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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 25, 2014 at 10:06am

Parts of the primordial soup in which life arose have been maintained in our cells today according to scientists at the University of East Anglia. Research published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals how cells in plants, yeast and very likely also in animals still perform ancient reactions thought to have been responsible for the origin of life -- some four billion years ago.
The new research shows how small pockets of a cell -- known as mitochondria -- continue to perform similar reactions in our bodies today. These reactions involve iron, sulfur and electro-chemistry and are still important for functions such as respiration in animals and photosynthesis in plants.
For example small pockets of a cell called mitochondria deal with electrochemistry and also with toxic sulfur metabolism. These are very ancient reactions thought to have been important for the origin of life.

The new research has shown that a toxic sulfur compound is being exported by a mitochondrial transport protein to other parts of the cell. We need sulfur for making iron-sulfur catalysts, again a very ancient chemical process.

The work shows that parts of the primordial soup in which life arose has been maintained in our cells today, and is in fact harnessed to maintain important biological reactions.
The research was carried out at UEA and JIC in collaboration with Dr Hendrik van Veen at the University of Cambridge.
Source: http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2014/July/primordial-soup

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 23, 2014 at 7:24am

Cheap Nasal Spray May Save Snakebite Victims
A novel, nasal spray-based approach may help reduce the toll, according to researchers.
A team of researchers, led by Matthew Lewin, from the California Academy of Sciences, United States, and Stephen Samuel, from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, says a simple nasal spray containing a substance called neostigmine can reduce snakebite fatalities.

“It would be one ingredient primarily directed against rapid onset paralysis—one of the causes of fast death following snakebite,” Lewin tells SciDev.Net. “It is inexpensive and available everywhere in the world.”

If combined with atropine, a substance that is absorbed through the nose, neostigmine would have few ill effects, according to Lewin.

The team tested the nasal spray on mice injected with fatal doses of venom from the Indian cobra. Mice treated with the spray outlived those that were not given it and, in many cases, survived, according to a study they published in the Journal of Tropical Medicine.
The nasally administrated drug is an alternative to antivenoms, Lewin says. He argues that, besides being expensive, antivenoms can vary in effectiveness depending on factors including the snake’s diet, the time of year and the geographic location.

Furthermore, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month reports that it may be harder than originally thought to develop an antivenom that works against many snakebites.

“We discovered that the genetics of the animals can be very similar, yet their venoms very different,” the lead author, Nicholas Casewell, from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom.
Using six related snakes—the Saharan horned viper, the puff adder and four species of saw-scaled vipers—Casewell and colleagues discovered that various genetic regulatory processes act at different stages of toxin production.

These processes result in major differences in toxin composition, and these different toxins cause different pathologies or levels of toxicity when they are injected, and they also undermine antivenom treatment.
There are about 500 species of dangerous, venomous snakes worldwide.
Antivenom is necessary, but not sufficient to manage this problem. Its limitations are fairly well known at this point and we need a better bridge to survival.

The nasal spray could be a cheap, fast and easy method to treat the paralysis caused by snakebites.
In 2013, to see if neostigmine could be absorbed through the human nose, Lewin tried the spray on himself, after being infused with a drug to induce awake paralysis in a manner similar to cobra venom. He made a completely recovery in a little over two hours, as described in Clinical Case Reports. Clinical trials of the spray are now planned in India.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtm/2014/131835/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 23, 2014 at 6:36am

Cancer treatment clears two Australian patients of HIV

Patients' virus levels became undetectable after bone-marrow therapy with stem cells.
http://www.nature.com/news/cancer-treatment-clears-two-australian-p...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2014 at 5:47am

Kidney Stone Risk Creeps North as Climate Changes
A link between heat and the painful stones
As ambient temperatures increase, your fluid losses through skin increase. With more water coming out as sweat and less coming out as urine, minerals can build up and form stones. In cold weather, researchers suspect, people dehydrate in warm, dry indoor air.

And you might have this effect without even realizing the fluid loss through your skin is increasing.

Not realizing you're dehydrated is a big part of the problem. In drier climates, people may not have puddles of sweat to gauge how much water they're losing. This is especially important when people migrate to warmer areas and aren't used to drinking more water.
- http://www.eenews.net/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2014 at 5:32am

Myopia and Level of Education
Main Outcome Measures

Prevalence and magnitude of myopia in association with years spent in school and level of post-school professional education.
Results

Individuals who graduated from school after 13 years were more myopic (median, −0.5 diopters [D]; first quartile [Q1]/third quartile [Q3], −2.1/0.3 D) than those who graduated after 10 years (median, −0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −1.3/0.8 D), than those who graduated after 9 years (median, 0.3 D; Q1/Q3, −0.6/1.4 D), and than those who never finished secondary school (median, 0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −0.5/1.8 D; P<0.001, respectively). The same holds true for persons with a university degree (median, −0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −2.3/0.3 D) versus those who finished secondary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −1.1/0.8 D) or primary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −0.9/1.1 D) versus persons without any post-school professional qualification (median, 0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −0.4/1.7 D; P<0.001, respectively). Of persons who graduated from school after 13 years, 50.9% were myopic (SE, ≤−0.5 D) versus 41.6%, 27.1%, and 26.9% after 10 years, in those who graduated after 9 years, and in those who never graduated from secondary school, respectively (P<0.001). In university graduates, the proportion of myopic persons was higher (53%) than that of those who graduated from secondary (34.8%) or primary (34.7%) vocational schools and than in those without any professional training (23.9%; P<0.001, respectively). In multivariate analyses: higher school and professional levels of education were associated with a more myopic SE independent of gender. There was a small effect of age and SNPs. Conclusions Higher levels of school and post-school professional education are associated with a more myopic refraction. Participants with higher educational achievements more often were myopic than individuals with less education. http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2900364-9/abstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2014 at 10:04am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 8:35am

How media people are twisting and spinning things to mislead people to make them believe in what they beleive:
''Aliens on the Moon' TV Show Adds Weird UFO Twists to Apollo Tales''
What one person sees as a overly magnified image with distortions that merely form strange patterns, another person sees as incontrovertible proof that extraterrestrials have left giant antennas, spaceships and industrial complexes on the moon.
The footage was later proven to be fake.
The Story Behind the 'Alien Autopsy' Hoax
The film—purporting to depict the post mortem of an extraterrestrial who died in a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947—was part of a "documentary" that aired on the Fox television network.
http://www.livescience.com/742-story-alien-autopsy-hoax.html
The heart of "Aliens on the Moon" is a review of decades-old photographs from the Apollo missions, with commentary by sources ranging from former Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell to old standbys on the UFO scene (MUFON analyst Marc D'Antonio, "Dark Mission" co-author Mike Bara and physicist John Brandenburg, plus photo lab workers Donna Hare and Ken Johnston).
many of the show's seemingly baffling mysteries can be resolved much more easily, by looking at higher-resolution imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. For example, straight-line tracks that UFO fans might interpret as evidence of massive machines on the moon are more clearly seen as the result of rolling boulders.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/aliens-moon-tv-show-adds-weird...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 8:22am

The plastics in your food:
The next time you ask for a plate of sea food you may have unknowingly ordered plastic as a side dish in it!

According to an alarming study by University of Exeter, tiny plastic particles polluting our seas are entering the bodies of marine creatures through their gills.

These microplastics take over six times longer to leave the body compared to standard digestion.

"About one 10th of the plastic we throw away ends up in the marine environment. In 2013, 11 million tonnes of plastic entered the seas. Wave action, heat and ultra-violet (UV) damage then break it up into microplastic," explained lead researcher Andrew Watts.

The research showed how these microplastics get into the body of the common shore crab, after sticking to hair-like 'setae' structures in the crabs.

"Many studies on microplastics only consider ingestion as a route of uptake into animals. The results we have just published stress other routes such as ventilation," Watts added.

The same could apply for other crustaceans, molluscs and fish - simply any animal which draws water into a gill-like structure to carry out gas exchange, researchers noted.

The longer these plastics are retained within the animal the more the chances are of being passed up the food chain.

"This is a human issue. We have put this plastic there, mostly accidently but it is our problem to solve. The best way to do this is to reduce our dependency on plastic. It comes back to the old phrase: reduce, reuse and recycle," Watts concluded.

The study was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 7:54am

Food Used to Fatten Animals Could Feed 3 Billion: Study
If all the food used to fatten up cows, chickens and pigs went straight to people instead, it would feed several billion more people than the food does today, according to a new study. "We've taken 10,000 years to get to the point of growing as much food as we are doing now," said Paul West, a food expert at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
''Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment''
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6194/325

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2014 at 5:15am

Aids conference says 100 researchers may have been on flight MH17

Session held ahead of Aids 2014 conference told email exchanges show about 100 attendees booked on flight MH17.
As many as 100 of the world’s leading HIV/Aids researchers and advocates may have been on the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine, in what has been described as a “devastating” blow to efforts to tackle the virus.

Delegates to a plenary session held ahead of the Aids 2014 conference were told that email exchanges showed about 100 attendees were booked on the MH17 flight. The plane was downed in eastern Ukraine by what the US and Australian governments have described as a surface-to-air missile.
“These people were the best and the brightest, the ones who had dedicated their whole careers to fighting this terrible virus. It’s devastating.”
There were some serious HIV leaders on that plane. This will have ramifications globally because whenever you lose a leader in any field, it has an impact. That knowledge is irreplaceable.

"We've lost global leaders and also some bright young people who were coming through. It's a gut-wrenching loss. The scientific community is very sad.
But the community is very close-knit, like a family. They will unite and this will galvanise people to strive harder to find a breakthrough. Let's hope that, out of this madness, there will be new hope for the world.

Losing one expert is tragedy. Losing several of them at a time is the mother of all tragedies. It is sad times for the world of science.

Our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy.

We want to offer our deepest condolences.

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