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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 23, 2014 at 6:36am

Cancer treatment clears two Australian patients of HIV

Patients' virus levels became undetectable after bone-marrow therapy with stem cells.
http://www.nature.com/news/cancer-treatment-clears-two-australian-p...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2014 at 5:47am

Kidney Stone Risk Creeps North as Climate Changes
A link between heat and the painful stones
As ambient temperatures increase, your fluid losses through skin increase. With more water coming out as sweat and less coming out as urine, minerals can build up and form stones. In cold weather, researchers suspect, people dehydrate in warm, dry indoor air.

And you might have this effect without even realizing the fluid loss through your skin is increasing.

Not realizing you're dehydrated is a big part of the problem. In drier climates, people may not have puddles of sweat to gauge how much water they're losing. This is especially important when people migrate to warmer areas and aren't used to drinking more water.
- http://www.eenews.net/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2014 at 5:32am

Myopia and Level of Education
Main Outcome Measures

Prevalence and magnitude of myopia in association with years spent in school and level of post-school professional education.
Results

Individuals who graduated from school after 13 years were more myopic (median, −0.5 diopters [D]; first quartile [Q1]/third quartile [Q3], −2.1/0.3 D) than those who graduated after 10 years (median, −0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −1.3/0.8 D), than those who graduated after 9 years (median, 0.3 D; Q1/Q3, −0.6/1.4 D), and than those who never finished secondary school (median, 0.2 D; Q1/Q3, −0.5/1.8 D; P<0.001, respectively). The same holds true for persons with a university degree (median, −0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −2.3/0.3 D) versus those who finished secondary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −1.1/0.8 D) or primary vocational school (median, 0 D; Q1/Q3, −0.9/1.1 D) versus persons without any post-school professional qualification (median, 0.6 D; Q1/Q3, −0.4/1.7 D; P<0.001, respectively). Of persons who graduated from school after 13 years, 50.9% were myopic (SE, ≤−0.5 D) versus 41.6%, 27.1%, and 26.9% after 10 years, in those who graduated after 9 years, and in those who never graduated from secondary school, respectively (P<0.001). In university graduates, the proportion of myopic persons was higher (53%) than that of those who graduated from secondary (34.8%) or primary (34.7%) vocational schools and than in those without any professional training (23.9%; P<0.001, respectively). In multivariate analyses: higher school and professional levels of education were associated with a more myopic SE independent of gender. There was a small effect of age and SNPs. Conclusions Higher levels of school and post-school professional education are associated with a more myopic refraction. Participants with higher educational achievements more often were myopic than individuals with less education. http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2900364-9/abstract

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2014 at 10:04am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 8:35am

How media people are twisting and spinning things to mislead people to make them believe in what they beleive:
''Aliens on the Moon' TV Show Adds Weird UFO Twists to Apollo Tales''
What one person sees as a overly magnified image with distortions that merely form strange patterns, another person sees as incontrovertible proof that extraterrestrials have left giant antennas, spaceships and industrial complexes on the moon.
The footage was later proven to be fake.
The Story Behind the 'Alien Autopsy' Hoax
The film—purporting to depict the post mortem of an extraterrestrial who died in a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947—was part of a "documentary" that aired on the Fox television network.
http://www.livescience.com/742-story-alien-autopsy-hoax.html
The heart of "Aliens on the Moon" is a review of decades-old photographs from the Apollo missions, with commentary by sources ranging from former Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell to old standbys on the UFO scene (MUFON analyst Marc D'Antonio, "Dark Mission" co-author Mike Bara and physicist John Brandenburg, plus photo lab workers Donna Hare and Ken Johnston).
many of the show's seemingly baffling mysteries can be resolved much more easily, by looking at higher-resolution imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. For example, straight-line tracks that UFO fans might interpret as evidence of massive machines on the moon are more clearly seen as the result of rolling boulders.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/aliens-moon-tv-show-adds-weird...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 8:22am

The plastics in your food:
The next time you ask for a plate of sea food you may have unknowingly ordered plastic as a side dish in it!

According to an alarming study by University of Exeter, tiny plastic particles polluting our seas are entering the bodies of marine creatures through their gills.

These microplastics take over six times longer to leave the body compared to standard digestion.

"About one 10th of the plastic we throw away ends up in the marine environment. In 2013, 11 million tonnes of plastic entered the seas. Wave action, heat and ultra-violet (UV) damage then break it up into microplastic," explained lead researcher Andrew Watts.

The research showed how these microplastics get into the body of the common shore crab, after sticking to hair-like 'setae' structures in the crabs.

"Many studies on microplastics only consider ingestion as a route of uptake into animals. The results we have just published stress other routes such as ventilation," Watts added.

The same could apply for other crustaceans, molluscs and fish - simply any animal which draws water into a gill-like structure to carry out gas exchange, researchers noted.

The longer these plastics are retained within the animal the more the chances are of being passed up the food chain.

"This is a human issue. We have put this plastic there, mostly accidently but it is our problem to solve. The best way to do this is to reduce our dependency on plastic. It comes back to the old phrase: reduce, reuse and recycle," Watts concluded.

The study was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2014 at 7:54am

Food Used to Fatten Animals Could Feed 3 Billion: Study
If all the food used to fatten up cows, chickens and pigs went straight to people instead, it would feed several billion more people than the food does today, according to a new study. "We've taken 10,000 years to get to the point of growing as much food as we are doing now," said Paul West, a food expert at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
''Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment''
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6194/325

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2014 at 5:15am

Aids conference says 100 researchers may have been on flight MH17

Session held ahead of Aids 2014 conference told email exchanges show about 100 attendees booked on flight MH17.
As many as 100 of the world’s leading HIV/Aids researchers and advocates may have been on the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine, in what has been described as a “devastating” blow to efforts to tackle the virus.

Delegates to a plenary session held ahead of the Aids 2014 conference were told that email exchanges showed about 100 attendees were booked on the MH17 flight. The plane was downed in eastern Ukraine by what the US and Australian governments have described as a surface-to-air missile.
“These people were the best and the brightest, the ones who had dedicated their whole careers to fighting this terrible virus. It’s devastating.”
There were some serious HIV leaders on that plane. This will have ramifications globally because whenever you lose a leader in any field, it has an impact. That knowledge is irreplaceable.

"We've lost global leaders and also some bright young people who were coming through. It's a gut-wrenching loss. The scientific community is very sad.
But the community is very close-knit, like a family. They will unite and this will galvanise people to strive harder to find a breakthrough. Let's hope that, out of this madness, there will be new hope for the world.

Losing one expert is tragedy. Losing several of them at a time is the mother of all tragedies. It is sad times for the world of science.

Our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy.

We want to offer our deepest condolences.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2014 at 10:51am

Good News: Scientists find a way to kill Malarial parasites
Scientists may be able to entomb the malaria parasite in a prison of its own making, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report July 16 in Nature. As it invades a red blood cell, the malaria parasite takes part of the host cell's membrane to build a protective compartment. To grow properly, steal nourishment and dump waste, the parasite then starts a series of major renovations that transform the red blood cell into a suitable home.

But the new research reveals the proteins that make these renovations must pass through a single pore in the parasite's compartment to get into the red blood cell. When the scientists disrupted passage through that pore in cell cultures, the parasite stopped growing and died.

A separate study by researchers at the Burnet Institute and Deakin University in Australia, published in the same issue of Nature, also highlights the importance of the pore to the parasite's survival. Researchers believe blocking the pore leaves the parasite fatally imprisoned, unable to steal resources from the red blood cell or dispose of its wastes.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2014 at 10:41am

Staying up late could hurt a woman's fertility
Women who want to become pregnant or are expecting a baby should avoid light during the night, a new report suggests.

Darkness is important for optimum reproductive health in women, and for protecting the developing fetus, said study researcher Russel J. Reiter, a professor of cellular biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
- Live science.com

In a review of studies published online July 1 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Reiter and his colleagues evaluated previously published research, and summarized the role of melatonin levels and circadian rhythms on successful reproduction in females.
Melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain in response to darkness, is important when women are trying to conceive, because it protects their eggs from oxidative stress, Reiter said. Melatonin has strong antioxidant properties that shield the egg from free-radical damage, especially when women ovulate, the findings reveal.

"If women are trying to get pregnant, maintain at least eight hours of a dark period at night," he advised. "The light-dark cycle should be regular from one day to the next; otherwise, a woman's biological clock is confused."
Eight hours of darkness every night is also optimal during pregnancy, and ideally, there should be no interruption of nighttime darkness with light, especially during the last trimester of a pregnancy, Reiter said.

Turning on the light at night suppresses melatonin production in women, and means the fetal brain may not get the proper amount of melatonin to regulate the function of its biological clock, he said.

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