had dummy tablets (6 versus 17). Protection occurred rapidly: with those who received placebos (dummy treatment), the first hospitalization for ulcer bleeding occurred after 6 days, compared to 525 days following antibiotic treatment.

Over a longer time period, protection appeared to wane. However, the overall rate of hospitalization for ulcer bleeding was lower than expected and this in line with other evidence that ulcer disease is on the decline. Risks for people already on aspirin are low. Risks are higher when people first start aspirin, when searching for H. pylori and treating it is probably worthwhile.

Helicobacter pylori eradication for primary prevention of peptic ulcer bleeding in older patients prescribed aspirin in primary care (HEAT): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, The Lancet (2022). www.thelancet.com/journals/lan … (22)01843-8/fulltext

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 4, 2022 at 10:02am

Lighting fires using ferro rods

Ferro Rod

Ferrocerium (also known in Europe as Auermetall) is a synthetic pyrophoric alloy of mischmetal (cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, other trace lanthanides and some iron – about 95% lanthanides and 5% iron) hardened by blending in oxides of iron and/or magnesium. When struck with a harder material, the mixture produces hot sparks that can reach temperatures of 3,315 °C (6,000 °F) when rapidly oxidized by the process of striking the rod. Striking both scrapes fragments off, exposing them to the oxygen in the air, and easily ignites them by friction heat due to cerium's remarkably low ignition temperature of ~170 °C (338 °F).
Its easy flammability gives ferrocerium many commercial applications, such as the ignition source for lighters, strikers for gas welding and cutting torches, deoxidization in metallurgy, and ferrocerium rods. Because of ferrocerium's ability to ignite in adverse conditions, rods of ferrocerium (also called ferro rods, spark rods, and flint-spark-lighters are commonly used as an emergency fire lighting device in survival kits.The ferrocerium is referred to as a "flint" in this case despite being dissimilar to natural flint as both are used in conjunction for fire lighting, albeit with opposite mechanical operation.

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