Knowledge Update

​London, April 6 (IANS) Scientists have discovered a new biochemical process, which reveals how the lungs operate during normal functioning and during asthma -- a chronic respiratory condition marked by difficulty in breathing.

The study conducted in mouse model reveals how air enters and leaves the lungs.

The findings showed that disrupting these biochemical pathways in a mouse model could prevent airway narrowing and maintain normal lung function.

"The fundamental biochemical process that we have discovered will ultimately allow us to better design ways to develop new treatments for those suffering from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)," said one of the researchers Andrew Tobin, professor at the University of Leicester in Britain.

It is too early to say whether these results apply to humans, the researchers maintained in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The lung is made up of tiny tubes called airways, surrounded by muscles that allow air in and out of the lung.

In asthma and other airway diseases such as COPD, the airway muscle contracts causing the airways to become narrow and restricting the flow of air in and out of the lung.

"This breakthrough will lay the essential foundations on which to build new strategies to combat airway diseases such as asthma," added Tobin.

According to the World Health Organisation estimates, 235 million people worldwide currently suffer from asthma with over 80 percent of asthma deaths occurring in low and lower-middle income countries. The disease is predicted to increase worldwide over the next 10 years.​

​New York, April 6 (IANS) Robots having close resemblance with humanoid robot movie characters like C-3PO and Wall-E, which are seen as "friendly, non-threatening computers", can evoke emotional response from humans, a study has found.

In an experiment, researchers at Stanford University used a human-shaped robot which was programmed to verbally instruct study participants to touch 13 parts of its body.

Participants were fitted with an Affectiva Q-Sensor on the fingers of their non-dominant hand. This measured skin conductance, a measure of physiological arousal, and reaction time of the participant.

The findings, which will be presented in June at the 66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in Fukuoka, Japan, showed that when participants were instructed to touch the robot in areas that people usually do not touch, like the eyes or the buttocks, they were more emotionally aroused when compared to touching more accessible parts like the hands and neck. 

Participants also were more hesitant to touch these intimate parts based on the response times.

"Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful. It shows that people respond to robots in a primitive, social way," said Stanford researcher Jamy Li.

"Social conventions regarding touching someone else's private parts apply to a robot's body parts as well. This research has implications for both robot design and theory of artificial systems," Li added.​

​New York, April 6 (IANS) If early Mars was as barren and cold as it is today then the bombardment of the Red Planet some four billion years ago by comets and asteroids may have made its climate more conducive to life, according to a study.

The impacts would have produced regional hydrothermal systems on Mars similar to those in Yellowstone National Park, which today harbour chemically powered microbes, some of which can survive boiling in hot springs or inhabiting water acidic enough to dissolve iron nails, said study co-author Stephen Mojzsis from the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

Scientists have long known there was once running water on Mars, as evidenced by ancient river valleys, deltas and parts of lake beds, Mojzsis added. 

In addition to producing hydrothermal regions in portions of Mars' fractured and melted crust, a massive impact could have temporarily increased the planet's atmospheric pressure, periodically heating Mars up enough to "re-start" a dormant water cycle.

Published recently in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the study took into consideration temperatures beneath millions of individual craters on Mars. 

The researchers used computer simulations to assess heating and cooling, as well as the effects of impacts on the planet from different angles and velocities.

They found the heating of ancient Mars caused by individual asteroid collisions would likely have lasted only a few million years before the Red Planet -- about one and one-half times the distance to the sun than Earth -- defaulted to today's cold and inhospitable conditions.

"None of the models we ran could keep Mars consistently warm over long periods," Mojzsis said.

While Mars is believed to have spent most of its history in a cold state, Earth was likely habitable over almost its entire existence. 

"What really saved the day for Earth was its oceans," Mojzsis said. "In order to wipe out life here, the oceans would have had to have been boiled away. Those extreme conditions in that time period are beyond the realm of scientific possibility," he added.

Mojzsis said the next step would be to model similar bombardment on Mercury as well as Venus to better understand the evolution of the inner solar system and apply that knowledge to studies of planets around other stars.​

​London, April 6 (IANS) The death of a spouse is linked to increased risk of developing an irregular heartbeat up to a year after the bereavement, says a study adding that the risk is prevalent among those below 60.

The condition known as atrial fibrillation -- itself a risk factor for stroke and heart failure -- can also flare up in cases when the loss was least expected.

According to Danish researchers, acute stress may directly disrupt normal heart rhythms and prompt the production of chemicals involved in inflammation.

"The elevated risk was especially high for those who were young and those who lost a relatively healthy partner," said Simon Graff of Aarhus University in Denmark.

The team collected information on 88,612 people newly diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and 886,120 healthy people.

They looked at several factors that might influence atrial fibrillation risk which included time since the bereavement, age and sex, heart disease and diabetes, the health of the partner a month before death, and whether they were single.

The results, published in the online journal Open Heart, indicated that the risk of developing an irregular heartbeat was 41 percent higher among those who had been bereaved than it was among those who had not experienced such a loss.

The risk seemed to be greater during eight to 14 days following a death, after which it gradually subsided until after a year the risk was similar to that of someone who had not been bereaved.

The highest risk was seen among people under the age of 60: they were more than twice as likely to develop atrial fibrillation if they had been bereaved and the risk also seemed to be greater where the partner's death had been unexpected.

Those whose partners were relatively healthy in the month before death were 57 percent more likely to develop atrial fibrillation. 

"In addition, patients with atrial fibrillation often claim that emotional stress is a common triggering factor and increasing levels of perceived stress are associated with prevalent atrial fibrillation," the researchers explained.

New York, April 4 (IANS) A single dose of oxytocin nasal spray, known to cut food intake, can lower impulsive behaviour in overweight and obese men, say researchers.

Oxytocin nasal spray is a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin which is important for controlling food intake and weight.

"Our preliminary results in men are promising. Oxytocin nasal spray showed no strong side effects and is not as invasive as obesity surgery," said Franziska Plessow, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Results of their new pilot study in 10 overweight and obese men suggest that one way oxytocin lowers food intake might be by improving self-control.

"Knowing the mechanisms of action of intranasal oxytocin is important to investigating oxytocin as a novel treatment strategy for obesity," Plessow added.

Participants took a psychology research test on two occasions 15 minutes after they self-administered a dose of nasal spray in each nostril.

In a randomly assigned order, one day they received oxytocin and another they received a placebo or dummy drug.

After receiving oxytocin, participants were acting less impulsively and exerting more control over their behaviour after receiving oxytocin.

More study is necessary to determine how oxytocin alters self-control and how important this mechanism is in regulating food intake since not all overeating relates to poor self-control.

The information may allow scientists to move forward to large clinical trials, identify who can benefit from the drug, and help optimise the treatment. They also will need to test the drug in women.

The preliminary study was presented at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston last weekend.​

​New York, April 4 (IANS) A person's age and gender can affect the prevalence of certain types of peripheral vascular diseases (PVD), which can lead to heart attack, stroke and even amputation of the limbs.

PVD is a circulation disorder that affects blood vessels outside of the heart and brain, particularly the veins and arteries that supply blood to the arms and legs. 

The results revealed that women, especially younger women, have a significantly higher prevalence of peripheral artery disease than men.

"These findings point to very important differences between women and men, and older and younger individuals, when it comes to PVD," said one of the researchers, Jeffrey S. Berger, associate professor at NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York, US. 

"Sex-specific guidelines for PVD are important, and we are starting to realise that women and men need to be approached differently," Berger added.

In addition, diabetes was found to be a major risk factor for developing PVD, even in patients without heart disease.

The team used data collected from more than 3.6 million individuals and found that people with both diabetes and coronary heart disease the risk of developing PVD increases.

However, the researchers cautioned that the findings might not represent PVD prevalence in all men and women, or disease risk in people with diabetes. 

The findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session in Chicago, US.​

​New York, April 5 (IANS) El Nino - the climate cycle that develops along the tropical west coast of South America every three to seven years - can have huge impact on the marine food chain with rippling effect on fisheries and the livelihoods of fishermen, says a new NASA study.

El Nino's mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the Equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru, said Stephanie Uz, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In a process called upwelling, those cold waters normally bring up the nutrients that feed the tiny organisms, which form the base of the food chain.

These tiny plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food -- without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse.

"An El Nino basically stops the normal upwelling," Uz said, adding that "there's a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web". 

Uz's team used NASA satellite data and ocean colour software called SeaDAS to find out El Nino's impact on phytoplankton. 

From shades of blue and green, scientists calculated the amount of green chlorophyll -- and therefore the amount of phytoplankton present.

They found that in December 2015, at the peak of the current El Nino event, there was more blue -- and less green chlorophyll -- in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru and Chile, compared to the previous year. 

After analysing data from the large 1997-1998 El Nino event, the researchers said the green chlorophyll virtually disappeared from the coast of Chile. 

In 1997-1998, the biggest ocean temperature abnormalities were in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But this year's event caused a drop in chlorophyll primarily along the equator, the study said. 

"We know how important phytoplankton are for the marine food web, and we're trying to understand their role as a carbon pump," Uz said. 

Other scientists at Goddard are investigating ways to forecast the ebbs and flows of nutrients using the centre's supercomputers, incorporating data like winds, sea surface temperatures, air pressures and more.​

Taipei, April 3 (IANS) People with type 1 diabetes are three times more prone to the risk of developing epilepsy later in life, finds a new research.

The findings revealed that in patients with type 1 diabetes, the risk of developing epilepsy -- a neurological disorder -- was significantly higher than that in patients without the disease.

Also, an excess of glucose in the bloodstream known as hyperglycaemia and deficiency of glucose in the bloodstream, known as hypoglycaemia, can alter the balance between the inhibition and excitation of neuronal networks and cause focal motor seizures.

Immune abnormalities, brain lesions, genetic factors and metabolic abnormalities have been identified as the potential causes for the link between type 1 diabetes and epilepsy.

In addition, younger age has been linked with an increased risk of developing epilepsy, the researchers said.

"This result is consistent with those of previous studies in that epilepsy or seizures are observed in many autoimmune or inflammatory disorders and are linked to the primary disease, or secondary to pro-inflammatory processes," said I-Ching Chou from China Medical University in Taiwan.

In the study, published in the journal Diabetologia, computer modelling was used to estimate the effects of type 1 diabetes on epilepsy risk.

The study cohort contained 2,568 patients with type 1 diabetes, each of whose frequency was matched by sex, urbanisation of residence area and index year with 10 control patients without type 1 diabetes.

The results showed that the type 1 diabetes the cohort was 2.84 times more likely to develop epilepsy than the control cohort.​

​New York, April 3 (IANS) A team of US researchers has found that monetary rewards for healthy behaviour can pay off both in the pocketbook and in positive psychological factors like internal motivation to eat fruits and vegetables.

The study, which encouraged daily consumption of fruits and vegetables in exchange for payment, not only showed monetary incentives worked, but that participants increased their internal motivation to eat fruits and vegetables over time.

Increased fruit and vegetable consumption by participants is linked to more positive attitudes and self efficacy - the confidence in one's own ability to succeed

"While programs involving monetary incentives to encourage healthy behaviour have become more popular in recent years, the evidence has been mixed as to how they can be most effective and how participants fare once the incentives stop," said lead author Casey Gardiner from University of Colorado Boulder in US.

"Some psychological research and theories suggest that if individuals have external motivations like payment to perform tasks, their internal, or intrinsic motivation can be undermined," said Gardiner of the psychology and neuroscience department.

The findings showed that participants who were assigned to receive payment for eating fruits and vegetables were still consuming more than usual two weeks after the study ended.

In the study, 60 adults were randomly assigned to three different groups.

Individuals in one group received $1 for every serving of fruits and vegetables they reported consuming daily over a three-week period.

People in the second group accrued $1 for every serving of fruits and vegetables eaten, with the lump sum money delivered at the end of the study.

Participants in the third group reported their fruit and vegetable consumption daily for three weeks with no incentives.

The participants who received daily monetary incentives had the greatest increase in their fruit and vegetable consumption.

"This finding highlights the importance of incentive design in health programs and differences in the timing or type of incentive can alter their effectiveness," Gardiner stated.

We essentially showed that incentives may be able to help people to 'jumpstart' behaviour changes, but that changes in key psychological factors help people maintain the behaviour when the incentives end, Gardiner noted.​

A new explanation of how gypsum forms may change the way we process this important building material, as well as allowing us to interpret past water availability on other planets such as Mars.