Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 9:30am

Long-acting Shot Prevents Infection with HIV-Like Virus
Periodic injection of an antiviral drug has been found to keep monkeys virus-free and could confer as long as three months of protection in humans
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-acting-shot-prevents...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 9:23am

Red Meat a Ticket to Early Grave, Harvard Says
Harvard scientists have found that daily consumption of red meat — particularly the kind you might like to grill — may significantly increase your risk of premature death.

While this much has long been suspected, perhaps even by you, the Harvard-led study is the first nuanced analysis to calculate the risk that a serving of red meat can have on your longevity compared with other protein sources.

The study measures, for example, how much one could expect to lower their risk of early death by replacing pork and beef with poultry, fish, nuts or beans can lower the risk of early death; they found chicken was at least as healthy an alternative to red meat as beans and whole grains.
http://www.livescience.com/18996-red-meat-premature-death.html

Diet High in Meat Proteins Raises Cancer Risk for Middle-Aged People
For people aged 50 to 65, a high-protein diet increased the risk of cancer fourfold, comparable to the risk associated with smoking

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 9:20am

Oil Pollution is Making Gulf Dolphins Sick
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2014/03/04/oi...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 9:19am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 7:33am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2014 at 7:30am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 5, 2014 at 9:54am

Scientists have confirmed hot headed people with outbursts of anger are more prone to heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular problems in the two hours immediately afterwards.

Five episodes of anger a day would result in around 158 extra heart attacks per 10,000 people with a low cardiovascular risk per year, increasing to about 657 extra heart attacks per 10,000 among those with a high cardiovascular risk.

The Harvard School of Public Health researchers say the risk with a single outburst of anger is relatively low - one extra heart attack per 10,000 people per year could be expected among people with low cardiovascular risk who were angry only once a month, increasing to an extra four per 10,000 people with a high cardiovascular risk.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 5, 2014 at 9:49am

The pollution in the sea is taking a heavy toll on the marine life along the coast. Latest in the series of tragedies is death of the 14-foot-long dolphin that choked to death after swallowing plastic.

Prakruti Nature Club's Jignesh Gohil, who was present in the rescue attempt, said, "During the postmortem we found that the dolphin, which was about 20 years old, had died because of chocking. In autopsy, we found four thick plastic bags.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/wild-wacky/Dolp...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 5, 2014 at 9:44am

Immune cells undergo ‘spontaneous’ changes on a daily basis that could lead to cancers if they were not destroyed by our immune system, scientists have found.
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.3442.html
The research team in Australia found that the immune system was responsible for eliminating potentially cancerous immune B cells in their early stages, before they developed into B-cell lymphomas (also known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas).

This immune surveillance accounts for the surprising rarity of B-cell lymphomas in the population, given how often these spontaneous changes occur. The discovery could lead to the development of an early-warning test that identifies patients at high risk of developing B-cell lymphomas, enabling proactive treatment to prevent tumors from growing.

Dr Axel Kallies, the senior author of the study, said the discovery provided an answer to why B-cell lymphomas occur in the population less frequently than expected. “Each and every one of us has spontaneous mutations in our immune B cells that occur as a result of their normal function,” Dr Kallies said.

“It is then somewhat of a paradox that B cell lymphoma is not more common in the population.”

“Our finding that immune surveillance by T cells enables early detection and elimination of these cancerous and pre-cancerous cells provides an answer to this puzzle, and proves that immune surveillance is essential to preventing the development of this blood cancer.”

The research team made the discovery while investigating how B cells change when lymphoma develops.

“As part of the research, we ‘disabled’ the T cells to suppress the immune system and, to our surprise, found that lymphoma developed in a matter of weeks, where it would normally take years,” Dr Kallies said.

“It seems that our immune system is better equipped than we imagined to identify and eliminate cancerous B cells, a process that is driven by the immune T cells in our body.”

According to the scientists, the research would enable scientists to identify pre-cancerous cells in the initial stages of their development, allowing early intervention for patients at risk of developing B-cell lymphoma.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 5, 2014 at 7:33am

Jurassic park all over again?

Giant Virus Resurrected from 30,000-Year-Old Ice

The discovery of the largest virus yet, still infectious, hints at the viral diversity trapped in permafrost

scientists have revived a giant virus that was buried in Siberian ice for 30,000 years — and it is still infectious. Its targets, fortunately, are amoebae, but the researchers suggest that as Earth's ice melts, this could trigger the return of other ancient viruses, with potential risks for human health.

The newly thawed virus is the biggest one ever found. At 1.5 micrometers long, it is comparable in size to a small bacterium. Evolutionary biologists Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, the husband-and-wife team at Aix-Marseille University in France who led the work, named it Pithovirus sibericum, inspired by the Greek word 'pithos' for the large container used by the ancient Greeks to store wine and food. “We’re French, so we had to put wine in the story,” says Claverie. The results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Abstract: The largest known DNA viruses infect Acanthamoeba and belong to two markedly different families. The Megaviridae exhibit pseudo-icosahedral virions up to 0.7 μm in diameter and adenine–thymine (AT)-rich genomes of up to 1.25 Mb encoding a thousand proteins. Like their Mimivirus prototype discovered 10 y ago, they entirely replicate within cytoplasmic virion factories. In contrast, the recently discovered Pandoraviruses exhibit larger amphora-shaped virions 1 μm in length and guanine–cytosine-rich genomes up to 2.8 Mb long encoding up to 2,500 proteins. Their replication involves the host nucleus. Whereas the Megaviridae share some general features with the previously described icosahedral large DNA viruses, the Pandoraviruses appear unrelated to them. Here we report the discovery of a third type of giant virus combining an even larger pandoravirus-like particle 1.5 μm in length with a surprisingly smaller 600 kb AT-rich genome, a gene content more similar to Iridoviruses and Marseillevirus, and a fully cytoplasmic replication reminiscent of the Megaviridae. This suggests that pandoravirus-like particles may be associated with a variety of virus families more diverse than previously envisioned. This giant virus, named Pithovirus sibericum, was isolated from a >30,000-y-old radiocarbon-dated sample when we initiated a survey of the virome of Siberian permafrost. The revival of such an ancestral amoeba-infecting virus used as a safe indicator of the possible presence of pathogenic DNA viruses, suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/02/26/1320670111

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 914
• 915
• 916
• 917
• 918
• …
• 993
• Next ›
• Page