Bacteria manipulate salt to build shelters to hibernate

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For the first time, Spanish researchers have detected an unknown interaction between microorganisms and salt. When Escherichia coli cells are introduced into a droplet of salt water that is left to dry, bacteria manipulate the sodium chloride crystallisation to create biomineralogical biosaline 3-D morphologically complex formations, where they hibernate. Afterwards, simply by rehydrating the material, bacteria are revived. The discovery was made by chance with a home microscope, but it made the cover of the ‘Astrobiology’ journal and may help us find signs of life on other planets.The bacterium Escherichia coli is one of the most studied living forms by biologists, but none had to date noticed what this microorganism can do within a simple drop of salt water: create impressive biomineralogical patterns in which it shelters itself when it dries.”It was a complete surprise, a fully unexpected result, when I introduced E.. coli cells into salt water and I realised that the bacteria had the ability to join the salt crystallisation and modulate the development and growth of the sodium chloride crystals,” biologist Jos Mara Gmez said.”Thus, in around four hours, in the drop of water that had dried, an impressive tapestry of biosaline patterns was created with complex 3D architecture,” added the researcher, who made the discovery with the microscope in his house, although he later confirmed it with the help of his colleagues from the Laboratory of BioMineralogy and Astrobiological Research (LBMARS, University of Valladolid-CSIC), Spain.Until present, we knew of similar patterns created from saline solutions and isolated proteins, but this is the first report that demonstrates how whole bacterial cells can manage the crystallisation of sodium chloride (NaCl) and generate self-organised biosaline structures of a fractal or dendritic appearance. The study and the striking three-dimensional patterns are on the front cover of this month’s edition of Astrobiology.”The most interesting result is that the bacteria enter a state of hibernation inside these desiccated patterns, but they can later be ‘revived’ simply by rehydration,” said Gmez, who highlighted a very important result from an astrobiological point of view: “Given the richness and complexity of these formations, they may be used as biosignatures in the search for life in extremely dry environments outside our own planet, such as the surface of Mars or that of Jupiter’s satellite, Europa.”In fact, the LBMARS laboratory participates in the development of the Raman RLS instrument of the ExoMars rover, the mission that the European Space Agency (ESA) will send to the red planet in 2018, and this new finding may help them search for possible biological signs. According to the researcher, “the patterns observed will help calibrate the instrument and test its detection of signs of hibernation or traces of Martian life.””The challenge we now face is to understand how the bacteria control the crystallisation of NaCl to create these incredible 3D structures and vice-versa, how salt influences this action, as well as studying the structure of these microorganisms that withstand desiccation,” said Gmez, who reminds us that a simple curiosity and excitement about science, although it may be with simple means, still allows us to make some interesting discoveries: “This is a tribute to scientists such as the Spaniard Santiago Ramn y Cajal and the Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who also worked from home with their own microscopes”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Plataforma SINC. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Why do men prefer nice women? Responsiveness and desire

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People’s emotional reactions and desires in initial romantic encounters determine the fate of a potential relationship. Responsiveness may be one of those initial “sparks” necessary to fuel sexual desire and land a second date. However, it may not be a desirable trait for both men and women on a first date. Does responsiveness increase sexual desire in the other person? Do men perceive responsive women as more attractive, and does the same hold true for women’s perceptions of men? A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin seeks to answer those questions.Femininity and AttractivenessResearchers from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, the University of Rochester, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, collaborated on three studies to observe people’s perceptions of responsiveness. People often say that they seek a partner that is “responsive to their needs,” and that such a partner would arouse their sexual interest. A responsive person is one that is supportive of another’s needs and goals. “Sexual desire thrives on rising intimacy and being responsive is one of the best ways to instill this elusive sensation over time,” lead researcher Gurit Birnbaum explains. “Our findings show that this does not necessarily hold true in an initial encounter, because a responsive potential partner may convey opposite meanings to different people.”In the first study, the researchers examined whether responsiveness is perceived as feminine or masculine, and whether men or women perceived a responsive person of the opposite sex as sexually desirable. …


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Day 8 on Chemo regime Alimta/Carboplatin and Trial by local Council NSW to end illegal dumping

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Day 8 of chemotherapy should see me starting to feel better. Yesterday was the day of feeling like death warmed up! Back ache, bile and metalic taste, nausea, anxiousness, fatigue and unable to sleep longer than a couple of hours at a time. Today after taking medication to fend off most of the above symptoms I am hoping to come good and enjoy the sunshine that has appeared outside! Expected temperature will be 16 degrees celcius and sunny – a perfect Winter day!Monday brought a wonderful surprise for me – my daughter Jo invited me to a high tea at the beautiful Windsor Hotel, Melbourne. I caught the bus that has replaced all trains for 2 weeks while school holidays are on and so that VLine can work on the rail …


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#Asbestos, #Daughter, #King, #Liverpool, #Nsw, #People, #Sydney, #Winter

Changes in agriculture increase high river flow rates

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Just as a leaky roof can make a house cooler and wetter when it’s raining as well as hotter and dryer when it’s sunny, changes in land use can affect river flow in both rainy and dry times, say two University of Iowa researchers.While it may be obvious that changes in river water discharge across the U.S. Midwest can be related to changes in rainfall and agricultural land use, it is important to learn how these two factors interact in order to get a better understanding of what the future may look like, says Gabriele Villarini, UI assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, assistant research engineer at IIHR — Hydroscience & Engineering and lead author of a published research paper on the subject.”We wanted to know what the relative impacts of precipitation and agricultural practices played in shaping the discharge record that we see today,” he says. “Is it an either/or answer or a much more nuanced one?”By understanding our past we are better positioned in making meaningful statements about our future,” he says.The potential benefits of understanding river flow are especially great in the central United States, particularly Iowa, where spring and summer floods have hit the area in 1993, 2008, 2013 and 2014, interrupted by the drought of 2012. Large economic damage and even loss of life have resulted, says co-author Aaron Strong, UI assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and with the Environmental Policy Program at the UI Public Policy Center.”What is interesting to note,” says Strong, “is that the impacts, in terms of flooding, have been exacerbated. At the same time, the impacts of drought, for in-stream flow, have been mitigated with the changes in land use composition that we have seen over the last century.”In order to study the effect of changes in agricultural practices on Midwest river discharge, the researchers focused on Iowa’s Raccoon River at Van Meter, Iowa. The 9,000-square-kilometer watershed has the advantage of having had its water discharge levels measured and recorded daily for most of the 20th century right on up to the present day. (The study focused on the period 1927-2012). During that period, the number of acres used for corn and soybean production greatly increased, roughly doubling over the course of the 20th century.Not surprisingly, they found that variability in rainfall is responsible for most of the changes in water discharge volumes.However, the water discharge rates also varied with changes in agricultural practices, as defined by soybean and corn harvested acreage in the Raccoon River watershed. In times of flood and in times of drought, water flow rates were exacerbated by more or less agriculture, respectively. The authors suggest that although flood conditions may be exacerbated by increases in agricultural production, this concern “must all be balanced by the private concerns of increased revenue from agricultural production through increased cultivation.””Our results suggest that changes in agricultural practices over this watershed — with increasing acreage planted in corn and soybeans over time — translated into a seven-fold increase in rainfall contribution to the average annual maximum discharge when we compare the present to the 1930s,” Villarini says.The UI research paper, “Roles of climate and agricultural practices in discharge changes in an agricultural watershed in Iowa,” can be found in the April 15 online edition of Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Iowa. …


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#Agriculture, #Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #Climate, #Engineering, #Health, #Iowa, #King, #Program, #University

Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seed Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seed Chocolate Chip Cookies Emily Dickey posted this in RecipesChocolate chip cookies are a classic and you can never go wrong with making them for a dessert or event! But sometimes we spice them up a bit… maybe you add peanut butter chips? Or butterscotch? How about some peanuts or raisins? Try this recipe for chocolate covered sunflower seed chocolate chip cookies! That’s a mouthful Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seed Chocolate Chip CookiesChocolate covered sunflower seeds?! They really aren’t that hard to find Check them out on Amazon. You could try another seed or just use raw sunflower seeds with mini chocolate chips if you’d like (or if that’s what you have on hand). The cookies will still be delicious!Chocolate-Covered Sunflower Seed Chocolate…


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#Check, #Covered, #Desserts, #Emily, #Health, #King, #Recipes, #Seedorjust, #Sunflowerseed

University of Pennsylvania"s Mesothelioma Program Receives $8 Million Grant from NCI

The National Cancer Institute awarded an $8 million grant to the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine to study the effects of photodynamic light therapy (PDT) in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. The grant will fund a clinical trial and additional studies looking at the effects of PDT on the patient’s immune response, the mesothelioma tumor cell , and the blood vessels surrounding the tumor.Dr. Eli Glatstein is the principal investigator of the program. He is also the professor and vice chair of Radiation Oncology, and member of Penn’s Mesothelioma and Pleural Program. According to Dr. Glatstein, “This trial represents a major step in understanding the combination of treatment modalities that will offer patients the best hope for survival and extended remission.”The study expects to …


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New hope for powdery mildew resistant barley

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New research at the University of Adelaide has opened the way for the development of new lines of barley with resistance to powdery mildew.In Australia, annual barley production is second only to wheat with 7-8 million tonnes a year. Powdery mildew is one of the most important diseases of barley.Senior Research Scientist Dr Alan Little and team have discovered the composition of special growths on the cell walls of barley plants that block the penetration of the fungus into the leaf.The research, by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls in the University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany, will be presented at the upcoming 5th International Conference on Plant Cell Wall Biology and published in the journal New Phytologist.”Powdery mildew is a significant problem wherever barley is grown around the world,” says Dr Little. “Growers with infected crops can expect up to 25% reductions in yield and the barley may also be downgraded from high quality malting barley to that of feed quality, with an associated loss in market value.”In recent times we’ve seen resistance in powdery mildew to the class of fungicide most commonly used to control the disease in Australia. Developing barley with improved resistance to the disease is therefore even more important.”The discovery means researchers have new targets for breeding powdery mildew resistant barley lines.”Powdery mildew feeds on the living plant,” says Dr Little. “The fungus spore lands on the leaf and sends out a tube-like structure which punches its way through cell walls, penetrating the cells and taking the nutrients from the plant. The plant tries to stop this penetration by building a plug of cell wall material — a papillae — around the infection site. Effective papillae can block the penetration by the fungus.”It has long been thought that callose is the main polysaccharide component of papilla. But using new techniques, we’ve been able to show that in the papillae that block fungal penetration, two other polysaccharides are present in significant concentrations and play a key role.”It appears that callose acts like an initial plug in the wall but arabinoxylan and cellulose fill the gaps in the wall and make it much stronger.”In his PhD project, Jamil Chowdhury showed that effective papillae contained up to four times the concentration of callose, arabinoxylan and cellulose as cell wall plugs which didn’t block penetration.”We can now use this knowledge find ways of increasing these polysaccharides in barley plants to produce more resistant lines available for growers,” says Dr Little.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, #Biology, #Conference, #Disease, #Genetics, #International, #King, #Plant, #Research, #School, #Scientist

Caffeine intake may worsen menopausal hot flashes, night sweats

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A new Mayo Clinic study, published online by the journal Menopause, found an association between caffeine intake and more bothersome hot flashes and night sweats in postmenopausal women. The study also showed an association between caffeine intake and fewer problems with mood, memory and concentration in perimenopausal women, possibly because caffeine is known to enhance arousal, mood and attention. The findings of this largest study to date on caffeine and menopausal symptoms are published on the Menopause website and will also be printed in a future issue of the journal.For the study, researchers conducted a survey using the Menopause Health Questionnaire, a comprehensive assessment of menopause-related health information that includes personal habits and ratings of menopausal symptom presence and severity. Questionnaires were completed by 2,507 consecutive women who presented with menopausal concerns at the Women’s Health Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester between July 25, 2005, and July 25, 2011. Data from 1,806 women who met all inclusion criteria were analyzed. Menopausal symptom ratings were compared between caffeine users and nonusers.Approximately 85 percent of the U.S. population consumes some form of caffeine-containing beverage daily. Vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats) are the most commonly reported menopausal symptoms, occurring in 79 percent of perimenopausal women and 65 percent of postmenopausal women. Although it has long been believed that caffeine intake exacerbates menopausal vasomotor symptoms, research has challenged this assumption, as caffeine has been both positively and negatively linked to hot flashes.”While these findings are preliminary, our study suggests that limiting caffeine intake may be useful for those postmenopausal women who have bothersome hot flashes and night sweats,” says Stephanie Faubion, M.D., director of the Women’s Health Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. “Menopause symptoms can be challenging but there are many management strategies to try.”Other strategies Dr. …


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What has happened to the tsunami debris from Japan?

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The amount of debris in the ocean is growing exponentially, becoming more and more hazardous and harmful to marine life and therefore also to our ocean food source. Measuring and tracking the movements of such debris are still in their infancy. The driftage generated by the tragic 2011 tsunami in Japan gave scientists Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner a unique chance to learn about the effects of the ocean and wind on floating materials as they move across the North Pacific Ocean.Shortly after the tsunami struck, Maximenko and Hafner used the IPRC Ocean Drift Model to predict where the debris from the tsunami would go. Their computer model is based on trajectories of real satellite-tracked drifting buoys and satellite-measured winds.The model has now been charting the possible paths of the tsunami driftage for nearly 3 years. The scientists have made a major improvement to the initial model: it now accommodates objects of different shapes and buoyancies that expose different amounts of surface to the wind and travel at different speeds and different trajectories. The model therefore now includes different levels of wind-forcing, simulating the movement of different types of floating debris.No formal marine debris observing systems exist to verify the model simulations. The model paths for tsunami debris, however, agree with reports of such debris washing up on the shores of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands, as well as with observations by sailors crossing the North Pacific.The first physical evidence of tsunami driftage far from the coasts of Japan, for example, came in September 2011 from the Russian sail training ship Pallada. The captain had been forewarned that the ship might run into a tsunami debris field on its voyage from Honolulu to Vladivostok. Sailors, alerted and on the lookout, sighted much debris just northwest of Midway, and picked up a little fishing boat later confirmed lost in the tsunami.The model predicted both the timing and the type of material that has washed up along windward shores of Hawaii: the first tsunami driftage came in August — September 2012, about 1 years after the tragedy. These were very buoyant pieces, for example, oyster buoys, crates, small fishing boats like the one picked up by Pallada, and parts of small refrigerators.Then 2 years after the tsunami, materials sitting lower in the water and less buoyant than the previous driftage arrived: poles and beams with mortise and tenon features. …


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#Cancer, #Ecology, #Iprc, #Japan, #King, #Pacific, #Science, #Tsunami, #University

Cavities are contagious, research shows

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Dental caries, commonly known as tooth decay, is the single most common chronic childhood disease. In fact, it is an infectious disease. Mothers with cavities can transmit caries-producing oral bacteria to their babies when they clean pacifiers by sticking them in their own mouths or by sharing spoons.According to Liliana Rozo, D.D.S., assistant profesor, University of Louisville School of Dentistry, tooth decay can have a detrimental effect on a child’s quality of life, performance in school and success in life. The disease can cause pain, inability to chew food well, embarrassment about discolored or damaged teeth, and distraction from play and learning.The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) encourages parents to find a dental home for their baby as soon as the child’s first tooth erupts. Regular visits to a pediatric dentist will help parents become familiar with their child’s dental and oral health milestones. They’ll inform parents about teething, proper oral hygiene habits, normal tooth development, and trauma prevention. Nutritional counseling also will be a part of the discussion.Often, Rozo said, parents do not make the connection between oral health and overall health, but they are related. The mouth is an open door for many microbial infections to enter the bloodstream. Poor oral health may be a risk factor for systemic disease. Oral health manifestations, such as bleeding or dry mouth can indicate the presence of a systemic disease or exacerbate the effects of an existing disease such as diabetes and heart disease.So parents, too, should make their own oral health care a priority in order to help their children stay healthy, said Rozo, an AAPD board certified pediatric dentist.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Louisville. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #Baby, #Cancer, #King, #Louisville, #Nutritional, #Pediatric, #Pregnancy, #Regular, #School, #Single

Forest model predicts canopy competition: Airborne lasers help researchers understand tree growth

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Out of an effort to account for what seemed in airborne images to be unusually large tree growth in a Hawaiian forest, scientists at Brown University and the Carnegie Institution for Science have developed a new mathematical model that predicts how trees compete for space in the canopy.What their model revealed for this particular forest of hardy native Metrosideros polymorpha trees on the windward slope of Manua Kea, is that an incumbent tree limb greening up a given square meter would still dominate its position two years later a forbidding 97.9 percent of the time. The model described online in the journal Ecology Letters could help generate similar predictions for other forests, too.Why track forest growth using remote sensing, pixel by pixel? Some ecologists could use that information to learn how much one species is displacing another over a wide area or how quickly gaps in the canopy are filled in. Others could see how well a forest is growing overall. Tracking the height of a forest’s canopy reveals how tall the trees are and therefore how much carbon they are keeping out of the atmosphere — that is, as long as scientists know how to interpret the measurements of forest growth.James Kellner, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, the paper’s lead and corresponding author, noticed what seemed like implausibly large canopy growth in LIDAR images collected by the Carnegie Airborne Observatory over 43 hectares on the windward flank of Manua Kea. In the vast majority of pixels (each representing about a square meter) the forest growth looked normal, but in some places the height change between 2007 and 2009 seemed impossible: sometimes 10 or 15 meters.The data were correct, he soon confirmed, but the jumps in height signaled something other than vertical growth. They signaled places where one tree had managed to overtop another or where the canopy was filling in a bare spot. The forest wasn’t storing that much more carbon; taller trees were growing a few meters to the side and creating exaggerated appearances of vertical growth in the overhead images.Turning that realization into a predictive mathematical model is not a simple matter. Working with co-author Gregory P. Asner at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., Kellner created the model, which provides a probabilistic accounting of whether the height change in a pixel is likely to be the normal growth of the incumbent tree, a takeover by a neighboring tree, or another branch of the incumbent tree.Tracking treetopsThe model doesn’t just work for this forest but potentially for different kinds of forests, Kellner said, because its interpretation of the data is guided by the data itself. …


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Evidence mixed on the usefulness of echinacea for colds

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For people seeking a natural treatment for the common cold, some preparations containing the plant Echinacea work better than nothing, yet “evidence is weak,” finds a new report from The Cochrane Library. The evidence review revealed no significant reductions in preventing illness, but didn’t rule out “small preventive effects.”The six authors conducted reviews on this subject in 1998, 2006 and 2008 and wanted to do an update to include several new trials conducted since then. “We’ve been doing this for so long and are very familiar with past research — which has been mixed from the very beginning,” said author Bruce Barrett, M.D., Ph.D. in the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.The research team reviewed 24 randomized controlled trials to determine whether Echinacea was a safe and effective cold prevention and treatment. Trials included 4631 participants and 33 preparations, along with placebo. Echinacea products studied in these trials varied widely according to characteristics of three different plant species, the part of the plant used and method of manufacturing.People who get colds spend $8 billion annually on pharmaceutical products, including supplements such as Echinacea, Barrett noted. The authors’ meta-analyses suggest that at least some Echinacea preparations may reduce the relative risk of catching a cold by 10 to 20 percent, a small effect of unclear clinical significance. The most important recommendation from the review for consumers and clinicians is a caution that Echinacea products differ greatly and that the overwhelming majority of these products have not been tested in clinical trials.Barrett added that “it looks like taking Echinacea may reduce the incidence of colds. For those who take it as a treatment, some of the trials report real effects — but many do not. Bottom line: Echinacea may have small preventive or treatment effects, but the evidence is mixed.”"The paper does support the safety and efficacy of Echinacea in treating colds and highlights the main issue of standardizing herbal medicines,” commented Ron Eccles, Ph.D., director of the Common Cold Centre & Healthcare Clinical Trials at Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences in Wales.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health. …


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#Cancer, #Department, #Echinacea, #Health, #King, #Plant, #Pregnancy, #School, #Science, #Wisconsin

The musical brain: Novel study of jazz players shows common brain circuitry processes both music, language

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The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics — those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of “trading fours,” a process in which musicians participate in spontaneous back and forth instrumental exchanges, usually four bars in duration. The musicians introduce new melodies in response to each other’s musical ideas, elaborating and modifying them over the course of a performance.The results of the study suggest that the brain regions that process syntax aren’t limited to spoken language, according to Charles Limb, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Rather, he says, the brain uses the syntactic areas to process communication in general, whether through language or through music.Limb, who is himself a musician and holds a faculty appointment at the Peabody Conservatory, says the work sheds important new light on the complex relationship between music and language.”Until now, studies of how the brain processes auditory communication between two individuals have been done only in the context of spoken language,” says Limb, the senior author of a report on the work that appears online Feb. 19 in the journal PLOS ONE. “But looking at jazz lets us investigate the neurological basis of interactive, musical communication as it occurs outside of spoken language.”We’ve shown in this study that there is a fundamental difference between how meaning is processed by the brain for music and language. Specifically, it’s syntactic and not semantic processing that is key to this type of musical communication. Meanwhile, conventional notions of semantics may not apply to musical processing by the brain.”To study the response of the brain to improvisational musical conversation between musicians, the Johns Hopkins researchers recruited 11 men aged 25 to 56 who were highly proficient in jazz piano performance. During each 10-minute session of trading fours, one musician lay on his back inside the MRI machine with a plastic piano keyboard resting on his lap while his legs were elevated with a cushion. A pair of mirrors was placed so the musician could look directly up while in the MRI machine and see the placement of his fingers on the keyboard. …


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UK failing to harness its bioenergy potential

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The UK could generate almost half its energy needs from biomass sources, including household waste, agricultural residues and home-grown biofuels by 2050, new research suggests.Scientists from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at The University of Manchester found that the UK could produce up to 44% of its energy by these means without the need to import.The study, published in Energy Policy Journal , highlights the country’s potential abundance of biomass resources that are currently underutilised and totally overlooked by the bioenergy sector. Instead, say the authors, much of the UK bioenergy sector is heading towards increased reliance on biomass resources that will have to be imported from abroad.Study author Andrew Welfle said: “The UK has legally binding renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction targets, and energy from biomass is anticipated to make major contributions to these. The widely discussed barriers for energy from biomass include the competition for land that may otherwise be used to grow food and the narrative that biomass will have to be imported to the UK if we want to use increased levels of bioenergy. But our research has found that the UK could produce large levels of energy from biomass without importing resources or negatively impacting the UK’s ability to feed itself.”The research involved analysing the UK’s biomass supply chains and investigating how different pathways that the UK could take may influence the potential bioenergy that the country could generate from its own resources up to 2050.The pathways the team analysed included a future with economic focus, investigating how the future UK bioenergy sector may look if economic growth was the prime focus; a conservation focus pathway, where the conservation of resources is the key future aim; an energy focus pathway, where the UK pushes towards achieving the maximum practical levels of bioenergy generated from its resources; and a food focus pathway, where the potential future of the country’s bioenergy sector is analysed in reflection of the UK working to increase its food security.”Biomass residue resources from ongoing UK activities, such as agriculture, forestry and industrial processes, were found to represent a continuous and robust resource option for the UK bioenergy sector, potentially contributing up to 6.5% of primary energy demand by 2050,” said Mr Welfle. “The potential bioenergy generated from agricultural residues, particularly from straws and slurry resources, being the highlight opportunities for the bioenergy sector due to their high abundance and current underutilisation.”UK waste resources were also found to represent a potential major opportunity for the bioenergy sector. The research highlights that both household and food/plant waste streams represent particular potential for the sector. Although the design and influence of future strategies and policies on UK waste generation and management are fundamental in determining the extent of opportunities that wastes represents to the UK bioenergy sector.He added: “Biomass is a flexible energy option, in that it can be used to produce heat, electricity or even be converted to transport fuels, although different types of biomass resource tend to be utilised in specific ways in order to produce the most energy or biomass-based products with increased value. Our research confirms that the best option for the UK to make the most of its biomass resources would be for selected resources to be used by bio-refineries to produce high value bio-products, with all remaining suitable resources being dedicated for heat generation.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Manchester University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Agriculture, #Alternative-Medicine, #Country, #Energy, #King, #Policy, #Research, #Story, #Study, #Team, #Tyndall

Managed honeybees linked to new diseases in wild bees, UK study shows

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Diseases that are common in managed honeybee colonies are now widespread in the UK’s wild bumblebees, according to research published in Nature. The study suggests that some diseases are being driven into wild bumblebee populations from managed honeybees.Dr Matthias Frst and Professor Mark Brown from Royal Holloway University of London (who worked in collaboration with Dr Dino McMahon and Professor Robert Paxton at Queen’s University Belfast, and Professor Juliet Osborne working at Rothamsted Research and the University of Exeter) say the research provides vital information for beekeepers across the world to ensure honeybee management supports wild bee populations.Dr Frst, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, said: “Wild and managed bees are in decline at national and global scales. Given their central role in pollinating wildflowers and crops, it is essential that we understand what lies behind these declines. Our results suggest that emerging diseases, spread from managed bees, may be an important cause of wild bee decline.”This research assessed common honeybee diseases to determine if they could pass from honeybees to bumblebees. It showed that deformed wing virus (DWV) and the fungal parasite Nosema ceranae — both of which have major negative impacts on honeybee health — can infect worker bumblebees and, in the case of DWV, reduce their lifespan.Honeybees and bumblebees were then collected from 26 sites across the UK and screened for the presence of the parasites. Both parasites were widespread in bumblebees and honeybees across the UK.Dr Frst explained: “One of the novel aspects of our study is that we show that deformed wing virus, which is one of the main causes of honeybee deaths worldwide, is not only broadly present in bumblebees, but is actually replicating inside them. This means that it is acting as a real disease; they are not just carriers.”The researchers also looked at how the diseases spread and studied genetic similarities between DWV in different pollinator populations. Three factors suggest that honeybees are spreading the parasites into wild bumblebees: honeybees have higher background levels of the virus and the fungus than bumblebees; bumblebee infection is predicted by patterns of honeybee infection; and honeybees and bumblebees at the same sites share genetic strains of DWV.”We have known for a long time that parasites are behind declines in honeybees,” said Professor Brown. “What our data show is that these same pathogens are circulating widely across our wild and managed pollinators. Infected honeybees can leave traces of disease, like a fungal spore or virus particle, on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.”While recent studies have provided anecdotal reports of the presence of honeybee parasites in other pollinators, this is the first study to determine the epidemiology of these parasites across the landscape. …


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#Agriculture, #Alternative-Medicine, #Brown, #King, #London, #National, #Nature, #Royalholloway

The number of tumor cells spread to sentinel lymph nodes affects melanoma prognosis

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Cancer cell spread to the sentinel node — the lymph node to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary tumor — is a risk factor for melanoma death. According to a study published in this week’s PLOS Medicine by Anja Ulmer, Christoph Klein and colleagues from the Universities of Tbingen and Regensburg, Germany, the prognosis of a patient largely depends on the number of disseminated cancer cells per million lymphocytes in the sentinel node. Even very low numbers were found to be predictive for reduced survival.The leading cause of death from skin disease is melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer. When melanoma metastasizes and spreads to other parts of the body, treatment options become limited and the prognosis is poor. Melanoma staging (and prognosis) is currently focused on the primary tumor itself, with characteristics like tumor thickness, mitotic rate, and ulceration (break in the skin caused by the tumor) indicating the likelihood that the tumor has started to spread. Looking for tumor cells in the sentinel nodes is done for patients who are at increased risk for spread, but standard procedures for how to measure spread to the nodes and how to integrate this information with the tumor histology are needed. Since melanoma is one of the deadliest cancers, better predictors of prognosis for melanoma patients are needed for patient information and to determine treatment options.The researchers prospectively collected a large number of samples for this relatively rare cancer: 1,834 sentinel lymph nodes from 1,027 patients with melanoma who had been followed for 5 years after the samples were taken. They labelled disseminated cancer cells (DCCs) in the lymph nodes through the use of a marker for melanoma cells, counted them, and calculated DCC density. They then asked whether DCC density was related to a patient’s survival. They found that patients with high DCC density in the lymph nodes were more likely to die from melanoma within 5 years. …


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#Agriculture, #Alzheimer, #Body, #Christophklein, #Current, #Disease, #Health, #King, #Medicine, #Plos, #Standard, #Tbingen

Almost 13 million smoking deaths could be prevented in China by 2050

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China is home to about one third of the world’s smokers and reducing smoking in China could have an enormous public health impact, even on a global scale.Even though China raised the tax on tobacco products in 2009, this did not translate to higher retail prices for consumers and the only ban that has been enforced is on public transport. WHO went on to publish a report in 2011 which stated that there were multiple opportunities to improve tobacco control.Using a version of the SimSmoke Tobacco Control Policy model (a model of tobacco smoking prevalence and smoking-related deaths), populated with data from China, researchers from Spain, France and the US estimated the potential health impact of this programme in China from 2015 — 2050.Under current policies, a total of over 50 million deaths due to smoking were estimated from 2012 to 2050.Projecting the status quo scenario forward, the researchers estimate that active smoking in males would fall from 51.3% in 2015 to 46.5% by 2050 — and in females from 2.1% in 2015 to 1.3% in 2050In 2015, the estimated number of deaths from smoking was about one million (932,000 for males and 79,000 for females). In males, annual deaths were expected to peak at 1.5 million in 2040, but then drop to 1.4 million by 2050. In females, annual deaths from smoking were estimated to be 49,000 in 2040 and 42,000 by 2050.Relative to the status quo scenario, increasing cigarette taxes to 75% of the package price was estimated to reduce smoking prevalence by almost 10% for both males and females by 2015. By 2050, smoking prevalence showed a reduction of 13% for males and 12% for females. The researchers estimate that between 2015 and 2050, this tax would save approximately 3.5 million lives.Smoke-free air laws and a well enforced marketing ban also showed “potent and immediate” effects. Comprehensive smoke-free air laws were estimated to show a 9% reduction in smoking rates by 2015, increasing to about a 10% reduction in 2050, potentially averting around 3.4 million deaths. A comprehensive marketing ban would reduce smoking prevalence by about 4% and avert just over two million deaths by 2050.A high intensity tobacco control campaign would lead to a 2.5% relative decline in smoking rates by 2015 and prevent 1.1 million deaths due to smoking by 2050, while stronger health warnings were projected to yield a relative 2.3% reduction in smoking rates by 2050.The researchers estimate that complete implementation of the WHO framework “would lead to as much as a 34% relative reduction in male smoking prevalence by 2020, and a 41% reduction by 2050.” They say, despite the lag time expected between reductions in current smoking and declines in smoking attributable deaths, nearly half a million annual tobacco related deaths could be averted yearly by 2050.These estimates suggest that substantial health gains could be made, say the authors — a 40% relative reduction in smoking prevalence and almost 13 million smoking attributable deaths averted and more than 154 million life years gained by 2050 — by extending effective public health and clinical interventions to reduce active smoking. They add that these policies would be cost effective and say that “without the implementation of the complete set of stronger policies, the death and disability legacy of current smoking will endure for decades in China.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Alzheimer, #British, #Britishmedical, #Cancer, #Control, #Cosmetics, #France, #King, #Policy, #Researchers, #Tobacco, #World

Addicts and Disease

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Commentary.Former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director Alan Leshner has been vilified by many for referring to addiction as a chronic, relapsing “brain disease.” What often goes unmentioned is Leshner’s far more interesting characterization of addiction as the “quintessential biobehavioral disorder.”Multifactorial illnesses present special challenges to our way of thinking about disease. Addiction and other biopsychosocial disorders often show symptoms at odds with disease, as people generally understand it. For patients and medical professionals alike, questions about the disease aspect of addiction tie into larger fears about the medicalization of human behavior.These confusions are mostly understandable. Everybody knows what cancer is—a disease of the cells. Schizophrenia? Some kind of brain illness. But addiction? Addiction strikes many people as too much a part …


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#Addiction-Disease, #Attractions, #Credit, #Drug, #Family-Disease, #Field, #Human, #King, #Psychiatry, #University

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

Baby hearts need rhythm to develop correctly

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To develop correctly, baby hearts need rhythm…even before they have blood to pump. “We have discovered that mechanical forces are important when making baby hearts,” said Mary Kathryn Sewell-Loftin, a Vanderbilt graduate student working with a team of Vanderbilt engineers, scientists and clinicians attempting to grow replacement heart valves from a patient’s own cells.In an article published last month in the journal Biomaterials the team reported that they have taken an important step toward this goal by determining that the mechanical forces generated by the rhythmic expansion and contraction of cardiac muscle cells play an active role in the initial stage of heart valve formation.A heart valve is a marvelous device. It consists of two or three flaps, called leaflets, which open and close to control the flow of blood through the heart. It is designed well enough to cycle two to three billion times in a person’s lifetime. (Humans and chickens are outliers: Most other animals, large and small, have hearts that beat about one billion times in their lives.) However, heart valves can be damaged by diseases such as rheumatic fever and cancer, aging, heart attacks and birth defects.”For the last 15 years, people have been trying to create a heart valve out of artificial tissue using brute-force engineering methods without any success,” said Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering W. David Merryman. “We decided to take a step back and study how heart valves develop naturally so we can figure out how to duplicate the process.” To do so, they designed a series of experiments with chickens, whose hearts develop in a fashion similar to the human heart.”The discovery that the deformations produced by the beating cardiac muscle cells are important provides an entirely new perspective on the process,” said Merryman, who directed the three-year study.The Vanderbilt effort is part of a broader program to develop artificial organs named the Systems-based Consortium for Organ Design and Engineering (SysCODE). It is a National Institutes of Health “Roadmap” initiative to speed the movement of scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside.”This is the second major advance that we’ve made,” said Professor of Pharmacology Joey Barnett, co-principal investigator of the heart valve project.Last spring, the Vanderbilt team announced that they had identified the unique genes and molecular pathways associated with valve formation. “These included both genes and pathways that we knew about and several that were previously unknown,” said Barnett, who has studied heart valves for more than 20 years.”The genetic study gave us the list of the basic parts — the hardware — required to build a heart valve and this latest study provides us with the information we need about the environment that is required,” said the biologist. “With this information, we should have what we need to create valvular interstitial cells (VICs), that are the basic building blocks of heart valves.”The heart starts out as a simple, U-shaped tube of tissue. …


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#Agriculture, #Brown, #Design, #King, #Merryman, #Pregnancy, #Sewell, #Vanderbilt