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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2024 at 10:54am

Study finds facially expressive primates make better leaders

Facially expressive monkeys are more socially successful and lead better connected social groups, according to research  which shows the benefits of facial communication in primates, including humans.

The study focused on nine social groups of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) all consisting of one adult male, multiple adult females, and offspring. The article, "Facial expressivity in dominant macaques is linked to group cohesion," has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

As social animals, primates are known to use their face to convey information related to identity, family relations, dominance, benign intent, affiliation, and motivation to play.

The researchers analyzed the facial expressions of the dominant male in each group by using a specially designed coding system for studying rhesus macaques, called MaqFACS, to track 17 separate facial muscle movements.
In addition, researchers quantified the social lives of all 66 monkeys across the groups, measuring how often each pair spend time together and how often they engage in friendly grooming interactions.

The males who displayed a greater diversity of facial expressions, perhaps to make their intent clear and reduce uncertainty, were found to be more socially connected within their groups, enjoying stronger social bonds and occupying more central positions within their social networks.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2024 at 10:40am

Tool predicts rogue waves up to five minutes in advance

A new tool that can be used to predict the emergence of unusually large and unpredictable waves at sea—known as rogue waves—up to five minutes into the future is presented in a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that the tool could be used to issue advance warnings to ships and offshore platforms to enable those working on them to seek shelter, perform emergency shutdowns, or maneuver to minimize the impacts of approaching rogue waves.

The tool developed by Thomas Breunung and Balakumar Balachandran consists of a neural network that has been trained to distinguish ocean waves that will be followed by rogue waves, from those that will not.

The authors trained the neural network using a dataset consisting of 14 million 30 minute-long samples of sea surface elevation measurements from 172 buoys located near the shores of the continental United States and the Pacific Islands. They used their tool to predict the emergence of rogue waves using a separate dataset consisting of 40,000 sea surface elevation measurements from the same buoys.

The authors found that their tool was able to correctly predict the emergence of 75% of rogue waves one minute into the future and 73% of rogue waves five minutes into the future. The tool was also able to predict the emergence of rogue waves near two buoys not included within the datasets used in training with 75% accuracy one minute into the future. This highlights that the tool may be capable of predicting rogue waves at new locations.

The authors suggest that the accuracy and advance warning time of their tool's forecasts could be further improved by incorporating water depth, wind speed, and wave location data. Future research could also enable the heights of upcoming rogue waves or the times at which they may emerge to be predicted, they add.

Thomas Breunung, Prediction of freak waves from buoy measurements, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66315-3. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-66315-3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2024 at 10:35am

 Research shows young infants use their mother's scent to perceive faces

Humans see the world through the five senses, but how and when the ability to integrate across the senses arises is debated. Research shows that humans combine sensory information together, particularly when one sense is not able to produce a sufficient response alone. Studies also show that infants may use multisensory cues to perceive their environments more efficiently.

A new Child Development study by researchers tracked how and when infants aged between four and 12 months use their mother's scent to perceive faces.

Results helped researchers confirm that the ability to perceive faces greatly improves between 4 and 12 months, with younger infants benefiting the most from the presence of their mother's odor. The research also suggests that older infants efficiently perceive faces from visual information, and they do not need to rely on other concurrent cues anymore.

Olfactory-to-visual facilitation in the infant brain declines gradually from 4 to 12 months, Child Development (2024). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14124

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2024 at 10:25am

A big question is why rotifers are the only animals that borrow these useful genes from microbes at such high rates.

Scientists think it might be linked with another strange fact about these rotifers. Unlike other animals, we never see male rotifers. Rotifer mothers lay eggs that hatch into genetic copies of themselves, without needing sex or fertilization.

According to one theory, animals that copy themselves like this can become so similar that they start to be unhealthy.

If one catches a disease, so will the rest. 

Because bdelloid rotifers don't have sex, which allows the parental genes to recombine in beneficial ways, the rotifer mother's genome is directly transferred to her offspring without introducing any new variation. If rotifers don't find a way to change their genes, they could go extinct. This might help explain why these rotifers have borrowed so many genes from other places, especially anything that helps them cope with infections.

The rotifers were using hundreds of genes that aren't seen in other animals. 

Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49919-1. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49919-1

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2024 at 10:22am

Study shows small animals use 'stolen' genes from bacteria to protect against infection

Certain small, freshwater animals protect themselves from infections using antibiotic recipes "stolen" from bacteria, according to new research .

The tiny creatures are called bdelloid rotifers, which means "crawling wheel-animals." They have a head, mouth, gut, muscles and nerves like other animals, though they are smaller than a hair's breadth.

When these rotifers are exposed to fungal infection, the study found, they switch on hundreds of genes that they acquired from bacteria and other microbes. Some of these genes produce resistance weapons, such as antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents, in the rotifers. Researchers report their findings in Nature Communications.

When the researchers translated the DNA code to see what the stolen genes were doing, they had a surprise. The main genes were instructions for chemicals that  they didn't think animals could make—they looked like recipes for antibiotics.

Prior research found that rotifers have been picking up DNA from their surroundings for millions of years, but the new study is the first to discover them using these genes against diseases. No other animals are known to "steal" genes from microbes on such a large scale.

These complex genes—some of which aren't found in any other animals—were acquired from bacteria but have undergone evolution in rotifers. This raises the potential that rotifers are producing novel antimicrobials that may be less toxic to animals, including humans, than those we develop from bacteria and fungi.

Antibiotics are essential to modern health care, but most of them were not invented by scientists. Instead, they are produced naturally by fungi and bacteria in the wild, and humans can make artificial versions to use as medicine.

The new study suggests that rotifers might be doing something similar.

These strange little animals have copied the DNA that tells microbes how to make antibiotics  Scientists watched them using one of these genes against a disease caused by a fungus, and the animals that survived the infection were producing 10 times more of the chemical recipe than the ones that died, indicating that it helps to suppress the disease.

The scientists think that rotifers could give important clues in the hunt for drugs to treat human infections caused by bacteria or fungi.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2024 at 7:34am

Scientists develop fridge-free storage approach for vital medicines

Scientists have developed a new approach to store and distribute crucial protein therapeutics without the need for fridges or freezers.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Nature, could significantly improve accessibility of essential protein-based drugs in developing countries where cold storage infrastructure may be lacking, helping efforts to diagnose and treat more people with serious health conditions.

The researchers have designed a hydrogel—a material mostly made of water—that stabilizes proteins, protecting its properties and functionality at temperatures as high as 50°C.

The technology keeps proteins so stable that they can even be sent through the post with no loss of effectiveness, opening up new possibilities for more affordable, less energy-intensive methods of keeping patients and clinics supplied with vital treatments.
Protein therapeutics are used to treat a range of conditions, from cancer to diabetes and most recently to treat obesity and play a vital role in modern medicine and biotechnology. However, keeping them stable and safe for storage and transportation is a challenge. They must be kept cold to prevent any deterioration, using significant amounts of energy and limiting equitable distribution in developing countries.

The medicines also often include additives—called excipients—which must be safe for the drug and its recipients limiting material options.

This new technology developed marks a significant advance in overcoming the challenges of the existing 'cold chain' which delivers therapeutic proteins to patients. The results of the tests have very encouraging results, going far beyond current hydrogel storage techniques' abilities to withstand heat and vibration. That could help create much more robust delivery systems in the future, which require much less careful handling and temperature management.

 The researchers showed in their research paper how the hydrogel works to store two valuable proteins: insulin, used to treat diabetes, and beta-galactosidase, an enzyme with numerous applications in biotechnology and life sciences.

Dave Adams, Mechanical release of homogenous proteins from supramolecular gels, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07580-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07580-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2024 at 7:27am

Trusted TV doctors 'deepfaked' to promote health scams on social media

Some of the UK's most recognizable TV doctors are increasingly being "deepfaked" in videos to sell scam products across social media, finds The BMJ recently. 

Trusted names including Hilary Jones, Michael Mosley and Rangan Chatterjee are being used to promote products claiming to fix high BP and diabetes, and to sell hemp gummies.

Deepfaking is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to map a digital likeness of a real-life human being onto a video of a body that isn't theirs. Reliable evidence on how convincing it is can be hard to come by, but one recent study suggests that up to half of all people shown deepfakes talking about scientific subjects cannot distinguish them from authentic videos.

The fraudsters think it's much cheaper to spend their cash on making videos than it is on doing research and coming up with new products and getting them to market in the conventional way.

The slew of questionable content on social media co-opting the likenesses of popular doctors and celebrities is an inevitable consequence of the AI revolution we're currently living through. The rapid democratization of accessible AI tools for voice cloning and avatar generation has transformed the fraud and impersonation landscape.

Feature: Deepfakes and doctors: How people are being fooled by social media scams, The BMJ (2024). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.q1319

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2024 at 7:22am

New invention makes vibrations disappear

When everything shakes, precision is usually impossible—everybody who has ever tried to take a photo with shaky hands or make handwritten notes on a bumpy bus journey knows that. With technical precision measurements, even much smaller vibrations are a major problem, for example, with high-performance microscopes or precisely aligned telescope mirrors. Even the smallest vibrations, which are not even perceptible to humans, can render the measurement result unusable.

A new type of vibration damping technology has now been invented by researchers that solves such problems in an unusual way: electropermanent magnets are used. These are magnets that, like ordinary permanent magnets, maintain their magnetism permanently without the need for a power supply, but which are also fitted with a coil so that their magnetization can be changed extremely fast using an electrical pulse. This makes it possible, for example, to actively suppress vibrations in mirrors in large telescopes and thus dramatically increase their performance.

Alexander Pechhacker et al, Integrated Electromagnetic Actuator With Adaptable Zero Power Gravity Compensation, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2023). DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2023.3288176

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2024 at 6:38am

Lifelong consequences of autoantibodies: Importantly, the study found that once developed, these autoantibodies remained detectable in the blood of individuals for the rest of their lives. People with autoantibodies against type 1 interferons, even when they had developed them as far back as in 2008, were more likely to suffer from severe COVID-19 in 2020.

These autoantibodies have consequences for individuals decades later, leading to a compromised type 1 interferon system and reduced immunity against viruses.

Understanding these risk factors might lead to future diagnostic tests that can identify older individuals who are more prone to developing this deficiency, and therefore help with measures to prevent autoantibodies ever developing. Identifying individuals with autoantibodies against type 1 interferons could also help to prioritize these people for vaccines or antivirals to prevent severe viral infections.

Sonja Fernbach et al, Loss of Tolerance Precedes Triggering and Lifelong Persistence of Pathogenic Type I Interferon Autoantibodies, Journal of Experimental Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1084/jem.20240365

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2024 at 6:36am

Study shows autoantibodies behind lifelong risk of viral infection

A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, shows that about 2% of the population develop autoantibodies against type 1 interferons, mostly later in life. This makes individuals more susceptible to viral diseases like COVID-19. The study  is based on an analysis of a large collection of historical blood samples.

Virus infections trigger the cells of the immune system to release type 1 interferons. These proteins act as early messengers that warn uninfected cells and tissues that a virus is spreading. This allows cells to prepare themselves so that they are ready to fight the virus when it reaches them.

In individuals with a compromised type 1 interferon system, severe viral infections can occur because the body cannot mount a full defense. Recent research has shown that about 5 to 15% of people who are in hospital with severe COVID-19 or influenza have a deficiency in their type 1 interferon response. This is because their blood contains autoantibodies—antibodies that target a person's own structures—that bind type 1 interferons and stop the messenger from functioning.

analyzed the blood samples for the presence of autoantibodies against type 1 interferons to find out who had developed the autoantibodies, when this occurred, and how long these autoantibodies lasted in the blood.

The analysis revealed that around 2% of individuals produced autoantibodies against type 1 interferons in their lifetime and that this typically occurred between the ages of 60 to 65. This confirms prior studies that reported that the prevalence of autoantibodies against type 1 interferons might increase with age.

Next, by studying clinical data, researchers were also able to understand which factors contributed to the development of autoantibodies against type 1 interferons. The individuals who developed them appeared to be prone to also producing antibodies against other proteins formed by their own bodies. This so-called loss of self-tolerance can occur in some people as they age.

These individuals may produce antibodies against their own type 1 interferons because they are both prone to making autoantibodies and are exposed to high levels of type 1 interferons, for example, because their immune system produces interferons against other infections at the time. 

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