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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 31, 2015 at 7:21am

Reusable launch vehicle trial in 2016 - ISRO
India’s reusable launch vehicle being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is slated for trials in 2016 and will help reduce the cost of access to space in the long run, said ISRO Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar.
The project was still in the experimental stage and the demonstration vehicle will have a range of 100 km, though eventually it will be like a space shuttle. The ISRO uses multi-stage rockets for satellite launch, but the reusable vehicle will be a single-stage rocket to start with. The single-stage rocket will have a solid propellant stored in casing. For a reusable vehicle, the casings have to be re-used or rebuilt and its evolution will hinge on cost benefits, said the ISRO chairman.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 31, 2015 at 7:18am

Bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness, causes dramatic mood shifts – often called episodes – in which the person is overly excited, extremely sad or depressed, or a mixed state of both, including irritable or explosive behavior, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Causes of bipolar disorder (BP) are thought to be both genetic and environmental, and researchers have long suspected that disruption in normal daily circadian rhythms, including sleep and wake cycles, can precede mood shifts.
Researchers in a recent study found that those with bipolar disorder awoke later and slept longer, on average were awake fewer minutes overall, and were active for shorter periods than those without the disorder. Researchers also found that those with bipolar disorder displayed lower activity levels while awake and had greater variations in sleep and wake cycles. The findings are reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team of international scientists led by UT Southwestern Medical Center and UCLA researchers have identified a dozen inherited traits related to sleep, wake, and activity cycles that are associated with severe bipolar disorder. Researchers also were able to tie the traits to specific chromosomes, providing important clues to the genetic nature of the disorder, as well as potential new avenues for prevention and treatment.
The 13 endophenotypes (biological or behavioral markers found more commonly in those with a certain disease than without) are: mean of awake duration, amplitude, Hill acrophase, interdaily stability, interdaily variability, median activity, relative amplitude, mean length of sleep bouts during the sleep period, mean number of sleep bouts during awake period, time of sleep offset, time of sleep onset, mean total minutes scored awake, and WASO (total minutes in awake bouts after sleep onset).
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/23/1513525113.abstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 8:18am

New medicine to fight drug -resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for causing tuberculosis (TB). Scientists from India and the US say they have discovered a group of compounds that can kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis by disabling a major defense mechanism it uses to survive in the human body.
The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, India’s ministry of science and technology and the Wellcome Trust-Department of Biotechnology alliance was published in ACS Chemical Biology.
These plant based compounds show tremendous promise as lead scaffolds for the development of new, anti-TB treatments. Specifically, these compounds inhibit the function of a critical enzyme responsible for survival of M. tuberculosis .
The new compounds belong to the ellipticine plant alkaloid family, which also is active in targeting cancerous cells. The active compounds have exerted a very high activity against drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains isolated from patients of Indian origin. The new compounds have shown potent bactericidal activity against active as well as dormant form of drug-susceptible and MDR/XDR strains.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.5b00517

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 6:43am

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 30, 2015 at 6:13am

Which hemisphere of the brain does what? Here is the explanation with proof!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 29, 2015 at 7:04am

Arsenic contamination of underground water in the Indian subcontinent:

https://vimeo.com/33354622#embed
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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 25, 2015 at 7:56am

HIV antibody infusion safely suppresses virus in infected people

A single infusion of a powerful antibody called VRC01 can suppress the level of HIV in the blood of infected people who are not taking antiretroviral therapy (ART), scientists at the US National Institutes of Health report in a paper published on 23rd Dec, 2015. The researchers also found that giving HIV-infected people VRC01 antibodies by infusing them into a vein or under the skin is safe and well tolerated, and the antibodies remain in the blood for an extended period.

The researchers found that while antibody infusions did not reduce the amount of HIV in blood cells, they reduced plasma viral load more than 10-fold in six of the eight people who were not on ART. In the two people in this group who began the study with the lowest viral loads, the antibody suppressed HIV to extremely low levels for approximately 3 weeks--as long as VRC01 was present at therapeutic concentrations. In the other four people whose HIV levels declined, their viral load fell substantially but did not reach undetectable levels. In the two people not on ART whose viral loads remained steady despite the antibody infusion, it was subsequently found that the predominant HIV strain in their bodies had been resistant to VRC01 at the outset. The antibody also did not appear to have any effect in people taking ART, whose virus was already suppressed.

- Sciencecodex.com

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 25, 2015 at 7:08am

Why some animals, especially those people consume contain mercury?

Here is the answer...

It is advisable for children and pregnant women not to eat too much fish. Why? Because they might contain harmful mercury!

Mercury pollution, from sources such as gold mining and power generation, ends up in the atmosphere and then the oceans, where it is transformed into methylmercury, which is as toxic as the element. Methylmercury accumulates in ocean creatures, and animals higher up in the food chain, such as tuna, tend to have higher levels of mercury. People who eat enough of those fish can experience health problems; mercury can impair development in children, infants and fetuses.

In 2012, researchers reported that methylmercury could be found in fog water along the central Californian coast. Now researchers are finding that the mercury, picked up from ocean water, is being deposited on land and accumulating in animals, from spiders to mountain lions. Starting with arthropods, wolf spiders, camel crickets and pill bugs all contained mercury. The researchers found mercury in all the arthropods, but the highest levels were in the wolf spiders, the team reported in the April Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. Wolf spiders are carnivorous, and they appeared to be acquiring more mercury through bioaccumulation. Other species, bigger ones, may also be affected.

Preliminary data shows high levels of mercury in deer in central California and in the mountain lions that eat them. A couple of mountain lions had mercury levels high enough that they could be experiencing health problems.

Researchers are  still working to trace the path of toxic mercury from ocean waters to fog to land to animals, and on up the food chain.

But this research is a worrying sign that mercury pollution may be a much bigger problem than we realize, and one that can’t be solved by simply limiting the amount of tuna you eat.

- Science News. org

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 20, 2015 at 11:32am

Microbial community assembly and metabolic function during mammalian corpse decomposition

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/12/09/science.aad2646

You are filled with bacteria, and you are covered in them. And a whole lot of them are just waiting for you to drop dead.

As soon as you die, they’ll swoop in. This week, we learned exactly how microbes chow down on us. A brave and strong-stomached team of scientists spent months watching dead bodies decompose, tracking all the bacteria, fungi, and worms, day by day. Forensic scientists can use this timeline, published in Science, to help determine time—and even place—of death.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/12/youre-surrounded...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 19, 2015 at 8:09am

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