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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 22, 2015 at 6:37am

A newly invented and ultra-cheap water cleaning process is looks promising.

Developed by a team of researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt, the procedure uses a desalination technique called pervaporation to remove the salt from sea water and make it drinkable. Specially made synthetic membranes are used to filter out large salt particles and impurities so they can be evaporated away, and then the rest is heated up, vapourised, and condensed back into clean water.
Crucially, the membranes can be made in any lab using cheap materials that are available locally, and the vaporisation part of the process doesn't require any electricity. This means the new method is both inexpensive and suitable for areas without a regular power supply - both factors that are very important for developing countries.

The technique not only desalinates the seawater, it's capable of removing sewage and dirt from it too. The researchers combined expertise in oceanography, chemical engineering, agricultural engineering and biosystems engineering to come up with the solution, and their work has now been published in the journal Water Science and Technology.
The technology implemented in the study is much better than reverse osmosis, the technology currently used in Egypt and most of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Unfortunately for those who are waiting for this type of technology, a lot of work is required before it can be put into action: the academics working on the project have to set up a pilot test that proves their theories correct on a large scale. There's also the issue of how to deal with the waste produced from the process.

What's certain is that a new procedure like this could have a huge impact on the lives of millions of people - according to Water.org

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 21, 2015 at 6:15am

'Tree of life' encompassing all of life created
Tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago, scientists have created the first "tree of life" for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes.

Tens of thousands of smaller trees have been built over the years for select branches of the tree of life--some containing upwards of 100,000 species--but this is the first time those results have been combined into a single tree that encompasses all of life, the study said.

A collaborative effort among 11 institutions, the tree depicts the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time.

Understanding how the millions of species on Earth are related to one another helps scientists discover new drugs, increase crop and livestock yields, and trace the origins and spread of infectious diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola and influenza.
Rather than build the tree of life from scratch, the researchers pieced it together by compiling thousands of smaller chunks that had already been published online and merging them into a gigantic "supertree" that encompasses all named species.
"Many participants on the project contributed hundreds of hours tracking down and cleaning up thousands of trees from the literature, then selecting 484 of them that were used to generate the draft tree of life," study first author Cody Hinchliff from University of Idaho in the US.

Combining the 484 trees was a painstaking process that took three years to complete, Stephen Smith, assistant professor at University of Michigan in the US, pointed out.

The end result is a digital resource that is available free online for anyone to use or edit, much like a "Wikipedia" for evolutionary trees.

The findings were published on 18th Sept., 2015 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 20, 2015 at 7:28am

Funny side of science: Ig Nobel Prizes.
A 17th century Moroccan sultan had 888 children in 30 years.

All mammals take about 21 seconds to urinate, give or take 13 seconds.

When you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, it walks like dinosaurs are thought to have walked.

Scientists actually studied this stuff.

Seriously.

And they got tongue in cheek awards for their efforts Thursday night at Harvard University.

They are known as the "Anti-Nobel" awards and are also called the Ig Nobel Prizes.

They are for "achievements that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK," the ceremony`s slogan says.

For instance, the physics award went to the three Georgia Tech University scientists who concluded that all mammals take about the same time to relieve themselves.

The award: a 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar bill. It is worth a few cents. In Zimbabwe, inflation is rampant.

The winner of the group received the award from an actual Nobel winner, the 2007 economics laureate, American Eric Maskin.

In mathematics, the committee chose two Austrians who used statistical analysis to study whether -- as legend claims -- Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed during the years from 1697 through 1727 to father 888 children.

With four wives and a harem of 500 other women the answer was yes, the researchers concluded.

On other areas, aside from research, the committee gave an economics award to police in Bangkok for offering to pay policemen extra cash if they refuse to take bribes.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 20, 2015 at 6:01am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 18, 2015 at 5:28am

Relationship between nitrates in Beetroot and muscle power

Spinach makes you stronger. But it’s the high nitrate content in the leafy greens — not the iron — that creates the effect. Building on a growing body of work that suggests dietary nitrate improves muscle performance in many elite athletes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that drinking concentrated beet juice — also high in nitrates — increases muscle power in patients with heart failure.
Based on research in elite athletes, especially cyclists who use beet juice to boost performance, the study’s corresponding author, Andrew R. Coggan, PhD, assistant professor of radiology, suggested trying the same strategy in patients with heart failure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​
In the September issue of the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, the scientists reported data from nine patients with heart failure. Two hours after the treatment, patients demonstrated a 13 percent increase in power in muscles that extend the knee. The researchers observed the most substantial benefit when the muscles moved at the highest velocities. The increase in muscle performance was significant in quick, power-based actions, but researchers saw no improvements in performance during longer tests that measure muscle fatigue.
Patients in the study served as their own controls, with each receiving the beet juice treatment and an identical beet juice placebo that had only the nitrate content removed. There was a one- to two-week period between trial sessions to be sure any effects of the first treatment did not carry over to the second. Neither the trial participants nor the investigators knew the order in which patients received the treatment and placebo beet juice.

The researchers also pointed out that participants experienced no major side effects from the beet juice, including no increase in heart rates or drops in blood pressure, which is important in patients with heart failure.
The nitrates in beet juice, spinach and other leafy green vegetables such as arugula and celery are processed by the body into nitric oxide, which is known to relax blood vessels and have other beneficial effects on metabolism.

With the growing evidence of a positive effect from dietary nitrates in healthy people, elite athletes and now heart failure patients, the researchers also are interested in studying dietary nitrates in elderly populations.
Acute dietary nitrate intake improves muscle contractile function in patients with heart failure: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial. Coggan AR, Leibowitz JL, Spearie CA, Kadkhodayan A, Thomas DP, Ramamurthy S, Mahmood K, Park S, Waller S, Farmer M, Peterson LR. Circulation: Heart Failure. September 2015.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 17, 2015 at 7:56am

More than three million people around the world die prematurely because of air pollution, scientists have estimated.

Most of the deaths occur in Asia, where large numbers of people in countries such as India and China use highly polluting methods of heating and cooking in their homes.

In the US, traffic pollution made the biggest contribution to global death rates while in Europe, Russia and eastern Asia, agricultural sources had the greatest impact.

Outdoor air pollution includes ozone, a toxic form of oxygen, and tiny sooty particles that lodge in the lungs.

The study, published in the journal Nature, was conducted by combining a global atmospheric chemistry model with population data and health statistics.

Scientists predict that premature mortality from air pollution could double by 2050 with a death toll of 6.6 million lives per year.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 11, 2015 at 7:33am

New hominid species discovered in South Africa
Researchers have discovered a brand new species of human ancestor buried deep inside a South African cave system. The fossils uncovered included 15 partial skeletons, making it the biggest single discovery of its kind in Africa.

But what's most exciting is that this new ancestor, named Homo naledi, may have been one of the first members of our genus, and may change our understanding of human evolution forever. The mass discovery also suggests that the species may have been ritualistic - a trait thought to be unique to humans ( I think, this is a controversial statement without evidence - Krishna).
H. naledi could have lived in Africa up to 3 million years ago ( yet to be confirmed).

The species walked upright at a height of around 150 centimetres.
Despite their height, they also had a tiny brain only slightly larger than a chimpanzee's, with a volume of around 450 to 550 cubic centimetres.
The skeletons suggest that H. naledi wasn't carrying much body weight, with researchers estimating an average weight of around 45 kg. Their bodies also appear to have been built to walk long distances.
H. naledi had small, modern-looking teeth and feet similar to humans, but more primitive fingers.
It's believed ( but there is no evidence) the bodies of these individuals were buried in the chamber intentionally, possibly as some type of burial ritual. No evidence of that kind of behaviour has been seen in such a primitive human ancestor before.
The fossils exhibit a combination of primitive features that bring to mind our ancient australopithecine predecessors (including Lucy and her ilk) and features that are associated with Homo. For instance, the pelvis has a flared shape like that seen in Australopithecus, whereas the leg and foot resemble those of Homo sapiens. Likewise, the skull combines a small braincase with a cranium that is otherwise built like that of early Homo. The teeth, meanwhile, are small like those of modern humans, yet the third molar is larger than the other molars—a pattern associated with australopithecines. And the upper limb pairs an Australopithecus-like shoulder and fingers with a Homo-like wrist and palm. Standing about 1.5 meters tall, with a small brain, clever hands and a body built for upright-walking as well as climbing, this creature possessed a unique mosaic of traits that Berger and his co-authors think reveals a new species of human. Given the many Homo-like traits evident in the bones—particularly in those regions that contact the environment (namely, feet, hands and teeth)—the team put the creature in the genus Homo, rather than Australopithecus, calling it H. naledi.

The fossils were discovered inside the Rising Star cave system, 48 km northwest of Johannesburg. They were named after the Dinaledi chamber where they were found.
Currently the researchers believe that H. naledi may sit between Homo habilis and Homo erectus on the family tree.
The species could be thought of as a "bridge" between primates and modern humans.
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 9, 2015 at 7:12am

You see a person on the road and wonder why he or she resembles your friend even though the person doesn't have any close relationship with the latter.

The word doppelgänger is often used in a more general sense to describe any person who physically or behaviorally resembles another person.

According to scientists the concept of having an unrelated identical twin is less a cool mysterious gift this beautiful world gives us and more a boring genetic math probability game.

The idea behind this theory was posed by Michael Sheehan, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior, and explained in an interview with LiveScience.

Sheehan says although there are large amounts of aesthetic variables our genetic makeups can churn out, at the end of the day there are only a finite amount of possibilities.

This means while there are billions of ways we can all look different, there are only just that: billions of ways we can look different.

Sheehan told LiveScience,

There is only so much genetic diversity to go around… If you shuffle that deck of cards so many times, at some point, you get the same hand dealt to you twice.

More bluntly, Sheehan believes there is a high probability of people in this world having doppelgängers because there are only so many ways faces can be structured.

Dr. Arthur Beaudet, a professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, told LiveScience because how we look is decided based off of our genetic makeups, doppelgängers could actually be distant relatives, whether the pairs know it or not.

http://www.livescience.com/52103-does-everyone-have-a-look-alike.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 8, 2015 at 10:15am

Egyptian method filters seawater in minutes
The technology is based on salt-attracting membranes and vaporising heat

The membranes are made of cellulose acetate powder which is cheap to make

Even remote communities could use the technique – with just membranes and fire
http://www.scidev.net/global/water/news/egyptian-filters-seawater-e...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 8, 2015 at 10:13am

A natural cooking oil additive, invented by Malaysian scientists and claimed to make palm oil healthier, is not all itclaims to be, other researchers say.

The additive is an extract derived from plants of the citrus family, and has been developed and patented by researchers at the Institute of Bioscience at the University Putra Malaysia. It is sold under the commercial name Afdhal, and is marketed as a way of reducing oil consumption.

“A better solution would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods.”
But other scientists say they are sceptical about the product’s properties without seeing the data.
The claims detailed in the product’s patent application are not based on sound scientific research, says Ibrahim, who is also a researcher in medicinal and natural products chemistry at University Kebangsaan Malaysia. “In fact it mentioned that the actual mechanism oil of adsorption by the product was not fully understood,” he says.
Reusing oil is not the solution to protect human health or the environment, says Bronwen Powell, a researcher in forests and food security at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia.
“A better solution,” she says, “would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods”.

The studies that back up the claims about Afdhal have not been published in peer-reviewed publications, however. This is in order to keep the information about the plant’s extracts secret, says one of its inventors, Suhaila Mohamed, a research fellow at the Institute of Bioscience.
Reusing oil is not the solution to protect human health or the environment, says Bronwen Powell, a researcher in forests and food security at the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. “A better solution,” she says, “would be to find ways to reduce the consumption of fried foods, rather than re-use oil and maintain or increase consumption of fried foods”.
-scidev.net

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