Tiny Protein Confirmed to Dismantle the Toxic Clumps Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

– credit, NIH

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have demonstrated for the first time that the protein midkine plays a preventative role in Alzheimer’s disease.

Midkine is known to accumulate in Alzheimer’s patients, but rather than accelerate the disease, it seems to prevents a second, sticky protein from clumping together—the chief hallmark in this form of dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease drug research almost exclusively focuses on amyloid beta, referred to sometimes as tau protein—its molecular class. There are 6 kinds of tau proteins, and they’re necessary for maintaining the stability of microtubules in human nerve fibers, but when tau proteins—in particular amyloid beta—become hyperphosphorylated, they are observed to clump together around neurons and cause a kind of atrophy.

This is generally considered to be the pathology and driver of Alzheimer’s disease. The rot cause is manifold, with a patient’s genetic mutations, sex, toxin exposure, and sleep history all suspected to play a role.

Midkine, the other molecular character in this tale, is a small, multifunctional growth factor protein found abundantly during embryonic development but also involved in normal cell growth.

Its role in cell growth means that midkine is often overexpressed in cancer, making it a valuable biomarker. However, beyond some preliminary studies showing its increase in Alzheimer’s, midkine’s link to the neurodegenerative disease has been poorly understood.

In a study published on August 21st in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, co-author author Junmin Peng and colleagues used fluorescence assays among other techniques to investigate how much of the correlation between midkine and amyloid beta is just a coincidence.

They knew that earlier Alzheimer’s models where midkine is lacking showed more amyloid beta accumulation, and so they used a fluorescent sensor to monitor amyloid beta assemblies, called thioflavin T, and tracked the real associations going on between these two compounds.

Their data revealed that midkine inhibits amyloid beta elongation and secondary nucleation, two specific phases during assembly formation. Nuclear magnetic resonance confirmed this finding.

“Once the amyloid beta assemblies grow, the signal becomes weaker and broader until it disappears because the technique can only analyze small molecules,” said Peng, referring to the ability to spot thioflavin T amid the tau ‘tangles’. “But when we add in midkine, the signal returns, showing that it inhibits the large assemblies.”

Additionally, the researchers used Alzheimer’s disease mouse models that have increased amyloid beta and demonstrated that removing the midkine gene resulted in even higher levels of amyloid beta assemblies. These results point to the protective role the protein has against Alzheimer’s disease.“We want to continue to understand how this protein binds to amyloid beta so we can design small molecules to do the same thing,” said Peng. “With this work, we hope to provide strategies for future treatment.” Tiny Protein Confirmed to Dismantle the Toxic Clumps Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

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Researchers link hot weather with increased headaches for people with migraines

New Delhi, (IANS) Scientists have found a link between increased headaches and hot temperatures for individuals with migraines, saying that as temperatures rise, so do chances for migraine attacks.

Weather change is one of the most common trigger factors for migraine, said Vincent Martin, director of the Headache and Facial Pain Center at the US-based University of Cincinnati.

The study looked at the use of Fremanezumab drug and whether it could prevent headaches caused by high temperatures.

Fremanezumab is administered by injection under the skin and is part of a set of monoclonal antibodies that have hit the market in the past six years to treat migraine in patients.

Researchers cross-referenced 71,030 daily diary records of 660 migraine patients with regional weather data and found that for every temperature increase of 0.12 degrees Celsius, there was a 6 per cent increase in the occurrence of any headache.

However, during the periods of Fremanezumab treatment, the association completely disappeared.

"This study is the first to suggest that migraine-specific therapies that block Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) may treat weather-associated headaches," said Fred Cohen, a study co-author and assistant professor of medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

If the results are confirmed in future studies, the drug therapy has the potential to help many people with weather-triggered migraine.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, believed that weather and medicine were intimately linked.

"A couple thousand of years later, we are proving that weather matters in human health," said Al Peterlin, who retired as chief meteorologist at the US Department of Agriculture and co-author of the study.The findings from the study were set to be presented at the American Headache Society's 66th annual scientific meeting in San Diego, California, over the weekend. Researchers link hot weather with increased headaches for people with migraines | MorungExpress | morungexpress.com

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Can animals give birth to twins?

Michael Jaffe, Mississippi State University and Tracy Jaffe, Mississippi State University 

Ask any parent – welcoming a new baby to the family is exciting, but it comes with a lot of work. And when the new addition is a pair of babies – twins – parents really have their work cut out for them.

For many animal species it’s the norm to have multiple babies at once. A litter of piglets can be as many as 11 or more!

We are faculty members at Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine. We’ve been present for the births of many puppies and kittens over the years – and the animal moms almost always deliver multiples.

But are all those animal siblings who share the same birthday twins?

Twins are two peas in a pod

Twins are defined as two offspring from the same pregnancy.

They can be identical, which means a single sperm fertilized a single egg that divided into two separate cells that went on to develop into two identical babies. They share the same DNA, and that’s why the two twins are essentially indistinguishable from each other.

Twins can also be fraternal. That’s the outcome when two separate eggs are fertilized individually at the same time. Each twin has its own set of genes from the mother and the father. One can be male and one can be female. Fraternal twins are basically as similar as any set of siblings.

Approximately 3% of human pregnancies in the United States produce twins. Most of those are fraternal – approximately one out of every three pairs of twins is identical.

Multiple babies from one animal mom

Each kind of animal has its own standard number of offspring per birth. People tend to know the most about domesticated species that are kept as pets or farm animals.

One study that surveyed the size of over 10,000 litters among purebred dogs found that the average number of puppies varied by the size of the dog breed. Miniature breed dogs – like chihuahuas and toy poodles, generally weighing less than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) – averaged 3.5 puppies per litter. Giant breed dogs – like mastiffs and Great Danes, typically over 100 pounds (45 kilograms) – averaged more than seven puppies per litter.

When a litter of dogs, for instance, consists of only two offspring, people tend to refer to the two puppies as twins. Twins are the most common pregnancy outcome in goats, though mom goats can give birth to a single-born kid or larger litters, too. Sheep frequently have twins, but single-born lambs are more common.

Horses, which are pregnant for 11 to 12 months, and cows, which are pregnant for nine to 10 months, tend to have just one foal or calf at a time – but twins may occur. Veterinarians and ranchers have long believed that it would be financially beneficial to encourage the conception of twins in dairy and beef cattle. Basically the farmer would get two calves for the price of one pregnancy.

But twins in cattle may result in birth complications for the cow and undersized calves with reduced survival rates. Similar risks come with twin pregnancies in horses, which tend to lead to both pregnancy complications that may harm the mare and the birth of weak foals.

DNA holds the answer to what kind of twins

So plenty of animals can give birth to twins. A more complicated question is whether two animal babies born together are identical or fraternal twins.

Female dogs and cats ovulate multiple eggs at one time. Fertilization of individual eggs by distinct spermatazoa from a male produces multiple embryos. This process results in puppies or kittens that are fraternal, not identical, even though they may look very much the same.

Biologists believe that identical twins in most animals are very rare. The tricky part is that lots of animal siblings look very, very similar and researchers need to do a DNA test to confirm whether two animals do in fact share all their genes. Only one documented report of identical twin dogs was confirmed by DNA testing. But no one knows for sure how frequently fertilized animal eggs split and grow into identical twin animal babies.

And reproduction is different in various animals. For instance, nine-banded armadillos normally give birth to identical quadruplets. After a mother armadillo releases an egg and it becomes fertilized, it splits into four separate identical cells that develop into identical pups. Its relative, the seven-banded armadillo, can give birth to anywhere from seven to nine identical pups at one time.

There’s still a lot that scientists aren’t sure about when it comes to twins in other species. Since DNA testing is not commonly performed in animals, no one really knows how often identical twins are born. It’s possible – maybe even likely – that identical twins may have been born in some species without anyone’s ever knowing.

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Michael Jaffe, Associate Professor of Small Animal Surgery, Mississippi State University and Tracy Jaffe, Assistant Clinical Professor of Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Multivitamins may help slow memory loss in older adults, study shows

Multivitamins. Photo: generic

A daily multivitamin – an inexpensive, over-the-counter nutritional supplement – may help slow memory loss in people ages 60 and older, a large nationwide clinical trial suggests.

The research, a collaboration between scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Columbia University, appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on Wednesday.

It was the second such multivitamin clinical study within the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) – a larger body of research examining the health effects of certain dietary supplements – to reach the same conclusion.

The most recent study found that those taking multivitamins showed an estimated 3.1 fewer years of memory loss compared with a control group who took a placebo. Put another way, the multivitamin group was an estimated 3.1 years “younger” in terms of their memory function than the placebo group.

“Older adults are very concerned about preserving cognition and memory, so this is a very important finding,” said JoAnn Manson, chief of Brigham’s division of preventive medicine and co-leader of the study with Howard Sesso, associate director of the division. “They are looking for safe and effective prevention strategies. The fact that two separate studies came to similar conclusions is remarkable.”

Manson, also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, described the effect of the supplements as “substantial.”

She stressed, however, that a dietary supplement “will never be a substitute for a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle.”

The study used a commonly available multivitamin – Centrum Silver – but “we think any high-quality multivitamin is likely to convey similar results,” Manson said. Centrum Silver contains vitamins D, A and B12, thiamine, riboflavin and manganese, among other substances.

Manson and Sesso reported grants to their institution from Mars Edge, which is a unit of the food company, Mars, and which focuses on nutrition research and produces the dietary supplement CocoaVia. Several of the 10 authors of the research also reported financial support from the National Institutes of Health.

Mars Edge and Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now Haleon), maker of Centrum Silver, donated the multivitamins and placebo tablets and packaging. COSMOS is also supported by NIH grants.

Sesso also reported grants from supplements company, Pure Encapsulations, and biopharmaceuticals company, Pfizer; and honoraria or travel support for lectures from the trade group for the dietary supplement industry, Council for Responsible Nutrition; chemical company, BASF; NIH; and a group that focuses on nutrition research, American Society for Nutrition.

Multivitamins already are popular with older Americans; 39 percent of adults ages 60 and older take multivitamins, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. sales of multivitamins and multivitamins with minerals totaled about $8 billion in 2020, according to NIH.

– – –

Memory benefit of multivitamins lasted three years

The latest trial included more than 3,500 participants ages 60 and older who completed web-based assessments of memory and cognition annually over three years. The tasks were recalling words and recognizing novel objects, and a measure of executive control.

Compared with the placebo group, participants randomized to multivitamin supplementation did significantly better on immediate recall of words after one year and sustained that benefit for an additional two years of follow-up, according to the study.

Multivitamin use, however, “did not significantly affect memory retention, executive function, or novel object recognition” when compared with placebo use, the study showed.

The finding is especially important because the brain, as all other organs in the body, requires nutrients for optimal functioning and can suffer cognitively without them, brain-health experts said.

“This study is groundbreaking,” said Andrew Budson, professor of neurology at Boston University and chief of cognitive behavioral neurology at VA Boston Healthcare System, who was not involved in the research.

Low levels of vitamins B1 – also known as thiamine – B12 and D are associated with cognitive decline, he said. “That a simple multivitamin can slow cognitive decline while they are aging normally is quite exciting, as it is something that almost everyone can do,” Budson said.

Paul E. Schulz, professor of neurology and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, said the brain requires a lot of vitamins and minerals to function properly. “Think of a complicated engine that requires lots of specialty parts and needs them all,” said Schulz, who also was not part of the study. “We regularly see people who are deficient in them who come in with cognitive impairment.”

– – –

Slowing of cognitive aging

The previous study, conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, appeared in the fall in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. It found a 60 percent slowing of cognitive aging among those who took multivitamins compared with the placebo group.

The two studies were independent of each other and had different designs. But, significantly, both were randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials, the “gold standard” of research in determining the efficacy of a drug or medical treatment – directly linking cause and effect.

“This is probably the best evidence there is for taking a multivitamin,” said Donald Hensrud, a specialist in nutrition at the Mayo Clinic, who was not involved in the research. “A randomized, controlled trial – good study.”

Curiously, both studies suggest that participants who derived the greatest benefits may have been those with a history of cardiovascular disease, the researchers said.

“It’s most intriguing because this same finding was replicated in two studies, with different designs, and with no overlapping participants,” Manson said, speculating that those with heart disease may have had a lower nutrient status at the start of the study. “They may have started from a lower threshold, so the improvements may have been more easily detectable,” she said.

In the overall COSMOS trial, which includes different studies, there were lower rates of stomach pain, diarrhea, skin rash and bruising as side effects with multivitamin use compared with the placebo, but an increased rate of gastrointestinal bleeding.

– – –

Future research on multivitamins

The study population included people of different races, ethnicities, educational levels, socioeconomic status and household income. “However, as is the case for volunteers in any randomized clinical trials, the participants tended to be slightly more educated, had slightly higher socioeconomic status, and had less diversity than a cross-section of U.S. adults in these age groups,” Manson said.

The researchers said that future studies should explore whether the findings would be applicable to even more diverse participants, including those with lower education levels and social economic status, because the “benefits may turn out to be even greater in populations with lower incomes and poorer quality diets,” Manson said.

Additional studies also should try to identify the nutrients that provide the most benefits, as well as the specific mechanisms involved, the researchers said. Multivitamins may help slow memory loss in older adults, study shows

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Women aren’t failing at science

Female scientists are often more productive than their male colleagues but much less likely to be recognised for their work. Argonne National Laboratory/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA Lorena Rivera León, United Nations University

Female research scientists are more productive than their male colleagues, though they are widely perceived as being less so. Women are also rewarded less for their scientific achievements.

That’s according to my team’s study for United Nations University - Merit on gender inequality in scientific research in Mexico, published as a working paper in December 2016.

The study, part of the project “Science, Technology and Innovation Gender Gaps and their Economic Costs in Latin America and the Caribbean”, was financed by the Gender and Diversity Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The ‘productivity puzzle’

The study, which looked at women’s status in 42 public universities and 18 public research centres, some managed by Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), focused on a question that has been widely investigated: why are women in science less productive than men, in almost all academic disciplines and regardless of the productivity measure used?

The existence of this “productivity puzzle” is well documented, from South Africa to Italy, but few studies have sought to identify its possible causes.

Our findings demonstrate that, in Mexico at least, the premise of the productivity puzzle is false, when we control for factors such as promotion to senior academic ranks and selectivity.

Using an econometric modelling approach, including several macro simulations to understand the economic costs of gender gaps to the Mexican academic system, our study focused on researchers within Mexico’s National System of Researchers.

We found that women produce higher quality research than men, often publishing in more prestigious scholarly journals with longer term impacts in the field.

A presentation on Mexican government funding for scientific investment. How many women can you count? Government of Aguascalientes/flickr, CC BY-SA

Additionally, despite the common belief that maternity leaves make women less productive in key periods of their careers, female researchers in fact have only between 5% to 6% more non-productive years than males. At senior levels, the difference drops to 1%.

Nonetheless, in the universities and research centres we studied, Mexican women face considerable barriers to success. At public research centres, women are 35% less likely to be promoted, and 89% of senior ranks were filled by men in 2013, though women comprised 24% of research staff and 33% at non-senior levels. Public universities do slightly better (but not well): female researchers there are 22% less likely to be promoted than men.

Overall, 89% of all female academics in our sample never reached senior levels in the period studied (2002 to 2013).

In some ways this data should not be surprising. Mexico ranks 66th out of 144 in the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Gender Gap Report and a 2015 report by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that among OECD countries Mexico has the widest overall gender gap in labour participation rates.

Some efforts are being made to improve gender equality in research. In 2013 Mexico amended four articles of its Science and Technology Law to promote gender equality in those fields, adding provisions to promote gender-balanced participation in publicly funded higher education institutions and collect gender-specific data to measure the impact of gender on science and technology policies.

Several CONACYT research centres have launched initiatives to promote gender equality among staff, but many of these internal programmes are limited to anti-discrimination and sexual harassment training.

More aggressive programmes include: the Research Centre on Social Anthopology’s graduate scholarship programme, in collaboration with CONACYT and the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, to promote higher education and training among indigenous women; and policies to increase women’s participation in higher academic ranks and management at the CIATEQ technological institute, which also gives childcare subsidies to female staff.

But such examples are rare. Overall, women hoping to succeed in Mexican academia must work harder and produce more than their male colleagues to be even considered for promotion to senior ranks.

This persistent inequality has implications not just for women but for the country’s scientific production: if Mexico were to eliminate gender inequality in promotions, the national academic system would see 17% to 20% more peer-reviewed articles published.

A global glass ceiling

Mexico is not alone. Our previous research in France and South Africa, using the same econometric model, found that gender inequalities there also prevent women scientists from being promoted to higher academic ranks.

Examining French physicists working in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and in French public universities, we learned that female physicists in CNRS are as productive as their male colleagues or more so. Yet they are 6.3% less likely to be promoted within CNRS and 16.3% within universities. This is notable in a country that ranks 17th in the world in gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum.

In South Africa, race plays an important role in explaining gender inequalities in science. Examining the career paths of researchers from 2002 to 2011, we observed that there are not large differences in the promotion patterns of white researchers by gender: 60.1% of white men were not promoted (even in cases where they applied for promotion), compared to 60.6% of women in the same period. But the gap widens dramatically when you account for ethnicity: 70.4% of non-white men and 69.2% of non-white women are not promoted.

Black women face more barriers to advancement in the sciences than white women. World Bank Photo Collection/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

In Uruguay the same IDB gender gaps project identified a glass ceiling as well. There women are underrepresented in the highest academic ranks and have a 7.1% less probability than men of being promoted to senior levels.

Moreover, from Mexico and Uruguay to France and South Africa, a vicious cycle between promotion and productivity is at play: difficulties in getting promoted reduce the prestige, influence and resources available to women. In turn, those factors can lead to lower productivity, which decreases their chances of promotion.

This two-way causality creates a source of endogeneity biases when including seniority as a variable to explain productivity in an econometric model. Only when we control for this, as well as for a selectivity bias (that is, publishing occurrence), do we find that female researchers are more productive than their male counterparts. Without these corrections, a gender productivity gap of 10% to 21% appears in favour of men.

The view that women are failing at science is commonly held, but evidence shows that, across the world, it’s science that’s failing women. Action must be taken to ensure that female researchers are treated fairly, recognised for their work, and promoted when they’ve earned it.

Lorena Rivera León, Economist and Research Fellow, United Nations University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ever wonder how your body turns food into fuel? We tracked atoms to find out

James Carter, Griffith University; Brian Fry, Griffith University, and Kaitlyn O'Mara, Griffith University

Inside our bodies at every moment, our cells are orchestrating a complex dance of atoms and molecules that uses energy to create, distribute and deploy the substances on which our lives depend.

And it’s not just in our bodies: all animals carry out this dance of metabolism, and it turns out none of them do it quite the same way.

In new research published in Science Advances, we analysed specific carbon atoms in amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – to discover distinctive fingerprints of the metabolism of different species.

These fingerprints reveal how different creatures meet the demands of survival, growth and reproduction – and offer a whole new way to understand metabolism in unprecedented detail.

A more detailed picture:: We have developed a new way to study metabolism – the chemical processes inside your body that keep you alive and functioning – that reveals much more detail than previous methods. Our new technique looks at isotopes inside amino acids to see how metabolism is working.

Isotopes are versions of the same chemical element with different masses. For example, the most common kind of carbon is carbon-12, but there is also an isotope called carbon-13 that is a little heavier. We can measure the ratio of heavy to light isotopes in biological molecules such as proteins to learn about the organism that produced them.

Traditionally, scientists would analyse the overall isotope ratio of the entire protein. This can reveal some information, particularly about what kinds of things an animal eats, but it is like averaging out a complex TV image into a single pixel of light – you lose all the detailed information.

More recently, scientists have been able to measure isotopes in each of the 20 individual amino acids that make up proteins. This is like having 20 dots of light – better, but still not very nuanced.

Our new method goes even further, by measuring isotopes in a particular carbon atom on each amino acid. It’s like seeing every pixel in the TV image, which gives us amazingly detailed metabolic info.

Finding the right carbon: We used a chemical called ninhydrin to chop off and isolate the carbon atom we wanted from each amino acid. We then sent these carbon atoms – from a very metabolically active part of the amino acid called the carboxyl group – through a machine called a mass spectrometer to read their isotope fingerprints.

This research began more than a decade ago, and developed into a collaborative project between Griffith University and Queensland Health. In 2018, working with colleagues in Japan, we were able to demonstrate that we could indeed use nihydrin to isolate the carbon atoms we wanted from amino acids.

The next stage was to combine our nihydrin technique with a process called high-performance liquid chromatography, which can separate out different kinds of amino acids.

In 2019, we were able to report position-specific isotope analysis for several different mammals. We found we could distinguish a clear metabolic “fingerprint” of each mammal.

The four phases of metabolism: In our latest work, we tested a broader range of animals including oysters, scallops, prawns, squid and fish. We found the patterns of isotopes in the amino acids could be tracked back to the biochemistry of mitochondria, the tiny energy-providing powerhouses in the cells of all animals and plants, as well as many other organisms.

We identified four distinct phases of metabolism: creating fats, destroying fats, creating proteins, and destroying proteins. Animals combine these phases in distinct ways to accomplish growth and reproduction.

For example, adult mammals use fats as a pantry to regulate their temperature, whereas adult prawns cannibalise their own proteins to make the fats they need for reproduction.

We also found that the humans we studied showed a very balanced, steady state metabolism, which is perhaps unsurprising given our generally stable and nutritious diets. Interestingly, this was quite similar to what we found in an oyster sample.

In this work, we studied individuals with generally normal metabolisms. Future applications might include studies of groups with abnormal metabolism such as cancer, obesity and starvation.

By peering deep into the isotopes of amino acids, we will be able to understand eukaryote metabolism like never before, in animals, plants and fungi.

James Carter, Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith University; Brian Fry, Emeritus Professor, Griffith University, and Kaitlyn O'Mara, Research Fellow, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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'How airflow inside car may affect COVID-19 transmission risk decoded'

DEC 05, 2020 BOSTON: Using computer simulations, scientists have analysed the airflow patterns inside a car's passenger cabin, shedding light on the potential ways to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission while sharing rides with others. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, assessed the airflow inside a compact car with various combinations of windows open or closed. According to the researchers, including those from Brown University in the US, the simulations showed that opening windows created airflow patterns that dramatically reduced the concentration of airborne aerosol particles exchanged between a driver and a single passenger. However, they said blasting the car's ventilation system didn't circulate air nearly as well as a few open windows. "Driving around with the windows up and the air conditioning or heat on is definitely the worst scenario, according to our computer simulations," said Asimanshu Das, co-lead author of the research from Brown university. "The best scenario we found was having all four windows open, but even having one or two open was far better than having them all closed," Das said. While there's no way to eliminate risk completely, and current guidelines recommend postponing travel, the scientists said the goal of the study was simply to assess how changes in airflow inside a car may worsen or reduce risk of COVID-19 transmission. In the research, the computer models simulated a car, loosely based on a Toyota Prius, with two people inside -- a driver, and a passenger sitting in the back seat on the opposite side from the driver. The scientists said they chose this seating arrangement since it maximised the physical distance between the two people. Since the novel coronavirus is thought to spread via tiny aerosol particles that can linger in the air for extended periods of time, the researchers simulated airflow around and inside a car moving at 50 miles per hour. Part of the reason opening windows is better in terms of aerosol transmission is because it increases the number of air changes per hour (ACH) inside the car that reduces the overall concentration of aerosols, the study noted. The scientists showed that different combinations of open windows created different air currents inside the car that could either increase or decrease exposure to remaining aerosols. Since the occupants in the simulations were sitting on opposite sides of the cabin, they said very few particles ended up being transferred between the two. According to the research, the driver was at slightly higher risk than the passenger since the average airflow in the car goes from back to front, but added that both occupants experience a dramatically lower transfer of particles. When some -- but not all -- windows were down, the study yielded counterintuitive results. Citing an example of one such instance, the scientists said opening the windows next to each occupant carried a higher exposure risk, compared to putting down the window opposite each occupant. "When the windows opposite the occupants are open, you get a flow that enters the car behind the driver, sweeps across the cabin behind the passenger and then goes out the passenger-side front window," said Kenny Breuer, a professor of engineering at Brown University and a senior author of the research. "That pattern helps to reduce cross-contamination between the driver and passenger," Breuer said. The scientists said airflow adjustments are no substitute for mask-wearing by both occupants when inside a car, adding that the findings are limited to potential exposure to lingering aerosols that may contain pathogens. Citing another limitation of the study, the scientists said it did not model larger respiratory droplets or the risk of actually becoming infected by the virus. However, they said the findings provide valuable new insights into air circulation patterns inside a car's passenger compartment. Copyright © Jammu Links News, Source: http://www.jammulinksnews.com/

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'Blood test may tell if you are at risk of severe COVID-19 infection'

AUG 11, 2020 LONDON: A simple blood test may predict the risk of severe COVID-19 infection, say scientists who have identified a particular molecular signature in the blood that increases the chances of hospitalisation by 5 to 10 times in people infected by the novel coronavirus. The test can be used to identify people who''ll need special precautions to avoid infection and prioritise those in most need of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the scientists at Nightingale Health, a biotechnology company in Helsinki, Finland. Identification of healthy people at high risk for severe COVID-19 is a global health priority, they said. The researchers investigated whether blood biomarkers measured by high-throughput metabolomics could be predictive of severe pneumonia and COVID-19 hospitalisation years after the blood sampling. The researchers analysed over 100,000 blood samples from the UK Biobank, and identified a particular molecular signature in the blood that is common among people who get severe symptoms if infected by the coronavirus. Those with this molecular signature are five to 10 times more likely to be hospitalised, they said. These findings are novel, as the blood biomarkers in the molecular signature have not been previously known as risk markers in healthy people for developing severe forms of COVID-19, according to the researchers. The company is launching a blood test that can predict if a person will develop mild symptoms or become severely ill due to COVID-19, the researchers noted in their yet-to-be published findings that appear on preprint server medRxiv. "The best way to detect those at high risk is by looking at a molecular signature of multiple biomarkers," said Peter Wurtz, lead scientist of the study and Scientific Director of Nightingale Health. "It is striking that the risk identification works well even when focusing on a subset of biomarkers in Nightingale''s blood test that can be captured by self-collection through a finger-prick blood sample," said Wurtz, Copyright © Jammu Links News', Source: Jammu Links News

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India's Covid testing rate is low, says WHO Chief Scientist

Underlining the importance of adequate testing for COVID-19, World Health Organisation's (WHO) Chief Scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, on Tuesday said that India's testing rate is low, compared to other countries which have done well in combating the pandemic.

"India, as a whole, has a low testing rate compared to some of the countries which have done well like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and even the US," she said while speaking on 'The vaccine race, balancing since and urgency' organised by the Telangana government.

Participating via video-conferencing, she said that every public health department needs to have benchmarks like what is the test rate per million and what is the test positivity rate. "The moment your test positivity rate is above 5 percent, you know that you are not testing adequately," she said.

She said the WHO had been repeatedly emphasising that testing is extremely important. "Unless we do testing adequately, we don't know where the virus is. If you are not testing, you are fighting a fire blindfolded. We have to test, test and test."

Swaminathan said for at least the next 12 months, countries need to put in place public health and social measures that have been shown to work. She pointed out that some countries controlled the virus successfully in the first phase because of good governance, good strategic planning based on scientific knowledge, and evidence and because of involvement of community and individual trust, and good communication between the government and people.

She, however, added that testing alone was not going to solve the problem and it has to be followed by isolation of positive people, contact tracing, quarantining, taking care of positive people, and following them up to make sure they don't get into interstitial pneumonia or complications by monitoring their oxygen saturation.

"It is a comprehensive package which needs to be put in place, particularly in places where there is high density of population like cities."

Swaminathan stressed the need for Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) surveillance in rural areas but said for cities, the only way out was to expand testing.

She said the novel coronavirus has established itself in the world and gone practically into every country, and wherever it has found a situation where it was able to spread easily from person to person, it established community transmission.

Swaminathan said while most people, who have natural infection, develop antibodies, it was not known how long the protective immunity lasts. "This has implications for vaccines. If long-lasting immunity cannot be achieved after natural infection with the vaccine, we will have to see because all first-generation vaccines are targeting spike protein. The only risk is if the virus develops mutation which causes it to escape the immunity... then we are in a difficulty," she said, stressing the need for a back-up plan in the form of second-generation vaccines.

She noted that 27-28 vaccines were in clinical trials while another 150 were in pre-clinical testing. "At least five vaccines are entering stage-III trials. We will know in the next few months about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Safety is important to get public trust when you are going to vaccinate a huge number of healthy individuals. The safety bar of vaccine has to be set quite high."

Stressing the need for fair and equitable access of vaccines to populations around the world, she said that the WHO did not want a repeat of what happened during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009-10 when few rich countries bought most of the stocks of vaccines and only started donating it to lower-income countries when they realise that the infection was not as severe as supposed to be and they had excess stock. "If this happens again, then all of us would have failed."

She pointed out that the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance plan to purchase two billion doses by the end of 2021 for the highest risk populations of the world.

"We have to get agreements between countries in the next few weeks that they will follow a fair allocation mechanism developed by the WHO. Side by side, Gavi is setting up a facility which is a risk pooling mechanism where self-financing countries can put in some funds so that they can procure vaccines for their populations. This facility will buy vaccines that are going to be proven to be safe and efficacious."

India is one of the 92 Gavi eligible countries which will get the vaccines from this facility.

Source: https://southasiamonitor.org

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Scientists discover potential sustainable energy technology for the household refrigerator

• While many advancements have been in improving its efficiency, the refrigerator still consumes considerable amounts of energy each year.
• "Energy efficiency of a normal refrigerator is affected by the heat-insulating property of the thermal barriers of the freezer. This is due to its low inner temperature," explained Jingyu Cao at the University of Science and Technology of China. "There is a significant difference in temperature between the freezer of a traditional refrigerator and ambient air temperature and the normal thermal barrier of the freezer causes considerable cold loss."
• Cao and his team hypothesized that using part of the cold loss to cool the fresh food compartment could be a promising solution in improving the efficiency of the refrigerator. They describe their findings in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, from AIP Publishing.
• "The evaporating temperature of the refrigeration cycle depends only on the freezer temperature and appropriate reduction of the evaporator area in the fresh food compartment will not decrease the overall efficiency," explained Cao.
• "Most families need one or two refrigerators and they are always on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That wastes a lot of energy. Even if we can save a little energy, that helps the human race be more energy-efficient," said Cao.
• Cao and his team are not the first scientists to attempt to improve the efficiency of household refrigeration. Extensive experiments by many different scientists have looked at various parts of the refrigerator to improve energy consumption, but a definitive solution has not yet been found. In Cao's study, a novel refrigerator with a loop thermosyphon is put forward to decrease the heat transfer between the freezer and ambient air.
• "One of the surprises was how much energy we saved. The energy-saving ratio of the improved walls got close to 30 per cent — more than we had expected. This technology even works in hot climates like the desert."
• Although Cao's study is currently based on theoretical calculation, the results are promising. "It has great potential to be popularized as a sustainable energy technology or applied in the renewable energy field, considering its significant energy-saving effect, simple structure and low cost," said Cao. Source: https://www.domain-b.com

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Vaccines could reduce antibiotic use in children

• Pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines, designed to protect against acute respiratory illness (ARI) and diarrhoea, have the potential to reduce episodes of antibiotic use in children in low- and middle-income countries, an international research team has found1. 
• The researchers say the study supports ptioritisinf childhood vaccines as part of a global strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
• Previous studies have predicted that vaccines might help avert AMR by preventing infections that are treated with antibiotics. Few studies, however, explored the effects of vaccines on antibiotic use.
• To find out, the scientists, including an Indian researcher from the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi, estimated the impact of the pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines on antibiotic use in children under five years of age. They analysed data from household surveys covering 944,173 children across 77 countries from 2006 to 2018.
• The researchers found that both vaccines reduce antibiotic consumption among children. Vaccinated children had lower chances of getting antibiotic treatment for respiratory and diarrhoeal infections compared with unvaccinated ones, they report.
• The vaccines, the researchers estimate, prevent more than 37 million episodes of antibiotic use among children every year. In the absence of these vaccines, the pathogens would cause more than 100 million episodes of antibiotic-treated respiratory illness and diarrhoea.
• The researchers say that such vaccines may even prevent an additional 40 million episodes of antibiotic-treated illnesses. 
• References: 1. Lewnard, J. A. et al. Childhood vaccines and antibiotic use in low- and middle-income countries. Nature (2020) doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2238-4  Source: https://www.natureasia.com/

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Shifting alpine vegetation in Kashmir Himalayas

• The richness of species in the alpine mountain summits of Kashmir Himalayas is a good indicator of vegetation shifting upwards, according to new research1. This supports earlier theories that rise in temperature and reduced precipitation may be triggering the upward migration of alpine species in the Himalayas.
• Scientists conducting the study in the Apharwat mountain in Gulmarg area of Jammu & Kashmir say understanding the relationship between biodiversity and climate change is critical for future forecasts on vegetation patterns. Himalayas, with the world’s highest mountain peaks harbouring global biodiversity hotspots of alpine flora, are one of the most climate warming-sensitive regions.
• Earlier research2 suggested that warming could change alpine vegetation through the phenomenon of thermophilization – the increased dominance of warm-adapted species and the loss of cold-adapted species.
• Researcher Anzar Khuru from the University of Kashmir in Srinagar says that in these warm conditions, plant species specially adapted to cold habitats move upwards or could go extinct locally.
• The researchers set out to fill the knowledge gaps due to limited research on warming-induced biodiversity changes in a rapidly warming Himalaya. “We observed an increase in species richness during the re-sampling of the alpine summits.” This is an alarming signal of new thermophilic species establishing themselves at higher summits, and the likelihood of local species being competitively displaced, Khuru says.
• The researchers call for more investigation as biodiversity change in the alpine summit ecosystems can have widespread consequences for ecosystem functioning.
• References: 
• 1. Hamid, M. et al. Early evidence of shifts in alpine summit vegetation: A case study from Kashmir Himalaya. Plant Sci. (2020) doi:10.3389/fpls.2020.00421
• 2. Pauli, H. et al. Recent plant diversity changes on Europe’s mountain summits. Science 336, 353-355 (2012) doi:10.1126/science.1219033 Source: https://www.natureasia.com/

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Scientists discover greener way of making plastics

• Plastics have crept into our everday life so unobtrusively, that one cannot imagine where they cannot be found from food packagings to wearable products and everyday electronics. But, plastics in daily life come at a pricce; they release carbon dioxide in the environment.
• Now, researchers at the Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University in the UK have found a way of converting waste carbon dioxide into a molecule that forms the basis of making plastics. 
• The potential of using global ethylene derived from carbon dioxide (CO2) is huge, utilising half a billion tonnes of the carbon emitted each year and offsetting global carbon emissions.
• Dr Enrico Andreoli, who heads the CO2 utilisation group at ESRI, says, "Carbon dioxide is responsible for much of the damage caused to our environment. 
• Considerable research focuses on capturing and storing harmful carbon dioxide emissions. But an alternative to expensive long-term storage is to use the captured CO2 as a resource to make useful materials.
• That's why rfesearchers at Swansea have converted waste carbon dioxide into a molecule called ethylene. 
• Ethylene is one of the most widely used molecules in the chemical industry and is the starting material in the manufacture of detergents, synthetic lubricants, and the vast majority of plastics like polyethylene, polystyrene, and polyvinyl chloride essential to modern society."
• Dr Andreoli says, "Currently, ethylene is produced at a very high temperature by steam from oils cracking. We need to find alternative ways of producing it before we run out of oil."
• The CO2 utilisation group uses CO2, water and green electricity to generate a sustainable ethylene at room temperature. Central to this process is a new catalyst — a material engineered to speed up the formation of ethylene. Dr Andreoli explains, "We have demonstrated that copper and a polyamide additive can be combined to make an excellent catalyst for CO2 utilisation. The polyamide doubles the efficiency of ethylene formation achieving one of the highest rates of conversion ever recorded in standard bicarbonate water solutions."
• The CO2 utilisation group worked in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the European Synchrotron Research Facility in Grenoble in the formation of the catalyst.
• Dr Andreoli concludes, "The potential of using CO2 for making everyday materials is huge, and would certainly benefit large-scale producers. We are now actively looking for industrial partners interested in helping take this globally-relevant, 21st century technology forward."Source: https://www.domain-b.com/

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Japan honours C N R Rao with its highest civilian award

The Japanese government will confer the `Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star', Japan's highest civilian award that is conferred on academicians, politicians and military officers, on Professor Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao (CNR Rao), eminent Indian scientist. The award is being given for his ''contribution to promoting academic interchange and mutual understanding in science and technology between Japan and India'', an official release said. Rao is one of the world's foremost solid state and materials chemists and has been bestowed with about 70 honorary doctorates and received the highest civilian award of India, Bharat Ratna. Professor CNR Rao is a National Research Professor, Linus Pauling Research Professor and honorary president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru, an autonomous institution supported by the ministry of science and technology, Government of India. Professor Rao had made substantial contributions to the development of science in India and the Third World. Born on 30 June 1934, has authored around 1,500 research papers and 45 scientific books. In 2014 the became the third scientist C V Raman and A P J Abdul Kalam to to receive the Bharat Ratna. Source: Article, Image: flickr.com

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Scientists hunt for universe's very first rays of light

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WASHINGTON (VOR)— It's a strange thought that some of the rays we bask in have taken millions of years to arrive.

More, that this light has taken a circuitous route, being bent by forces such as gravity. Now, scientists have begun to unravel the path of light, and in doing so may be able to develop a clearer map of the universe. To do so, scientists are attempting to track down a specific type of light which they describes as a primordial B mode. This light wave is believed to have been released less than a second after the very universe was formed. One catch to the search is that scientists don't quite know how powerful the signal may be, or in fact what it might look like. Nonetheless, vast microwave telescopes are being set up at the South Pole because of its arid climate to seek deep into space in an attempt to identify the level of polarization as well as the direction of the light wave. For insight, VOR’s Andrew Hiller spoke with Olivier Doré, a member of the Planck science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dore' speculates that some of that light may have already reached Earth. Though invisible to the naked eye, he says it may exist in the background of the spectrum. To explain, he conjures the analogy of television static picked up using an old fashioned antenna. He says that if you could look through the prism and see every wavelength of light... the distortion you receive or TV-like snow may be where these primordial b modes hide. But scientists aren't just interested in finding ancient light that's made its way to us. They want to trace it back to its origins and pick up other threads deep in space as a way of piecing together the tapestry of the universe. Dore' believes this discovery "…is really opening a new window into the physics of the universe. It's something really, really unique!" Source: Voice of Russia - US Edition

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ATC upgrade is hackable scientist says

Air traffic control technology is getting a major upgrade in the United States that is scheduled to be completed in 2014, but the new systems are susceptible to potentially dangerous manipulation, according to a security researcher. The actual flaws might seem mild compared to everyone's worst fears and common Hollywood plot lines. Planes cannot be forced from the sky or dangerously redirected. But the researcher says the system can be tricked into seeing aircraft that are not actually there. Messages sent using the system are not encrypted or authenticated, meaning anyone with the basic technology and know-how could identify a plane and see its location. Computer scientist Andrei Costin, a Ph.D. student at Eurecom, gave a talk on the weaknesses of the new air traffic system at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. He did not mention any known hacks of the system, but did demonstrate the potential negative scenarios. Old radar systems are being replaced with a new technology called Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast system, or ADS-B. The traditional radars work by sending a signal that triggers an aircraft's responder to send back its position. The new system uses the global satellite navigation system to continuously broadcast the locations of planes. The information is sent to other aircraft and ground stations; the ground station sends the location to air traffic controllers. The new system will open up this flight information to a new player: the general public. "There are various applications which you can go to and basically see, online, in real time, all the airplanes which broadcast their information," said Costin. According to Costin, the chance of these security holes being exploited for terrorism is unlikely, but he says they still have the potential to be used by pranksters, paparazzi and military intelligence organizations interested in tracking private aircraft or confusing air traffic control systems on the ground. Intercepting the messages, jamming the system or attacking it by adding false information does not require advanced technology; the necessary software-defined radio retails for under $800. One of the technology's makers downplayed the threat. "We are quite familiar with the theory that ADS-B could be 'spoofed,' or barrage jammed by false targets. There's little new here. In fact, just about any radio frequency device can be interfered with somewhat," said Skip Nelson, the president of ADS-B Technologies, which is one of many companies making these components. "I obviously can't comment on countermeasures, but you should know that this issue has been thoroughly investigated and international aviation does have a plan." In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said it already has a process in place for addressing potential threats to the system, and it does conduct ongoing assessments of vulnerabilities: "An FAA ADS-B security action plan identified and mitigated risks and monitors the progress of corrective action. These risks are security sensitive and are not publicly available." The FAA has sunk millions of dollars into the system. The benefits of the ADS-B are that it will show more precise locations of aircraft and pilots will have access to more information about surrounding aircraft while in the air. The FAA also says it is more environmentally friendly by making flight routes more direct and saving on fuel. Given the large time and financial investment, the FAA is not going to abandon the new technology. However, it isn't throwing out the old system completely, just in case. "The FAA plans to maintain about half of the current network of secondary radars as a backup to ADS-B in the unlikely event it is needed," the FAA said in its statement. Source: Deep Blue Horizon

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Russian scientists get first ice samples from Antarctic Lake Vostok

© Photo: ru.wikipedia.org

Russian scientists have obtained first ice samples from Lake Vostok, a huge body of liquid water buried under the Antarctic ice. The scientists presume that the ice from the lake may have special physical characteristics.

Lake Vostok is considered to be the largest of several hundreds of reservoirs located under the Antarctic ice. With an area of 15,000 square km it is slightly smaller that Ladoga Lake in Russia, which is considered to be the largest in Europe. For millions of years Lake Vostok was isolated from earth atmosphere. The thickness of the ice layer above the lake varies between 3,700 up and 4,200 meters. On January 10, the members of the Antarctic expedition received first ice samples from that lake. The samples will be brought to St. Petersburg in mid-May when the research ship “Academician Fyodorov” is back from the expedition. We hear from Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in charge of the mission. "Thеn (in May) these samples will be taken to our laboratories for micro-biological and chemical analysis. We are going to study the biodiversity of an absolutely unknown object. So far no one else in the world has managed to take sample from that lake. If we find some microorganisms in those samples we will probably get new data about evolution laws because such organisms lived in such a unique environment." The study of water from the lake will help researchers answer an important question about life forms which existed on our planet millions of years ago. So far there are no direct proves of life forms in the lake but many scientists believe that they exist there, Tamara Hoger, deputy head of the limnology institute of the Siberian department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says. "Lake Vostok was isolated from the outer world for more than a million years. It is possible to speak about the reconstruction of paleo-climate by analyzing samples of water. Perhaps we will discover the most primitive life forms." Antarctica is still full of secrets and now Russian scientists have come closer to discovering the secrets of the largest Antarctic lake. Source: Voice of Russia

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Japanese scientists succeed in generating kidney tissue from stem cells

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Japanese scientists have made “a very significant step” that gives hope to millions of those who have to undergo regular dialysis treatment because of their organs’ dysfunction. For the first time human kidney tissue has been generated from stem cells.

Kenji Osafune of Kyoto University said their experiment aimed at  generating
kidney cells from the “blank slates” – stem cells capable to become any type of cell – had proved to be a success. Scientists say that a human kidney has a complex structure, and not any damage to it is fixable. According to Osafune, his team successfully generated intermediate mesoderm tissue, which can be regarded as an intermediate stage between the blank slate and the finished kidney tissue. The intermediate mesoderm tissue can be grown separately in a tube or a living host into specific kidney cells. Osafune said he hoped their success would contribute to the development of regenerative therapy. Source: Voice of Russia

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Chinese scientists create brain cells from urine

More news on the stem cell front (not the embryonic kind). Chinese scientists have created brain cells from urine. Since there is no shortage of this and since collecting it is not invasive, their technique is very promising. It might be possible to treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease – which has been the Holy Grail of stem cell research. Writing in the journal Nature Methods, scientists from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that they were able to reprogram the urine cells to become neural cells without passing through pluripotency. They did this with a clever technique which did not involve shuttling genes from genetically engineered viruses into the target cell. This seems to result in harmful mutations. Source: Bio-Edge

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Scientists find mechanism behind origin of life on Earth

Researchers have found that a 'molecular  network'  with  self - perpetuating capability may have triggered a possible mechanism by which life got a foothold on the early Earth. Recent mathematical research sheds light on a possible mechanism by which life may have gotten a foothold in the chemical soup that existed on the early Earth. Researchers have proposed several competing theories for how life on Earth could have gotten its start, even before the first genes or living cells came to be. Despite differences between various proposed scenarios, one theme they all have in common is a network of molecules that have the ability to work together to jumpstart and speed up their own replication two necessary ingredients for life. However, many researchers find it hard to imagine how such a molecular network could have formed spontaneously with no precursors ¿ from the chemical environment of early Earth. "Some say it's equivalent to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling the random pieces of metal and plastic into a Boeing 747," said co-author Wim Hordijk from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N Carolina. In a previous study, Hordijk and colleague Mike Steel of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand used a mathematical model of simple chemical reactions to show that such networks might form more easily than many researchers thought. Indeed, biochemists have recently created such networks in\ the lab. In a new study, Hordijk, Steel and Stuart Kauffman from the University of Vermont analysed the structure of the networks in their mathematical models and found a plausible mechanism by which they could have evolved to produce the building blocks of life we know today, such as cell membranes or nucleic acids. "It turns out that if you look at the structure of the networks of molecules [in our models], very often they're composed of smaller subsets of molecules with the same self-perpetuating capabilities," Hordijk said. By combining, splitting, and recombining to form new types of networks from their own subunits, the models indicate that these subsets of molecules could give rise to increasingly large and complex networks of chemical reactions, and, presumably, life. "These results could have major consequences for how we think life may have originated from pure chemistry," Hordijk said. Source: Indian Express, ***

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