Listening to Mozart ‘doesn’t make you brainier’

May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, May 11 (ANI): People, who were listening to Mozart in the hope of boosting their intelligence, can stop now – as according to scientists the Austrian composer’s creations won’t make you smart.

For over 15 years, scientists have been discussing alleged performance-enhancing effects of hearing classical music. Now, University of Vienna researchers Jakob Pietschnig, Martin Voracek and Anton K. Formann present quite definite results on this so-called “Mozart effect” in the US journal Intelligence.

These new findings suggest no evidence for specific cognitive enhancements by mere listening to Mozart”s music.

In 1993, in the journal Science, the “Mozart effect” was first suggested by a scientific study, reports The Telegraph.

That study showed that teenagers who listened to Mozart”s 1781 Sonata for Two Pianos in D major performed better in reasoning tests than adolescents who listened to something else or who had been in a silent room.

However, now a team from Vienna University”s Faculty of Psychology has analysed all studies since 1993 that have sought to reproduce the Mozart effect and found no proof of the phenomenon”s existence.

“Those who listened to music, Mozart or something else – Bach, Pearl Jam – had better results than the silent group. But we already knew people perform better if they have a stimulus,” said Jakob Pietschnig, who led the study.

“I recommend everyone listen to Mozart, but it”s not going to improve cognitive abilities as some people hope,” he added. (ANI)

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Protein jab mends broken bones

May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, May 10 (ANI): Scientists have found a novel way to significantly speed up the healing of broken bones in mice, a feat which, if replicated in humans, could mean people with fractures would be free of their casts a lot sooner.

Jill Helms, Roel Nusse and team at Stanford University in California drilled small holes into the shin bones of mice, and injected them with Wnt proteins.

These proteins prompt bone stem cells to divide, reports New Scientist.

Three days later, bone growth was three times greater than in mice injected with a placebo, it was observed.

The approach could prove to be better than adding new stem cells, which can divide uncontrollably.

The research has appeared in the journal Science Translational Medicine. (ANI)

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Sequencing of frog genome may offer new insights into human diseases

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): An international team of researchers has cracked the genetic code of an amphibian, the African clawed frog Xenopus tropicali – the latest research aimed at understanding how genes work for potential applications in human health.

The genome of Xenopus tropicalis has been analysed by an international consortium of scientists from 24 institutions, and joins a list of sequenced model organisms including the mouse, zebrafish, nematode and fruit fly.

What’s most surprising, researchers say, is how closely the amphibian’s genome resembles that of the mouse, the chicken and the human, with large swathes of frog DNA on several chromosomes having genes arranged in the same order as in these mammals.

“A lot of furry animals have been sequenced, but far fewer other vertebrates,” said co-author Richard Harland, University of California, Berkeley, professor of molecular and cell biology.

“Having a complete catalog of the genes in Xenopus, along with those of humans, rats, mice and chickens, will help us reassemble the full complement of ancestral vertebrate genes.”

The researchers found that nearly 80 per cent of all human genes associated with genetic diseases have counterparts in the western-clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis.

This discovery could lead to a better understanding of the genetic and chemical basis for many of the human diseases.

The research, published this week in the journal Science, was led by the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the University of California, Berkeley. (ANI)

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First discovery of animals making their own carotene

April 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 30 (ANI): In what could be called as the first among animals, insects, known as aphids, can make their own essential nutrients called carotenoids, say University of Arizona researchers.

To date, no other animals are known to make the potent antioxidants.

And scientists had been thinking that the only way animals could obtain the orangey-red compounds was from their diet.

“It is written everywhere that animals do not make carotenoids,” said Nancy Moran, leader of the UA team that overturned the conventional wisdom.

Carotenoids are building blocks for molecules crucial for vision, healthy skin, bone growth and other key physiological functions. Beta-carotene, the pigment that makes carrots orange, is the building block for Vitamin A.

The researchers also figured out how the aphids they studied, known as pea aphids, acquired the ability to make carotenoids.

“What happened is a fungal gene got into an aphid and was copied,” said Moran.

She added that, although gene transfers between microorganisms are common, finding a functional fungus gene as part of an animal”s DNA is a first.

“Animals have a lot of requirements that reflect ancestral gene loss. This is why we require so many amino acids and vitamins in the diet. Until now it has been thought that there is simply no way to regain these lost capabilities. But this case in aphids shows that it is indeed possible to acquire the capacity to make needed compounds,” she said.

“Possibly this will be an extraordinarily rare case. But so far in genomic studies, a single initial case usually turns out to be only an example of something more widespread.”

A lucky accident in the lab plus the recent sequencing of the pea aphid genome made the discovery possible, said Moran.

The researchers have published their discovery in the latest issue of the journal Science. (ANI)

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Human and frogs share the ‘kissing cousin’ bond

April 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 30 (ANI): An international team of researchers has cracked the genetic code of an amphibian, the African clawed frog Xenopus tropicali – the latest research aimed at understanding how genes work for potential applications in human health.

The genome of Xenopus tropicalis has been analysed by an international consortium of scientists from 24 institutions, and joins a list of sequenced model organisms including the mouse, zebrafish, nematode and fruit fly.

What”s most surprising, researchers say, is how closely the amphibian”s genome resembles that of the mouse, the chicken and the human, with large swathes of frog DNA on several chromosomes having genes arranged in the same order as in these mammals.

“A lot of furry animals have been sequenced, but far fewer other vertebrates,” said co-author Richard Harland, University of California, Berkeley, professor of molecular and cell biology.

“Having a complete catalog of the genes in Xenopus, along with those of humans, rats, mice and chickens, will help us reassemble the full complement of ancestral vertebrate genes.”

The researchers found that nearly 80 per cent of all human genes associated with genetic diseases have counterparts in the western-clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis.

This discovery could lead to a better understanding of the genetic and chemical basis for many of the human diseases.

The research, published this week in the journal Science, was led by the Department of Energy”s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the University of California, Berkeley. (ANI)

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Boffins come closer to understanding how cystic fibrosis causes lung disease

April 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 29 (ANI): A new American research has made an advance in scientists” understanding of how cystic fibrosis (CF) causes lung disease in people with the condition.

The study by a University of Iowa research team and colleagues at University of Missouri has appeared in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Lead author David Stoltz, UI assistant professor of internal medicine, said: “Using our model we are beginning to answer that question, and it looks like infection does precede inflammation.

“The importance of that finding is that it could dictate what types of therapy we might use. Knowing that infection is first suggests that if we can prevent or fight infection, then that might delay or prevent the lung disease in people with CF.”

For example, the finding would seem to support early and aggressive treatment of lung infections in children with CF, added Stoltz, who also is assistant director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Center at UI Hospitals and Clinics.

The new experimental model that Stoltz and his colleagues used were pigs with a CF-causing gene mutation.

The team generated the pig model in the hope that it would more closely mimic the human disease than mouse models do.

By studying the CF pigs through their first six months of life, the team has shown that these animals do develop lung disease typical of what is seen in humans, including infection in the lungs, inflammation, and accumulation of mucus in the airways, which is a significant problem for patients with CF.

Randall Prather, distinguished professor of reproductive biotechnology at the University of Missouri, said: “This is a really great example where the pig serves as a model for what happens in the human, and the pig reacts to this disease in nearly the same way.

“In contrast, when you use mice, they don”t get the lung disease that is common in patients with cystic fibrosis.”

The team also found that the lungs of newborn CF pigs tended to be infected with more bacteria than lungs of control pigs.

Furthermore, within a few hours of birth, the CF pigs showed signs that their lungs are less able to get rid of bacteria from their lungs.

This problem might represent an initial step in the disease process that results in chronic lung infection in CF.

Stoltz said: “Our new model will help us understand the mechanisms of lung disease in humans with CF.

“It also provides a unique opportunity to test different therapies starting at a very early stage of the disease — much earlier than we can in humans with CF — and maybe to target preventive therapies that might help delay or even prevent the type of lung disease that affects people with CF.” (ANI)

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Multitasking splits the brain into two parts

April 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, Apr 16 (ANI): People who think they can juggle more than a few tasks at once with ease, here’s a research: “multi-tasking” skills are limited by the physical division of the brain into two hemispheres.

In a new study, boffins found that when individuals carry out two tasks simultaneously their brains divide each job up so that one is performed largely by the left side of the brain and the other is carried out mainly on the right.

The study’s finding may explain why humans tend to prefer a simple choice between two options rather than three or more, reports The Independent.

To reach the conclusion, Sylvain Charron and Etienne Koechlin of France”s National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris asked 32 volunteers to carry out two different mental puzzles while their brains were being scanned by an MRI machine.

“Each subject was performing two tasks concurrently. One task was to pair upper case letters and the other task was to pair lower case letters together. It was a very simple task and the subjects had to switch back and forth between them,” Dr Koechlin said.

“We motivated them with a reward if they made no errors between trials. It was a monetary reward actually, so when the subject made an error on one of the tasks, their reward was less. We rewarded brain activity and at the same time we monitored the subjects” errors, reaction time and so on. So we could measure performance and we found that a larger reward was associated with a better performance,” he said.

The study, published in the journal Science, focused on the medial frontal cortex. It is this part of the brain that is thought to drive the pursuit of rewards associated with carrying out a task.

“We found that brain activity increased with rewards and expectations in the medial frontal cortex. We found in the left hemisphere that the activity increased as the reward value of one task increased, but not the other task, whereas in the right hemisphere the brain activation was related to the reward value of the other task,” Professor Koechlin said.

“The two hemispheres co-operated when there was only one task. But in two tasks, one hemisphere covers the reward of one task and the other hemisphere covers the reward of the other.”

“The human prefrontal function seems to be built to control two tasks simultaneously. It means in everyday behaviour we can readily switch between two tasks but not between three. With three tasks the division is limited to only two hemispheres, so there is a problem,” he said. (ANI)

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China scientists show how arsenic treats blood cancer

April 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Scientists in China have demonstrated how arsenic — a favorite murder weapon in the Middle Ages — destroys deadly blood cancer by targeting and killing specific proteins that keep the cancer alive.

Science | China

“Our study showed how arsenic directly targets these proteins and kills them,” lead researcher Zhang Xiaowei at the State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics in Shanghai, China, told Reuters.

“Unlike chemotherapy, the side effects of arsenic (in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia) are very low. There is no hair loss or suppression of bone marrow (function). We are interested in finding out how arsenic can be used in other cancers,” Zhang said by telephone.

Well known for its toxicity, arsenic was regarded in the past as the king among poisons because its symptoms are like those of cholera and can often go undetected.

In China, however, it has long served a dual purpose. Apart from intentional poisoning, it has been used for at least 2,000 years in traditional Chinese medicine.

In 1992, a group of Chinese doctors reported how they used arsenic to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), a blood and bone marrow cancer that has surprisingly high cure rates of over 90 percent in China.

However, the actual workings of arsenic and how it interacts with cancer tissues has never been clear — until Zhang and his colleagues used modern technology to find out.

In a paper published in the journal Science, Zhang and his team, which includes Health Minister Chen Zhu, described how they used modern equipment and saw how arsenic attacked specific proteins that would otherwise be keeping the cancer alive and well.

“This shows how Western technology can be used to find out about the mysteries of Chinese medicine,” Zhang said.

“Although many countries are now using arsenic to treat APL, some countries are resistant to the idea. It depends a lot on whether doctors recommend it and whether patients accept it.”

In APL, there is a drop in the production of normal red blood cells and platelets, resulting in anemia and thrombocytopenia. The bone marrow is unable to produce healthy red blood cells. Until the 1970s, APL was 100 percent fatal and there was no effective treatment.

“The clinical result of arsenic in treating APL is well-established. More than 90 percent of APL patients in China have (at least) five years of disease-free survival,” Zhang said.

In a separate commentary in Science, Scott Kogan at the University of California San Francisco Cancer Center wrote that proper case selection and combination therapy with arsenic may lead to improved outcomes for treating not only promyelocytic leukemia, but other diseases as well.

“If so, an ancient medicine, revived through careful clinical and biological studies in modern times, will have an even greater impact on human health,” wrote Kogan, who was not linked to the Chinese study.

(Editing by Chris Lewis and Sugita Katyal)

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China scientists show how arsenic treats blood cancer

April 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

SINGAPORE, April 9 (Reuters) – Scientists in China have demonstrated how arsenic — a favourite murder weapon in the Middle Ages — destroys deadly blood cancer by targeting and killing specific proteins that keep the cancer alive.

“Our study showed how arsenic directly targets these proteins and kills them,” lead researcher Zhang Xiaowei at the State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics in Shanghai, China, told Reuters.

“Unlike chemotherapy, the side effects of arsenic (in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia) are very low. There is no hair loss or suppression of bone marrow (function). We are interested in finding out how arsenic can be used in other cancers,” Zhang said by telephone.

Well known for its toxicity, arsenic was regarded in the past as the king among poisons because its symptoms are like those of cholera and can often go undetected.

In China, however, it has long served a dual purpose. Apart from intentional poisoning, it has been used for at least 2,000 years in traditional Chinese medicine.

In 1992, a group of Chinese doctors reported how they used arsenic to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), a blood and bone marrow cancer that has surprisingly high cure rates of over 90 percent in China.

However, the actual workings of arsenic and how it interacts with cancer tissues has never been clear — until Zhang and his colleagues used modern technology to find out.

In a paper published in the journal Science, Zhang and his team, which includes Health Minister Chen Zhu, described how they used modern equipment and saw how arsenic attacked specific proteins that would otherwise be keeping the cancer alive and well.

“This shows how Western technology can be used to find out about the mysteries of Chinese medicine,” Zhang said.

“Although many countries are now using arsenic to treat APL, some countries are resistant to the idea. It depends a lot on whether doctors recommend it and whether patients accept it.”

In APL, there is a drop in the production of normal red blood cells and platelets, resulting in anemia and thrombocytopenia. The bone marrow is unable to produce healthy red blood cells. Until the 1970s, APL was 100 percent fatal and there was no effective treatment.

“The clinical result of arsenic in treating APL is well-established. More than 90 percent of APL patients in China have (at least) five years of disease-free survival,” Zhang said.

In a separate commentary in Science, Scott Kogan at the University of California San Francisco Cancer Center wrote that proper case selection and combination therapy with arsenic may lead to improved outcomes for treating not only promyelocytic leukemia, but other diseases as well.

“If so, an ancient medicine, revived through careful clinical and biological studies in modern times, will have an even greater impact on human health,” wrote Kogan, who was not linked to the Chinese study. (Editing by Chris Lewis and Sugita Katyal)

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Venus still hot and active

April 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Earth’s nearest planetary neighbour might still be geologically active, according to a new study.

Venus is sometimes called Earth’s sister planet because they’re almost the same size and composition. But it’s a twisted sister, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead, sulphuric acid rain, and a crushing atmospheric pressure 100 times greater than Earth’s.

Now a team of scientists led by Dr Suzanne Smrekar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has found new evidence for recently active volcanoes on Venus.

Its report, which appears today in the journal Science, identifies hot spots on Venus that indicate young rocks with abnormally high level of heat compared to their surroundings.

“It shows the rocks haven’t degraded despite exposure to the harsh Venusian weather,” said Dr Smrekar.

“It means the hotspots are recently active volcanoes, with lava flows younger than 2.5 million years.”

Similar to Hawaii

Dr Smrekar and colleagues used surface heat data gathered by sensors aboard the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft.

Data collected by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s identified nine hot spots similar to those found on the islands of Hawaii.

Broad topographic rises and gravity anomalies found at these hot spots suggest there could be active mantle plumes close to the surface.

Using the visible and infrared thermal imaging spectrometer aboard Venus Express, Dr Smrekar’s team examined three of these hot spots.

“They’re places geologically like Hawaii, and so are the most likely sites for volcanic activity. They could be active now but there’s no evidence that they’re currently erupting,” Dr Smrekar said.

“The clue was finding basalt rock that hasn’t been weathered or chemically changed. Even on Earth when lava erupts on the surface, it interacts with the atmosphere and changes composition at the crust.

“On Venus, because it’s so hot with a dense carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide atmosphere, we expect lava to quickly react when it hits the surface undergoing chemical and mineral changes.”

But Dr Smrekar says that process has not yet happened at these hot spots.

“We believe that means these are relatively fresh,” he said.

Because of the small number of impact craters on Venus, scientists know the planet’s surface is not much more than half a billion years old.

Dr Smrekar says that is a relatively young surface, like the Earth’s, and much younger than Mars. But unlike Earth, there is no evidence of plate tectonic activity on Venus or Mars.

“It means Venus is a lot like Earth, but not exactly the same. It’s kind of a laboratory for understanding how the Earth works,” she said.

“As we find more planets around other stars, maybe we’ll find out what’s more typical, Earth or Venus.”

Future mission

According to Dr Smrekar, a new mission to visit the surface of Venus is currently being considered for funding.

Called Surface and Atmospheric Geochemical Explorer (SAGE), the lander will have a tough time surviving the journey to the surface.

During the 1970s, a number of Soviet spacecraft landed on the Venusian surface, but lasted no more than a hour before being cooked and crushed in the hostile environment.

Dr Smrekar says SAGE could answer a number of questions relating to Venus and help scientists better understand data from orbiting spacecraft such as Venus Express.

A decision on SAGE is expected within a year.

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New species of human found in ‘death trap’

April 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The discovery of two human-like skeletons in South Africa has shed further light on the evolution of humans.

The skeletal remains of the human-like creatures were found at the base of what was once a network of underground caves, described by scientists as a “death trap”.

The find is set to provide more fuel for the never-ending debate over the evolution of humans.

Two papers published today in the journal Science describe the fossils of what has been called Australopithecus sediba and the environment in which they were found.

The partial skeletons of a juvenile male and adult female were found close together in sediments dated between 1.95 and 1.78 million years old.

“From looking at the sediments you can get an idea that the material has been washed down from a higher location,” says one of the Australian authors, Dr Andy Herries of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The researchers, who included Dr Lee Berger from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, found the fossils in a cave called Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Area.

They believe where the fossils were found was once the base of an underground cave system that extended tens of metres below the surface.

The entrance to the caves would have been a hole in the ground.

“You find that fossils actually fall into these caves, they die, they become partly mummified and then they get redistributed into lower sections by floodwater,” said Dr Herries, who was involved in dating the sediments.

“It would have been what we call a death trap.”

The first bone was picked up by Professor Berger’s nine-year-old son, Matthew, who says he thought he had discovered an animal bone.

“I turned the rock over and I saw the clavicle sticking out – that’s the collar bone,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought it was just an antelope.

“So I called my dad over and about five metres away he started swearing and I was like, ‘what did I do wrong?’ and he’s like, ‘nothing, nothing – you found a hominid’.”

The researchers also found fossils of at least 25 animals in the cave, including large-toothed cats, a brown hyena, a wild dog, antelopes and a horse.

Debate on human origins

Dr Herries says the new fossils add to an increasingly complicated picture on the evolution of humans (Homo sapiens).

“I’m sure that this fossil will create huge amounts of new debate on exactly what the origins of Homo are,” he said.

“It gets more complicated by every fossil that’s found.”

Dr Herries says most scientists believe the genus Homo evolved from the genus Australopithecus and until now the most likely candidate was Australopithecus africanus.

He says Australopithecus sediba had a small brain like the primitive Australopithecus africanus, which died out around 2.1 million years ago.

But its other features, especially its pelvis, are similar to Homo erectus which appeared around 1.8 million years ago.

“It would have walked in a very modern way,” Dr Herries said.

He says the features of the new species are an intermediate between Australopithecus africanus and Homo erectus, suggesting it provides a link between them.

“There seems to be a very clear transition from one to the other,” Dr Herries said.

Predecessor puzzle

One fly in the ointment of this theory is that there are other species that have been classified in the genus Homo that appear in East Africa 2.3 million years ago, making Australopithecus sediba too young to be a predecessor of Homo.

But Dr Herries says Australopithecus sediba may have evolved a lot earlier than the specimen found at Malapa.

And some experts argue that many earlier Homo specimens are actually Australopithecus, he says.

Australian anthropologist Professor Colin Groves of the Australian National University in Canberra disputes the analysis of the latest fossil find.

He thinks the new species should be classified as Homo.

“It was a very strange decision to assign them to Australopithecus,” Professor Groves said.

“Except for its cranial capacity – and I have my doubts about the way they estimated that – all its characters are those of Homo.”

He describes the specimens as “intensely interesting” because they confirm that early Homo species existed in South Africa as well as in East Africa around the same time.

“What they’ve probably found is the South African sister species of Homo habilis,” Professor Groves said.

What’s in a name?

Dr Herries agrees there will be debate on the classification of the new fossils.

“I think a lot of people will be surprised it is called Australopithecus,” he said.

But Dr Herries says some of the disagreement over classification can be explained by the fact that so many early human fossils were mere fragments which encouraged one classification over another.

He says Australopithecus sediba fossils are the most complete skeletons of early humans of that time.

“It’s got a mosaic of characteristics. It’s got some characteristics that look very Homo-like and some characteristics that look very Australopithecine,” Dr Herries said.

“So if you were to find one part of it you might find the bit that looks more like Australopithecus. If you found another part you might find a part that looks a bit more like Homo. So you would end up classifying it one way or the other.”

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Scientists unearth Australian T rex

March 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Australian scientists say they have discovered the first evidence that an ancestor of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex once roamed across Australia.

The finding, published today in the journal Science, fills a major gap in the evolutionary history of T rex and overturns the theory the giant predator was a purely northern hemisphere animal.

It also puts a dampener on hopes of finding a unique Australian dinosaur, says Museum Victoria curator of vertebrate palaeontology Dr Tom Rich.

The discovery is based on a pubic bone found about 20 years ago at Dinosaur Cove, 220 kilometres west of Melbourne in Victoria.

It was made after Dr Rich took a number of isolated and unidentified bones overseas for identification.

Conspicuous feature

Lead author Dr Roger Benson, a research fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, says he instantly recognised one of the bones belonged to a coelurosaur.

Coelurosaurs are the group of mainly small-bodied, predatory dinosaurs that includes birds at one end and tyrannosaurs at the other, Dr Benson says.

He says the identification was initially based on “one conspicuous feature”.

Dr Benson says the far end of the pubic bone was expanded into a “boot” shape fore and aft, but was very narrow across.

“Basically, our [the Museum Victoria] pubis is almost identical to that of T rex, only much smaller,” Dr Benson said.

The new species, which Dr Rich says would have been about one-third to one-quarter the size of T rex, shares other features with the giant predator, including short arms and powerful jaws.

“It’s much more similar to T rex than one other tyrannosaur (Raptorex, from China) of slightly older age than ours,” Dr Benson said.

“We know Raptorex had a robust skull and small arms and we know that our new fossil is from a tyrannosaur even more closely related to T rex. Thus it’s most likely the general body plan of our new one was similar.”

Surge in discovery

Until recently the only known tyrannosaurs were those like T rex – giant predators from Asia and North America that lived about 70 million years ago, just before the Cretaceous mass extinction, says Dr Benson.

However in the past decade a “surge” in discoveries has revealed diverse types and body sizes in the tyrannosauroid family from up to 170 million years back in the Middle to Late Jurassic.

“It’s these discoveries, mostly man-sized or smaller, that have filled in the story of tyrannosaur evolution,” says Dr Benson.

“Since all discoveries have been from the northern hemisphere, tyrannosaurs have been considered as northern dinosaurs that might have just never made it down into the south.

“The new discovery shows that this is wrong and that 110 million years ago tyrannosaurs were probably global. This poses a question. Why did tyrannosaurs grow to giant size and dominance in the north, but apparently not in the south?”

Dr Rich says the new species of Tyrannosaurus also shows the likelihood of finding a unique Australian dinosaur is low.

“The picture that seems to be emerging is that dinosaurs were more or less cosmopolitan,” he says.

“We are getting elements that look like those found in the northern hemisphere and we haven’t found the dinosaur equivalent of the koala; we don’t seem to have a unique dinosaur.”

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India and China need to team up to deal with environmental problems

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 19 (ANI): A Michigan State University (MSU) scientist and colleagues have said that China and India need to collaborate to slow global warming, deforestation, water shortages and other environmental issues.

“China and India are the two largest countries in terms of population,” said Jianguo Liu, MSU University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife who holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability.

“Even while the rest of the world is in a recession, the economies of China and India are growing and the countries’ consumption of raw materials is increasing. Cooperation between the two is vital to mitigating negative environmental impacts,” he added.

In the report “China, India and the Environment,” published in the March 19 issue of the journal Science, Liu and co-authors advocate using scientific collaboration as a bridge to help break down political barriers between the two nations – ultimately benefiting the larger global society.

All the authors have strong research programs in one or both of the countries.

“We all have a huge interest in a sustainable world and the way we’re managing it now, it simply isn’t sustainable,” said Peter Raven, co-author and president of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

“The problems get worse every year; biodiversity loss and climate change have clear global significance. Our thesis is the two countries share so much adjacent territory that the environmental benefits should be obvious and, informed by scientific analysis, should provide a bridge between them,” he added.

According to Liu, water availability could be an increasingly challenging issue facing the two countries and one that will require careful cooperation.

Many rivers flow through both China and India. If one country builds too many dams on its side to generate hydroelectric power, it will likely cause water shortages downstream in the other country.

“Water is a huge issue. It’s being discussed extensively. We need to make people aware of the benefits of cooperation,” said Liu.

“It’s more than just China and India that will be affected if these two countries don’t work together. The environmental impacts will be felt around the world, including in the United States,” he added.

“One thing we have learned from the recession is that without sustainability there cannot be unlimited growth,” said Kamaljit Bawa, University of Massachusetts-Boston distinguished professor of biology and president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalor, India.

“The two countries are not facing recession and it is time for them to exercise environmental stewardship. Future economic growth is contingent upon this stewardship,” he added. (ANI)

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Brain receptor behind learning deficits post-puberty identified

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 19 (ANI): A novel brain receptor, alpha4-beta-delta, has been labelled as the culprit behind learning deficits that come with puberty.

It is well known that the onset of puberty marks the end of the optimal period for learning language and certain spatial skills, such as computer/video game operation.

In the new study, Dr. Sheryl Smith, professor of physiology and pharmacology, and colleagues at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn showed that alpha4-beta-delta emerges at puberty in the hippocampus, part of the brain that controls learning and memory.

Before puberty, expression of this receptor is low and learning is optimal. However, at puberty, increases in this receptor reduce brain excitability and impair spatial learning.

Smith has shown that the learning deficit could be reversed with the help of a stress steroid that diminishes the harmful effects of the alpha4-beta-delta receptors, thereby facilitating learning.

“These findings suggest that intrinsic brain mechanisms alter learning during adolescence, but that mild stress may be one factor that can reverse this decline in learning proficiency during the teenage years. They also suggest that different strategies for learning and motivation may be helpful in middle school. And it is within the realm of possibility that a drug could be developed that would increase learning ability post-puberty, one that might be especially useful for adolescents with learning disabilities,” said Smith.

In 2007, researchers demonstrated that a hormone normally released in response to stress, THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty, when it increases activity of the hippocampus.

While in adults this hormone acts like at tranquilizer, in adolescents it has the opposite effect, an action that may help to explain mood swings in teenagers.

The new report on learning deficits is published in the journal Science. (ANI)

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Sperm of ants battle inside the queens

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, March 19 (ANI): Queens of ants and bees normally obtain a lifetime supply of sperm on a single day of sexual activity, and sperm competition is expected to occur in lineages where queens receive sperm from multiple males. Now, a new research has shown that it”s not the males that try to harm each other: it”s their ejaculate.

Some female insects, such as honeybees and leafcutter ants, have sex on only one day in their life. But they mate with multiple males and store enough sperm to fertilise eggs throughout their lives.

Now, scientists have discovered that when honeybees and leafcutter ants inseminate the queen, their seminal fluid is harmful to rival sperm.

In the study, Boris Baer of the University of Western Australia and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, exposed the sperm of honeybees and leafcutter ants to their own seminal fluid, and the secretions of other males of the same species.

The seminal fluid killed more than 50 per cent of the rival sperm within 15 minutes.

“The males seemed to use the seminal fluid to harm the sperm,” New Scientist quoted Baer as aying.

The researchers also found that females put up a fight to save the sperm inside them. Baer and colleagues found that queen leafcutter ants can chose to secrete a fluid that protects sperm from the damaging effects of seminal fluid from rival males.

The study has been published in the Journal Science. (ANI)

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Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak created in 3D

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 19 (ANI): The magical cloak that featured in the Harry Potter series has become closer to reality, thanks to German scientists who’ve created a three-dimensional “invisibility cloak” that can hide objects by bending light waves.

Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London reported their discovery in the journal Science.

The boffins used their cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, reports Discovery News.

“It”s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this time the carpet also disappears,” they said.

“We put an object under a microscopic structure, a little like a reflective carpet,” said Nicholas Stenger, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

“When we looked at it through a lens and did spectroscopy, no matter what angle we looked at the object from, we saw nothing. The bump became invisible,” said Stenger.

The “cloak” hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans.

Now, the boffins are working to recreate the disappearing bump but on a larger scale.

Stenger said: “Theoretically, it would be possible to do this on a large scale but technically, it”s totally impossible with the knowledge we have now.” (ANI)

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Deformity-causing mechanism of drug Thalidomide discovered

March 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, Mar 13 (ANI): The primary mechanism by which thalidomide causes malformed limbs in developing embryos has been discovered by scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The drug’s side-effect gained recognition after many affected children were born to mothers who had been prescribed the drug for morning sickness.

According to research in the journal Science, thalidomide binds to and renders inactive the protein cereblon, which is very important in limb formation.

Drug thalidomide may be effective in the treatment of certain cancers and leprosy, but the fact that it causes birth defects means that for women its use remains risky and controversial.

In the study, the research team, led by Takumi Ito from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, isolated the negative effects of the “potentially useful” drug.

They set out to discover which target molecules thalidomide bound to in the body. They did this using tiny beads that extracted each individual molecule the drug bound to.

The conclusion was confirmed after the usage of genetic techniques to reduce the production of the cereblon protein in developing zebrafish and chick embryos. The embryos with reduced cereblon had similar developmental defects to those that were treated with thalidomide.

“We [have shown] that cereblon… is a primary target of thalidomide teratogenicity” (or its ability to cause birth defects), the researchers wrote in their Science article.

Dr Ito told BBC News: “Although the mechanism for the teratogenic effect was made clear, the mechanism for its therapeutic effects remains unknown.

“[If we want to develop] a new drug devoid of teratogenic activity, it is important to understand [this] mechanism… this is what we are heading for.” (ANI)

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Negative public opinion about foreign countries an early warning signal for terrorism

September 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 18 (ANI): People’s negative views toward the leadership and policies of other countries may be an indication that a terrorist act may be carried out, say researchers.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist, and Jitka Maleckova, of Charles University in the Czech Republic, came to this conclusion after analysing public opinion polls and terrorist activity in 143 pairs of countries.

Writing about their findings in the journal Science, the researchers say that there is a strong relationship between attitudes expressed toward a foreign country — indicated in surveys on foreign leaders’ performance-and the occurrence of terrorism against that country.

“Public opinion appears to be a useful predictor of terrorist activity,” said Krueger, the Bendheim Professor in Economics and Public Policy.

“This is the first study to relate public opinion across countries to concrete actions such as terrorism,” he added.

He pointed out that the notion that public attitudes can contribute to terrorism has been inadequately explored to date.

According to him, the study’s findings attain significance as they suggest that public opinion may provide a valuable early warning signal of terrorism, and help researchers better understand the causes of terrorism.

The researchers carried out their study by mining public opinion polls of residents in 19 countries in the Middle East and northern Africa conducted by Gallup.

They asked the respondents whether they approved of the job performance of the leaders of nine large countries.

According to the researchers, the countries selected for the study are world powers in terms of size, population or military strength, are the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom.

The opinions, both positive and negative, were linked to the number of terrorist attacks conducted against the nine world powers by people from the 19 countries between 2004 and 2008. The terror attacks were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center.

Based on the findings, Krueger says that there is not a direct connection between poverty and terrorism, contrary to a popular view.

He adds that economic status has more to do with target countries than it does with the states where the attacks originate.

He says that countries with advanced economies as well as a high degree of civil liberties are most likely to be the targets of terrorism.

The researchers admits that the study does not explain whether terrorists act in response to public opinion or whether they are simply reacting just like the larger public to external events.

However, he insists that, in either case, public opinion surveys can provide a powerful indication of the likelihood of terrorist activity.

Krueger believes that greater disapproval of another country’s leaders or policies may result in more terrorist acts because it increases the number of people who provide material support and encouragement for terrorism, and increases the number of people interested in joining cells and carrying out terrorist acts themselves. (ANI)

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How to make antibiotics more effective at lower doses

September 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 11 (ANI): Researchers at the NYU School of Medicine say that they have gained significant insights into a mechanism that plays an important role in making human pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis resistant to numerous antibiotics.

Writing about their work in the journal Science, they have said that their study provides evidence that Nitric Oxide (NO) is able to alleviate the oxidative stress in bacteria caused by many antibiotics, and that it also helps to neutralize many antibacterial compounds.

Lead researcher Evgeny A. Nudler, The Julie Wilson Anderson Professor of Biochemistry at NYU Langone Medical Center, says in the report that eliminating this NO-mediated bacterial defence renders existing antibiotics more potent at lower, less toxic, doses. he researcher further says that the study’s findings pave the way for new ways of combating bacteria that have become antibiotic resistant.

A study Nudler led a few years ago had shown that bacteria mobilize NO to defend against the oxidative stress.

The new study supports the radical idea that many antibiotics cause the oxidative stress in bacteria, often resulting in their death, whereas NO counters this effect.

Based on this work, the researchers have come to the conclusion that scientists may use commercially available inhibitors of NO-synthase, an enzyme producing NO in bacteria and humans, to make antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA and ANTHRAX more sensitive to available drugs during acute infection.

“Developing new medications to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA is a huge hurdle, associated with great cost and countless safety issues. Here, we have a short cut, where we don’t have to invent new antibiotics. Instead, we can enhance the activity of well established ones, making them more effective at lower doses,” says Nudler.

“We are very excited about the potential impact of this research in terms of continuing to push the boundaries of research in the area of infectious diseases,” said Dr. Vivian S. Lee, vice dean for science, senior vice president and chief scientific officer of NYU Langone Medical Center.

“With the emergence of drug resistant bacteria, it’s imperative that researchers strive to find conceptually new approaches to fight these pathogens,” Lee added. (ANI)

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Scientists come closer to ‘synthetic life’ in lab

August 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, Aug 21 (ANI): A group of scientists has created a new “engineered” strain of bacteria – a development which could be described as a step towards the creation of “synthetic life”.

The team, including scientist J Craig Venter, a leading figure in the controversial field of synthetic biology, has successfully transferred the genome of one type of bacteria into a yeast cell, modified it, and then transplanted into another bacterium.

The study paves the way to the creation of a synthetic organism – inserting a human-made genome into a bacterial cell.

It has been described in the journal Science.

According to boffins, the advancement overcomes the obstacle of making a new inserted genome work inside a recipient cell.

The resulting cell Sanjay Vashee, one of the authors, and his team created went on to undertake multiple rounds of cell division, to produce a new strain of the modified bacteria.

Vashee is a researcher at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, in the US. He explained to BBC News: “Bacteria have ‘immune’ systems that protect them from foreign DNA such as those from viruses.”

The scientists disabled the immune system, which consists of proteins called restriction enzymes that home in on specific sections of DNA and chop up the genome at these points.

Bacteria can shield their own genomes from this process by attaching chemical compounds called methyl groups at the points which the restriction enzymes attack.

The scientists modified the original genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides, whilst it was inside the yeast cell. Then they either attached methyl groups to it, or inactivated the restriction enzyme of the recipient bacterium, before transplanting the genome into its new cell.

The team aims to transplant a fully synthetic genome into a bacterial cell – creating bacteria that can be programmed to carry out specific functions – for example, digesting biological material to produce fuel. (ANI)

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