Science Simplified!

Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 17, 2014 at 7:39am

Human brains react unconsciously to our body movements
|
According to researchers from University College London and Cambridge University found evidence of a specialized mechanism in the human brain that takes in visual information about our body and triggers an instant, unconscious response.

The new study has shown that our brains have separate 'hard-wired' systems to visually track our own bodies, even if we are not paying attention to them. The network triggers reactions even before the conscious brain has time to process them.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 17, 2014 at 7:30am

Individual Variation in Contagious Yawning Susceptibility Is Highly Stable and Largely Unexplained by Empathy or Other Known Factors
The contagious aspect of yawning is a well-known phenomenon that exhibits variation in the human population. Despite the observed variation, few studies have addressed its intra-individual reliability or the factors modulating differences in the susceptibility of healthy volunteers. Due to its obvious biological basis and impairment in diseases like autism and schizophrenia, a better understanding of this trait could lead to novel insights into these conditions and the general biological functioning of humans. We administered 328 participants a 3-minute yawning video stimulus, a cognitive battery, and a comprehensive questionnaire that included measures of empathy, emotional contagion, circadian energy rhythms, and sleepiness. Individual contagious yawning measurements were found to be highly stable across testing sessions, both in a lab setting and if administered remotely online, confirming that certain healthy individuals are less susceptible to contagious yawns than are others. Additionally, most individuals who failed to contagiously yawn in our study were not simply suppressing their reaction, as they reported not even feeling like yawning in response to the stimulus. In contrast to previous studies indicating that empathy, time of day, or intelligence may influence contagious yawning susceptibility, we found no influence of these variables once accounting for the age of the participant. Participants were less likely to show contagious yawning as their age increased, even when restricting to ages of less than 40 years. However, age was only able to explain 8% of the variability in the contagious yawn response. The vast majority of the variability in this extremely stable trait remained unexplained, suggesting that studies of its inheritance are warranted.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 17, 2014 at 7:25am

Gastric bypass surgery may diminish knee pain in obese patients

Source: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Gastric bypass surgery may diminish knee pain in obese patients with little or no osteoarthritis, according to new research. The study authors recommend that surgeons consider bariatric consultation for obese patients who have knee symptoms but lack advanced osteoarthritis or other conditions amendable to orthopaedic management.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 16, 2014 at 8:40am

The protein titin has been found to be the key to reversible muscle elasticity according to a report by Columbia University biological sciences professor Julio Fernandez and his team in the March 13, 2014, edition of the journal Cell.
Mechanical force exposes cryptic cysteines in titin to allow S-glutathionylation
S-glutathionylation of cryptic cysteines inhibits protein folding
S-glutathionylation of titin reversibly modulates the elasticity of cardiomyocytes
Modification of cryptic cysteines links redox environment to tissue mechanics
The researchers discovered that titin is not a passive muscle structure but plays an active chemical role when the muscles are stretched. Stretching the muscles exposed parts of the titin molecule that are susceptible to oxidation. Oxidation of the reactive parts of the titin molecule confers lasting and reversible muscle elasticity through the process of glutathionylation.
he discovery promises new methods to treat heart disease and muscle disease.

The researchers recommend the yoga position downward-facing dog as a means to extend titin to the greatest extent and therefore produce lasting muscle elasticity.
http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2814%2900150-0

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 15, 2014 at 8:51am

How Mountains And Rivers Make Life Possible
Favorable conditions for life on Earth are enabled in part by the natural shuttling of carbon dioxide from the planet’s atmosphere to its rocky interior and back again. Now Stanford scientists have devised a pair of math equations that better describe how topography, rock compositions and the movement of water through a landscape affects this vital recycling process.

Scientists have long suspected that the so-called the geologic carbon cycle is responsible for Earth’s clement and life-friendly conditions because it helps regulate atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that acts to trap the sun’s heat. This cycle is also thought to have played an important role in slowly thawing the planet during those rare times in the past when temperatures dipped so low that the globe was plunged into a “snowball-Earth” scenario and glaciers blanketed the equator.

“Our equations suggest that different landscapes have different potentials for regulating the transfer of carbon dioxide,” said Kate Maher, an assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences who developed the equations along with her colleague, Environmental Earth System Science Professor Page Chamberlain. The research, which was supported by the National Research Foundation, is described in the March 14 issue of the journal Science.
- Science news agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 15, 2014 at 8:45am

Innovative solar-powered toilet developed by CU-Boulder ready for India unveiling
University of Colorado Boulder developed a toilet fueled by the sun that is being developed to help some of the 2.5 billion people around the world lacking safe and sustainable sanitation will be unveiled in India this month.

The self-contained, waterless toilet, designed and built using a $777,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has the capability of heating human waste to a high enough temperature to sterilize human waste and create biochar, a highly porous charcoal, said project principal investigator Karl Linden, professor of environmental engineering. The biochar has a one-two punch in that it can be used to both increase crop yields and sequester carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/03/12/innovative-solar-p...

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

How grapevines got acne bacteria
Microbe is the first known animal pathogen to become dependent on a plant host — and could have helped in its domestication.
A common bacterium on human skin that is partly responsible for acne — has made itself at home in the grapevine. It is the first known instance of a human bacterial pathogen that has become dependent on a host from a different kingdom of life. Italian researchers report that a newly found strain of Propionibacterium acnes seems unable to live anywhere else than within grapevine cells, and speculate that this adaptation helped humans to domesticate the plant.
http://www.nature.com/news/how-grapevines-got-acne-bacteria-1.14812

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 14, 2014 at 8:47am

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers
The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.

http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2014/03/13/publishers-withdraw-1...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 14, 2014 at 8:43am

A team of British and American scientists have taken an important step toward understanding how life arose on Earth. Their work is published in a new paper in the journal Astrobiology.

The Fuel Cell Model of Abiogenesis: A New Approach to Origin-of-Life Simulations
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2014.1140

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 14, 2014 at 8:40am

The five second rule to pick up food from the floor:

According to researchers,  final-year students at Birmingham’s Aston University, the 'five-second rule' that many of us think is okay is an actual scientific measure of how long your food is safe to eat for.

(But again I have watched a programme on Discovery channel sometime back that said it depends on the state of food. If it is very wet, it picks up lots of microbes from the floor. If it is dry less number of microbes get attached to it regardless of time it spent on the floor.)

According to this one there is a "significant time factor" on the transfer of bacteria from the floor to food - basically, you have five second window to pick it up before it stops being safe to eat.

The students placed toast, pasta, biscuits and a sweet on the floor to determine that food picked-up straight after being dropped is less likely to contain common bacteria such as E. coli.

They also determined that bacteria is least likely to transfer from carpeted surfaces, and most likely to transfer from laminate or tiled surfaces to moist foods which made contact with the floor for more than five seconds.

"Consuming food dropped on the floor still carries an infection risk as it very much depends on which bacteria are present on the floor at the time; however the findings of this study will bring some light relief to those who have been employing the “five-second rule” for years, despite a general consensus that it is purely a myth," Professor Anthony, who led the study, said.

"We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food."

- News Agencies

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 872
• 873
• 874
• 875
• 876
• …
• 955
• Next ›
• Page