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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2021 at 11:39am

To prevent next pandemic, scientists say we must regulate air like ...

To prevent next pandemic, scientists say we must regulate air like food and water

Humans in the 21st century spend most of their time indoors, but the air we breathe inside buildings is not regulated to the same degree as the food we eat and the water we drink. A group of 39 researchers from 14 countries say that needs to change to reduce disease transmission and prevent the next pandemic. In a Perspectives piece published in Science on May 14, they call for a paradigm shift in combating airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, demanding universal recognition that respiratory infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. Air can contain viruses just as water and surfaces do. We need to understand that it's a problem and that we need to have, in our toolkit, approaches to mitigating risk and reducing the possible exposures that could happen from build-up of viruses in indoor air.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/689

https://researchnews.cc/news/6872/To-prevent-next-pandemic--scienti...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2021 at 11:05am

High-resolution simulation of how stars are born

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2021 at 11:04am

Beating Cardioid: This Beating Sesame Seed-Sized 'Human Heart' Grew Itself in a Lab

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2021 at 10:25am

No Need to Buy an Oximeter Anymore? This Mobile App Monitors Blood Oxygen, Pulse Rate

The new app called CarePlix Vital's can monitor your blood oxygen level, pulse, and respiration rates.

With India reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic since last year, oximeters have become an important item for households, especially since the severe second wave. However, with an increase in demand for the vital health device, prices of pulse oximeters have been hiked by manufacturers. A good pulse oximeter can easily cost around Rs 2,000 these days.

To replace the oximeter, a Kolkata-based health startup has developed a mobile app. The new app called CarePlix Vital's can monitor your blood oxygen level, pulse, and respiration rates.

According to a report in Technology News, Latest Technology News, Gadgets News | BGR India, all one needs to do to use the mobile app is place a finger on their smartphone's rear camera and flashlight and within seconds, the oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse and respiration rates are displayed on the device.

The underlying technology in all of this is photoplethysmography or PPG

We are achieving this through our smartphone's rear camera and flashlight. If you see the wearables and oximeters have infrared light sensors in them but for the phone, we just have the flashlight. Once we cover the rear camera and flashlight with the finger and start the scan for around 40 seconds, we are doing nothing but calculating the difference of light intensity and based on the difference we plot the PPG graph. From the graph, the SpO2 and pulse rate is derived," the co-founder said.

The CarePlix Vital's app is a registration-based application. It is said that the "application's AI helps in determining the strength of finger placement, that is, the stronger the finger placement, more accurate readings."

Source: https://www.india.com/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 23, 2021 at 12:19pm

Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof.

One of the simplest forms of animal life, the tiny aquatic organism called the hydra, has been shown to spend some time every few hours asleep — a fact that deepens the mystery of why sleep evolved in the first place.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleep-evolved-before-brains-hydras-a...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 23, 2021 at 10:48am

banana Eel

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 22, 2021 at 11:16am

First-of-its-kind flower smells like dead insects to imprison 'coffin flies'

The plant Aristolochia microstoma uses a unique trick: its flowers emit a fetid-musty scent that seems to mimic the smell of decomposing insects. Flies from the genus Megaselia (family Phoridae) likely get attracted to this smell while searching for insect corpses to mate over and lay their eggs in. When they enter a flower, they are imprisoned and first pollinate the female organs, before being covered with pollen by the male organs. The flower then releases them unharmed.

The flowers of A. microstoma emit an unusual mix of volatiles that includes alkylpyrazines, which are otherwise rarely produced by flowering plants. Our results suggest that this is the first known case of a flower that tricks pollinators by smelling like dead and rotting insects rather than vertebrate carrion.

Thomas Rupp et al, Flowers of Deceptive Aristolochia microstoma Are Pollinated by Phorid Flies and Emit Volatiles Known From Invertebrate Carrion, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.658441

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-first-of-its-kind-dead-insects-impris...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 22, 2021 at 11:09am

Using CRISPR to lower cholesterol levels in monkeys

A team of researchers from Verve Therapeutics and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a CRISPR gene-editing technique that lowered the levels of cholesterol in the blood of test monkeys. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe their technique.

Prior research has shown that in some people, the PCSK9 gene codes excess PCSK9 protein production (which occurs mostly in the liver)—leading to an increase in lipoprotein cholesterol levels in the bloodstream. This is because it interferes with blood cells with LDL receptors that "grab" LDL and remove it. For this reason, pharmaceutical companies have developed therapies that reduce the production of PCSK9 protein. However, most do not work well enough, which is why there is still so much atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In this new effort, the researchers have tried another approach—altering the PCSK9 gene to make it stop coding for PCSK9 protein production.

The approach involved using a base editing technology made up of messenger RNA encoding for an adenine base editor along with guided RNA that was packaged in a lipid nanoparticle. Notably, the base editing technique was able to substitute a single nucleotide with another in the DNA without cutting the double helix. Prior research has shown the technique to be more precise, which means fewer errors than other CRISPR techniques. In their work, the researchers replaced an adenine with a guanine and a thymine with a cytosine, completely incapacitating the gene. Implementation of the therapy involved a one-time injection into the liver of cynomolgus monkeys.

After injection, the researchers tested the monkeys' cholesterol levels regularly. The researchers found that after just one week, levels of the PCSK9 protein had fallen by approximately 90% and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels were down by approximately 60%. They also found that both percentages held up for at least 10 months.

The researchers suggest their strong results show that the technique is ready for testing in humans, though there is still hesitation by medical authorities on approving such work due to the inability to reverse the process should unintended effects occur.

Kiran Musunuru et al, In vivo CRISPR base editing of PCSK9 durably lowers cholesterol in primates, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03534-y

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-crispr-cholesterol-monkeys.html?utm_s...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 22, 2021 at 10:59am

Water treatment: Removing hormones with sunlight

Organic pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and hormones, even at nanoscale concentrations, contaminate drinking water in a way that poses significant risks to humans, animals and the environment. In particular, the steroid hormones estrone, estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone can cause biological damage in humans and wildlife. The European Union has therefore set strict minimum quality standards for safe and clean drinking water, which must also be taken into account in the development of new technologies for water treatment.

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Biodiversity devastation: Human-driven decline requires millions of...

A new study shows that the current rate of biodiversity decline in freshwater ecosystems outcompetes that at the end-Cretaceous extinction that killed the dinosaurs: damage now being done in decades to centuries may take millions of years to undo.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 22, 2021 at 10:36am

Scientists reveal structural details of how SARS-CoV-2 variants escape immune response

Fast-spreading variants of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, carry mutations that enable the virus to escape some of the immune response created naturally or by vaccination. A new study by scientists  has revealed key details of how these escape mutations work.

used structural biology techniques to map at high resolution how important classes of neutralizing antibodies bind to the original pandemic strain of SARS-CoV-2—and how the process is disrupted by mutations found in new variants first detected in Brazil, the United Kingdom, South Africa and India.

The research also highlights that several of these mutations are clustered in one site, known as the "receptor binding site," on the spike protein of the virus. Other sites on the receptor binding domain are unaffected.

An implication of this study is that, in designing next-generation vaccines and antibody therapies, we should consider increasing the focus on other vulnerable sites on the virus that tend not to be affected by the mutations found in variants of concern.

Structural and functional ramifications of antigenic drift in recent SARS-CoV-2 variants, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abh1139 , science.sciencemag.org/content … 5/19/science.abh1139

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-scientists-reveal-sars-cov-v...

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