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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 25, 2021 at 10:37am

No lab required: New technology can diagnose infections in minutes

Engineering, biochemistry and medical researchers have combined their skills to create a hand-held rapid test for bacterial infections that can produce accurate, reliable results in less than an hour, eliminating the need to send samples to a lab.

Their proof-of-concept research, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry, specifically describes the test's effectiveness in diagnosing urinary tract infections from real clinical samples. The researchers are adapting the test to detect other forms of bacteria and for the rapid diagnosis of viruses, including COVID-19. They also plan to test its viability for detecting markers of cancer.

The new DNA-based technology uses a handheld device similar to a blood-glucose monitor. A microchip analyzes a droplet of bodily fluid such as blood, urine or saliva, using molecules that can detect the specific protein signature of an infection. The device, about the size of a USB stick, plugs into a smartphone, which displays the result.

Integrating programmable DNAzymes with electrical readout for rapid and culture-free bacterial detection using a handheld platform, Nature Chemistry (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00718-x , www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00718-x

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-lab-required-technology-infections-mi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 25, 2021 at 10:11am

Genome study reveals East Asian coronavirus epidemic 20,000 years ago

An international study has discovered a coronavirus epidemic broke out in the East Asia region more than 20,000 years ago, with traces of the outbreak evident in the genetic makeup of people from that area.

In the past 20 years, there have been three outbreaks of epidemic severe coronaviruses: SARS-CoV leading to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which originated in China in 2002 and killed more than 800 people; MERS-CoV leading to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which killed more than 850 people, and SARS-CoV-2 leading to COVID-19, which has killed 3.8 million people.

But this study of the evolution of the human genome has revealed another large coronavirus epidemic broke out thousands of years earlier.

The modern human genome contains evolutionary information tracing back tens of thousands of years, like studying the rings of a tree gives us insight into the conditions it experienced as it grew.

In the study, the researchers used data from the 1000 Genomes Project, which is the largest public catalog of common human genetic variation, and looked at the changes in the human genes coding for SARS-CoV-2 interacting proteins.

COVID epidemic 20000 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_I9oVhlrjE

An international study has discovered a coronavirus epidemic broke out in the East Asia region more than 20,000 years ago, with traces of the outbreak evident in the genetic makeup of people from that area.

Dr. KKC

East Asian people come from the area that is now China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan.

In the course of the epidemic, selection favored variants of pathogenesis-related human genes with adaptive changes presumably leading to a less severe disease

 Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.067

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 25, 2021 at 8:54am

Stress really does turn hair grey – but it can be reversed

Stress can turn your hair prematurely grey. A study by researchers  has provided the first quantitative evidence that this is in fact the case – and not only that, but hair can go back to its original colour if the stress is removed.

The new data add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that human ageing is not a linear, fixed biological process but may, at least in part, be halted or even temporarily reversed.

It was found that  some hairs had regained their pigmentation when the stress was lifted. 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that all greying is reversible. Scientists don’t think that reducing stress in a 70-year-old who’s been grey for years will darken their hair or increasing stress in a 10-year-old will be enough to tip their hair over the grey threshold.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/67437

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/stress-really-does-turn-hair-grey...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 25, 2021 at 5:54am

Spiders Feast On Deadly Snakes

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 24, 2021 at 3:22pm

Almost Unbelievable': Gruesome Encounters Show Spiders Feasting on Snakes

Venomous spiders prey upon snakes many times their size, a new study finds – and often emerge victorious against snakes as venomous as they are.

The study researchers found 319 records of spiders killing and feasting upon snakes, 297 of which were naturally occurring events in the wild. (The remaining 22 were staged in captivity.) About a third of those examples came from scientific observations published in journals, while the rest were found on news or social media sites.

Snacking on snakes was remarkably widespread, with more than 30 spider species engaging in the practice in natural conditions, and another 11 taking the opportunity in captivity, Nyffeler and University of Georgia herpetologist J. Whitfield Gibbons reported this month in the Journal of Arachnology

Widow spiders were the most frequent spiders involved, responsible for about half of the snake deaths.

https://www.sciencealert.com/almost-unbelievable-gruesome-encounter...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 24, 2021 at 3:05pm

How engineered bacteria could clean up oilsands pollution and minin...

Rampant industrialization has caused our planet to warm at an unprecedented rate. Glaciers are melting away and sea levels are rising. Droughts last longer and are more devastating. Forest fires are more intense. Extreme, once-in-a-generation weather events—such as Category 5 hurricanes—seem to be occurring on an annual basis.

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Cosmic dawn occurred 250 to 350 million years after Big Bang

Cosmic dawn, when stars formed for the first time, occurred 250 million to 350 million years after the beginning of the universe, according to a new study led by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Cambridge.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 24, 2021 at 3:01pm

Low-cost imaging technique shows how smartphone batteries could charge in minutes

Researchers have developed a simple lab-based technique that allows them to look inside lithium-ion batteries and follow lithium ions moving in real time as the batteries charge and discharge, something which has not been possible until now.

Using the low-cost technique, the researchers identified the speed-limiting processes which, if addressed, could enable the batteries in most smartphones and laptops to charge in as little as five minutes.

Operando optical tracking of single-particle ion dynamics in batteries, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03584-2 , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03584-2

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-low-cost-imaging-technique-smar...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 23, 2021 at 2:24pm

Birthdays might have helped to spread COVID

Assessing the Association Between Social Gatherings and COVID-19 Risk Using Birthdays

Birthday celebrations might have boosted the spread of COVID-19. Researchers looked at data from almost three million households in the United States, where public-health mandates did not ban people from meeting up at home. In areas with a lot of cases, households in which someone had a birthday saw a 31% increase in the prevalence of infection in the following two weeks, compared with households that did not have a birthday. If it was a child’s birthday, that went up to 57%. “It is a big endorsement, in retrospect, of the gains among those who skipped all sorts of social gatherings.

Researchers conclude:

“During a pandemic, it is okay to be a party pooper.”( Party Pooper: a person who refuses to join in the fun of a party broadly : one who refuses to go along with everyone else.)

 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2...

Scientific American | 5 min read

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 23, 2021 at 2:18pm

Memory helps us evaluate situations on the fly, not just recall the past

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 23, 2021 at 2:12pm

Worrying insights into the chemicals in plastics

Plastic is practical, cheap and incredibly popular. Every year, more than 350 million tons are produced worldwide. These plastics contain a huge variety of chemicals that may be released during their lifecycles—including substances that pose a significant risk to people and the environment. However, only a small proportion of the chemicals contained in plastic are publicly known or have been extensively studied.

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Is dark matter real, or have we misunderstood gravity?

For many years now, astronomers and physicists have been in a conflict. Is the mysterious dark matter that we observe deep in the Universe real, or is what we see the result of subtle deviations from the laws of gravity as we know them? In 2016, Dutch physicist Erik Verlinde proposed a theory of the second kind: emergent gravity. New research, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics this week, pushes the limits of dark matter observations to the unknown outer regions of galaxies, and in doing so re-evaluates several dark matter models and alternative theories of gravity. Measurements of the gravity of 259,000 isolated galaxies show a very close relation between the contributions of dark matter and those of ordinary matter, as predicted in Verlinde's theory of emergent gravity and an alternative model called Modified Newtonian Dynamics. However, the results also appear to agree with a computer simulation of the Universe that assumes that dark matter is 'real stuff'.

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