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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 7:29am

Inducing Task-Relevant Responses to Speech in the Sleeping Brain
Our brains sort words as we sleep
Vigilance in slumber may explain how meaningful sounds wake a person
•Subjects classifying spoken words continue performing the task after falling asleep
•Movement-related brain activity in the absence of overt behavior is demonstrated
•The sleeping brain can process spoken words in a task-dependent manner
•Response preparation is slower in sleep than in wakefulness
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2900994-4

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 7:22am

Tugs and Prods on a Cell, Not Just Its Genes, Determine Its Fate in the Human Body
Physical pushes and pulls on a cell, not just genes, determine whether it will become part of a bone, a brain—or a deadly tumor
The human cells in our laboratory looked mild-mannered. They were normal cells, not cancer cells, which are able to proliferate rampantly, invade nearby tissues, and ultimately can kill.

But something disturbingly malignant occurred when we forced these cells to change their shape, stretching them by pulling on their edges. This maneuver, flattening out their rounded mounds, increased the activity of two proteins within the cells, YAP and TAZ. As the proteins peaked, our benign cells began acting cancerous, replicating uncontrollably. It was stunning to see how these changes were triggered not by gene modifications but by a physical force.
- Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tugs-and-prods-on-a-cell-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 7:18am

To What Extent Does the Reporting Behavior of the Media Regarding a Celebrity Suicide Influence Subsequent Suicides?
A study investigated the nature of media coverage of a national entertainer's suicide and its impact on subsequent suicides. After the celebrity suicide, the number of suicide-related articles reported surged around 80 times in the week after the suicide compared with the week prior. Many articles (37.1%) violated several critical items on the World Health Organization suicide reporting guidelines, like containing a detailed suicide method. Most gender and age subgroups were at significantly higher risk of suicide during the 4 weeks after the celebrity suicide. Results imply that massive and noncompliant media coverage of a celebrity suicide can cause a large-scale copycat effect.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sltb.12109/abstract;jses...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 7:15am

Companies in Japan and India have started utilizing floating power farms to circumvent the lack of space on land.
Floating Solar Farms For India and Japan

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 7:13am

A young startup at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has developed a multi-functional water filtration membrane. Its inventors hope it will render current membranes in the water industry obsolete.

Traditional polymer-based water filtration membranes tend to end up clogged up with what they have filtered out. As a result, biofouling and organic compounds are a huge problem for the $200 billion global water industry.

With the membranes developed by NTU’s Nano Sun, biofouling is greatly reduced as organic material and bacteria are killed and destroyed when they come into contact with the membranes. Any organic material that does not decompose can also be quickly burnt by putting the membrane in an oven heated to 700 degrees celsius, since it is able to withstand high heat unlike traditional polymer membranes.

Additionally, the new membranes allow for an flow rate of at least ten times faster than current water filtration membranes.

Underlying this new invention is a titanium dioxide nanotechnology patented by Nano Sun. Titanium dioxide nanoparticles are proven to kill bacteria and to break down organic compounds in waste water with the help of sunlight or ultra violet (UV) rays.
University spin-off develops multi-functional membranes that can be used in water filtration, chemical and food industries.

Filtering Water With Nanotechnology
Source: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/Pages/home.aspx

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 6:55am

Donald E. Ingber, Founding Director of the Wyss Institute, Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, talks about his article "Mechanobiology and Developmental Control," which he wrote with Tadanori Mammoto and Akiko Mammoto for the 2013 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. He discusses the role of physical and mechanical forces in the control of cell development and disease, which he says is as important as chemicals and genes.

Read the article online at: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/...

“Mechanical forces are as important for the control of cell and tissue and organ development as are chemicals and genes.”

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2014 at 6:42am

Does smiling really help you even if you are not happy? ('Don't worry be happy! Even if your entire world collapses!', say some people).
But does that really work?
According to a recent study - smiling can backfire for some!
Surprisingly, for a section of the population, smiling actually reduced well-being. The more these people smiled, the less happy they were. This is like finding that there are some diners who, after consuming a four-course meal, feel less full!

Who are these people for whom extra smiling fails to generate corresponding increases in joy? In the answer lies the ultimate irony. It turns out that the gloomiest people were those who believed in precisely that somatic feedback hypothesis. People who realized, in other words, that you can “smile to feel happy” (called proactive smilers) were exactly those who did not enjoy the benefits of the theory they espoused. On the other hand, for those who believed that smiling is a genuine indicator of mood—those who subscribed to commonsense notions about the causal order of action and emotion (reactive smilers)—smiling boosted happiness.

How does understanding the benefits of proactive smiling eradicate its effect? It remains a matter of scientific opinion. What’s likely is that knowing too much about somatic feedback throws a wrench in the circuitry, undercutting the message the body sends to itself. At first, the brain says, “I’m smiling; I must be happy!” But upon learning that smiling can be a proactive strategy, this turns into, “I’m smiling; I must be trying to make myself happy—I must be sad!”
Well, read the entire story here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-smiling-can-backfire/...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2014 at 8:07am

Teenager from India invents device that can convert breath to speech

Sixteen-year-old Arsh Shah Dilbagi has developed a new technology called ‘TALK’, which is a cheap and portable device to help people who are physically incapable of speaking express themselves.
Sixteen-year-old Arsh Shah Dilbagi has developed a new technology called ‘TALK’, which is a cheap and portable device to help people who are physically incapable of speaking express themselves. Right now, 1.4 percent of the world’s population has very limited or no speech, due to conditions such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), locked-in syndrome (LIS), Encephalopathy (SEM), Parkinson’s disease, and paralysis. So that's literally a group of people that could match the entire population of Germany, and all of them unable to speak.

Stephen Hawking has a device to help him communicate, but it's extremely expensive, costing several thousand dollars, and is also quite bulky. What Dilbagi has managed to do is invent a device that achieves the same thing, but can be purchased for just $80.

The way TALK works is that it’s able to translate the user’s breath into electric signals using a special device called a MEMS Microphone. This technology is composed of a pressure-sensitive diaphragm etched directly into a silicon chip, and an amplifying device to increase the sound of the user’s breath.

By expelling two types of breaths into the device, with different intensities and timing, the user is able to spell out words in Morse code. "A microprocessor then interprets the breathes into dots and dashes, converting them into words. The words are then sent to a second microprocessor that synthesises them into voice,” says Whitney Mallett at Motherboard. "The morse code can either be translated into English, or specific commands and phrases. The device features nine different voices varying in age and gender."

People who do not have a means of properly expressing themselves, like those living with speech disorders, experience a lower than average life expectancy because of it. Dilbagi’s aim for this device is to give millions of people like this a 'voice' for the first time.
http://kkartlab.in/group/some-science

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2014 at 8:03am

Molecular mechanisms of birth defects among older women: Why older women can have babies with Down Syndrome
Researchers studying cell division in fruit flies have discovered a pathway that may improve understanding of molecular mistakes that cause older women to have babies with Down syndrome.
The study shows for the first time that new protein linkages occur in immature egg cells after DNA replication and that these replacement linkages are essential for these cells to maintain meiotic cohesion for long periods.

The study appears in the journal PLOS Genetics.
As women age, so do their eggs and during a woman's thirties, the chance that she will conceive a Down syndrome fetus increases dramatically. Most such pregnancies arise from mistakes in a process called meiosis, a specialized cell division that creates gametes, or sex cells (sperm and eggs). Mistakes in meiosis can lead to gametes with the wrong number of chromosomes, which can cause Down syndrome.
Accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis depends on protein linkages, or cohesion, that hold together sister chromatids, which are identical copies of a replicated chromosome. Recent evidence from Dartmouth and other laboratories indicates that meiotic cohesion weakens over time, contributing to the maternal age effect.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140911135440.htm

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 16, 2014 at 7:24am

How to engage with participants in field research

Building trust is the crucial foundation for successful research in the field

Trust comes from listening and understanding as much as from giving information

Good communication will often bring suggestions that improve your research
http://www.scidev.net/global/communication/practical-guide/engage-p...

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