Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 1, 2013 at 5:23am

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352880/title/News_in_Bri...
News in Brief: Don't stand so close to me
Personal space has a measurable boundary

People have a sharp no-fly zone around their faces. Though its boundaries depend on the person, this discomfort zone usually starts between 20 and 40 centimeters away and continues right up to the face, researchers report August 28 in the Journal of Neuroscience. Threatening objects that enter this forbidden space are likely to trigger a strong defensive reaction. Scientists knew that this safety margin exists, but its boundaries hadn’t been measured.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 31, 2013 at 7:03am

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7464/full/nature12506.html Richness of human gut microbiome correlates with metabolic markers We are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic. Here we report the human gut microbial composition in a population sample of 123 non-obese and 169 obese Danish individuals. We find two groups of individuals that differ by the number of gut microbial genes and thus gut bacterial richness. They contain known and previously unknown bacterial species at different proportions; individuals with a low bacterial richness (23% of the population) are characterized by more marked overall adiposity, insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia and a more pronounced inflammatory phenotype when compared with high bacterial richness individuals. The obese individuals among the lower bacterial richness group also gain more weight over time. Only a few bacterial species are sufficient to distinguish between individuals with high and low bacterial richness, and even between lean and obese participants. Our classifications based on variation in the gut microbiome identify subsets of individuals in the general white adult population who may be at increased risk of progressing to adiposity-associated co-morbidities.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=staying-he...
Staying Healthy Takes Guts Full of Microbes

People whose intestines have smaller and less diverse bacterial populations are more prone to obesity and gut inflammation.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 31, 2013 at 5:56am

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352859/description/Pover...
Poverty may tax thinking abilities
But sudden windfalls improve poor people's mental fortunes

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 30, 2013 at 6:18am

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/0...
Turning the tables on obesity and BMI: When more can be better.

while obese and unhealthy people suffer from the highest mortality, people with normal BMI can also be quite unhealthy and be near the upper or mid range of the mortality scale. Conversely, an obese person can be metabolically healthy. So why is this? The short answer is that for high-BMI individuals, the right fat in the right location might provide some benefits, like soaking up toxins or being a source of energy. In case of people with normal BMI it gets even more interesting; they often suffer from a poor nutritional and metabolic status in spite of their favorable BMI profile, and this can lead to worse mortality and health.

To me, the practice of boiling down something as complicated as health or mortality to a single number like the BMI says a lot about the human desire to simplify and to use what’s readily available rather than what’s important. The belief again reminds you of the drunkard and his keys; BMI is readily measurable and it’s what we know, so why not use it? The truth is of course more convoluted. True metrics of mortality will have to take into account not just variables like fat distribution but – as the graphic illustrates – other biochemical and physiological indicators like insulin sensitivity and inflammation. It’s very much a holistic approach, something that medicine is increasingly appreciating in both diagnosis and treatment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 30, 2013 at 6:14am

http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/solving-the-mysteries-of-hiatus-in-glo...
Solving the Mysteries of Hiatus in Global Warming
Is the Pacific Ocean Responsible for a Pause in Global Warming?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pacific-ocean-and-...
Sea-surface temperatures may explain why climate change is not warming the planet as fast
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.short
Plus, a decline in stratospheric water vapor over the last decade or so can explain 25% of the stall in global temperature rise:

"Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% as compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change."

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 30, 2013 at 6:10am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 30, 2013 at 5:14am

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352799/description/News_...
News in Brief: Flu antibodies can make disease worse
Pigs vaccinated against one influenza virus got lung damage if infected with another strain
Some antibodies to flu viruses may actually make patients sicker, a new study of pigs suggests.

The finding, published August 28 in Science Translational Medicine, may point to problems with catchall influenza vaccines.

Pigs vaccinated against a seasonal strain of influenza made antibodies to that strain. Some of the antibodies could also latch on to a different flu virus that caused a pandemic among humans in 2009, report scientists led by Hana Golding of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in Bethesda, Md., and Amy Vincent of the Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa.

Instead of protecting the pigs against the 2009 pandemic flu, the broad-range antibodies actually helped the virus invade lung cells, causing pneumonia and lung damage.

Scientists hoping to create a universal flu vaccine need to learn how the pigs’ antibodies and viruses interacted to make the disease worse, James Crowe Jr. of Vanderbilt University writes in a commentary in the same issue of the journal.

And vaccines aren't the only problem, Crowe says. Natural infections may provoke similar disease-worsening problems.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 30, 2013 at 5:12am

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352830/description/Tiny_...
Tiny human almost-brains made in lab
Stem cells arrange themselves into a version of the most complex human organ
Largely left to their own devices, human stem cells knitted themselves into tissue with a multitude of brain structures and specialized cadres of neurons in a form reminiscent of the brain of a nine-week-old fetus, scientists report August 28 in Nature.

The tissue doesn’t approach the dizzying complexity of the human brain. Yet these tiny neural balls, each no bigger than a BB pellet, represent the most complex brain structure grown in a lab to date, researchers say. The new work could provide an unprecedented window into the early stages of human brain development, a simple way to test pharmaceuticals on human brain tissue and a way to study the brain defects of individual patients, the study authors suggest.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 29, 2013 at 8:51am

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/science-or-just-c...
Science or just common sense?

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 29, 2013 at 7:12am

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....
Are All Placebo Effects Equal? Placebo Pills, Sham Acupuncture, Cue Conditioning and Their Association

Jian Kong mail, Rosa Spaeth, Amanda Cook, Irving Kirsch, Brian Claggett, Mark Vangel, Randy L. Gollub, Jordan W. Smoller, Ted J. Kaptchuk
Abstract

Placebo treatments and healing rituals have been used to treat pain throughout history. The present within-subject crossover study examines the variability in individual responses to placebo treatment with verbal suggestion and visual cue conditioning by investigating whether responses to different types of placebo treatment, as well as conditioning responses, correlate with one another. Secondarily, this study also examines whether responses to sham acupuncture correlate with responses to genuine acupuncture. Healthy subjects were recruited to participate in two sequential experiments. Experiment one is a five-session crossover study. In each session, subjects received one of four treatments: placebo pills (described as Tylenol), sham acupuncture, genuine acupuncture, or no treatment rest control condition. Before and after each treatment, paired with a verbal suggestion of positive effect, each subject's pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain ratings to calibrated heat pain were measured. At least 14 days after completing experiment one, all subjects were invited to participate in experiment two, during which their analgesic responses to conditioned visual cues were tested. Forty-eight healthy subjects completed experiment one, and 45 completed experiment two. The results showed significantly different effects of genuine acupuncture, placebo pill and rest control on pain threshold. There was no significant association between placebo pills, sham acupuncture and cue conditioning effects, indicating that individuals may respond to unique healing rituals in different ways. This outcome suggests that placebo response may be a complex behavioral phenomenon that has properties that comprise a state, rather than a trait characteristic. This could explain the difficulty of detecting a signature for “placebo responders.” However, a significant association was found between the genuine and sham acupuncture treatments, implying that the non-specific effects of acupuncture may contribute to the analgesic effect observed in genuine acupuncture analgesia.

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