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Soluble fibre ‘effective in treating irritable bowel syndrome’

August 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 28 (ANI): A new study by researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands has suggested that a soluble fibre supplement called psyllium should be the first line of attack in treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

In the study, researchers compared adding bran, psyllium and a dummy supplement to sufferers’ diets.

They found psyllium was the most effective, warning that bran may even worsen the symptoms of the condition.

IBS is characterized by abdominal pain and an irregular bowel habit.

Its exact cause is unknown and recommendations for treatment include dietary advice, antidepressants and drug treatments.

Many relying on dietary adjustments still turn to bran in a bid to help improve the way the intestines work.

However, the new study of 275 patients questions the wisdom of this approach.

The researchers gave patients 10g of either psyllium, bran or rice flour twice a day for 12 weeks.

At the end of the study, those on psyllium, a naturally occurring vegetable fibre, reported symptom severity had been reduced by 90 points using a standard scale of rating problems.

For bran it was 58 points and for the placebo group, 49.

The study also showed that patients seemed less tolerant of bran, with more than half of the group dropping out during the trial, mostly because their symptoms worsened.

Soluble fibre can also be found in fruit such as apples and strawberries, as well as barley and oats.

“I think adding psyllium to the diet is the best treatment option to start with. In the study, people did this by adding it to things such as yoghurt and it had a real effect,” the BBC quoted Dr Niek de Wit, one of the researchers, as saying.

The study has been described in the British Medical Journal. (ANI)

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Inflation rises to – 1.53 percent

August 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug 20 (ANI): The rate of inflation has increased to – 1.53 percent for the week ended August 8 against the – 1.74 percent in the previous week.

It rose despite increase in prices of food articles.

Bajra and urad prices rose by two per cent each while condiments, spices, arhar, and fruit and vegetables became more expensive by one per cent.

However, the prices of jowar came down by four per cent, barley by two per cent, and moong by one per cent. (ANI)

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Stressed crops emit more methane emissions than previously thought

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 18 (ANI): Scientists at the University of Calgary (U of C) in Canada have found that methane emission by stressed crops could be a bigger problem in global warming than previously thought.

According to a U of C study, when crops are exposed to environmental factors that are part of climate change – increased temperature, drought and ultraviolet-B radiation – some plants show enhanced methane emissions.

Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas; 23 times more effective in trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2).

“Most studies just look at one factor. We wanted to mix a few of the environmental factors that are part of the climate change scenario to study a more true-to-life impact climate change has on plants,” said David Reid, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, who co-authored a paper with research associate Mirwais Qaderi in the advanced on-line edition of the journal Physiologia Plantarum.

Reid and Qaderi analyzed methane emissions from six important Canadian crops – faba bean, sunflower, pea, canola, barley and wheat – that were exposed to combinations of three components of global climate change: temperature, ultraviolet-B radiation and water stress (drought).

What they found was troubling.

These stresses caused plants to emit more methane. In a warmer, drier world, methane might be a bigger contributor in global warming than previously thought.

When it comes to the greenhouse effect, methane could be considered the misunderstood and often overlooked orphan greenhouse gas.

Much of the attention has been focused on carbon dioxide, but more recently it has been realized that methane should also be considered as a very significant greenhouse gas.

Its concentrations have more than doubled since pre-industrial times.

While the growth rate of methane concentrations has slowed since the early 1990s, some scientists say this is only a temporary pause.

“Our results are of importance in the whole climate warming discussion because methane is such a potent greenhouse warming gas,” said Qaderi.

“It points to the possibility of yet another possible feedback phenomena which could add to global warming,” he added. (ANI)

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Salt-tolerant crops come a step closer to reality

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 8 (ANI): An international team of scientists has developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification (GM), bringing salt-tolerant cereal crops a step closer to reality.

The research team, based at the University of Adelaide’s Waite Campus in Australia, has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.

Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security.

The work has been led by researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK.

According to Professor Tester, his team used the technique to keep salt – as sodium ions (Na+) – out of the leaves of a model plant species.

“Salinity affects the growth of plants worldwide, particularly in irrigated land where one third of the world’s food is produced. And it is a problem that is only going to get worse, as pressure to use less water increases and quality of water decreases,” said the team’s leader, Professor Mark Tester, from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG).

“Helping plants to withstand this salty onslaught will have a significant impact on world food production,” he added.

The researchers modified genes specifically around the plant’s water conducting pipes (xylem) so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot.

“This reduces the amount of toxic Na+ building up in the shoot and so increases the plant’s tolerance to salinity,” Professor Tester said.

“In doing this, we’ve enhanced a process used naturally by plants to minimize the movement of Na+ to the shoot. We’ve used genetic modification to amplify the process, helping plants to do what they already do – but to do it much better,” he added.

The team is now in the process of transferring this technology to crops such as rice, wheat and barley.

“Our results in rice already look very promising,” Professor Tester said. (ANI)

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Ancient granaries preceded Agricultural Revolution

June 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 23 (ANI): A new study has determined that it apparently took a long time to get the Agricultural Revolution off the ground, with discoveries at a Jordan site indicating that ancient granaries, more than 11,000 years old, preceded the advent of modern agriculture.

Excavations at Dhra’ near the Dead Sea in Jordan have uncovered remnants of four sophisticated granaries built between 11,300 and 11,175 years ago, about a millennium before domesticated plants were known to have been cultivated there.

Radiocarbon measurements from charred wood indicate that each structure was used to store wild plants for no more than 50 years, the first beginning around 11,300 years ago and the second starting shortly after abandonment of the first.

The excavations were carried out by archaeologists Ian Kuijt of the University of Notre Dame and Bill Finlayson of the Council for British Research in the Levant in Amman, Jordan.

Microscopic pieces of silica from barley husks were identified in one structure.

Though intact cereal grains have yet to be found, the granaries were situated between oval-shaped buildings where the researchers found stone tools for grinding wild plants.

Discoveries at Dhra’ represent the oldest known evidence for systematic storage of wild grains, according to the researchers.

A nearby site dating to at least 12,800 years ago contains pits that may have held wild plants, but no food remains have been found there.

Ancient residents of Dhra’ and several nearby settlements sowed wild cereals in fields and stored surplus food in granaries, making it possible to establish permanent communities before farming of domesticated plants began, Kuijt and Finlayson propose.

“The most important implication of our findings is that fundamental social changes occurred before plant domestication, including the establishment of fairly permanent settlements, with communal labor and storage, based on cultivated wild plants,” Kuijt said.

Researchers now generally accept that people in the Middle East and Asia must have cultivated wild plants for between 1,000 and 2,000 years, with annual harvests in the fall, before domesticated species appeared, remarked Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef.

“The discovery in Dhra’ provides us with one of the earliest well-built examples of a food-storage structure from before plants were domesticated,” Bar-Yosef said.

Storage structures there support the argument that the sowing of wild plants beginning as early as 14,000 to 15,000 years ago led to agriculture, according to archaeologist Mordechai Kislev of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. (ANI)

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Inflation rate up to 0.61 percent

May 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, May 21 (ANI): The rate of inflation in India for the week ended May 9 rose marginally to 0.61 percent, from 0.48 percent a week earlier, a government data showed on Thursday.

The annual rate of inflation had been rising for four consecutive reporting dates since the week ended April 4 when it was at 0.18 percent and touched 0.7 percent for the week ended April 26, before falling to 0.48 percent for the period ended May 2.

During the week, prices of tea, fruits, vegetables and spices rose by 0.5 percent during the week and that for manufactured products was up 0.1 percent, while the index for fuels remained unchanged.

The prices of urad, barley and maize declined during the week. The sub-index for non-food articles rose 0.4 percent as raw cotton, raw silk and oil seeds became dearer, while prices fell for raw rubber. (ANI)

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Plants use ‘genetic memory’ to recognize when it is time to start flowering

May 2, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Washington, April 29 (ANI): Australian plant scientists have revealed that plants use a genetic memory to recognize when it is spring and can even count the number of cold days.

According to a report by ABC News, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers show how winter cereal crops recognize when it is time to start flowering.

Co-author Dr Jim Peacock of CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra said the findings could, in the future, help scientists genetically adapt wheat to remain productive under changing environments.

Peacock said that winter cereal crops need exposure to an extended period of cold weather to begin flowering, a process known as vernalisation.

He said that the study builds on an earlier CSIRO discovery that a gene known as VRN1, which is the master switch that controls flowering in cereals such as wheat and barley.

In the latest paper, Peacock and colleagues show how the VRN1 gene is activated in winter cereals, and reveal a “molecular memory” that is passed on from cell to cell in the plant’s development.

“The remarkable thing is it is not a change to the genetic code,” said Peacock, but rather a major shift in gene pathways controlled by chemical changes to the chromatin of the gene.

Chromatin consist of DNA and balls of protein known as histones.

According to Peacock, with exposure to the cold, certain chemical conditions modify the histones and change the way chromatin is packaged, causing it to become active.

He said that the plants retain a “molecular memory” of the prolonged cold of winter, which is reset in each new generation to ensure it is able to respond to vernalisation.

“Each generation of winter wheat has to go through the cold period before it can flower,” he said. “The plant has this strategy to ensure it flowers and develops in the best weather conditions,” he added.

The team, led by CSIRO plant scientist Dr Sandra Oliver, also found the plant responds to longer days.

In laboratory experiments, the researchers also found if the wheat was exposed to a very short cold snap, the flowering response was reduced.

Although gene activity can be detected within several days of cold weather, up to six to eight weeks of cold temperatures was needed for a strong flowering response, according to Peacock.

But, he added that cropping industries will benefit from the work, as climate change alters conditions in traditional growing areas.

“You can either have potential changes in grain-growing areas, or teach the plant to accept the changes in the climate,” he said. (ANI)

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To protest Chinese rule Tibetan farmers refuse to sow spring crops

April 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Apr 11 (ANI): Tibetan farmers discontented with the Chinese rule have refused to sow their fields in a show of passive resistance against Beijing.

Chinese officials are so anxious at the latest action of farmers that they have sent in troops from the People’s Liberation Army to work with them or in their place if need be to carry out spring planting in mountainous regions.

The Times quoted sources as saying that many farmers in areas of Sichuan province with large ethnic Tibetan populations have decided to down tools and leave their barley fields fallow this year.

“The farmers know that they will be the ones to suffer if they do this. But this is a way for them to show their unhappiness,” one source said.

State-run TV broadcast footage show soldiers accompanying Tibetan farmers into the fields to plough and hoe. The Government has even ordered officials and party members into the fields themselves to get on with the spring planting.
he extent of the protest was impossible to gauge since foreign reporters are barred from Tibet and have been prevented from entering Tibetan-populated regions.

However, it appears to be serious enough to have prompted a statement this week from the Dalai Lama’s capital, saying: “The Tibetan Government in exile of the Dalai Lama appeals to Tibetans not to make this sacrifice and to stop their ‘refusal to till the fields’.”

A huge police and army presence across Tibet has failed to still simmering unrest, local residents said. (ANI)

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World’s first cocktail arose in Mesopotamia 5,000yrs ago

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 6 (ANI): The world’s first cocktail party might have taken place in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, if researchers are to be believed.

Researchers at the Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia, have came to this conclusion after studying the evolution of viticulture in the East and West.

They have found some earthenware along the Tigris river showing traces of tartaric acid (an element which is characteristic of the grape fermentation), honey, apple juice, and brew barley (a sort of beer ante litteram).

The researchers say that analyses of some pottery from South Tuscany suggest that this archaic blend was also drunk by Etrurians, a population that knew vine before the Greek arrived in Italy.

Based on these finding, it is assumed that the domestication of vine in Etruria was previous than the diffusion on Greek wine in the South coastlines.

Osvaldo Failla, a researcher at the Milan University, says that it is possible that the wild vine domestication took place in circumscribed areas, and not only after the introduction of external vines.

As part of the Vinum research project, the researchers also analysed the genetic characteristics of various wild vine found at different archaeological places in Maremma (Tuscany) and some vines present in non-anthropized places.

Their studies showed that, where the men were in contact with wild vines, the local genetic variability grew.

It was also possible to genetically distinguish the populations of wild vines deriving from anthropized zones in respect to non-anthropized areas. (ANI)

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Soon, gluten-free French bread for celiac disease patients

April 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 5 (ANI): Celiac disease patients, who are asked to stay away from gluten, can supplement the protein in their diet by opting for a new gluten-free bread, which resembles French bread in terms of texture and colour, according to a new study.

Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food.

Over two million people who have celiac disease cannot tolerate gluten, a protein in wheat, rye, and barley.

And as bread is prepared mainly from wheat flour containing proteins implicated as the cause of the disease, celiac patients have been forbidden from eating bread in many countries.

The new gluten-free bread includes guar gum, buckwheat flour, whole egg powder, and whey proteins.

Breads with guar gum had colour characteristics similar to French bread.

Bread prepared with buckwheat flour had improved quality and softer texture similar to regular French bread and contained dietary fibre.

“Buckwheat flour in the actual base of ingredients was found to have interesting improving effects on the quality attributes of the bread. Sensory analysis is now underway to evaluate the acceptance of this formulation by a panel of consumers,” said lead researcher Marie de Lamballerie.

The study is published in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). (ANI)

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Inflation rates up to 0.31 percent

April 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Apr 2 (ANI): The rate of inflation for the week ended March 21 rose marginally to 0.31 percent, from 0.27 percent a week earlier, government data showed on Thursday.

The inflation rate, as measured by the wholesale price index, was 7.8 per centuring the corresponding week of the previous year.

Price of certain food items such as tea, gur, aerated water and imported edible oil has risen during the period.

While the price of blended tea increased by 48 per cent, packaged tea and aerated water became expensive by 22 and 10 per cent, respectively.

Besides them, the list of items, which became expensive comprises of oil cake, bajra, soft drinks, condiments and spices, soyabean, niger seed, raw rubber, groundnut, mustard seed and raw cotton.

Cement, rubber, plastic products and PVC fittings also became dearer.

However, prices of fruit and vegetables, barley, jowar, raw silk, khandsari, salt, mustard and coconut oil became cheaper.

Prices of furnace oil, textile items, hair oil, steel ingots and bars also decreased.

Meanwhile, the commerce ministry has lowered the inflation rate for the week ended Jan 24 to 4.70 percent from the provisional 5.07 percent reported earlier.

It didn’t give any reasons for the revision in the rate. (ANI)

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nflation rates falls further to 0.27 per cent

March 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Mar 26 (ANI): The rate of inflation for the week ended March 14 fell further to 0.27 percent, from 0.44 per cent a week earlier, government data showed on Thursday.

However, the prices of some essential commodities like cereals and vegetables have risen during the period.

The price for primary food articles like fruits and vegetables, rice, some varieties of pulses, barley, bajra, and maize rose by 0.1 percent.

The food index of manufactured items also went up as maida, sooji, oil cakes, imported edible oil, gur, and cottonseed oil became expensive.

Commerce Secretary GK Pillai had said last week that the dropping rate inflation does not show a weakening demand.

“Inflation below 1 per cent is not a deflation and the low levels are due to high base effect,” he said.

The experts have predicted a further downfall of inflation to zero by the end of March, when the 2008/09 fiscal year ends.

Some analysts also expect negative readings by mid-2009. (ANI)

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