Depression increases heart failure risk by 40 percent
Moderate to severe depression increases the risk of heart failure by 40%, a study of nearly 63,000 Norwegians has shown. The findings were presented for the first time today at EuroHeartCare 2014.
"We found a dose response relationship between depressive symptoms and the risk of developing heart failure. That means that the more depressed you feel, the more you are at risk."
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/05/depression.increases.he...

Science does educational theatre with a bang
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26884833

Eco-friendly cement by recycling old ones
Discarded toilets, along with other ceramic waste such as basins, stoneware and bricks, can be recycled into an eco-friendly form of cement, scientists say.

The method involves grinding the ceramic waste and mixing it with an activator solution and water. The mixture is then poured into a mould and subjected to a high-temperature hardening process. Researchers conducted tests with items made from red-clay brick waste and found the cement was actually stronger than types that are currently in common use, 'Gizmag' reported. They are still evaluating the strength of cement made with other forms of ceramic waste.

Currently, researchers are using sodium hydroxide or sodium silicate as activators. The researchers, from Spain's Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and Universitat Jaume I de Castellon, Imperial College of London, and the Universidade Estadual Paulista of Sao Paulo in Brazil Spain, the UK and Brazil, are looking into using rice husk ash as an activator. If it could be used, the result would be a cement made entirely from waste materials. The eco-friendly cement could be used as an alternative to Portland cement, which is the world's most widely used form of cement, they said. Production of Portland cement releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, and the material is considered a major contributor to global warming.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Eco-friendly-cement...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Cell Reports and presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Conference 2014 shows that the cellular process of autophagy in which cells "eat" parts of themselves in times of stress may allow cancer cells to recover and divide rather than die when faced with chemotherapies. Autophagy, from the Greek "to eat oneself," is a process of cellular recycling in which cell organelles called autophagosomes encapsulate extra or dangerous material and transport it to the cell's lysosomes for disposable. Like tearing apart a Lego kit, autophagy breaks down unneeded cellular components into building blocks of energy or proteins for use in surviving times of low energy or staying safe from poisons and pathogens (among other uses).

Zombie cancer cells eat themselves to live
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/06/zombie.cancer.cells.eat...

Segue 1: An Unevolved Fossil Galaxy from the Early Universe
Fossil Galaxy May Be One of First Ever Formed
The stars in the nearby Segue 1 dwarf galaxy have fewer metals than any other galaxy known, suggesting the object is a relic from the baby universe
http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6116

How Can Cities Protect Themselves against Gas Explosions?
Leaks are surprisingly common in aging urban underground pipe networks
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-cities-protect-th...

Seeing Stars: Matthew Effects and Status Bias in Major League Baseball Umpiring
Now research reveals that even top-notch umps are subject to decision-making bias, often in a game’s most important moments.
A team of Northwestern and Columbia university researchers analyzed more than 700,000 pitches thrown during the 2008 and 2009 seasons. They found that umpires called about 14 percent of nonswinging pitches wrong. And umps were least accurate when the game was on the line in the ninth inning and when calling a strike would end an at-bat. They also tended to favor All-Star pitchers, especially those with a reputation for good control.

Of course, there’s no way to know how challenging a handful of the hundreds of pitches thrown in any given game would affect the outcome. And you might create a different umpire bias—against managers who demand too many replays.
http://www.jerry-kim.net/2014/03/24/seeing-stars-matthew-effects-an...

Social stress takes a toll on chromosomes, affects aging
Humans experiencing high levels of social stress and deprivation have shorter telomeres.

Telomeres are the protective caps at the end of chromosomes which are the best indicators of biological age (cell age) as against chronological age.

Scientists say the length of telomeres is crucial in deciding biological age - long ones indicate healthy ageing, short ones indicate some form of irreparable damage.

Several studies suggest that telomere shortening is accelerated by stress but until now no studies examined the effects of social isolation on telomere shortening.

To test whether social isolation accelerates telomere shortening, Denise Aydinonat, a doctorate student at the Vetmeduni Vienna conducted a study using DNA samples that she collected from African grey parrots during routine check-ups.

African greys are highly social birds, but they are often reared and kept in isolation from other parrots. She and her collaborators compared the telomere lengths of single birds versus pair-housed individuals with a broad range of ages (from 1 to 45 years).

The telomere lengths of older birds were shorter compared to younger birds, regardless of their housing.

But the important finding of the study was that single-housed birds had shorter telomeres than pair-housed individuals of the same age group.

Dustin Penn from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the Vetmeduni Vienna said, "This study is the first to examine the effects of social isolation on telomere length in any species."

Penn and his team previously conducted experiments on mice which were the first to show that exposure to crowding stress causes telomere shortening. He points out that this new finding suggests that both extremes of social conditions affect telomere attrition.

There is extensive scientific evidence showing the strong correlation between the percentage of short telomeres and the risk of developing diseases associated with ageing, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's.

In turn, lifestyle habits (nutrition, obesity and exercise) are increasingly being shown to impact telomere length.

Telomeres shorten with each cell division, and once a critical length is reached, cells are unable to divide further. Although cellular senescence is a useful mechanism to eliminate worn-out cells, it appears to contribute to aging and mortality.

Loneliness Impacts DNA Repair
Social stress takes a toll on chromosomes, affects aging
Humans experiencing high levels of social stress and deprivation have shorter telomeres.

Telomeres are the protective caps at the end of chromosomes which are the best indicators of biological age (cell age) as against chronological age.

Scientists say the length of telomeres is crucial in deciding biological age - long ones indicate healthy ageing, short ones indicate some form of irreparable damage.

Several studies suggest that telomere shortening is accelerated by stress but until now no studies examined the effects of social isolation on telomere shortening.

To test whether social isolation accelerates telomere shortening, Denise Aydinonat, a doctorate student at the Vetmeduni Vienna conducted a study using DNA samples that she collected from African grey parrots during routine check-ups.

African greys are highly social birds, but they are often reared and kept in isolation from other parrots. She and her collaborators compared the telomere lengths of single birds versus pair-housed individuals with a broad range of ages (from 1 to 45 years).

The telomere lengths of older birds were shorter compared to younger birds, regardless of their housing.

But the important finding of the study was that single-housed birds had shorter telomeres than pair-housed individuals of the same age group.

Dustin Penn from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the Vetmeduni Vienna said, "This study is the first to examine the effects of social isolation on telomere length in any species."

Penn and his team previously conducted experiments on mice which were the first to show that exposure to crowding stress causes telomere shortening. He points out that this new finding suggests that both extremes of social conditions affect telomere attrition.

There is extensive scientific evidence showing the strong correlation between the percentage of short telomeres and the risk of developing diseases associated with ageing, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's.

In turn, lifestyle habits (nutrition, obesity and exercise) are increasingly being shown to impact telomere length.

Telomeres shorten with each cell division, and once a critical length is reached, cells are unable to divide further. Although cellular senescence is a useful mechanism to eliminate worn-out cells, it appears to contribute to aging and mortality.
http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/

Science Writing: An Examination into Sourcing Habits
A research study that looks at where science writers get their information from, and why they choose these sources over others.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=121217&type=mem...
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/25GF795

Absence (of Weight) Makes the Heart Grow Rounder
After prolonged periods in microgravity, astronauts' hearts became more spherical, according to scans done on the International Space Station.
When astronauts float weightless in space, their muscles don't need to work as hard as on Earth. Muscles therefore atrophy during a long mission, which can cause trouble when space travelers return home. But what happens to that most vital of muscles, the heart?

To find out, 12 astronauts learned how to do ultrasound scans of their hearts. Then they recorded the organ's shape before, during and after a stint on the International Space Station. The scans showed that while in microgravity the astronauts' hearts deformed into more spherical shapes. Back on Earth, they stretched back into their usual elongated forms. The work was presented at the annual scientific session of the American College of Cardiology. [Chris May et al, Affect of Microgravity on Cardiac Shape: Comparison of Pre- and In-Flight Data to Mathematical Modeling]

Knowing how weightlessness changes the heart could help mission planners prevent long-term damage to astronauts’ cardiovascular systems due to long space voyages. Astronauts on the space station already perform specific exercises to keep their weight-bearing muscles toned. Similarly well-designed workouts might keep hearts both in shape—and in the right shape.
http://www.scientificamerican.com

After more than six decades, estimates of global species richness have failed to converge, remain highly uncertain, and in many cases, are logically inconsistent. Convergence in these estimates could be accelerated by adaptive learning methods where the estimation of uncertainty is prioritised and used to guide future research.
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347%28...

Link between pesticides and Parkinson disease:
Aldehyde dehydrogenase variation enhances effect of pesticides associated with Parkinson disease

http://www.neurology.org/content/82/5/419.abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parkinsons-disease-and-pe...

Stress alters children's genomes

Poverty and unstable family environments shorten chromosome-protecting telomeres in nine-year-olds.
Growing up in a stressful social environment leaves lasting marks on young chromosomes, a study of African American boys has revealed. Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of chromosomes from fraying over time, are shorter in children from poor and unstable homes than in children from more nurturing families.
http://www.nature.com/news/stress-alters-children-s-genomes-1.14997

A study found that up to half of 2 year olds were picky eaters. Food choosiness isn’t just a way for a kid to drive a parent mad. Pickiness actually makes sense: When kids are bombarded with new and unusual foods, sticking with safe, familiar choices is a good way to avoid eating something dangerous.
''Prevalence of picky eaters among infants and toddlers and their caregivers’ decisions about offering a new food''
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0...
Taste preferences start in the womb. Fetuses slurp up amniotic fluid, seasoned with whatever mom just ate. (You’re welcome for the seasoned amniotic fluid imagery.) These flavors, such as carrots or garlic, tap into the fetus’s taste system, which begins to form in the first trimester. The more exposure to a certain taste, the more a baby is to eventually like it. Babies whose mothers drank a lot of carrot juice while pregnant and breastfeeding preferred carrot-flavored cereal, for instance.
Familiarity breeds yum, in this case. And I was amazed when I saw just what familiarity means to young kids. Some recent work suggests that to get kids used to a certain flavor, that food should be offered and tasted anywhere from six to 14 times. That’s a whole lot of tasting. And lots of parents don’t have that kind of patience. Most parents reported giving their kids a new food three to five times before giving up. Only 6 to 9 percent of parents kept offering a new food six to 10 times.

This kind of intense exposure can transform a reviled food into a familiar one, making the kid more likely to eat it. One study had parents give their child a tiny taste of one of six raw vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, green peppers or red peppers) every day for 14 days. After this intense tasting exposure, kids were more likely to eat the veggie, the researchers found.

''If your kid hates broccoli, try, try again
Repeated exposure to foods may be the antidote to picky eating''
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/if-your-kid-hates-bro...

A speedy particle from beyond the solar system is the new record holder for the highest-energy neutrino ever detected, researchers from the IceCube experiment announced April 7 at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

Buried under an Antarctic glacier, IceCube consists of thousands of detectors looking for flashes of light triggered when neutrinos, particles that barely interact with anything as they cruise the cosmos, collide with the ice. Incorporating a year’s worth of new data, researchers announced that IceCube detected nine additional high-energy neutrinos for a total of 37.

One of the nine neutrinos struck the ice with a record 2 million billion electron volts of energy. Continuing the tradition of naming neutrinos after Muppets, the scientists named it Big Bird.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/meet-big-bird-highe...

Hand Soap Ingredient Can Up Body Bacteria Burden
Residues of the antimicrobial agent triclosan can paradoxically boost bacterial growth in our bodies, by giving microbes a comfortable biofilm in which to rest.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/triclosan-biofilm...

An interdisciplinary research team of researchers has designed ultra-fast electrical circuits using quantum tunneling.
Quantum Tunneling Speeds Up Circuits
- http://www.nus.edu.sg/

Scientists in Taiwan has uncovered how a viral DNA polymerase breaks the golden Watson-Crick rule.
Replication of DNA occurs in all living organisms and forms the basis of biological inheritance. DNA is formed and replicated through the pairing of the four nucleotides, adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G) in a specific pattern: A pairs with T and C pairs with G. This is known as the Watson-Crick base-pairing rule. The synthesis of new strands of DNA is facilitated by enzymes called DNA polymerases.

Scientists have long been fascinated by the fidelity of the DNA polymerase reaction — the way in which the pairing rule is invariably followed. However, in recent years scientists have discovered polymerases that do not follow the Watson-Crick rule, and have sought explanations for how these enzymes function.

Recently published in the chemistry periodical Journal of American Chemistry, Tsai’s research investigated a DNA polymerase from the African swine fever virus named Pol X. Pol X is unusual because it can get G to pair with itself, on top of following the Watson-Crick rule.
In conventional DNA polymerization, the enzyme firsts binds to the DNA, and only subsequently the free nucleotides. This allows the DNA sequence to determine which nucleotide binds, restricting the binding to nucleotides complementary to the DNA template. The team found, however, that Pol X is able to bind nucleotides in the absence of DNA.

“Kinetic studies suggested that Pol X does not follow the established mechanistic paradigm that DNA polymerases bind DNA before binding to a nucleotide,” Tsai explained.

The results demonstrate the first solution structural view of DNA polymerase catalysis and a novel mechanism for non-Watson-Crick incorporation by a low-fidelity DNA polymerase.
''How a Low-Fidelity DNA Polymerase Chooses Non-Watson–Crick from Watson–Crick Incorporation''
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja4102375

Researchers have found that inflammation of the nervous system is higher in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) than in healthy people.

The study, published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, suggests that using positron emission tomography (PET) scans to detect brain inflammation could be an objective diagnostic test for CFS.
''Toward a clearer diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome''
http://www.riken.jp/en/pr/press/2014/20140404_1/

Scientists have found that drinking water can activate different areas of the brain, depending on whether the subject is thirsty or satiated.

Brains Know When To Stop Drinking Water
Our brains are hardwired to stop us from drinking more water than is healthy, according to a new brain imaging study led by The University Of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Australia.

The study found a ‘stop mechanism’ that controlled the brain signals telling an individual to stop drinking water when no longer thirsty, as well as the effects of drinking more water than required on the brain.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research used magnetic resonance imaging to scan two physiological conditions of the brain, starting with scanning brain regions during the experience of thirst. Participants were then removed from the scanner and asked to drink to satiation or ‘overdrink’ and returned for further scanning.

Different areas of the brain involved in emotional decision-making were activated when people drank water after becoming thirsty and when study participants followed instructions to keep drinking when no longer thirsty.” 



“The brain regions determining the signals to stop drinking have not previously been recognized in this context. It identifies an important component in regulation and this ‘stop mechanism’ may prevent complications from excessive water intake”.
Scientists have found that drinking water can activate different areas of the brain, depending on whether the subject is thirsty or satiated.

Our brains are hardwired to stop us from drinking more water than is healthy, according to a new brain imaging study led by The University Of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Australia.

The study found a ‘stop mechanism’ that controlled the brain signals telling an individual to stop drinking water when no longer thirsty, as well as the effects of drinking more water than required on the brain.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research used magnetic resonance imaging to scan two physiological conditions of the brain, starting with scanning brain regions during the experience of thirst. Participants were then removed from the scanner and asked to drink to satiation or ‘overdrink’ and returned for further scanning.


Researcher Professor Derek Denton from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne said the study provided insight into the human instincts that determine survival behavior and are also of medical importance. 



“Different areas of the brain involved in emotional decision-making were activated when people drank water after becoming thirsty and when study participants followed instructions to keep drinking when no longer thirsty.” 



“The brain regions determining the signals to stop drinking have not previously been recognized in this context. It identifies an important component in regulation and this ‘stop mechanism’ may prevent complications from excessive water intake,” he said.

Overdrinking can reduce the salt concentration of the blood that can result in the swelling of the brain, a potentially fatal condition. Also known as polydipsia, it has been found in some patients with schizophrenia and in some marathon runners.
“This is a study of elements of gratification and how the body programs accurate behavior. In revealing aspects of gratification control, the data are relevant to study the gratification of other instincts, such as food intake, salt intake and sexual behavior”.
''Regional brain responses associated with drinking water during thirst and after its satiation''
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/14/5379

Did Life Originate At Deep Sea Vents?
Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis, and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” – a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113118229/did-life-originate-...

You have never lived in reality. Instead your brain gathers bits and pieces of data from your sensory systems and builds a virtual simulation of the world.
One groundbreaking new illusion exploits the fact that our perception of motion emerges from the interaction between an object's actual motion and its background.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-illusions-of-the-yea...

The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites
http://www.livescience.com/13040-10-disgusting-parasites-zombie-ant...

Electronic cigarettes can change gene expression in a similar way to tobacco, according to one of the first studies to investigate the biological effects of the devices.
E-cigarettes affect cells
http://www.nature.com/news/e-cigarettes-affect-cells-1.15015

Scientists have found that the two drugs used across the world to treat swine flu — Tamiflu and Relenza — are no better than Paracetamol in relieving flu symptoms and are next to useless in preventing a pandemic.

Many countries including India have spent millions of dollars in stockpiling these two drugs fearing a swine flu pandemic.

According to an independent panel of scientists, companies behind the two drugs held back crucial information that showed just how ineffective they were in clinical trials.
Main anti-swine flu drugs found to be useless
_ Agencies

This is what happens when you pee in the pool
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/what-happens-when-you...

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-m-eger/business-and-education-ex...

Scientists make a Mini Mars to mimic Red Planet dust

Martian dust can wreak havoc with sensitive equipment, so researchers have created a chamber that lets them simulate the Martian surface -- dust and all -- before that equipment heads to the Red Planet.
http://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-build-a-mini-mars-in-spain/

A new evolutionary reason for why many underfed lab animals live longer:
The most prominent theory involves what happens physiologically during times of food scarcity. When the living is good, natural selection favors organisms that invest energy in reproduction. In times of hardship, however, animals have fewer offspring, diverting precious nutrients to cell repair and recycling so they can survive until the famine ends, when reproduction begins anew. Cell repair and recycling appear to be substantial antiaging and anticancer processes, which may explain why underfed lab animals live longer and rarely develop old-age pathologies like cancer and heart disease.

The new hypothesis she proposes holds that during a famine animals escalate cellular repair and recycling, but they do so for the purpose of having as many progeny as possible during a famine, not afterward. They “make the best of a bad situation” to maximize their fitness in the present. “It’s an efficiency mode that the animal goes into,” she says. Adler and colleague Russell Bonduriansky published their reasoning in the March BioEssays.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300165/abstract
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hunger-gains-a-new-idea-o...

Just 1 Rock Concert or Football Game May Cause Permanent Hearing Damage
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2014/04/14/just-1-...

“Boys Can Be Anything”: Effect of Barbie Play on Girls’ Career Cognitions

Abstract

Play with Barbie dolls is an understudied source of gendered socialization that may convey a sexualized adult world to young girls. Early exposure to sexualized images may have unintended consequences in the form of perceived limitations on future selves. We investigated perceptions of careers girls felt they could do in the future as compared to the number of careers they felt boys could do as a function of condition (playing with a Barbie or Mrs. Potato Head doll) and type of career (male dominated or female dominated) in a sample of 37 U.S. girls aged 4–7 years old residing in the Pacific Northwest. After a randomly assigned 5-min exposure to condition, children were asked how many of ten different occupations they themselves could do in the future and how many of those occupations a boy could do. Data were analyzed with a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial ANOVA. Averaged across condition, girls reported that boys could do significantly more occupations than they could themselves, especially when considering male-dominated careers. In addition, girls’ ideas about careers for themselves compared to careers for boys interacted with condition, such that girls who played with Barbie indicated that they had fewer future career options than boys, whereas girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head reported a smaller difference between future possible careers for themselves as compared to boys. Results support predictions from gender socialization and objectification theories.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-014-0347-y

Behavioural impairment in reef fishes caused by ocean acidification at CO2 seeps
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...

Fish are losing their survival instinct — even becoming attracted to the smell of their predators — as the world's oceans become more acidic because of climate change, new research said on Monday.

The study of fish in coral reefs off the coast of Papua New Guinea — where the waters are naturally acidic — showed the animals' behaviour became riskier.

"Fish will normally avoid the smell of a predator, that makes perfect sense," lead author Professor Philip Munday from Australia's James Cook University told AFP.

"But they start to become attracted to the smell of the predator. That's incredible.

"They also swim further from shelter and they are more active, they swim around more. That's riskier behaviour for them — they are more likely to be attacked by a predator."

Munday said the research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was important given that about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is ultimately absorbed by the ocean, a process which results in the seas becoming more acidic.

Acidification around the reefs studied is at levels predicted to become ocean-wide by the end of the century as the climate changes.

Munday said the fish appeared to have failed to adapt to the conditions, despite living their whole lives exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide.

"They didn't seem to adjust within their lifetime," Munday said. "That tells us that they don't adjust when they are permanently exposed to these higher carbon dioxide levels and we would have to think about whether adaptation would be possible over the coming decades."

Munday said the "seep" to which the fish were exposed — in which carbon dioxide from undersea volcanic activity bubbles to the surface — was the perfect "natural laboratory" for the study.

Close to the seep there is no coral growth, but further away lies a unique coral reef zone with carbon dioxide levels similar to those forecast for future decades.

Co-author Jodie Rummer said while the increased carbon dioxide in the water affected how fish behaved, it did not appear to affect their athletic performance.

"The metabolic rates of fish from the seep area were the same as fish from nearby 'healthy' reefs," she said in a statement.

"So, it seems that future ocean acidification may affect the behaviour of reef fishes more than other aspects of their performance."

The research was conducted by James Cook's Coral Centre of Excellence, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Geographic Society.

Health risks from mobile wireless devices like phones and tablets are growing stronger, and require immediate action, says a new study. According to the BioInitiative Working Group, which released a mid-year update covering new science studies from 2012 to 2014, new studies intensify medical concerns about malignant brain tumours from cell phone use.

"There is a consistent pattern of increased risk for glioma (a malignant brain tumour ) and acoustic neuroma with use of mobile and cordless phones," said Lennart Hardell from Orebro University , Sweden. "Epidemiological evidence shows that radio frequency should be classified as a known human carcinogen. The existing FCC/IEEE and ICNIRP public safety limits are not adequate to protect public health," Hardell said.

The BioInitiative reports nervous system effects in 68% of studies on radio frequency radiation (144 of 211 studies) in 2014. This has increased from 63% in 2012 (93 of 150 studies). Studies of extremely-low frequency radiation are reported to cause nervous system effects in 90% of the 105 studies available in 2014.

Genetic effects (damage to DNA) from radio frequency radiation is reported in 65% (74 of 114 studies); and 83% (49 of 59 studies) of extremely low frequency studies. Wireless devices like phones and tablets are big sources of unnecessary biological stress to the mind and body that can chip away at resilience over time. The report warns against wireless in schools. Schools should provide internet access without Wi-Fi.
-Agencies

In a ground-breaking trial, researchers in the UK will test artificial blood made from human stem cells in patients for the first time.

The research, planned for 2016, could pave the way for manufacturing of blood on an industrial scale, which could even supersede donated blood as the main supply for patients.

"We have made red blood cells, for the first time, that are fit to go in a person's body. Before now, we haven't really had that," said Marc Turner, medical director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, who is leading the 5 million pounds project at the University of Edinburgh.
_PTI

Five mutations could make bird flu spread easily
Handful of alterations can turn H5N1 avian influenza into virus that infects mammals through the air

Recently, A/H5N1 influenza viruses were shown to acquire airborne transmissibility between ferrets upon targeted mutagenesis and virus passage. The critical genetic changes in airborne A/Indonesia/5/05 were not yet identified. Here, five substitutions proved to be sufficient to determine this airborne transmission phenotype. Substitutions in PB1 and PB2 collectively caused enhanced transcription and virus replication. One substitution increased HA thermostability and lowered the pH of membrane fusion. Two substitutions independently changed HA binding preference from α2,3-linked to α2,6-linked sialic acid receptors. The loss of a glycosylation site in HA enhanced overall binding to receptors. The acquired substitutions emerged early during ferret passage as minor variants and became dominant rapidly. Identification of substitutions that are essential for airborne transmission of avian influenza viruses between ferrets and their associated phenotypes advances our fundamental understanding of virus transmission and will increase the value of future surveillance programs and public health risk assessments.
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2814%2900281-5

Revealing camouflaged bacteria
A research team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has discovered an protein family that plays a central role in the fight against the bacterial pathogen Salmonella within the cells. The so called interferon-induced GTPases reveal and eliminate the bacterium's camouflage in the cell, enabling the cell to recognize the pathogen and to render it innocuous. The findings are published in the current issue of the science magazine Nature. Bacteria have developed countless strategies to hide themselves in order to evade attack by the immune system. In the body, Salmonella bacteria use macrophages as host cells to ensure their survival and to be able to spread within the body. Their survival strategy is to nestle into a vacuole within the cytoplasm of a macrophage, hiding there and multiplying. While they are hidden there, the immune cells cannot detect the bacteria and fight them.

The recommendations include increasing hepatitis C screening, liver damage mitigation and how to select appropriate treatment for chronic infections.

WHO Issues First Hepatitis C Guidelines
Guidelines for the screening, care and treatment of persons with hepatitis C infection
http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/hepatitis/hepatitis-c-guidelines/en/

A research team reports in the April 16 Science Translational Medicine that after a small group of ferrets were exposed to the canine distemper virus—a close cousin of measles—and then three days later treated with a newly developed antiviral medication, the disease was completely suppressed.
All three of the exposed animals not only survived the virus but developed high amounts of protective antibodies against it, likely protecting them against future exposures (although the research team has not yet explored how long that immunity lasts). “We strongly support vaccination,” says study author Richard Plemper of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University. “This drug was not developed as an alternative to vaccination but rather as an additional weapon in our arsenal against the virus that may enable us to improve disease management and rapidly silence outbreaks,” he says. The researchers hope that a therapeutic drug will be particularly useful for combating outbreaks in unvaccinated hotspots.
'Could an Oral Measles Drug Help the Unvaccinated?'
A medication designed to inhibit measleslike virus in infected ferrets shows promise
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-oral-measles-dru...

Opinion: Science Is Running Out of Things to Discover
The advancing age when Nobelists receive their prizes could suggest fewer breakthroughs are waiting to happen
The latest evidence is a "Correspondence" published today in the journal Nature. A group of six researchers, led by Santo Fortunato, professor of complex systems at Aalto University in Finland, points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140409-nobel-prize-...

(What rubbish?! We have lots to discover in life sciences, chemistry and Physics. Just taking into account only Astrophysics to write this article is dumb- Krishna)

Sperm RNA Carries Marks of Trauma
Stress alters the expression of small RNAs in male mice and leads to depressive behaviors in later generations
-Nature.com

Call for alternative identification methods for endangered species
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/04/17/call.alternative.identi...