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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 16, 2024 at 2:42pm

Deadly 'Zombie Drug' Believed to Contain Human Bones Wreaks Havoc in West Africa

A new drug called kush is wreaking havoc in west Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone where it is estimated to kill around a dozen people each week and hospitalise thousands.
The drug, taken mostly by men aged 18 to 25, causes people to fall asleep while walking, to fall over, to bang their heads against hard surfaces and to walk into moving traffic.
Kush should not be confused with the drug of the same name found in the US, which is a mixture of "an ever-changing host of chemicals" sprayed on plant matter and smoked.

Kush in Sierra Leone is quite different; it is a mixture of cannabis, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and – according to some – ground down human bones.

It is mixed by local criminal gangs, but the constituent drugs have international sources, facilitated no doubt by the internet and digital communications.

While cannabis is widely grown in Sierra Leone, the fentanyl is thought to originate in clandestine laboratories in China where the drug is manufactured illegally and shipped to west Africa.

Tramadol has a similar source, namely illegal laboratories across Asia. Formaldehyde, which can cause hallucinations, is also reported in this mixture.

As for ground human bones, there is no definitive answer about whether or not they occur in the drug, where such bones would come from, or why they might be incorporated into the drug.

Some people say that grave robbers provide the bones, but there is no direct evidence of this.
But why would bones be incorporated into the drug? Some suggest that the sulphur content of the bones causes a high. Another reason might be the drug content of the bones themselves, if the deceased was a fentanyl or tramadol user.

However, both are unlikely. Sulphur levels in bones are not high. Smoking sulphur would result in highly toxic sulphur dioxide being produced and inhaled. Any drug content in bones is orders of magnitude less than that required to cause a physiological effect.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 16, 2024 at 7:00am

The researchers set out to study how water molecules are affected by the distribution of ions at the exact point where air and water meet. Traditionally, this has been done with a technique called vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG). With this laser radiation technique, it is possible to measure molecular vibrations directly at these key interfaces.

However, although the strength of the signals can be measured, the technique does not measure whether the signals are positive or negative, which has made it difficult to interpret findings in the past. Additionally, using experimental data alone can give ambiguous results.

The team overcame these challenges by utilizing a more sophisticated form of VSFG, called heterodyne-detected (HD)-VSFG, to study different electrolyte solutions. They then developed advanced computer models to simulate the interfaces in different scenarios.

The combined results showed that both positively charged ions, called cations, and negatively charged ions, called anions, are depleted from the water/air interface. The cations and anions of simple electrolytes orient water molecules in both up- and down-orientation. This is a reversal of textbook models, which teach that ions form an electrical double layer and orient water molecules in only one direction.
This work demonstrates that the surface of simple electrolyte solutions has a different ion distribution than previously thought and that the ion-enriched subsurface determines how the interface is organized: at the very top there are a few layers of pure water, then an ion-rich layer, then finally the bulk salt solution.

Kuo-Yang Chiang et al, Surface stratification determines the interfacial water structure of simple electrolyte solutions, Nature Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01416-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41557-023-01416-6

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 16, 2024 at 6:59am

Water molecule discovery contradicts textbook models

Textbook models will need to be re-drawn after a team of researchers found that water molecules at the surface of salt water are organized differently than previously thought.

Many important reactions related to climate and environmental processes take place where water molecules interface with air. For example, the evaporation of ocean water plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and climate science. Understanding these reactions is crucial to efforts to mitigate the human effect on our planet.

The distribution of ions at the interface of air and water can affect atmospheric processes. However, a precise understanding of the microscopic reactions at these important interfaces has so far been intensely debated.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers show that ions and water molecules at the surface of most salt-water solutions, known as electrolyte solutions, are organized in a completely different way than traditionally understood. This could lead to better atmospheric chemistry models and other applications.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 15, 2024 at 8:36am

The researchers first homed in on Nod1 by analyzing public databases of human embryos, then studied the receptor further using zebrafish, a commonly used model organism that shares roughly 70 percent of its genome with humans. By inhibiting or boosting Nod1, the researchers demonstrated a positive correlation with the creation of blood stem cells.

Most of a person's blood stem cells reside in their bone marrow, so patients with certain blood disorders often need a bone marrow transplant to provide a vital supply of blood stem cells.

But armed with this evidence about Nod1's role in creating blood stem cells in embryos, scientists have new hope for devising a way to produce new blood stem cells from human samples, potentially even from patients' own blood.

That could help avoid not only the logistical challenges of arranging and performing bone marrow transplants, the researchers note, but also complications like graft-versus-host disease, in which transplanted immune cells recognize the host as foreign and attack the recipient's cells.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43349-1.pdf

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 15, 2024 at 8:34am

The Key to Creating Blood Stem Cells May Lie in Your Own Blood

The development of blood stem cells relies on a seemingly unrelated microbe-sensing protein receptor, according to a new study.

The discovery could break new ground in the ongoing quest to produce blood stem cells from a person's own blood – thereby negating the need for bone marrow transplants.

The protein receptor in question, called Nod1, is already known for its role in helping recognize bacterial infections in the body and rallying an immune response, the study's authors note.

But according to their research, Nod1 also seems to serve a different purpose much earlier in life, when an embryo's vascular system is still developing.

The study suggests this microbial sensor helps embryos force some of their vascular endothelial cells to become blood stem cells.

That could be valuable information, given its potential for shedding light on how an embryo makes blood stem cells – and perhaps how we can grow them much later in life, too.

This would eliminate the challenging task of finding compatible bone marrow transplant donors and the complications that occur after receiving a transplant, improving the lives of many leukemia, lymphoma, and anemia patients.

Blood stem cells are progenitors of all white and red cells in our blood, producing all the components of our blood in a process called hematopoiesis.

These blood stem cells, also known as hematopoietic stem cells, arise themselves in the body before birth, developing from endothelial cells within an embryo's aorta.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 14, 2024 at 10:42am

First prehistoric people with different syndromes identified from ancient DNA

Researchers  have developed a new technique to measure the number of chromosomes in ancient genomes more precisely, using it to identify the first prehistoric person with mosaic Turner syndrome (characterized by one X chromosome instead of two [XX]), who lived about 2,500 years ago.

As part of their research published in Communications Biology, they also identified the earliest known person with Jacob's syndrome (characterized by an extra Y chromosome—XYY) in the Early Medieval Period, three people with Klinefelter syndrome (characterized by an extra X chromosome—XXY) across a range of time periods, and an infant with Down Syndrome from the Iron Age.

Most cells in the human body have 23 pairs of DNA molecules called chromosomes, and the sex chromosomes are typically XX (female) or XY (male), although there are differences in sexual development. Aneuploidy occurs when a person's cells have an extra or missing chromosome. If this occurs in the sex chromosomes, a few differences like delayed development or changes in height can be seen around puberty.

Ancient DNA samples can erode over time and can be contaminated by DNA from other ancient samples or from people handling them. This makes it difficult to accurately capture differences in the number of sex chromosomes.

The team  of researchers developed a computational method that aims to pick up more variation in sex chromosomes. For the sex chromosomes, it involves counting the number of copies of X and Y chromosomes, and comparing the outcome to a predicted baseline (what you would expect to see).

The team used the new method to analyze ancient DNA from a large dataset of individuals collected as part of their Thousand Ancient British Genomes project across British history, identifying six individuals with aneuploidies across five sites in Somerset, Yorkshire, Oxford and Lincoln (two sites). The individuals lived across a range of time periods, from the Iron Age (2,500 years ago) up to the Post-Medieval Period (about 250 years ago).

They identified five people who had sex chromosomes that fell outside the XX or XY categories. All were buried according to their society's customs, although no possessions were found with them to shed more light on their lives.

The three individuals with Klinefelter syndrome lived across very different time periods, but they shared some similarities—all were slightly taller than average and showed signs of delayed development in puberty.

By investigating details on the bones, the research team could see that it was unlikely that the individual with Turner syndrome had gone through puberty and started menstruation, despite their estimated age of 18-22. Their syndrome was shown to be mosaic; some cells had one copy of chromosome X and some had two.

Through precisely measuring sex chromosomes, they were able to show the first prehistoric evidence of Turner syndrome 2,500 years ago, and the earliest known incidence of Jacob's syndrome around 1,200 years ago. It's hard to see a full picture of how these individuals lived and interacted with their society, as they weren't found with possessions or in unusual graves, but it can allow some insight into how perceptions of gender identity have evolved over time.

 Detection of chromosomal aneuploidy in ancient genomes. Communications Biology, 2024; 7 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05642-z

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 13, 2024 at 11:58am

Those types of claims need ridiculously strong evidence to back them up, replicated multiple times over. Chae's paper will no doubt be scrutinized closely by his peers. Nonetheless, it's in findings like this that we might find a way to bridge our gaps in knowledge over gravity's remaining mysteries.

"The evidence for the gravity boost in the low-acceleration regime is now clear enough," Chae writes, "although the scientific community should keep gathering further evidence from future observations."

The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Part 4

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 13, 2024 at 11:58am

But binary stars separated by more than 2,000 astronomical units appeared to get a velocity 'boost' at low accelerations, inconsistent with what classical mechanics predicts and regardless of whether hypothetical dark matter was included in the models.

"This gravitational anomaly implies a low-acceleration breakdown of both Newtonian dynamics and general relativity and so has immense implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics," Chae writes in his new paper.

"Thus, one cannot overemphasize the importance of confirming the claimed anomaly from as many independent studies as possible."

While two studies from the same researcher are light-years away from the independent verification theory-overturning results demand, Chae thinks his methods are solid. Although he does admit that theoretical interpretations of the reported anomaly are "wide open."

However, he also makes some big claims in his paper such as "the dark matter paradigm seems now doomed to be abandoned" and that "standard cosmology based on general relativity seems no longer valid, even in principle."

Part 3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 13, 2024 at 11:57am

In a new study, astrophysicist Kyu-Hyun Chae of Sejong University in Korea has analyzed nearly 2,500 wide binary star systems observed by European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope, arriving at the conclusion that standard gravity is breaking down at certain points within them.

Chae first reported finding gravitational anomalies midway through 2023 in a study of the orbital motions of wide binaries, anomalies which he thought represented evidence of one theory of modified gravity, called modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).

However, some physicists disagreed and instead suggested his sample had been 'contaminated' by pull of undetected close companions in the binary star systems. In other words, the larger-than-expected accelerations Chae observed in some wide binaries were more likely the effect of interlopers lurking in the shadows Chae had missed.

So the Sejong University physicist sought to test his methods again in a smaller, refined subset of 'pure' binary stars. Chae found that closely orbiting twin stars were behaving consistently with classical Newtonian dynamics, so no problems there.

part2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 13, 2024 at 11:56am

Startling Signs of Gravity's Laws Breaking Down Detected in Twin Stars

In 1859, French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier detected something strange: Mercury deviated in its dance around the Sun, defying the orderly precession predicted by Newtonian physics.

This odd anomaly couldn't be explained by unknown planets tugging at Mercury's orbit; only by physicist Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity creates curves in the fabric of space-time.

Einstein's general theory has held strong in the century since, but there are a few things about the Universe his mind-bending model can't explain. It breaks down in the centers of black holes and at the dawn of the Universe, for example, and doesn't fit very easily with quantum mechanics, leading some physicists to ponder alternative takes on how gravity works.

While those ideas remain fringe theories, the discovery of gravitational anomalies in widely separated twin stars at infinitesimally low acceleration is once again challenging Einstein's general theory.

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