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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 8:40am

In a ground-breaking trial, researchers in the UK will test artificial blood made from human stem cells in patients for the first time.

The research, planned for 2016, could pave the way for manufacturing of blood on an industrial scale, which could even supersede donated blood as the main supply for patients.

"We have made red blood cells, for the first time, that are fit to go in a person's body. Before now, we haven't really had that," said Marc Turner, medical director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, who is leading the 5 million pounds project at the University of Edinburgh.
_PTI

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 8:39am

Health risks from mobile wireless devices like phones and tablets are growing stronger, and require immediate action, says a new study. According to the BioInitiative Working Group, which released a mid-year update covering new science studies from 2012 to 2014, new studies intensify medical concerns about malignant brain tumours from cell phone use.

"There is a consistent pattern of increased risk for glioma (a malignant brain tumour ) and acoustic neuroma with use of mobile and cordless phones," said Lennart Hardell from Orebro University , Sweden. "Epidemiological evidence shows that radio frequency should be classified as a known human carcinogen. The existing FCC/IEEE and ICNIRP public safety limits are not adequate to protect public health," Hardell said.

The BioInitiative reports nervous system effects in 68% of studies on radio frequency radiation (144 of 211 studies) in 2014. This has increased from 63% in 2012 (93 of 150 studies). Studies of extremely-low frequency radiation are reported to cause nervous system effects in 90% of the 105 studies available in 2014.

Genetic effects (damage to DNA) from radio frequency radiation is reported in 65% (74 of 114 studies); and 83% (49 of 59 studies) of extremely low frequency studies. Wireless devices like phones and tablets are big sources of unnecessary biological stress to the mind and body that can chip away at resilience over time. The report warns against wireless in schools. Schools should provide internet access without Wi-Fi.
-Agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 7:32am

Behavioural impairment in reef fishes caused by ocean acidification at CO2 seeps
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

Fish are losing their survival instinct — even becoming attracted to the smell of their predators — as the world's oceans become more acidic because of climate change, new research said on Monday.

The study of fish in coral reefs off the coast of Papua New Guinea — where the waters are naturally acidic — showed the animals' behaviour became riskier.

"Fish will normally avoid the smell of a predator, that makes perfect sense," lead author Professor Philip Munday from Australia's James Cook University told AFP.

"But they start to become attracted to the smell of the predator. That's incredible.

"They also swim further from shelter and they are more active, they swim around more. That's riskier behaviour for them — they are more likely to be attacked by a predator."

Munday said the research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was important given that about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is ultimately absorbed by the ocean, a process which results in the seas becoming more acidic.

Acidification around the reefs studied is at levels predicted to become ocean-wide by the end of the century as the climate changes.

Munday said the fish appeared to have failed to adapt to the conditions, despite living their whole lives exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide.

"They didn't seem to adjust within their lifetime," Munday said. "That tells us that they don't adjust when they are permanently exposed to these higher carbon dioxide levels and we would have to think about whether adaptation would be possible over the coming decades."

Munday said the "seep" to which the fish were exposed — in which carbon dioxide from undersea volcanic activity bubbles to the surface — was the perfect "natural laboratory" for the study.

Close to the seep there is no coral growth, but further away lies a unique coral reef zone with carbon dioxide levels similar to those forecast for future decades.

Co-author Jodie Rummer said while the increased carbon dioxide in the water affected how fish behaved, it did not appear to affect their athletic performance.

"The metabolic rates of fish from the seep area were the same as fish from nearby 'healthy' reefs," she said in a statement.

"So, it seems that future ocean acidification may affect the behaviour of reef fishes more than other aspects of their performance."

The research was conducted by James Cook's Coral Centre of Excellence, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Geographic Society.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 7:27am

“Boys Can Be Anything”: Effect of Barbie Play on Girls’ Career Cognitions

Abstract

Play with Barbie dolls is an understudied source of gendered socialization that may convey a sexualized adult world to young girls. Early exposure to sexualized images may have unintended consequences in the form of perceived limitations on future selves. We investigated perceptions of careers girls felt they could do in the future as compared to the number of careers they felt boys could do as a function of condition (playing with a Barbie or Mrs. Potato Head doll) and type of career (male dominated or female dominated) in a sample of 37 U.S. girls aged 4–7 years old residing in the Pacific Northwest. After a randomly assigned 5-min exposure to condition, children were asked how many of ten different occupations they themselves could do in the future and how many of those occupations a boy could do. Data were analyzed with a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial ANOVA. Averaged across condition, girls reported that boys could do significantly more occupations than they could themselves, especially when considering male-dominated careers. In addition, girls’ ideas about careers for themselves compared to careers for boys interacted with condition, such that girls who played with Barbie indicated that they had fewer future career options than boys, whereas girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head reported a smaller difference between future possible careers for themselves as compared to boys. Results support predictions from gender socialization and objectification theories.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-014-0347-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 7:23am

Just 1 Rock Concert or Football Game May Cause Permanent Hearing Damage
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2014/04/14/just-1-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 15, 2014 at 7:11am

A new evolutionary reason for why many underfed lab animals live longer:
The most prominent theory involves what happens physiologically during times of food scarcity. When the living is good, natural selection favors organisms that invest energy in reproduction. In times of hardship, however, animals have fewer offspring, diverting precious nutrients to cell repair and recycling so they can survive until the famine ends, when reproduction begins anew. Cell repair and recycling appear to be substantial antiaging and anticancer processes, which may explain why underfed lab animals live longer and rarely develop old-age pathologies like cancer and heart disease.

The new hypothesis she proposes holds that during a famine animals escalate cellular repair and recycling, but they do so for the purpose of having as many progeny as possible during a famine, not afterward. They “make the best of a bad situation” to maximize their fitness in the present. “It’s an efficiency mode that the animal goes into,” she says. Adler and colleague Russell Bonduriansky published their reasoning in the March BioEssays.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300165/abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hunger-gains-a-new-idea-o...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 14, 2014 at 8:41am

Scientists make a Mini Mars to mimic Red Planet dust

Martian dust can wreak havoc with sensitive equipment, so researchers have created a chamber that lets them simulate the Martian surface -- dust and all -- before that equipment heads to the Red Planet.
http://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-build-a-mini-mars-in-spain/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 14, 2014 at 7:12am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 13, 2014 at 9:09am

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-m-eger/business-and-education-ex...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 12, 2014 at 5:09am

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