So you think as your original age is just 31, you are likely to live another 40-50 years without any doubt. Is your thinking right ? Not necessarily according to new research.
"DNA methylation age of blood predicts all-cause mortality in later life"
We count our age in calendar years, but our bodies may not be counting the same way. Using a biological clock that compares the aging of a person’s DNA to their actual age, University of Queensland researchers have found some clear signals to life expectancy. Professor Naomi Wray, from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), said the study found that people with a “biological” or DNA age greater than their true age were more likely to die younger, compared to those whose biological and true age were closely matched. “Last year, it was discovered that from a simple blood sample it is possible to predict a person’s age with a high degree of accuracy,” Wray said. “But it is not totally accurate, and some people’s predicted or ‘biological’ age is higher than their actual age and vice versa.” “Our study showed biological age really does seem to be tracking biological wear-and-tear.” The study, published in Genome Biology, used data from four independent studies that sampled almost 5,000 older people, of whom about 10 percent died in the following 14 years. Each participant’s biological age was measured from a blood sample at the outset. The research showed that those with a higher biological age compared to actual age had an increased risk of death. All four studies found the same pattern, with death linked to accelerated biological changes to DNA. Wray said the study could not look at what caused the DNA to change at an accelerated pace, nor was it an accurate predictor of death for an individual person. “However, it’s an important clue for future research in the study of cellular ageing,” she said. “What we’re seeing could be caused by environmental, lifestyle, genetic predispositions, or a combination of all these factors.” The QBI’s Dr. Allan McRae, who conducted analyses for the study, said biological ageing was measured by following DNA changes caused by a process known as methylation. “Methylation affects whether genes are turned on or off, which has important repercussions for conditions such as disease susceptibility, so it makes sense that the biological clock speeding up has impacts on how we age,” McRae said.
http://genomebiology.com/2015/16/1/25/abstract

Researchers have succeeded in inducing human embryonic stem cells to self-organize into a three-dimensional structure similar to the cerebellum, providing tantalizing clues in the quest to recreate neural structures in the laboratory. Their results have been published in Cell Reports.

Full details here:

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/articleSelectPrefsTemp?Redi...

How do medical journalists treat cancer-related issues?
http://ecancer.org/journal/9/full/502-how-do-medical-journalists-tr...
Where Do Medical Journalists Find Their Sources? Direct contact with patients and doctors is favored over press releases from pharmaceutical companies, a survey of journalists reveals.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo sent self-administered questionnaires to 364 medical journalists, who described their experiences in selecting stories, choosing angles, and performing research when creating cancer-centerd news pieces. The journalists reported that they did not find pharmaceutical press releases to be helpful, preferring direct contact with physicians as their most reliable and prized sources of information. Medical journalists also report using social media and personal connections to support their research.
All journalists reported difficulties in producing accurate and interesting cancer news stories. The most commonly reported concerns were the quality of source information, difficulty in understanding technical information and a shortage of background knowledge.
As medical knowledge advances rapidly, journalists may have increasing difficulty covering cancer-related issues .
This highlights the need for responsible healthcare reporting, the team suggests, which can be attained through journalistic communication with researchers and physicians, and the willingness of healthcare professionals to explain their work carefully and clearly.
Asian Scientist Magazine : http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/02/in-the-lab/medical-journalist...

How to tell whether people got enough sleep or not

Science is like magic! Watch the wonder of it!

Hand washing focus in hospitals has led to rise in worker dermatitis
A new study from The University of Manchester has revealed that the incidence of dermatitis has increased 4.5 times in health care workers following increased hand hygiene as a drive to reduce infections such as MRSA has kicked in.

Researchers from the University's Institute of Population Health studied reports voluntarily submitted by dermatologists to a national database which is run by the University (THOR), between 1996 and 2012. Sixty percent of eligible UK dermatologists used this database which is designed to report skin problems caused or aggravated by work.

They found that out of 7,138 cases of irritant contact dermatitis reported 1,796 were in healthcare workers. When the numbers were broken down by year, health workers were 4.5 times more likely to suffer from irritant contact dermatitis in 2012 as in 1996. In two control groups, cases declined or did not change.
( Irritant contact dermatitis (ICD) is inflammation of the skin typically manifested by erythema, mild edema, and scaling. Irritant contact dermatitis is a nonspecific response of the skin to direct chemical damage that releases mediators of inflammation predominately from epidermal cells. A corrosive agent causes the immediate death of epidermal cells, manifested by chemical burns and cutaneous ulcers.)
"Campaigns to reduce these infections through frequent hand washing have been very successful and many lives have been saved. However, we need to do all we can to prevent skin irritation among these frontline workers."
The implications of increasing levels of irritant dermatitis are potentially counter-productive to the aims of infection reducing campaigns. Other studies have identified that infections can remain present for longer on damaged and broken skin and having irritated skin can put people off washing their hands.
The paper, 'The impact of national level interventions to improve hygiene on the incidence of irritant contact dermatitis in healthcare workers: changes in incidence from 1996-2012 and interrupted times series analysis', was published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.13719/abstract;jsess...

Evolutionary union after 60 million year breakup!
Scientists have discovered a delicate fern in the mountains of France that is the "love child" of two distantly-related groups of plants that have not interbred in 60 million years.

For most plants and animals, reuniting after such a long hiatus is thought to be impossible due to genetic and other incompatibilities between species that develop over time.

"Reproducing after such a long evolutionary breakup is akin to an elephant hybridizing with a manatee or a human with a lemur," said study co-author Kathleen Pryer, director of Duke University Herbarium.

The genetic analyses revealed that the fern was the result of a cross between an oak fern and a fragile fern - two distantly related groups that co-occur across much of the northern hemisphere but stopped exchanging genes and split into separate lineages some 60 million years ago.

"To most people they just look like two ferns, but to fern researchers these two groups look really different," Rothfels said.

Other studies have documented instances of tree frog species that proved capable of producing offspring after going their separate ways for 34 million years, and sunfish who hybridized after nearly 40 million years, but until now those were the most extreme reunions ever recorded.

"For most plant and animal species, reproductive incompatibility takes only a few million years at the most," said co-author Carl Rothfels from the University of California, Berkeley.

The sex lives of ferns may help explain why divergent fern lineages remain compatible for so long, the researchers say.

Fern sex is no different from other creatures.

But whereas many other plants rely on birds, bees or other animals to play matchmaker, all ferns need is wind and water.

The study appeared online in the journal American Naturalist.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/an.html

Blood copper and sulfur to aid liver cancer diagnosis
A new study reports that circulating blood of patients with liver cancers reveals isotopic selectivity for 'light' copper and sulfur. The study results have potential in the development of new diagnostic methods in liver cancer. The evidence of 'cancer driven imbalances' in the isotopic ratios of stable copper (65Cu/63Cu) and sulfur (34S/32S) in the blood of patients with hepatocellular carcinomas was provided by Dr. Vincent Balter of the Université de Lyon and his colleagues.

The research team has shown selective enrichment of the blood with the lighter stable isotopes of these elements, using novel techniques adapted from earth sciences methodologies. As well, the heavier 65Cu isotope was selectively enhanced in tumors. The study was published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/982

Raman spectroscopy could help neurosurgeons find those errant cancer cells. A team led by engineer Frédéric Leblond of Montreal Polytechnique and neurosurgeon Kevin Petrecca of McGill University, also in Montreal, has developed a Raman probe that distinguishes between normal and cancer cells. They showed their method could find previously undetectable cancer cells in the brains of glioma patients .
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/274/274ra19

“It’s very uncomfortable when you’re performing an operation and are not certain if you are removing all the cancer,” because missing some can impact a patient’s survival, Petrecca says. The Raman probe, he says, allows surgeons to spot cancer cells they might have thought were normal.

To use the tool, a surgeon simply holds a fiber-optic probe in contact with the brain tissue to collect a Raman spectrum. The researchers use an algorithm that statistically analyzes the data to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells.

The next step is to run clinical trials to demonstrate that the Raman technique can improve surgery outcomes. He and his collaborators plan to start such a trial soon.

Persistent fungal root endophytes ( those living inside hosts) isolated from a wild barley species suppress seed-borne infections in a barley cultivar.
ABSTRACT: Ten fungal root endophytes were isolated from wild populations of Hordeum murinum ssp. murinum L. and inoculated onto untreated seeds of a barley cultivar using five artificial and one soil-based growth media. A co-inoculant of all ten isolates as well as two individual isolates successfully suppressed the development of seed-borne fungal infections on germinated and ungerminated seed. The two most successful isolates were also the most persistent as re-emergents and may provide real potential for development as crop inoculants. All isolates were more persistent in barley exposed to light after germination. The soil-based compost was associated with the greatest degree of seed-borne infection suppression, and the most successful artificial medium for suppressing seed-borne infections was also the medium with the most similar pH to the soil at the sampling sites. These results suggest a direct antagonistic effect of the fungal isolates on seed-borne pathogens without the induction of plant defences.
This information can be used to control plant diseases.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268575042_Persistent_fungal...

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And in humans ---

Electronic Medicine Fights Disease

Factors Underlying Different Myopia Prevalence between Middle- and Low-income Provinces in China
A study of 20,000 children shows that nearsightedness is twice as prevalent in middle-income areas than lower-income ones in China.
In one of the largest population-based studies ever conducted on nearsightedness in children, researchers have discovered that lower-income students in China have better vision than their middle-class counterparts. Data show that nearsightedness, also called myopia, is twice as prevalent in the middle-income province of Shaanxi compared to the poorer neighboring province of Gansu. The study was published in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Living in the middle-class area was associated with a 69 percent increased risk for nearsightedness, even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as time spent reading, outdoor activity and whether the student's parents wore glasses. Higher math scores were associated with increased myopia in all children while nearsightedness was less prevalent in males overall. The research team also looked at whether the use of blackboards, as opposed to textbooks, played a role in staving off myopia. Students in the lower-income area rely more on blackboards to learn in the classroom as they may have difficulty affording books, while students in the middle-income areas used blackboards less often.
They found that using blackboards had a "protective effect" against nearsightedness when examined as a variable alone, possibly because blackboards do not require the kind of close-up focusing that may increase myopia. However, when adjusting for other factors, they found no statistically significant differences between lower-income and middle-class students that might explain higher myopia prevalence in richer areas.
Previous studies have found that people who had higher levels of education and years spent in school were more likely to be nearsighted. Many researchers also postulate that exposure to certain kinds of light, particularly indoor versus outdoor light, may be responsible for the uptick in myopia. Recent studies of children and young adults in Denmark and across Asia show that more time outdoors and exposure to daylight is associated with less nearsightedness.
http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420%2814%2901196-8/abstract

A single natural nucleotide mutation alters bacterial pathogen host tropism
Bacteria may be able to jump between species with greater ease than was previously thought
Researchers have found that a single genetic mutation in a strain of bacteria that infects humans enables it to also infect rabbits. The discovery has major implications for how we assess the risks associated with bacterial diseases that can pass between people and animals.

Scientists at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh studied a strain of bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus ST121, which is responsible for widespread epidemics in the global rabbit farming industry.

The team looked at the genetic make-up of ST121 to work out where the strain originated. They also tracked how changes in its genetic code enabled it to infect rabbits.

They concluded that ST121 most likely evolved as the result of a host jump from humans to rabbits around 40 years ago.

A genetic mutation at a single site in the bacterial DNA code was sufficient to convert a human strain into one that could infect rabbits.

The discovery transforms our understanding of the minimal genetic changes that are required for bacteria to infect different species. The results represent a paradigm shift in understanding of the minimal adaptations required for a bacterium to overcome species barriers and establish in new host populations.
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3219.html

It’s a firmly established fact straight from Biology 101: Traits such as eye color and height are passed from one generation to the next through the parents’ DNA.

But now, a new study in mice by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the DNA of bacteria that live in the body can pass a trait to offspring in a way similar to the parents’ own DNA. According to the authors, the discovery means scientists need to consider a significant new factor – the DNA of microbes passed from mother to child – in their efforts to understand how genes influence illness and health.

The study appears online Feb. 16 in Nature.
Vertically transmissible fecal IgA levels distinguish extra-chromosomal phenotypic variation. Moon C, Baldridge MT, Wallace MA, Burnham C-AD, Virgin HW, Stappenbeck TS. Nature, Feb. 16, 2015

http://www.sciguru.org/newsitem/18448/mothers-can-pass-traits-offsp...

Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Should Exercise After Dinner
Individuals with Type 2 diabetes have heightened amounts of sugars and fats in their blood, which increases their risks for cardiovascular diseases such as strokes and heart attacks. Exercise is a popular prescription for individuals suffering from the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, but little research has explored whether these individuals receive more benefits from working out before or after dinner. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that individuals with Type 2 diabetes can lower their risks of cardiovascular diseases more effectively by exercising after a meal.
“This study shows that it is not just the intensity or duration of exercising that is important but also the timing of when it occurs,” said Jill Kanaley, professor in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. “Results from this study show that resistance exercise has its most powerful effect on reducing glucose and fat levels in one’s blood when performed after dinner.”
Kanaley also found that improvements in participants’ blood sugar and fat levels were short-lived and did not extend to the next day. She suggests individuals practice daily resistance exercise after dinner to maintain improvements.

“Individuals who exercise in the morning have usually fasted for 10 hours beforehand,” Kanaley said. “Also, it is natural for individuals’ hormone levels to be different at different times of day, which is another factor to consider when determining the best time to exercise.”

In the future, Kanaley said she plans to research how exercising in the morning differs from exercising after dinner and how individuals’ hormone levels also affect exercise results.

The study, “Post-dinner resistance exercise improves postprandial risk factors more effectively than pre-dinner resistance exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes,” was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2014/12/23/japplphysiol.009...

A DNA hard drive has been built that can store data for 1 MILLION years

Scientists have found a way to preserve the world's data for millions of years, by storing it on a tiny strand of DNA preserved in glass.
When you think of humanity’s legacy, the most powerful message for us to leave behind for future civilisations would surely be our billions of terabytes of data. But right now the hard drives and discs that we use to store all this information are frustratingly vulnerable, and unlikely to survive more than a couple of hundred years.

Fortunately scientists have built a DNA time capsule that's capable of safely preserving all of our data for more than a million years.
Researchers already knew that DNA was ideal for data storage. In theory, just 1 gram of DNA is capable of holding 455 exabytes, which is the equivalent of one billion gigabytes, and more than enough space to store all of Google, Facebook and pretty much everyone else's data.

Storing information on DNA is also surprisingly simple - researchers just need to program the A and C base pairs of DNA as a binary '0', and the T and G as a '1'. But the researchers, led by Robert Grass from ETH Zürich in Switzerland, wanted to find out just how long this data would last.

DNA can definitely be durable - in 2013 scientists managed to sequence genetic code from 700,000-year-old horse bones - but it has to be preserved in pretty specific conditions, otherwise it can change and break down as it's exposed to the environment. So Glass's team decided to try to replicate a fossil, to see if it would help them create a long-lasting DNA hard drive.

"Similar to these bones, we wanted to protect the information-bearing DNA with a synthetic 'fossil' shell," explained Grass in a press release.
In order to do that, the team encoded Switzerland’s Federal Charter of 1921 and The Methods of Mechanical Theorems by Archimedes onto a DNA strand - a total of 83 kilobytes of data. They then encapsulated the DNA into tiny glass spheres, which were around 150 nanometres in diameter.

The researchers compared these glass spheres against other packaging methods by exposing them to temperatures of between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius - conditions that replicated the chemical degradation that would usually occur over hundreds of years, all crammed into a few destructive weeks.

They found that even after this sped-up degradation process, the DNA inside the glass spheres could easily be extracted using a fluoride solution, and the data on it could still be read. In fact, these glass casings seem to work much like fossilised bones.

Based on their results, which have been published in Angewandte Chemie, the team predicts that data stored on DNA could survive over a million years if it was stored in temperatures below -18 degrees Celsius, for example, in a facility like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is also known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. They say it could last 2,000 years if stored somewhere less secure at 10 degrees Celsius - a similar average temperature to central Europe.

The tricky part of this whole process is that the data stored in DNA needs to be read properly in order for future civilisations to be able to access it. And despite advances in sequencing technology, errors still arise from DNA sequencing.
Robust Chemical Preservation of Digital Information on DNA in Silica with Error-Correcting Codes
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201411378/full

In this amazing video, scientists have sucked the air out of the container and managed to find a pressure/temperature combination that's near the triple point of the fluid, which has been identified as cyclohexane - the triple point is the very precise temperature and pressure at which the three states of matter (solid, liquid and gas) exist in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Cyclohexane at the Triple Point

Extreme strength observed in limpet teeth
Sea snail teeth: The Strongest Known Biological Structures
The teeth of limpets exploit distinctive composite nanostructures consisting of high volume fractions of reinforcing goethite nanofibres within a softer protein phase to provide mechanical integrity when rasping over rock surfaces during feeding. The tensile strength of discrete volumes of limpet tooth material measured using in situ atomic force microscopy was found to range from 3.0 to 6.5 GPa and was independent of sample size. These observations highlight an absolute material tensile strength that is the highest recorded for a biological material, outperforming the high strength of spider silk currently considered to be the strongest natural material, and approaching values comparable to those of the strongest man-made fibres. This considerable tensile strength of limpet teeth is attributed to a high mineral volume fraction of reinforcing goethite nanofibres with diameters below a defect-controlled critical size, suggesting that natural design in limpet teeth is optimized towards theoretical strength limits.
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/105/20141326

Potential new vaccine blocks every strain of HIV
A new drug candidate is so potent against all strains of HIV, researchers think it could work as a new kind of vaccine.

Developed by researchers from more than a dozen research institutions and led by a team at the Scripps Research Institute in the US, the drug is effective against doses of HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) that have been extracted from humans or rhesus macaques - including what researchers consider to be the ‘hardest-to-stop’ variants. It worked against doses of HIV that are way higher than what would be transmitted between humans, and works for at least eight months after injection.
Scientists announce anti-HIV agent so powerful it can work in a vaccine
Source:
The Scripps Research Institute

THE CLOSEST KNOWN FLYBY OF A STAR TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM
http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/800/1/L17?fromSearchPage=true
a group of astronomers says it's determined that a small binary star system dubbed "Scholz's star" buzzed the edges of our solar system just 70,000 years ago. On the cosmic time scale, that's so recent that we could still practically wave goodbye from our front door.

At that point in history, there may have been both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans wandering around. In fact, some believe that is right around the point in history when we were just starting to get our evolutionary act together, developing things like languages, tools and really slick cave paintings that descendants would totally dig for eons.
Unfortunately, those early ancestors probably weren't together enough to notice a binary star hanging out at the edge of the Oort cloud, which is a comet cluster of sorts that basically envelopes our solar system at the furthest reaches of the sun's gravity. (Oort does sound like the sort of name a stereotypical caveman society might dream up for such a concept, though.)

The transient star would have passed within about 52,000 astronomical units (1 a.u. = the distance between Earth and our sun) or 0.8 light-years of us, according to a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

To get a sense of how close that is, consider that the nearest star we know of today, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away.

Scholz's star was only passing through, though. The binary system kept on the move and is now 20 light-years away.

As it moved through the Oort cloud, the star system may have agitated the trillions of small bodies believed to be drifting around out there, potentially showering the inner solar system with comets. Not exactly the best kind of visitor to have in the neighborhood.

Doctors with conscience speak out
In order to benefit the hospital and meet its commercial needs, one has to do things like keeping patients in the hospital longer than necessary, and doing unnecessary investigations and procedures (including angioplasty) since there was pressure from the management of the hospital.
Read this eye opener here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Doctors-with-conscience-sp...

New insect-borne virus that might cause severe symptoms in human beings found
Scientists have described a previously unknown insect-borne virus, following the death of a man in the Kansas county of Bourbon in the US in mid-2014.

According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the otherwise healthy, 50-year-old man was working outside on his property in mid-2014, when he sustained multiple tick bites, which led to an array of symptoms including fever, fatigue, rash, headaches, nausea and vomiting around two days after. After he was hospitalised, his white blood cell count dipped, his lungs and kidney started failing, and by day 11, suffered a heart attack, and died.
Scientists were able to isolate a new virus from a blood sample collected from the patient nine days after he fell ill, and attributed it to the Thogotovirus genus in the virus family Orthomyxoviridae. This family contains six genera - Influenza virus A, Influenza virus B, Influenza virus C, Isavirus, Thogotovirus and Quaranjavirus.

The researchers say there’s a marked difference between the symptoms suffered by this man, and other known Thogotoviruses. Thogotoviruses usually cause diseases such as meningitis or encephalitis, where the lining of the brain becomes severely inflamed. But they've never seen these viruses destroy white blood cell counts like the Bourbon virus did to this man.

The team discusses this in the current edition of the CDC journal, Emerging infectious diseases.
Novel Thogotovirus Species Associated with Febrile Illness and Death, United States, 2014
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/5/15-0150_article

Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to detect in its early stages, and is often diagnosed only after it begins deteriorating someone’s memory and thinking abilities.

Researchers around the world have been looking at ways to improve the way Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed. While lots of research is focused on the brain, there could also be clues in your bloodstream as to how the disease manifests – possibly in the form of trace metals.
A team of researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Faculty of Science in Australia have taken the approach of scouring the blood for possible early warning signs, and are now closing in on a disease indicator for Alzheimer’s. Their suspected culprit: iron.

Specifically, the team is studying a protein called transferrin, which helps shuttle iron around the body. Iron binds to the transferrin proteins in your blood. When these proteins encounter corresponding transferrin receptors on the surfaces of cells, the iron is then transferred to those cells.

If transferrin fails to do its job, so to speak, iron that was meant to be distributed throughout the body might end up accumulating in the brain. According to the UTS:Science press release, this accumulation “contributes to the build-up of ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’. Plaques impede the transmission of signals among brain cells and tangles kill them.”
Overall, people with Alzheimer's had lower levels of iron in their blood compared to the healthy volunteers, according to teh new research done in Australia.
Decreased Plasma Iron in Alzheimer’s Disease Is Due to Transferrin Desaturation
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cn5003557

‘Science Cities’ to be set up in six zones across India
Plans are afoot to set up ‘Science Cities’ in five to six zones across the country in a hub-and-spoke method as part of efforts to have science and technology footprint in every State, according to Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y.S. Chowdary.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he said each ‘Science City’ would cater to scientific institutions/ labs located in different States in that particular zone. The ‘Science City’ would have the required infrastructure and other facilities, including a convention centre, research laboratories and hotels.

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A new study has identified a crucial protein that keeps the heart beating on time, which could eventually help in finding potential treatment for deadly heart problems.

W. Jonathan Lederer, MD, PhD, professor of physiology at the UM SOM, as well as director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering and Technology, and David Warshaw, PhD, professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at University of Vermont (UVM) and the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont, describe how myosin-binding protein C ("C protein") allows the muscle fibers in the heart to work in perfect synchrony.

C protein sensitizes certain parts of the sarcomere to calcium. As a result, the middle of the sarcomere contracts just as much as the ends, despite having much less calcium. In other words, C protein enables the sarcomeres to contract synchronously.

It appears to play a large part in many forms of heart disease. In the most severe cases, defects in C-protein lead to extremely serious arrhythmias, which cause sudden death when the heart loses the ability to pump blood. In the U.S., arrhythmias contribute to about 300,000 deaths a year, according to the American Heart Association. (Not all arrhythmias are fatal; some can be controlled with medicines and electrical stimulation.)

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

According to a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the best length for eyelashes is one-third the width of their eye. Anything shorter or longer increases airflow around the eye and leads to more dust hitting the surface.
Eyelashes form a barrier to control airflow and the rate of evaporation on the surface of the cornea," according to the lead author Guillermo Amador, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. "When eyelashes are shorter than the one-third ratio, they have only a slight effect on the flow. Their effect is more pronounced as they lengthen up until one-third. After that, they start funneling air and dust particles into the eye."
"As short lashes grew longer, they reduced air flow, creating a layer of slow-moving air above the cornea," explained researcher David Hu. "This kept the eye moist for a longer time and kept particles away. The majority of air essentially hit the eyelashes and rolled away from the eye."

However, longer lashes extended further into the airflow and created a cylinder, leading to faster evaporation.

"This is why long, elegant, fake eyelashes aren't ideal". They are not good for the health of your eyes.
Eyelashes divert airflow to protect the eye
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/105/20141294

Reversing Lupus
Immune cells in mice with lupus symptoms have overactive metabolisms, so scientists inhibited two metabolic pathways and succeeded in reversing lupus symptoms in mice
In a patient with the autoimmune disease lupus, immune cells attack the body’s own tissues as if they were an invading pathogen. This can lead to damage to the skin, joints, kidneys, and even the brain.

Now a team of immunologists reports that some of these errant immune cells have an overactive metabolism, and that inhibiting two key metabolic pathways can reverse lupus symptoms in mice (Sci. Transl. Med. 2015,
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/274/274ra18

Human-specific gene ARHGAP11B promotes basal progenitor amplification and neocortex expansion
A single gene may have paved the way for the rise of human intelligence by dramatically increasing the number of brain cells found in a key brain region.
This gene seems to be uniquely human: It is found in modern-day humans, Neanderthals and another branch of extinct humans called Denisovans, but not in chimpanzees.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/02/25/science.aaa1975

What is the 'fire-ball' that was seen in the Kerala sky recently?

A day after it blazed across the sky creating a shock wave, the district administration attributed the fireball to a meteorite that entered the earth’s atmosphere.

“Samples have been collected from two sites–one each in Mazhuvannur and Karumaloor villages from where reports of objects falling out of the sky emerged. Preliminary assessments point to the possibility of a meteorite activity,” according to them.

Further scientific examination was required to ascertain if samples collected contained any extra terrestrial matter.  

Meanwhile, scientific experts also pointed to the likelihood of a space debris re-entry given the slow pace of the object.

“A similar group of slow moving fireballs were reported in the US during the two days from February 23. Further, the reports suggest the object was moving across the sky very slowly, which again raises the possibility of a space debris re-entry,” pointed out Prof. K. Indulekha, School of Pure and Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University and a contributor to the SKA India consortium at the TIFR-National Centre of Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune.

Chronic fatigue is a biological illness
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has now been confirmed to be a biological illness. These immune signatures represent the first robust physical evidence that CFS is not a psychological disorder and the first proof that it has distinct stages.

Doctors have for long known the symptoms of CFS - constant exhaustion, mental fogginess, sleep disorders, muscle/joint pain, impaired memory, inability to concentrate and depression. Lack of physical determinants has caused the debilitating illness to go undiagnosed in most patients across the world.

Scientists say that they have discovered distinct immune changes in patients diagnosed with CFS, known medically as myalgic ence8phalomyelitis, in which symptoms range from extreme fatigue and difficulty concentrating to headaches and muscle pain.Researchers at the Centre for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health used immunoassay testing methods to determine the levels of 51 immune biomarkers in blood plasma samples collected through two multicenter studies that represented a total of 298 CFS patients and 348 healthy controls.They found specific patterns in patients who had the disease three years or less that were not present in controls or in patients who had the disease for more than three years. Short duration patients had increased amounts of many different types of immune molecules called cytokines. The association was unusually strong with a cytokine called interferon gamma that has been linked to the fatigue that follows many viral infections. Cytokine levels were not explained by symptom severity.

"We now have evidence confirming what millions of people with this disease already know that CFS isn't psychological," states lead author Mady Hornig, director of translational research at the Centre.

"Our results should accelerate the process of establishing the diagnosis after individuals first fall ill as well as discovery of new treatment strategies focusing on these early blood markers".

There are already human monoclonal antibodies on the market that can dampen levels of a cytokine called interleukin-17A that is among those the study shows were elevated in early-stage patients.Before any drugs can be tested in a clinical trial, Dr Hornig and colleagues hope to replicate the current study that follows patients for a year to see how cytokine levels, including interleukin-17A, differ within individual patients over time, depending on how long they have had the disease.

New in preservation science:
Using bio-polymers like carbohydrates (sodium alginate, chitosan, starch, xanthan gum etc) and proteins (soy protein, gelatin etc) to increase shelf life of these fruits and vegetables by 40% is latest news.
You may not require refrigerating costly fruits and vegetables. A mango can stay fresh more than 10 days while a jamun's shelf life has got almost doubled.

In a breakthrough in post-harvest crop preservation, researchers at Vallabh Vidyanagar-based Sardar Patel University (SPU) have developed an emulsion that provides an eco-friendly 'shield' to perishable fruits and vegetables. Generally, fruits, mostly apples in supermarkets, have a eco-friendly wax coating on them that keeps them fresh. This coating technology reduces post-harvest losses.
By using bio-polymers, SPU's team has successfully increased shelf life of fruits like banana, mango, papaya, strawberry, grapes, jamun, sapota, carambola, phalsa, guava, custard apple, pear and plum, apart from vegetables like tomato, capsicum and broccoli.

Emulsifiers in Food Linked to Obesity in Mice
The common food additives altered mice microbiomes to encourage gut inflammation and overeating.
Inside our guts is a diverse ecosystem of bacteria: the microbiome. But the makeup of the community can depend on what we eat. Emulsifiers are food additives that extend the shelf life of processed foods. And now research with mice finds that consuming emulsifiers may throw off the microbiome’s delicate balance and thereby contribute to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14232...
Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome

The ‘Second Moon’ You Didn’t Know Earth Had
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/03/02/earth-second-moon...
http://www.firstpost.com/living/earths-mysterious-second-moon-nobod...

For the first time, an international research team, including a tropical forest ecologist from the University of Exeter, has provided direct evidence of the rate at which individual trees in the Amazon Basin ‘inhale’ carbon from the atmosphere during a severe drought.

The team measured the growth and photosynthesis rates of trees at 13 rainforest plots across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, comparing plots that were affected by the strong drought of 2010 with unaffected plots. They found that while growth rates of the trees in drought-affected plots were unchanged, the rate of photosynthesis – by which trees convert carbon into energy to fuel their activities – slowed down by around 10 percent over six months.

The paper, published in the journal Nature, concludes that trees may be channelling their more limited energy reserves into growth rather than maintaining their own health. Computer simulations of the biosphere have predicted such responses to drought, but these are the first direct observations of this effect across tropical forests.
"Drought impact on forest carbon dynamics and fluxes in Amazonia"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7541/full/nature14213.html

Drug-induced acute liver failure is uncommon, and over-the-counter medications and dietary and herbal supplements -- not prescription drugs -- are its most common causes, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are published in the current issue of Gastroenterology.

One of the most feared complications of drugs and medications is acute liver failure, traditionally associated with a greater than 50 percent chance of dying without a liver transplant. Drug-induced liver injury, known as hepatotoxicity, is the second most common reason drugs are withdrawn from the market, behind cardiac toxicity, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Penn authors, however, say this is based solely on abnormal liver tests, not actual liver damage. The real risk of acute liver failure that the researchers calculated was 1.61 per million people per year.
Despite hepatotoxicity being the second most common cause of drug withdrawal from the market, acute liver failure, the most severe form of liver injury, from prescription drugs was rare, the team found. They discovered that 75 percent of acute liver failure cases resulting from prescribed medication use were derived from over-the-counter products such as acetaminophen or herbal supplements. “Prescription medications are an exceedingly rare cause of acute liver failure.”
Source: University of Pennslyvania

Human chimerism occurs when two eggs are released by the mother and are fertilised by two sperm from the father. Normally, this would result in fraternal, non-identical twins, but on rare occasions, these eggs can overlap and fuse to develop into one person who contains two different sets of DNA.

This can cause a person to have two different blood types simultaneously, or to develop both male and female genitals. A DNA sample taken from a chimeric person’s kidney could be completely different from a sample taken from her cervical tissue - an issue that has caused much grief in women trying to prove that they are in fact their children’s biological mothers.

According to researchers at Stanford University in the US, in some cases, chimeric people will have skin made up of two different types of skin cells, encoded by two different sets of DNA. This DNA is responsible for skin tone, which is how patterns can occur. "Often the skin colour of the two types is indistinguishable, or subtle enough that it can only show up under black light”. "Sometimes, however, the two different sets of DNA code for skin types that are dramatically different, which leaves people with literal stripes on their skin in the pattern of Blaschko's lines."

Blood group O protects against malaria- here is how:

It has long been known that people with blood type O are protected from dying of severe malaria. In a study published in Nature Medicine, a team of Scandinavian scientists explains the mechanisms behind the protection that blood type O provides, and suggest that the selective pressure imposed by malaria may contribute to the variable global distribution of ABO blood groups in the human population.

It has long been known that people with blood type O are protected against severe malaria, while those with other types, such as A, often fall into a coma and die. Unpacking the mechanisms behind this has been one of the main goals of malaria research.

A team of scientists led from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now identified a new and important piece of the puzzle by describing the key part played by the RIFIN protein. Using data from different kinds of experiment on cell cultures and animals, they show how the Plasmodium falciparum parasite secretes RIFIN, and how the protein makes its way to the surface of the blood cell, where it acts like glue. The team also demonstrates how it bonds strongly with the surface of type A blood cells, but only weakly to type O.

Principal investigator Mats Wahlgren, a Professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology, describes the finding as “conceptually simple”. However, since RIFIN is found in many different variants, it has taken the research team a lot of time to isolate exactly which variant is responsible for this mechanism.

The mechanism behind the protection that blood group O provides against severe malaria, which can, in turn, explain why the blood type is so common in the areas where malaria is common. In Nigeria, for instance, more than half of the population belongs to blood group O, which protects against malaria.”

Evolution - on the move!

RIFINs are adhesins implicated in severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.3812.html

My mother had severe cases of Malaria - not once but 5 times in 2 years some 15 years back! She had a temperature of 104 -107 degrees. We were very worried. And the malaria she got was caused by drug resistant Plasmodium falciparum.

But luckily she survived, now I know the reason. She is O+ve!