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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 10, 2023 at 11:59am

World's largest study shows the more you walk, the lower your risk of death, even if you walk fewer than 5,000 steps

The number of steps you should walk every day to start seeing benefits to your health is lower than previously thought, according to the largest analysis to investigate this.

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology recently, found that walking at least 3967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, and 2337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from diseases of the heart and blood vessels (cardiovascular disease). However, the new analysis of 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world has shown that the more you walk, the greater the health benefits. The risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease decreases significantly with every 500 to 1000 extra steps you walk. An increase of 1000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, and an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease.

They found that even if people walked as many as 20,000 steps a day, the health benefits continued to increase. They have not found an upper limit yet.

This study confirms that the more you walk, the better. They found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, sub-tropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates. In addition, this analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.

There is strong evidence that a sedentary lifestyle may contribute to an increase in cardiovascular disease and a shorter life. Studies have shown that insufficient physical activity affects more than a quarter of the world's population.

According to World Health Organization data, insufficient physical activity is the fourth most frequent cause of death in the world, with 3.2 million deaths a year related to physical inactivity.

Maciej Banach et al, The Association Between Daily Step Count and All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality: A Meta-Analysis, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (2023). DOI: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwad229

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 9, 2023 at 11:29am

Microwaving 'Safe' Plastics Can Release Billions of Particles, Scientists Warn

Billions of nanometer-wide particles can be released from plastic containers into the food they're holding when they're microwaved, a new study reveals. A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US ran experiments using baby food containers made from polypropylene and polyethylene, which are both approved as safe to use by the regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

After three minutes of being heated in a 1,000-watt microwave, a variety of liquids put inside the containers were analyzed for microplastics (at least 1/1,000th of a millimeter in diameter) and nanoplastics (even smaller).

Particle numbers varied, but the researchers estimated that 4.22 million microplastic and 2.11 billion nanoplastic particles from only one square centimeter of plastic could be released during those three minutes of microwave heating.

Microwaving water or dairy products inside polypropylene or polyethylene products is likely to deliver the highest relative concentrations of plastic, the researchers revealed. Particles were also released when food and drinks were refrigerated and stored at room temperature, but significantly fewer in number.

What's not clear right now is what these microscopic plastic particles are doing to us. Studies have shown they can potentially be harmful to the intestine and key biological processes, but it's an area scientists aren't sure about.

It's probably safe to say that the less plastic we're ingesting the better, though. Embryonic kidney cells cultured by the researchers and exposed to plastic particles at levels of concentrations released by the containers over several days revealed a potential for concern.

The team found 77 percent of the kidney cells exposed to the highest levels of plastic were killed off. While this isn't to say our own kidneys would necessarily be exposed directly to such concentrations, it gives us some idea of the potential toxicity of these microplastics and nanoplastics – particular in developing bodies.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01942

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 9, 2023 at 10:34am

Asteroid Mining & Orbital Settlements

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 9, 2023 at 9:57am

In mice, just three days of a fat-rich diet is enough to cause this inflammation. Other studies have shown that this inflammation can raise the threshold at which animals are full—in other words, they have to eat more food than usual to feel full.

Inflammation may explain why the hypothalamus is larger in these individuals, the team say. One suggestion is that the body reacts to inflammation by increasing the size of the brain's specialist immune cells, known as glia.

The team say more research is needed to confirm whether increased volume in the hypothalamus is a result of being overweight or whether people with larger hypothalami are predisposed to eat more in the first place. It is also possible that these two factors interact with each other causing a feedback loop.

Stephanie S.G. Brown Conceptualisation et al, Hypothalamic volume is associated with body mass index, NeuroImage: Clinical (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2023.103478

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 9, 2023 at 9:55am

Brain's 'appetite control center' found to be different in people who are overweight or living with obesity

Scientists have shown that the hypothalamus, a key region of the brain involved in controlling appetite, is different in the brains of people who are overweight and people with obesity when compared to people who are a healthy weight.

The researchers say their findings add further evidence to the relevance of brain structure to weight and food consumption.

A large number of factors influence how much we eat and the types of food we eat, including our genetics, hormone regulation, and the environment in which we live. What happens in our brains to tell us that we are hungry or full is not entirely clear, though studies have shown that the hypothalamus, a small region of the brain about the size of an almond, plays an important role.

Researchers  used an algorithm developed using machine learning to analyze MRI brain scans taken from 1,351 young adults across a range of BMI scores, looking for differences in the hypothalamus when comparing individuals who are underweight, healthy weight, overweight and living with obesity.

In a study published in Neuroimage: Clinical, the scientists found that the overall volume of the hypothalamus was significantly larger in the overweight and obese groups of young adults. In fact, they found a significant relationship between volume of the hypothalamus and body-mass index(BMI).

These volume differences were most apparent in those sub-regions of the hypothalamus that control appetite through the release of hormones to balance hunger and fullness.

While the precise significance of the finding is unclear—including whether the structural changes are a cause or a consequence of the changes in body weight—one possibility is that the change relates to inflammation. Previous animal studies have shown that a high fat diet can cause inflammation of the hypothalamus, which in turn prompts insulin resistance and obesity.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 8, 2023 at 11:09am

Mosquito-dwelling microbe stops malaria
Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are less likely to pass on the parasite that causes the disease if they are infected with a naturally occurring bacterium. The microbe secretes a chemical that hobbles the malaria parasite’s development in the insects’ guts. So far, researchers trying to prevent the spread of the disease have had to rely on genetically modified bacteria — a major obstacle to regulatory and public acceptance, says malaria researcher Carolina Barillas-Mury. In experiments, one-third of mice bitten by bacterium-carrying mosquitoes became infected, compared with 100% of those bitten by regular malaria mosquitoes. And the mosquitoes don’t seem to develop resistance against the bacterium as they do to insecticides. The approach “has great potential to be implemented”.

 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8141

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 8, 2023 at 10:44am

Scientists observe first evidence of 'quantum superchemistry' in the laboratory

A research team  has announced the first evidence for "quantum superchemistry"—a phenomenon where particles in the same quantum state undergo collective accelerated reactions. The effect had been predicted, but never observed in the laboratory till now.

The findings, published July 24 in Nature Physics, open the door to a new field. Scientists are intensely interested in what are known as "quantum-enhanced" chemical reactions, which could have applications in quantum chemistry, quantum computing, and other technologies, as well as in better understanding the laws of the universe.

Near absolute zero, particles can link up so that they are all in the same quantum state—where they can display unusual abilities and behaviors. It had been theorized that a group of atoms and molecules in the same quantum state would behave differently during chemical reactions, but the difficulty in orchestrating the experiment meant it had never been observed.

In the experiments, the scientists cooled down cesium atoms and coaxed them into the same quantum state. Next, they watched as the atoms reacted to form molecules. In ordinary chemistry, the individual atoms would collide, and there's a probability for each collision to form a molecule. However, quantum mechanics predicts that atoms in a quantum state perform actions collectively instead. You are no longer treating a chemical reaction as a collision between independent particles, but as a collective process. All of them are reacting together, as a whole.

One consequence is that the reaction happens faster than it would under ordinary conditions. In fact, the more atoms in the system, the faster the reaction happens.

Another consequence is that the final molecules share the same molecular state.

the same molecules in different states can have different physical and chemical properties —but there are times when you want to create a batch of molecules in a specific state. In traditional chemistry, you're rolling the dice. But with this technique, you can steer the molecules into an identical state.

Researchers  saw evidence that the reaction was taking place as a three-body interaction more often than as a two-body interaction. That is, three atoms would collide; two would form a molecule, and the third remained single. But the third played some role in the reaction.

 Zhendong Zhang et al, Many-body chemical reactions in a quantum degenerate gas, Nature Physics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-023-02139-8

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 8, 2023 at 10:22am

Therefore, linking this increased and consistent supply of methane to the Late Paleozoic Ice Age, which had a peak in atmospheric methane 304 million years ago, may suggest that the combined contribution from numerous alkaline lakes globally could have had a significant impact on global greenhouse gas levels. The researchers suggest that, taking the lakes in northwest China alone, methane emissions could have reached 109 gigatonnes, which is equivalent to the greenhouse forcing power of up to 7521 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.

Clearly this highlights the potency of methane in affecting our climate, and specifically the importance of identifying alkaline lakes globally to monitor their current emissions and find solutions to help combat their activity. This can include reducing the pH of the lakes so that they become more acidic, adding certain types of clay or even dredging the lake bottom, but all of these solutions naturally introduce a host of their own effects on the environment. As such, there may not yet be a clear solution to reducing methane emissions from lakes and abating their global warming potential.

Liuwen Xia et al, Effects on global warming by microbial methanogenesis in alkaline lakes during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA), Geology (2023). DOI: 10.1130/G51286.1

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 8, 2023 at 10:21am

Ancient lake microbes caused global warming during ice age

Global warming is not just a modern issue, but has occurred numerous times over Earth's history, with one such event happening 304 million years ago during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (which spanned from 340 to 290 million years ago). Studies have discovered evidence of increased sea surface temperature, continental ice decline and oceanic environments flooding the land at the time.

Scientists researched the effect of a large injection of methane from alkaline lakes (pH 9 to 12) into the atmosphere, in work published in Geology.

Large quantities of atmospheric methane causes global warming as it is a potent greenhouse gas trapping heat 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over 100 years. Methane-producing microorganisms are responsible for 74% of global methane emissions, therefore defining the environmental conditions that encourage them to not only survive but thrive is important for understanding climate change.

The Junggar Basin in northwest China was investigated by assessing methane levels derived from microbial activity. The researchers took core samples from the lake bed and undertook chemical analyses of the rock to determine the type of carbon present based upon its source from aquatic green algae, cyanobacteria (photosynthesising microorganisms) and halophilic archaea (an extreme microorganisms that lives in high salt environments). When the lake contains more dissolved inorganic carbon (a form that doesn't have carbon and hydrogen bonds) the algae, cyanobacteria and archaea preferentially take up the lighter form (carbon-12) meaning the heavier carbon-13 remains in the lake water and is deposited, leading to distinct differences in the measurements taken from the rock. The researchers found one particular type, alkalophilic methanogenic archaea, took a competitive advantage in the low sulfate anoxic environmental conditions of the lake, preserving the heaviest carbon-13 values in the rock. This species thrived by obtaining the energy required for growth by producing large quantities of methane in the lake water, which was then released into the atmosphere. Methane emissions from microbial activity alone are suggested to have been up to 2.1 gigatons. Carbon dioxide derived from volcanic activity and hydrothermal processes transported to the lake was converted into bicarbonate and carbonate (forms of dissolved inorganic carbon), which increased the alkalinity of the lake and is noted to enhance the creation of methane as it promotes microbial activity. Dissolved inorganic carbon provides an almost limitless supply of carbon to the algae, cyanobacteria and archaea for their metabolic processes.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 7, 2023 at 9:47am

For the first time researchers restore feeling and lasting movement in man living with quadriplegia

In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, bioelectronic medicine researchers, engineers and surgeons  have successfully implanted microchips into the brain of a man living with paralysis, and have developed artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to re-link his brain to his body and spinal cord.

This double neural bypass forms an electronic bridge that allows information to flow once again between the man's paralyzed body and brain to restore movement and sensations in his hand with lasting gains in his arm and wrist outside of the laboratory. The research team unveiled the trial participant's groundbreaking progress four months after a 15-hour open-brain surgery that took place on March 9 at North Shore University Hospital (NSUH).

This is the first time the brain, body and spinal cord have been linked together electronically in a paralyzed human to restore lasting movement and sensation.

When the study participant thinks about moving his arm or hand, researchers 'supercharge' his spinal cord and stimulate his brain and muscles to help rebuild connections, provide sensory feedback, and promote recovery. This type of thought-driven therapy is a game-changer. Their goal is to use this technology one day to give people living with paralysis the ability to live fuller, more independent lives.

Paralyzed from the chest down, Keith Thomas, 45, of Massapequa, NY, is the first human to use the technology. During the height of the pandemic, on July 18, 2020, a diving accident caused Mr. Thomas to suffer injury at the C4 and C5 level of the vertebrae in his spine, leaving him unable to move and feel from the chest down..

Now science has changed his fate!

Source: The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health

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