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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 18, 2015 at 9:49am

Factors Underlying Different Myopia Prevalence between Middle- and Low-income Provinces in China
A study of 20,000 children shows that nearsightedness is twice as prevalent in middle-income areas than lower-income ones in China.
In one of the largest population-based studies ever conducted on nearsightedness in children, researchers have discovered that lower-income students in China have better vision than their middle-class counterparts. Data show that nearsightedness, also called myopia, is twice as prevalent in the middle-income province of Shaanxi compared to the poorer neighboring province of Gansu. The study was published in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Living in the middle-class area was associated with a 69 percent increased risk for nearsightedness, even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as time spent reading, outdoor activity and whether the student's parents wore glasses. Higher math scores were associated with increased myopia in all children while nearsightedness was less prevalent in males overall. The research team also looked at whether the use of blackboards, as opposed to textbooks, played a role in staving off myopia. Students in the lower-income area rely more on blackboards to learn in the classroom as they may have difficulty affording books, while students in the middle-income areas used blackboards less often.
They found that using blackboards had a "protective effect" against nearsightedness when examined as a variable alone, possibly because blackboards do not require the kind of close-up focusing that may increase myopia. However, when adjusting for other factors, they found no statistically significant differences between lower-income and middle-class students that might explain higher myopia prevalence in richer areas.
Previous studies have found that people who had higher levels of education and years spent in school were more likely to be nearsighted. Many researchers also postulate that exposure to certain kinds of light, particularly indoor versus outdoor light, may be responsible for the uptick in myopia. Recent studies of children and young adults in Denmark and across Asia show that more time outdoors and exposure to daylight is associated with less nearsightedness.
http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2901196-8/abstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 18, 2015 at 9:11am

Persistent fungal root endophytes ( those living inside hosts) isolated from a wild barley species suppress seed-borne infections in a barley cultivar.
ABSTRACT: Ten fungal root endophytes were isolated from wild populations of Hordeum murinum ssp. murinum L. and inoculated onto untreated seeds of a barley cultivar using five artificial and one soil-based growth media. A co-inoculant of all ten isolates as well as two individual isolates successfully suppressed the development of seed-borne fungal infections on germinated and ungerminated seed. The two most successful isolates were also the most persistent as re-emergents and may provide real potential for development as crop inoculants. All isolates were more persistent in barley exposed to light after germination. The soil-based compost was associated with the greatest degree of seed-borne infection suppression, and the most successful artificial medium for suppressing seed-borne infections was also the medium with the most similar pH to the soil at the sampling sites. These results suggest a direct antagonistic effect of the fungal isolates on seed-borne pathogens without the induction of plant defences.
This information can be used to control plant diseases.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268575042_Persistent_fungal...

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And in humans ---

Electronic Medicine Fights Disease

Stimulation of the nervous system could replace drugs for inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 18, 2015 at 9:06am

Raman spectroscopy could help neurosurgeons find those errant cancer cells. A team led by engineer Frédéric Leblond of Montreal Polytechnique and neurosurgeon Kevin Petrecca of McGill University, also in Montreal, has developed a Raman probe that distinguishes between normal and cancer cells. They showed their method could find previously undetectable cancer cells in the brains of glioma patients .
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/274/274ra19

“It’s very uncomfortable when you’re performing an operation and are not certain if you are removing all the cancer,” because missing some can impact a patient’s survival, Petrecca says. The Raman probe, he says, allows surgeons to spot cancer cells they might have thought were normal.

To use the tool, a surgeon simply holds a fiber-optic probe in contact with the brain tissue to collect a Raman spectrum. The researchers use an algorithm that statistically analyzes the data to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells.

The next step is to run clinical trials to demonstrate that the Raman technique can improve surgery outcomes. He and his collaborators plan to start such a trial soon.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 18, 2015 at 8:58am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 17, 2015 at 6:09am

Blood copper and sulfur to aid liver cancer diagnosis
A new study reports that circulating blood of patients with liver cancers reveals isotopic selectivity for 'light' copper and sulfur. The study results have potential in the development of new diagnostic methods in liver cancer. The evidence of 'cancer driven imbalances' in the isotopic ratios of stable copper (65Cu/63Cu) and sulfur (34S/32S) in the blood of patients with hepatocellular carcinomas was provided by Dr. Vincent Balter of the Université de Lyon and his colleagues.

The research team has shown selective enrichment of the blood with the lighter stable isotopes of these elements, using novel techniques adapted from earth sciences methodologies. As well, the heavier 65Cu isotope was selectively enhanced in tumors. The study was published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/982

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 16, 2015 at 6:15am

Evolutionary union after 60 million year breakup!
Scientists have discovered a delicate fern in the mountains of France that is the "love child" of two distantly-related groups of plants that have not interbred in 60 million years.

For most plants and animals, reuniting after such a long hiatus is thought to be impossible due to genetic and other incompatibilities between species that develop over time.

"Reproducing after such a long evolutionary breakup is akin to an elephant hybridizing with a manatee or a human with a lemur," said study co-author Kathleen Pryer, director of Duke University Herbarium.

The genetic analyses revealed that the fern was the result of a cross between an oak fern and a fragile fern - two distantly related groups that co-occur across much of the northern hemisphere but stopped exchanging genes and split into separate lineages some 60 million years ago.

"To most people they just look like two ferns, but to fern researchers these two groups look really different," Rothfels said.

Other studies have documented instances of tree frog species that proved capable of producing offspring after going their separate ways for 34 million years, and sunfish who hybridized after nearly 40 million years, but until now those were the most extreme reunions ever recorded.

"For most plant and animal species, reproductive incompatibility takes only a few million years at the most," said co-author Carl Rothfels from the University of California, Berkeley.

The sex lives of ferns may help explain why divergent fern lineages remain compatible for so long, the researchers say.

Fern sex is no different from other creatures.

But whereas many other plants rely on birds, bees or other animals to play matchmaker, all ferns need is wind and water.

The study appeared online in the journal American Naturalist.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/an.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 14, 2015 at 1:45pm

Hand washing focus in hospitals has led to rise in worker dermatitis
A new study from The University of Manchester has revealed that the incidence of dermatitis has increased 4.5 times in health care workers following increased hand hygiene as a drive to reduce infections such as MRSA has kicked in.

Researchers from the University's Institute of Population Health studied reports voluntarily submitted by dermatologists to a national database which is run by the University (THOR), between 1996 and 2012. Sixty percent of eligible UK dermatologists used this database which is designed to report skin problems caused or aggravated by work.

They found that out of 7,138 cases of irritant contact dermatitis reported 1,796 were in healthcare workers. When the numbers were broken down by year, health workers were 4.5 times more likely to suffer from irritant contact dermatitis in 2012 as in 1996. In two control groups, cases declined or did not change.
( Irritant contact dermatitis (ICD) is inflammation of the skin typically manifested by erythema, mild edema, and scaling. Irritant contact dermatitis is a nonspecific response of the skin to direct chemical damage that releases mediators of inflammation predominately from epidermal cells. A corrosive agent causes the immediate death of epidermal cells, manifested by chemical burns and cutaneous ulcers.)
"Campaigns to reduce these infections through frequent hand washing have been very successful and many lives have been saved. However, we need to do all we can to prevent skin irritation among these frontline workers."
The implications of increasing levels of irritant dermatitis are potentially counter-productive to the aims of infection reducing campaigns. Other studies have identified that infections can remain present for longer on damaged and broken skin and having irritated skin can put people off washing their hands.
The paper, 'The impact of national level interventions to improve hygiene on the incidence of irritant contact dermatitis in healthcare workers: changes in incidence from 1996-2012 and interrupted times series analysis', was published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.13719/abstract;jsess...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 12, 2015 at 9:04am

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 12, 2015 at 8:55am

Science is like magic! Watch the wonder of it!

The experiment is also surprisingly simple to replicate at home. All you need is some sand and some water-repellant spray, such as Scotchgard (or gotchscard, which you'll understand when you see the clip above). You spread the sand out and then give it a couple of genorous coatings of water-repellant chemicals. Once it's dry, you're now the proud owner of hydrophobic sand.

You can also even buy hydrophobic sand, called Magic Sand, that's pre-made, and contains ordinary beach sand mixed with tiny particles of silica. The combination is then exposed to vapours of trimethylsilanol, an organosilicon compound, that bonds to the silica particles, creating a hydrophobic coating for the sand.

Both Magic Sand and the DIY hydrophobic variety will do anything it can to avoid contact with liquid, including forming strange formations underwater to reduce surface area.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 11, 2015 at 9:22am

How to tell whether people got enough sleep or not

A drop in certain fats and acids in the blood may reveal whether a person is critically sleep deprived, scientists report online February 9 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When people and rats skimp on slumber, two compounds involved in metabolism become depleted.

A reliable marker of sleep debt could be used to test whether pilots, truck drivers and other people who hold jobs with long hours are sufficiently well rested, says coauthor Amita Sehgal, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Going without sleep blunts people’s performance on memory and attention tests, and has been linked to diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses. To see how losing sleep changes metabolism, Sehgal and her colleagues took blood samples from rats and humans after they’d had only four hours of sleep a night for five nights.

In both species, two molecules involved in metabolism decreased. One is a fat that plays a role in storing energy and helping hormones send messages. The other, an acid, is a by-product of normal metabolism. Levels of both molecules bounced back after a full night’s sleep.

Sehgal and her colleagues will keep investigating these metabolic effects of sleep loss. “We’re seeing these changes in the blood, but where are they coming from and how do they relate to what’s happening in the liver, the adipose [fatty] tissue, the muscle?” Sehgal asks.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/03/1417432112

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/03/1417432112

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