Trees save lives, reduce respiratory problems

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In the first broad-scale estimate of air pollution removal by trees nationwide, U.S. Forest Service scientists and collaborators calculated that trees are saving more than 850 human lives a year and preventing 670,000 incidents of acute respiratory symptoms.While trees’ pollution removal equated to an average air quality improvement of less than 1 percent, the impacts of that improvement are substantial. Researchers valued the human health effects of the reduced air pollution at nearly $7 billion every year in a study published recently in the journal Environmental Pollution.The study by Dave Nowak and Eric Greenfield of the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and Satoshi Hirabayashi and Allison Bodine of the Davey Institute is unique in that it directly links the removal of air pollution with improved human health effects and associated health values. The scientists found that pollution removal is substantially higher in rural areas than urban areas, however the effects on human health are substantially greater in urban areas than rural areas.”With more than 80 percent of Americans living in urban area, this research underscores how truly essential urban forests are to people across the nation,” said Michael T. Rains, Director of the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and the Forest Products Laboratory. “Information and tools developed by Forest Service research are contributing to communities valuing and managing the 138 million acres of trees and forests that grace the nation’s cities, towns and communities.”The study considered four pollutants for which the U.S. EPA has established air quality standards: nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) in aerodynamic diameter. Health effects related to air pollution include impacts on pulmonary, cardiac, vascular, and neurological systems. In the United States, approximately 130,000 PM2.5-related deaths and 4,700 ozone-related deaths in 2005 were attributed to air pollution.Trees’ benefits vary with tree cover across the nation. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #Cancer, #Forest, #Forestservice, #Greater, #Health, #Institute, #Northernresearch, #Pollution, #Science, #Unitedstates

Intensity of hurricanes: New study helps improve predictions of storm intensity

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They are something we take very seriously in Florida — hurricanes. The names roll off the tongue like a list of villains — Andrew, Charlie, Frances and Wilma.In the past 25 years or so, experts have gradually been improving prediction of the course a storm may take. This is thanks to tremendous advancements in computer and satellite technology. While we still have the “cone of uncertainty” we’ve become familiar with watching television weather reports, today’s models are more accurate than they used to be.The one area, however, where there is still much more to be researched and learned is in predicting just how intense a storm may be. While hurricane hunter aircraft can help determine wind speed, velocity, water temperature and other data, the fact is we often don’t know why or how a storm gets stronger or weaker. There has been virtually no progress in hurricane intensity forecasting during the last quarter century.But, thanks to new research being conducted, all that’s about to change.”The air-water interface — whether it had significant waves or significant spray — is a big factor in storm intensity,” said Alex Soloviev, Ph.D., a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center. “Hurricanes gain heat energy through the interface and they lose mechanical energy at the interface.”Soloviev is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM RSMAS) and a Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS.) He and his fellow researchers used a computational fluid dynamics model to simulate microstructure of the air-sea interface under hurricane force winds. In order to verify these computer-generated results, the group conducted experiments at the UM’s Rosenstiel School Air-Sea Interaction Salt Water Tank (ASIST) where they simulated wind speed and ocean surface conditions found during hurricanes.The study “The Air-Sea Interface and Surface Stress Under Tropical Cyclones” was published in the June 16, 2014 issue of the journal Nature Scientific Reports. Soloviev was the lead author of this study, which was conducted by a multi-institutional team including Roger Lukas (University of Hawaii), Mark Donelan and Brian Haus (UM RSMAS), and Isaac Ginis (University of Rhode Island.)The researchers were surprised at what they found. Under hurricane force wind, the air-water interface was producing projectiles fragmenting into sub millimeter scale water droplets. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #Fellow, #Health, #Institute, #Marine, #Miami, #Professor, #School, #Scientific

MS cognitive rehabilitation: Task meaningfulness influences learning, memory, research finds

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Kessler Foundation researchers have found that among persons with multiple sclerosis, self-generation may be influenced by variables such as task meaningfulness during learning and memory. They also found that type of task (functional versus laboratory) had a significant effect on memory. This is the first controlled investigation of therapeutic and patient-specific factors that supports the inclusion of self-generation in cognitive rehabilitation. The study was published in the January issue of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation: An International Journal.Yael Goverover, PhD, OT, is a Visiting Scientist at Kessler Foundation. She is an associate professor at New York University. Dr. Goverover is a recipient of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research Fellowship award (Mary Switzer Award).The researchers studied two groups: 35 persons with MS who had moderate to severe learning and memory impairments (SEVERE-MS), and 35 persons with little to no impairment (MILD-MS). All the participants learned two types of tasks (functional everyday tasks and laboratory tasks), each in two learning conditions (Provided and Generated). Participants were required to recall the information immediately, 30 minutes, and 1 week following initial learning. Significantly more words were recalled from the generated condition, a finding that was consistent for both SEVERE-MS and MILD-MS. …


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#Agriculture, #Alzheimer, #Institute, #Kessler, #Mild, #National, #Participants, #Research, #Science, #Scientist, #Severe

Meet your match: Using algorithms to spark collaboration between scientists

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Speed dating, in which potential lovers size each other up in brief 10 minute encounters before moving on to the next person, can be an awkward and time-wasting affair. Finding the perfect research partnership is often just as tough. Speed dating-style techniques are increasingly used at academics conferences, but can be equally frustrating — with busy academics being pushed into too many pointless encounters.But now a group of scientists led by geneticist Rafael Carazo Salas have constructed a system that could revolutionise conference speed dating — by treating scientists like genes.Using mathematical algorithms, the team created a method of matching conference-goers according to pre-set criteria, bringing about unforeseen collaboration opportunities while also enabling “would-like-to-meet” match-ups across disciplines and knowledge areas. The results have been recently published in the open-access journal eLife.Funded by the Royal Society to run a small-scale satellite conference on cell polarity, the researchers wanted to find a way to not only break the ice between scientists who did not know each other, but also to “break the heat” — to encourage big name scientists to step outside of their usual small circle, and mix with up-and-coming scientists.”We wanted to avoid the usual pattern that happens at conferences, especially at interdisciplinary meetings, of like sticking with like. Then we came up with an idea — what if we treated the delegates like we treat genes, and used mathematical algorithms to build a connectivity picture that could enable new links to be made?” said Carazo Salas, from the Gurdon Institute and Genetics Department of Cambridge University, who co-developed the technique with colleagues Federico Vaggi and Attila Csikasz-Nagy from Fondazione Edmund Mach, Italy.In the lead-up to the conference, delegates were asked to submit information about their research areas and disciplines and also to come up with a ‘wish list’ of specialist areas that they would like to know more about.”The conference started in a predictable way. After the first couple of talks, questions came entirely from people in the first few rows. We then did a brief presentation about the “speed dating” session that was about to happen. People’s eyes lit up when they got the game — the notion of being treated like genes seemed to appeal.”In the first speed-dating round, the 40 delegates were each paired up with someone who was not known to them and who had a very different knowledge base — so someone specialising in X technique might be paired with a specialist in Y. Pairs were given around 10 minutes to talk and then moved on to new pairs, so that each person met a total of four other people they knew very little about.”The atmosphere in the room after the first round of speed dating was entirely different. There was a buzz, and at the next set of talks questions came from all over the room, not just the usual couple of rows at the front.”In the second round, the pairings made use of the wish lists the delegates had created. …


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#Academics, #Alzheimer, #Carazo, #Conference, #Department, #Institute, #Lovers, #Pregnancy, #Research, #Royal, #Scientists, #Style

Still no Field Sobriety Test for Marijuana

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Photo Credit How do police identify a stoned driver?The standard field sobriety test involves having a driver walk heel to toe, turn on one foot and walk back heel to toe and stand on one leg for 30 seconds. This is said to catch almost 90% of drunk drivers – but does it do the same for stoned drivers?According to an article published in the New York Times it does not. In fact, only 30% of stoned drivers with THC in their systems fail these motor skills and the rates are even lower for veteran stoners who are used to being high.Crafting a standard field sobriety test that works for marijuana is becoming increasingly important as states legalize its recreational and medical use. Still little…


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#Colorado, #Drivers, #Driving-Under-Influence, #Driving-While-Stoned, #Institute, #Manager, #Result, #Thc, #Timesitdoes

World"s most powerful terahertz laser chip

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University of Leeds researchers have taken the lead in the race to build the world’s most powerful terahertz laser chip.A paper in the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) journal Electronics Letters reports that the Leeds team has exceeded a 1 Watt output power from a quantum cascade terahertz laser.The new record more than doubles landmarks set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently by a team from Vienna last year.Terahertz waves, which lie in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, can penetrate materials that block visible light and have a wide range of possible uses including chemical analysis, security scanning, medical imaging, and telecommunications.Widely publicised potential applications include monitoring pharmaceutical products, the remote sensing of chemical signatures of explosives in unopened envelopes, and the non-invasive detection of cancers in the human body.However, one of the main challenges for scientists and engineers is making the lasers powerful and compact enough to be useful.Professor Edmund Linfield, Professor of Terahertz Electronics in the University’s School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: “Although it is possible to build large instruments that generate powerful beams of terahertz radiation, these instruments are only useful for a limited set of applications. We need terahertz lasers that not only offer high power but are also portable and low cost.”The quantum cascade terahertz lasers being developed by Leeds are only a few square millimetres in size.In October 2013, Vienna University of Technology announced that its researchers had smashed the world record output power for quantum cascade terahertz lasers previously held by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Austrian team reported an output of 0.47 Watt from a single laser facet, nearly double the output power reported by the MIT team. The Leeds group has now achieved an output of more than 1 Watt from a single laser facet.Professor Linfield said: “The process of making these lasers is extraordinarily delicate. Layers of different semiconductors such as gallium arsenide are built up one atomic monolayer at a time. We control the thickness and composition of each individual layer very accurately and build up a semiconductor material of between typically 1,000 and 2,000 layers. The record power of our new laser is due to the expertise that we have developed at Leeds in fabricating these layered semiconductors, together with our ability to engineer these materials subsequently into suitable and powerful laser devices.”Professor Giles Davies, Professor of Electronic and Photonic Engineering in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: “The University of Leeds has been an international leader in terahertz engineering for many years. This work is a key step toward increasing the power of these lasers while keeping them compact and affordable enough to deliver the range of applications promised by terahertz technology.”This work was mainly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Leeds. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Austrian, #Council, #Health, #Institute, #King, #Linfield, #Professor, #Research, #Science, #World

HIV drug used to reverse effects of virus that causes cervical cancer

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A commonly-used HIV drug has been shown to kill off the human papilloma virus (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer in a world-first clinical trial led by The University of Manchester with Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in Nairobi.Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson, from the University’s Institute of Cancer Sciences and Dr Innocent Orora Maranga, Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at KNH in Nairobi examined Kenyan women diagnosed with HPV positive early stage cervical cancer who were treated with the antiviral HIV drug lopinavir in Kenya.The study looked at 40 women with both high and low-grade pre-cancerous disease of the cervix and the antiviral drug, normally used orally to treat HIV, was self-applied directly to the cervix as a pessary.The results, due to be presented at two international scientific conferences later this month and next, showed a high proportion of women diagnosed with HPV positive high-grade disease returned to normal following a short course of the new treatment. The findings build on previous peer-reviewed laboratory based research carried out by Drs Hampson and will be submitted to a journal soon.They have been described by an independent leading specialist in gynaecological cancer as very impressive. The 40 women, who were all HPV positive with either high-grade, borderline or low grade disease, were treated with one capsule of the antiviral drug twice a day for 2 weeks.Repeat cervical smears showed a marked improvement within one month of the treatment although after three months, there was a definite response. Out of 23 women initially diagnosed with high-grade disease, 19 (82.6%) had returned to normal and two now had low-grade disease giving an overall positive response in 91.2%.of those treated.Furthermore the 17 women initially diagnosed with borderline or low-grade disease also showed similar improvement. Photographic images of the cervix before and after treatment showed clear regression of the cervical lesions and no adverse reactions were reported.Dr Ian Hampson said: “For an early stage clinical trial the results have exceeded our expectations. We have seen women with high-grade disease revert to a normal healthy cervix within a comparatively short period of time.”We are convinced that further optimization of the dose and treatment period will improve the efficacy still further.”It is our hope that this treatment has the potential to revolutionize the management of this disease most particularly in developing nations such as Kenya.”Cervical cancer is caused by infection with human papilloma virus (HPV) and is more than five times more prevalent in East Africa than the UK. In many developing countries, HPV-related cervical cancer is still one of the most common women’s cancers accounting for approximately 290,000 deaths per year worldwide. The same virus also causes a significant proportion of cancers of the mouth and throat in both men and women and this disease is showing an large increase in developed countries, such as the UK, where it is now more than twice as common as cervical cancer.Dr Lynne Hampson said: “Current HPV Vaccines are prophylactics aimed at preventing the disease rather than curing or treating symptoms. Other than surgery, as yet there is no effective treatment for either HPV infection or the pre-cancerous lesion it causes which is why these results are so exciting.”Further work is needed but it looks as though this might be a potential treatment to stop early stage cervical cancer caused by HPV.”On a global scale HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease. Although in the developed world vaccination programmes against HPV are well underway, these are not effective in women already infected with the virus.The current vaccines do not protect against all types of HPV and they are expensive, which can limit their use in countries with low resources. …


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#Africa, #Cancer, #Drs, #Health, #Institute, #Nairobi, #National, #Private, #Trust

Theory on origin of animals challenged: Some animals need extremely little oxygen

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One of science’s strongest dogmas is that complex life on Earth could only evolve when oxygen levels in the atmosphere rose to close to modern levels. But now studies of a small sea sponge fished out of a Danish fjord shows that complex life does not need high levels of oxygen in order to live and grow.The origin of complex life is one of science’s greatest mysteries. How could the first small primitive cells evolve into the diversity of advanced life forms that exists on Earth today? The explanation in all textbooks is: Oxygen. Complex life evolved because the atmospheric levels of oxygen began to rise app. 630 — 635 million years ago.However new studies of a common sea sponge from Kerteminde Fjord in Denmark shows that this explanation needs to be reconsidered. The sponge studies show that animals can live and grow even with very limited oxygen supplies.In fact animals can live and grow when the atmosphere contains only 0.5 per cent of the oxygen levels in today’s atmosphere.”Our studies suggest that the origin of animals was not prevented by low oxygen levels,” says Daniel Mills, PhD at the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the University of Southern Denmark.Together with Lewis M. Ward from the California Institute of Technology he is the lead author of a research paper about the work in the journal PNAS.A little over half a billion years ago, the first forms of complex life — animals — evolved on Earth. Billions of years before that life had only consisted of simple single-celled life forms. The emergence of animals coincided with a significant rise in atmospheric oxygen, and therefore it seemed obvious to link the two events and conclude that the increased oxygen levels had led to the evolution of animals.”But nobody has ever tested how much oxygen animals need — at least not to my knowledge. …


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#Earth, #Ecology, #Institute, #Marine, #Mills, #Oxygen, #Science, #Technology

Deep TCR sequencing reveals extensive renewal of the T cell repertoire following autologous stem cell transplant in MS

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A new study describes the complexity of the new T cell repertoire following immune-depleting therapy to treat multiple sclerosis, improving our understanding of immune tolerance and clinical outcomes.In the Immune Tolerance Network’s (ITN) HALT-MS study, 24 patients with relapsing, remitting multiple sclerosis received high-dose immunosuppression followed by a transplant of their own stem cells, called an autologous stem cell transplant, to potentially reprogram the immune system so that it stops attacking the brain and spinal cord. Data published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation quantified and characterized T cell populations following this aggressive regimen to understand how the reconstituting immune system is related to patient outcomes.ITN investigators used a high-throughput, deep-sequencing technology (Adaptive Biotechnologies, ImmunoSEQTM Platform) to analyze the T cell receptor (TCR) sequences in CD4+ and CD8+ cells to compare the repertoire at baseline pre-transplant, two months post-transplant and 12 months post-transplant.Using this approach, alongside conventional flow cytometry, the investigators found that CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes exhibit different reconstitution patterns following transplantation. The scientists observed that the dominant CD8+ T cell clones present at baseline were expanded at 12 months post-transplant, suggesting these clones were not effectively eradicated during treatment. In contrast, the dominant CD4+ T cell clones present at baseline were undetectable at 12 months, and the reconstituted CD4+ T cell repertoire was predominantly composed of new clones.The results also suggest the possibility that differences in repertoire diversity early in the reconstitution process might be associated with clinical outcomes. Nineteen patients who responded to treatment had a more diverse repertoire two months following transplant compared to four patients who did not respond. Despite the low number of non-responders, these comparisons approached statistical significance and point to the possibility that complexity in the T cell compartment may be important for establishing immune tolerance.This is one of the first studies to quantitatively compare the baseline T cell repertoire with the reconstituted repertoire following autologous stem cell transplant, and provides a previously unseen in-depth analysis of how the immune system reconstitutes itself following immune-depleting therapy.About The Immune Tolerance NetworkThe Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) is a research consortium sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The ITN develops and conducts clinical and mechanistic studies of immune tolerance therapies designed to prevent disease-causing immune responses, without compromising the natural protective properties of the immune system. Visit www.immunetolerance.org for more information.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Immune Tolerance Network. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Agriculture, #Cancer, #Diseases, #Institute, #Itn, #Journal, #Materials, #Science

Thinking it through: Scientists seek to unlock mysteries of the brain

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Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science. If we can rise to this challenge, we will gain profound insights into what makes us human, develop new treatments for brain diseases, and build revolutionary new computing technologies that will have far reaching effects, not only in neuroscience.Scientists at the European Human Brain Project — set to announce more than a dozen new research partnerships worth Eur 8.3 million in funding later this month — the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the US BRAIN Initiative are developing new paradigms for understanding how the human brain works in health and disease. Today, their international and collaborative projects are defined, explored, and compared during “Inventing New Ways to Understand the Human Brain,” at the 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.Brain Simulation, Big Data, and a New Computing ParadigmHenry Markram from the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, where the Human Brain Project is based, describes how the project will leverage available experimental data and basic principles of brain organization to reconstruct the detailed structure of the brain in computer models. The models will allow the HBP to run super-computer based simulations of the inner working of the brain.”Brain simulation allows measurements and manipulations impossible in the lab, opening the road to a new kind of in silico experimentation,” Markram says.The data deluge in neuroscience is resulting in a revolutionary amount of brain data with new initiatives planning to acquire even more. But searching, accessing, and analyzing this data remains a key challenge.Sean Hill, also of EPFL and a speaker at AAAS, leads The Neuroinformatics Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP). In this scientific panel, he explains how the platform will provide tools to manage, navigate, and annotate spatially referenced brain atlases, which will form the basis for the HBP’s modeling effort — turning Big Data into deep knowledge.The Neuroinformatics Platform will bring together many different kinds of data. University of Edinburgh’s Seth Grant, a key member of the HBP, describes how he is deriving new methods to decode the molecular principles underlying the brain’s organization, such as how individual proteins assemble into larger complexes. As Grant explains in Chicago, this has important practical applications as many mutations in schizophrenia and autism converge on these so-called supercomplexes in the brain.As we understand more and more about the way the brain computes we can apply this knowledge to technology. Karlheinz Meier, of Heidelberg University in Germany and a speaker at AAAS, outlines how he is working to create entirely new computing systems as part of the HBP. These Neuromorphic Computing Systems will merge realistic brain models with new hardware for a completely new paradigm of computing — one that more closely resembles how the brain itself processes information.”The brain has the ability to efficiently perform computations that are impossible even for the most powerful computers while consuming only 30 Watts of power,” Meier says.Brain: Get Ready For Your Close-upAt AAAS, Christof Koch lays out another ambitious, 10-year plan from the Allen Institute for Brain Science: to understand the structure and function of the brain by mapping cell types from mice and humans with computer simulations and figuring out how the cells connect, and how they encode, relay, and process information. …


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#Allen, #Alternative-Medicine, #Computing, #European, #Hbp, #Health, #Institute, #Neuroinformatics, #Science, #Switzerland

Genetic chip will help salmon farmers breed better fish

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Atlantic salmon production could be boosted by a new technology that will help select the best fish for breeding.The development will enable salmon breeders to improve the quality of their stock and its resistance to disease.A chip loaded with hundreds of thousands of pieces of DNA — each holding a fragment of the salmon’s genetic code — will allow breeders to detect fish with the best genes.It does so by detecting variations in the genetic code of each individual fish — known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These variations make it possible to identify genes that are linked to desirable physical traits, such as growth or resistance to problematic diseases, for example sea lice infestations.Salmon breeders will be able to carry out the test by taking a small sample of fin tissue.The chip carries over twenty times more genetic information than existing tools. Similar chips have already transformed breeding programmes for land-farmed livestock including cattle and pigs.Salmon farming contributes around half a billion pounds to the UK economy each year and provides healthy, high quality food. Worldwide, approximately 1.5 million tonnes of Atlantic salmon are produced every year.Scientists from the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute and Edinburgh Genomics initiative developed the chip with researchers from the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow. They worked with industrial partners Affymetrix UK and Landcatch Natural Selection. The work was funded by the UK’s innovation agency — the Technology Strategy Board — and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.The chip is highlighted in a study published today in the journal BMC Genomics and it will be available to breeders and farmers from March 2014.Dr Ross Houston, of The Roslin Institute, said: “Selective breeding programmes have been used to improve salmon stocks since the 1970s. This new technology will allow the best breeding fish to be selected more efficiently and accurately, particularly those with characteristics that are difficult to measure such as resistance to disease”Dr Alan Tinch, director of genetics at Landcatch Natural Selection, said: “This development takes selective breeding programmes to a whole new level. It is an extension to the selective breeding of salmon allowing more accurate identification of the best fish to create healthier and more robust offspring.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Edinburgh. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Alzheimer, #Biotechnology, #Council, #Dna, #Edinburgh, #Genomics, #Institute, #Landcatch, #Pregnancy, #Research, #Selection, #Universities

Researchers hijack cancer migration mechanism to "move" brain tumors

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One factor that makes glioblastoma cancers so difficult to treat is that malignant cells from the tumors spread throughout the brain by following nerve fibers and blood vessels to invade new locations. Now, researchers have learned to hijack this migratory mechanism, turning it against the cancer by using a film of nanofibers thinner than human hair to lure tumor cells away.Instead of invading new areas, the migrating cells latch onto the specially-designed nanofibers and follow them to a location — potentially outside the brain — where they can be captured and killed. Using this technique, researchers can partially move tumors from inoperable locations to more accessible ones. Though it won’t eliminate the cancer, the new technique reduced the size of brain tumors in animal models, suggesting that this form of brain cancer might one day be treated more like a chronic disease.”We have designed a polymer thin film nanofiber that mimics the structure of nerves and blood vessels that brain tumor cells normally use to invade other parts of the brain,” explained Ravi Bellamkonda, lead investigator and chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “The cancer cells normally latch onto these natural structures and ride them like a monorail to other parts of the brain. By providing an attractive alternative fiber, we can efficiently move the tumors along a different path to a destination that we choose.”Details of the technique were reported February 16 in the journal Nature Materials. The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health; by Atlanta-based Ian’s Friends Foundation, and by the Georgia Research Alliance. In addition to the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, the research team included Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University.Treating the Glioblastoma multiforme cancer, also known as GBM, is difficult because the aggressive and invasive cancer often develops in parts of the brain where surgeons are reluctant to operate. Even if the primary tumor can be removed, however, it has often spread to other locations before being diagnosed.New drugs are being developed to attack GBM, but the Atlanta-based researchers decided to take a more engineering approach. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Cancer, #Coulter, #Engineering, #Georgia, #Health, #Institute, #Pregnancy, #Professor, #Science

Pregnancy study for overweight women leads to fewer high birth weight babies

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The world’s biggest study offering healthy eating and exercise advice to pregnant women who are overweight or obese has shown a significant reduction in the number of babies born over 4kg (8.8 pounds) in weight.The LIMIT Study, led by researchers from the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Institute and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, involved more than 2200 pregnant women from 2008-2011.In the first major results from the LIMIT Study, published this week in the British Medical Journal, the researchers say that providing advice and assistance to adopt a healthy diet and regular exercise during pregnancy has led to an 18% reduction in the chance of a baby being born over 4kg.”This is a very important finding,” says the lead author of the study, Professor Jodie Dodd from the University’s Robinson Institute and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.”We know that babies who are born over 4kg have a two-fold increased risk of being overweight or obese as children, which often carries into later life, bringing with it a range of health concerns such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So we’re pleased to see that the study has led to a significant reduction in the risk of a baby being born over 4kg.Professor Dodd says overweight and obesity during pregnancy are common, affecting approximately 50% of women, and until now there has been little evidence about the benefit of dietary and lifestyle interventions on clinical outcomes in this group of women.About half of the women who took part in the study were provided with dietary and lifestyle advice promoting healthy eating and exercise, consistent with current Australian recommendations. The remaining women continued to receive routine antenatal care.”Our focus was on providing simple, practical lifestyle advice that is very achievable in the real world. It wasn’t about going on a diet, but focused on healthy eating and increasing activity levels on a daily basis,” Professor Dodd says.”There were no differences in the amount of weight women gained during pregnancy between the two study groups. It will be very important to look in more detail at the changes women have made to their diet and physical activity, and that will be the subject of a future paper.”This study has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). The full paper can be found at the British Medical Journal website.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Adelaide. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Agriculture, #Australian, #Children, #Health, #Institute, #National, #Pregnancy, #Robinson, #Study, #University

Robotic construction crew needs no foreman

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On the plains of Namibia, millions of tiny termites are building a mound of soil — an 8-foot-tall “lung” for their underground nest. During a year of construction, many termites will live and die, wind and rain will erode the structure, and yet the colony’s life-sustaining project will continue.Inspired by the termites’ resilience and collective intelligence, a team of computer scientists and engineers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has created an autonomous robotic construction crew. The system needs no supervisor, no eye in the sky, and no communication: just simple robots — any number of robots — that cooperate by modifying their environment.Harvard’s TERMES system demonstrates that collective systems of robots can build complex, three-dimensional structures without the need for any central command or prescribed roles. The results of the four-year project were presented this week at the AAAS 2014 Annual Meeting and published in the February 14 issue of Science.The TERMES robots can build towers, castles, and pyramids out of foam bricks, autonomously building themselves staircases to reach the higher levels and adding bricks wherever they are needed. In the future, similar robots could lay sandbags in advance of a flood, or perform simple construction tasks on Mars.”The key inspiration we took from termites is the idea that you can do something really complicated as a group, without a supervisor, and secondly that you can do it without everybody discussing explicitly what’s going on, but just by modifying the environment,” says principal investigator Radhika Nagpal, Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard SEAS. She is also a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute, where she co-leads the Bioinspired Robotics platform.Most human construction projects today are performed by trained workers in a hierarchical organization, explains lead author Justin Werfel, a staff scientist in bioinspired robotics at the Wyss Institute and a former SEAS postdoctoral fellow.”Normally, at the beginning, you have a blueprint and a detailed plan of how to execute it, and the foreman goes out and directs his crew, supervising them as they do it,” he says. “In insect colonies, it’s not as if the queen is giving them all individual instructions. Each termite doesn’t know what the others are doing or what the current overall state of the mound is.”Instead, termites rely on a concept known as stigmergy, a kind of implicit communication: they observe each others’ changes to the environment and act accordingly. That is what Nagpal’s team has designed the robots to do, with impressive results. Supplementary videos published with the Science paper show the robots cooperating to build several kinds of structures and even recovering from unexpected changes to the structures during construction.Each robot executes its building process in parallel with others, but without knowing who else is working at the same time. …


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#Alzheimer, #Cancer, #Environment, #Group, #Harvard, #Health, #Institute, #Research, #Robotics, #Science, #Termes

Cosmic roadmap to galactic magnetic field revealed

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Scientists on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including a team leader from the University of New Hampshire, report that recent, independent measurements have validated one of the mission’s signature findings — a mysterious “ribbon” of energy and particles at the edge of our solar system that appears to be a directional “roadmap in the sky” of the local interstellar magnetic field.Unknown until now, the direction of the galactic magnetic field may be a missing key to understanding how the heliosphere — the gigantic bubble that surrounds our solar system — is shaped by the interstellar magnetic field and how it thereby helps shield us from dangerous incoming galactic cosmic rays. “Using measurements of ultra-high energy cosmic rays on a global scale, we now have a completely different means of verifying that the field directions we derived from IBEX are consistent,” says Nathan Schwadron, lead scientist for the IBEX Science Operations Center at the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. Schwadron and IBEX colleagues published their findings online today in Science.Establishing a consistent local interstellar magnetic field direction using IBEX low-energy neutral atoms and galactic cosmic rays at ten orders of magnitude higher energy levels has wide-ranging implications for the structure of our heliosphere and is an important measurement to be making in tandem with the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is in the process of passing beyond our heliosphere.”The cosmic ray data we used represent some of the highest energy radiation we can observe and are at the opposite end of the energy range compared to IBEX’s measurements,” says Schwadron. “That it’s revealing a consistent picture of our neighborhood in the galaxy with what IBEX has revealed gives us vastly more confidence that what we’re learning is correct.”How magnetic fields of galaxies order and direct galactic cosmic rays is a crucial component to understanding the environment of our galaxy, which in turn influences the environment of our entire solar system and our own environment here on Earth, including how that played into the evolution of life on our planet.Notes David McComas, principal investigator of the IBEX mission at Southwest Research Institute and coauthor on the Science Express paper, “We are discovering how the interstellar magnetic field shapes, deforms, and transforms our entire heliosphere.”To date, the only other direct information gathered from the heart of this complex boundary region is from NASA’s Voyager satellites. Voyager 1 entered the heliospheric boundary region in 2004, passing beyond what’s known as the termination shock where the solar wind abruptly slows. Voyager 1 is believed to have crossed into interstellar space in 2012.Interestingly, when scientists compared the IBEX and cosmic ray data with Voyager 1′s measurements, the Voyager 1 data provide a different direction for the magnetic fields just outside our heliosphere.That’s a puzzle but it doesn’t necessarily mean one set of data is wrong and one is right. Voyager 1 is taking measurements directly, gathering data at a specific time and place, while IBEX gathers information averaged over great distances — so there is room for discrepancy. Indeed, the very discrepancy can be used as a clue: understand why there’s a difference between the two measurements and gain new insight.”It’s a fascinating time,” says Schwadron. “Fifty years ago, we were making the first measurements of the solar wind and understanding the nature of what was just beyond near-Earth space. Now, a whole new realm of science is opening up as we try to understand the physics all the way outside the heliosphere.”Eberhard Mbius, UNH principal scientist for the IBEX-Lo instrument on board, is a coauthor on the Science paper along with colleagues from institutions around the country.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of New Hampshire. …


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Scientists find cell fate switch that decides liver, or pancreas?

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Harvard stem cell scientists have a new theory for how stem cells decide whether to become liver or pancreatic cells during development. A cell’s fate, the researchers found, is determined by the nearby presence of prostaglandin E2, a messenger molecule best known for its role in inflammation and pain. The discovery, published in the journal Developmental Cell, could potentially make liver and pancreas cells easier to generate both in the lab and for future cell therapies.Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD, and Trista North, PhD, both principal faculty members of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), identified a gradient of prostaglandin E2 in the region of zebrafish embryos where stem cells differentiate into the internal organs. Experiments conducted by postdoctoral fellow Sahar Nissim, MD, PhD, in the Goessling lab showed how liver-or-pancreas-fated stem cells have specific receptors on their membranes to detect the amount of prostaglandin E2 hormone present and coerce the cell into differentiating into a specific organ type.”Cells that see more prostaglandin become liver and the cells that see less prostaglandin become pancreas,” said Goessling, a Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “This is the first time that prostaglandin is being reported as a factor that can lead this fate switch and essentially instruct what kind of identity a cell is going to be.”The researchers next collaborated with the laboratory of HSCI Affiliated Faculty member Richard Maas, MD, PhD, Director of the Genetics Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to see whether prostaglandin E2 has a similar function in mammals. Richard Sherwood, PhD, a former graduate student of HSCI Co-director Doug Melton, was successfully able to instruct mouse stem cells to become either liver or pancreas cells by exposing them to different amounts of the hormone. Other experiments showed that prostaglandin E2 could also enhance liver growth and regeneration of liver cells.Goessling and his research partner North, a Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, first became intrigued by prostaglandin E2 in 2005, as postdoctoral fellows in the lab of HSCI Executive Committee Chair Leonard Zon, MD. It caught their attention during a chemical screen exposing 2,500 known drugs to zebrafish embryos to find any that could amplify blood stem cell populations. Prostaglandin E2 was the most successful hit — the first molecule discovered in any system to have such an effect — and recently successfully completed Phase 1b clinical trials as a therapeutic to improve cord blood transplants.”Prostaglandin might be a master regulator of cell growth in different organs,” Goessling said. “It’s used in cord blood, as we have shown, it works in the liver, and who knows what other organs might be affected by it.”With evidence of how prostaglandin E2 works in the liver, the researchers next want to calibrate how it can be used in the laboratory to instruct induced pluripotent stem cells — mature cells that have been reprogrammed into a stem-like state — to become liver or pancreas cells. …


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We will fight them with mosquitoes: Historical evidence of biological weapons research in Nazi Germany

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Why did the armed wing of the Nazi party need to study insects? Tbingen University’s Dr Klaus Reinhardt asked that question while studying documents from the Waffen-SS Entomological Institute, an annex of Dachau concentration camp. It made no sense — during WWII, Germany already had several respected entomological research centers; nor did the SS institute study insects which presented a potential threat to Germany’s all-important food supplies.After combing the archives, and building upon postwar studies, Dr Reinhardt came to the conclusion that, although the institute was intended to combat insect-borne diseases such as typhoid, it also carried out research into whether mosquitoes — which host malaria — could be used in biological warfare. The results of Dr Reinhardt’s research are published in the latest edition of the journal Endeavour.It has been debated for many years whether Nazi Germany sought to produce biological weapons despite Hitler’s ban on them. Dr Reinhardt’s findings are likely to re-ignite that discussion. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, commissioned the Entomological Institute in Dachau in January 1942, presumably after reports of lice infestation among SS troops, and following an outbreak of typhoid fever at Neuengamme concentration camp. The instructions Himmler issued in 1942 were for basic research required to combat germ-carrying insects — involving the life cycles, diseases, predators and preferred hosts of beetles, lice, fleas and flies.Dr Reinhardt says that in 1944, the SS Entomological Institute was also tasked with testing various species of mosquito for their ability to survive without food or water — and thus, their suitability to be infected with malaria and air-dropped into enemy territory.Dr Reinhardt examined notes by the institute’s director, Eduard May. Lab reports detailed experiments with anopheles mosquitoes, which can host malaria during part of its development. May recommended the use of one particular anopheles mosquito species which could survive for more than four days. Reinhardt considers this a clear indicator that the insects were to be used as an offensive biological weapon.Dr Reinhardt’s article describes how scientifically more suitable candidates were passed over in favor of May, who was regarded by the regime as ideologically sound. …


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#Entomological, #Heinrich, #Insect, #Institute, #Journal, #Nazi, #Reinhardt, #Science, #Territory

Plastic shopping bags make a fine diesel fuel

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Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report.The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels — diesel, for example — that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags.A report of the new study appears in the journal Fuel Processing Technology.There are other advantages to the approach, which involves heating the bags in an oxygen-free chamber, a process called pyrolysis, said Brajendra Kumar Sharma, a senior research scientist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center who led the research. The ISTC is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.”You can get only 50 to 55 percent fuel from the distillation of petroleum crude oil,” Sharma said. “But since this plastic is made from petroleum in the first place, we can recover almost 80 percent fuel from it through distillation.”Americans throw away about 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year, according to the Worldwatch Institute. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that only about 13 percent are recycled. The rest of the bags end up in landfills or escape to the wild, blowing across the landscape and entering waterways.Plastic bags make up a sizeable portion of the plastic debris in giant ocean garbage patches that are killing wildlife and littering beaches. Plastic bags “have been detected as far north and south as the poles,” the researchers wrote.”Over a period of time, this material starts breaking into tiny pieces, and is ingested along with plankton by aquatic animals,” Sharma said. Fish, birds, ocean mammals and other creatures have been found with a lot of plastic particles in their guts.Whole shopping bags also threaten wildlife, Sharma said.”Turtles, for example, think that the plastic grocery bags are jellyfish and they try to eat them,” he said. Other creatures become entangled in the bags.Previous studies have used pyrolysis to convert plastic bags into crude oil. …


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#Agriculture, #Alzheimer, #Cancer, #Environmental, #Health, #Institute, #Istc, #King, #Material, #Research, #Science, #Sharma

Promise for castor crop planting in Florida

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Castor, grown in Florida during World War II and currently considered as a component for military jet fuel, can be grown here again, using proper management techniques, a new University of Florida study shows.Those techniques include spacing plants properly and using harvest aids to defoliate the plant when it matures.Growers in the U.S. want to mechanically harvest castor, which is typically hand-picked in other parts of the world, the researchers said. Among other things, the UF/IFAS study evaluated whether the plant would grow too tall for mechanical harvesting machines.Castor oil is used in paints, lubricants and deodorants, among other industrial products, said David Campbell, a former UF agronomy graduate student and lead author of the study. It has not been grown in the U.S. since 1972, because the federal government ceased giving price supports, the study says.At UF research units in Citra and Jay, scientists tested Brigham and Hale, two types of castor that were bred in an arid part of west Texas near Lubbock in 1970 and 2003, respectively. These cultivars are shorter than castor found in the wild, said Diane Rowland, an associate professor of agronomy at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and Campbell’s faculty adviser.Scientists tried to control the growth of the plants even more by spraying them with a chemical, she said. Even though the crop didn’t respond to the chemicals, it did not grow taller than expected. So it appears these types of castor can be harvested mechanically, she said.While yields were lower than those reported in Texas research trials in 1993, results are promising for Florida.“We were concerned that, in this environment, with all the moisture and the good growing conditions, that it would grow too tall. But it didn’t,” Rowland said. “So it shows that shorter genetic types will still work, without the chemical application. …


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Healthy habits pay off in long term

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Can initial modes of behavior be used to predict how fit and healthy a person will be 18 years later? This question was in the focus of studies performed by researchers of KIT, Technische Universitt Mnchen, and the universities of Konstanz and Bayreuth. A basic survey covered about 500 adults over a longer term. The result: Initial habits determine physical fitness and health in the long term. The study is now reported by the scientists in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise.”The results of our study reveal how important it is to acquire health-promoting habits at early adult age already. This should also be in the focus of prevention measures,” Professor Alexander Woll, Head of the KIT Institute of Sports and Sport Science, explains. Initial habits concerning nutrition and physical exercise will influence physical fitness and health in a statistically significant way in the long term.In their study, the researchers used a four-stage biopsychosocial model to identify mutual interactions of health-relevant factors. On the first level, distal, environment-related factors, such as the migration background and socioeconomic status, can be found. The second level covers proximal, personal factors, such as social support, stress management strategies, and the coherence feeling. The third level includes behavioral factors, such as nutrition habits, smoking, and physical exercise. …


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#Cancer, #Development, #Fitness, #Health, #Institute, #Major, #Municipality, #Pregnancy, #Professor, #Science, #Sport, #Sports