Science Simplified!

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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

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 14, 2014 at 8:13am

Earth's mantle holds an ocean's worth of water. Scientists have found the first terrestrial sample of a water-rich gem which suggests that large volumes of water exist deep beneath the Earth.

An international team of scientists led by Graham Pearson, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Resources at the University of Alberta, has discovered the first-ever sample of a mineral called 'ringwoodite'. Analysis of the mineral shows it contains a significant amount of water — 1.5% of its weight — a finding that confirms scientific theories about vast volumes of water trapped 410 to 660 kilometres beneath the Earth, between the upper and lower mantle.

"This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth in this area," said Pearson, a professor in the faculty of science. "That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world's oceans put together," Pearson said.

Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone.

Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists have not been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths. Pearson's sample was found in 2008 in the Juina area of Mato Grosso, Brazil, where artisan miners unearthed the host diamond from shallow river gravels.

The diamond had been brought to the Earth's surface by a volcanic rock known as kimberlite — the most deeply derived of all volcanic rocks. Pearson said the discovery was almost accidental in that his team had been looking for another mineral when they found a three-millimetre-wide, dirty-looking, commercially worthless brown diamond.

- News Agencies

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 9:24am

Zombie virus discovered
After lying dormant in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years, the largest virus ever discovered is just as deadly as it was when mammoths roamed the Earth.
The virus targets amoebas rather than humans. But thawing, drilling and mining of ancient permafrost could potentially unleash viruses that infect people, say the scientists who discovered the giant virus.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 9:21am

Spontaneous fluctuations in neural responses to heartbeats predict visual detection
Each heartbeat creates a blip of neural activity in the brain, and that blip may help people better sense their world.

People were more likely to spot a flash of a hard-to-see ring when the image was presented right after a heartbeat, researchers report March 9 in Nature Neuroscience. The neural jolt produced by a heartbeat primes the brain to better detect the ring.

The results are an example of how bodily functions can have a big effect on the brain.
Spontaneous fluctuations of ongoing neural activity substantially affect sensory and cognitive performance. Because bodily signals are constantly relayed up to the neocortex, neural responses to bodily signals are likely to shape ongoing activity.
Using magnetoencephalography, scientists show that in humans, neural events locked to heartbeats before stimulus onset predict the detection of a faint visual grating in the posterior right inferior parietal lobule and the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, two regions that have multiple functional correlates and that belong to the same resting-state network. Neither fluctuations in measured bodily parameters nor overall cortical excitability could account for this finding. Neural events locked to heartbeats therefore shape visual conscious experience, potentially by contributing to the neural maps of the organism that might underlie subjectivity. Beyond conscious vision, the results show that neural events locked to a basic physiological input such as heartbeats underlie behaviorally relevant differential activation in multifunctional cortical areas.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3671.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 9:01am

Global Biogeochemical Cycles
In a study of the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle, Siegel and his colleagues used nuggets to their advantage. They incorporated the lifecycle of phytoplankton and zooplankton — small, often microscopic animals at the bottom of the food chain —into a novel mechanistic model for assessing the global ocean carbon export. Their findings appear online in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-9224

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 8:58am

It only takes a quick jolt of electricity to get a swarm of cells moving in the right direction. Researchers at UC Berkeley found that an electrical current can be used to orchestrate the flow of a group of cells, an achievement that could establish the basis for more controlled forms of tissue engineering and for potential applications such as "smart bandages" that use electrical stimulation to help heal wounds.
Scientists 'herd' cells in new approach to tissue engineering
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/03/12/scientists.herd.cells.n...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 6:56am

Vaccination keeps children from hospitals
Flu Vaccine Keeps Connecticut Kids from Hospitals - study
After flu shot regulations upped Connecticut kids' vaccination rate, their hospitalization risk went down.
Impact of Requiring Influenza Vaccination for Children in Licensed Child Care or Preschool Programs — Connecticut, 2012–13 Influenza Season
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6309a1.htm?s_cid=mm6309a1_e

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 13, 2014 at 6:29am

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 12, 2014 at 10:28am

Even as conservation efforts at various levels continue to show hope for the future, the latest International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN) Red List of Birds (2013) shows that fifteen bird species in India continue to be critically endangered (CR).

Moreover, three other bird species now face greater danger than before. These species have been uplisted to Near Threatened (NT) and Vulnerable (VU) categories. Earlier they were better off and classified under Least Concern (LC) category. In India, organizations such as BNHS-India play a crucial role in researching and collating such information, as the BirdLife International (UK) country partner.

The species falling under the Critically Endangered category in India include migratory wetland species: Baer's Pochard, Siberian Crane and Spoon-billed Sandpiper; non-migratory wetland species: White-bellied Heron; grassland species: Bengal Florican, Great Indian Bustard, Jerdon's Courser and Sociable Lapwing; forest species: Forest Owlet and scavengers: Indian Vulture, Red-headed Vulture, White-backed Vulture and Slender-billed Vulture. Himalayan Quail and Pink-headed Duck are now considered Extinct for all practical purposes.

15 bird species in India critically endangered
-TNN

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 12, 2014 at 10:17am

Pathologies of hyperfamiliarity in dreams, delusions and déjà vu

Research from the University of Adelaide has delved into the reasons why some people are unable to break free of their delusions, despite overwhelming evidence explaining the delusion isn’t real.

In a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, University of Adelaide philosopher Professor Philip Gerrans says dreams and delusions have a common link – they are associated with faulty “reality testing” in the brain’s higher order cognitive systems.

‘Reality testing’ is the ability to challenge and revise thoughts prompted by anomalous experiences, and depends on activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal circuitry.
In someone who has problems with reality testing, that story might persist and may even be elaborated and translated into action. Such people can experience immense mental health difficulties, even to the point of becoming a threat to themselves or to others.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00097/full

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