Knowledge Update

New York, May 1 (IANS) To cut down the waste that fashion industry generates, a team of US researchers has developed a new fibre from a green tea by-product that is 100 percent biodegradable.

Young-A Lee and her research team have designed a vest and shoe prototype from the cellulosic fibre grown in LeBaron Hall on the Iowa State University campus, US, and testing it if it is a viable alternative.

"Fashion is an ephemeral expression of culture, art and technology manifesting itself in form. Fashion companies keep producing new materials and clothing to fulfill consumers' desire and needs," Lee said.

"These items eventually go underground and take spaces of Earth like other trash," Lee, who is an associate professor of apparel, merchandising and design at Iowa State, added.

LeBaron Hall has plastic bins in which all trash is dumped. The bins contain a gel-like film consisting of cellulose fibres --- a byproduct of kombucha tea -- that feeds off a mixture of vinegar and sugar.

The cellulose fibre reduces waste by creating a continuous cycle of reuse or regeneration, what is known as cradle-to-cradle design. Even if clothing is recycled or repurposed, it still eventually ends up in the trash.

The material has been tested for other applications, such as cosmetics, foods and biomedical tissue for wound dressing but it is relatively new to the apparel industry.

The fact that the fibre is 100 percent biodegradable is a significant benefit for the fashion industry, which by its very nature generates a lot of waste.

Lee said she envisions a truly sustainable fabric or material that is biodegradable and goes back into the soil as a nutrient rather than taking up space in a landfill.​

​New York, May 1 (IANS) Researchers have found that an elusive brain receptor may play an important role in the death of neurons from neurological diseases.

Strokes, seizures, traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia leads to persistent, widespread acidity around neurons in the brain.

Analysing NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) - a family of brain receptors that are critical to learning and memory - the researchers found that one of these receptors called N3A functions through a different mechanism than all other NMDA receptors.

"We found that in contrast to all other NMDA receptors, acidity can reactivate dormant N3A receptors," said one of the researchers Gabriela K. Popescu, professor at University of Buffalo, in US.

The results, published in Scientific Reports, showed that, as acidity increases after a stroke or an epileptic seizure, reactivation of N3A receptors may be one reason why neurons die after these neurologic events.

"When the N3A receptors were exposed to acidic conditions they reactivate, causing neurons to become more sensitive to the neurotransmitter glutamate, which can, under certain circumstances, kill them," said lead author Kirstie A. Cummings, doctoral candidate.

Also, N3A proteins were found to be more abundant in brains of people with schizophrenia -- a disease associated with high acidity in the brain, causes brains to shrink.

Finding ways to prevent acidification or the reactivation of N3A receptors may prevent brain damage from strokes or seizures, the researchers suggested.

In addition, the researchers have identified the site on the receptor where acidity acts to reactivate these receptors, a different location from the site where acidity acts to inhibit all other NMDA receptors.

"This site is new and unique and thus can be used to make drugs that are very specific to the N3A receptor," Popescu said.​

​New York, April 30 (IANS) Family, social and community strength can have a protective effect against adverse childhood experiences, researchers say.

Ccommunity support can boost kids to become strong and increase their chances of flourishing from long-term physical and mental health problems that results from childhood hardship and trauma.

People who experience economic hardship, exposure to violence or the death of a loved one are more likely to have lasting physical and mental health problems.

"We focused on questions about ACEs exposure, but also family, social and community assets that could serve to moderate that risk or enhance resilience," said lead study author Iman Sharif from Nemours/Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington in the US.

The team analysed data from the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children's Health to gauge children's health and well-being, physical, emotional and behavioural health indicators, family context and neighbourhood environment.

Additional protective factors identified included fathers in excellent mental health, mothers and fathers who had completed at least some college, living in a neighbourhood with amenities such as sidewalks, a library, a park and a recreation centre, and mothers in good physical health.

"With appropriate screening to identify children at risk we can support children and families through the patient-centred medical home, linking parents to mental health services and building community social supports to help children succeed," Sharif advised.

The study was scheduled to be presented at the Pediatrics Academic Societies 2016 meeting in Baltimore.​

​New York, April 30 (IANS) Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk - irrespective of whether that came from the babies' own mothers or donated by other women - during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth, compared with babies given little or no breast milk, says a study.

"The brains of babies born before their due dates usually are not fully developed," said senior investigator Cynthia Rogers from St. Louis Children's Hospital in the US. 

"But breast milk has been shown to be helpful in other areas of development, so we looked to see what effect it might have on the brain,” Rogers said.

"With MRI scans, we found that babies fed more breast milk had larger brain volumes. This is important because several other studies have shown a correlation between brain volume and cognitive development," Rogers explained.

The findings are scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, in Baltimore on May 3.

The study included 77 preterm infants. The researchers retrospectively looked to see how much breast milk those babies had received while being cared for in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Louis Children's Hospital in the US. 

Then, the researchers conducted brain scans on those infants at about the time each would have been born had the babies not arrived early. 

All of the babies were born at least 10 weeks early, with an average gestation of 26 weeks, or about 14 weeks premature. Because they are still developing, preemies typically have smaller brains than full-term infants.

In gauging the effects of breast milk on the babies' brains, the researchers did not distinguish between milk that came from the babies' own mothers and breast milk donated by other women. Rather, they focused on the influence of breast milk in general, first author Erin Reynolds, aresearch technician in Rogers' laboratory, said.

"As the amount of breast milk increased, so did a baby's chances of having a larger cortical surface area," Reynolds said. 

"The cortex is the part of the brain associated with cognition, so we assume that more cortex will help improve cognition as the babies grow and develop," Reynolds said.

London, April 29 (IANS) Researchers have discovered that vitamin nicotinamide riboside, which is a source of vitamn B3, has the potential to revitalise certain organs that lose the regenerative capacity with age.

By administering nicotinamide riboside (NR) to elderly mice, the researchers restored their organs' ability to regenerate and prolonged their lives. 

The findings, published in the journal Science, have implications for treating a number of degenerative diseases.

"This work could have very important implications in the field of regenerative medicine," said one of the researchers, Johan Auwerx from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). 

"We are not talking about introducing foreign substances into the body but rather restoring the body's ability to repair itself with a product that can be taken with food," Auwerx explained.

The researchers believe this work on the ageing process also has potential for treating diseases that can affect -- and be fatal -- in young people, like muscular dystrophy.Under normal conditions, cetain stem cells, reacting to signals sent by the body, regenerate damaged organs by producing new specific cells, at least in young bodies. "We demonstrated that fatigue in stem cells was one of the main causes of poor regeneration or even degeneration in certain tissues or organs," Hongbo Zhang from EPFL noted.This is why the researchers wanted to "revitalise" stem cells in the muscles of elderly mice.

"We gave nicotinamide riboside to two-year-old mice, which is an advanced age for them," Hongbo Zhang said.

"And our results are extremely promising: muscular regeneration is much better in mice that received NR, and they lived longer than the mice that didn't get it," Hongbo Zhang pointed out.​

​London, April 29 (IANS) Recent discoveries of exoplanets have rekindled hope for other advanced technological civilisations that may have ever existed near us, researchers have found.

A new paper shows that unless the odds of advanced life evolving on a habitable planet are astonishingly low, then human kind is not the universe's first technological or advanced civilisation.

“We have known for a long time approximately how many stars exist. We didn't know how many of those stars had planets that could potentially harbour life or how often life might evolve and lead to intelligent beings,” explained Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at University of Rochester.

“Thanks to NASA's Kepler satellite and other searches, we now know that roughly one-fifth of stars have planets in "habitable zones," where temperatures could support life as we know it. So one of the three big uncertainties has now been constrained,” he added.

The big question - how long civilisations might survive - is still unknown. 

“The fact that humans have had rudimentary technology for roughly 10,000 years doesn't really tell us if other societies would last that long or perhaps much longer," Frand noted in a paper to be published in Astrobiology.

Using a novel approach, Frank and Woodruff Sullivan from University of Washington calculate how unlikely advanced life must be if there has never been another example among the universe's ten billion trillion stars, or even among our own Milky Way galaxy's hundred billion.

The result? By applying the new exoplanet data to the universe's 2 x 10 to the 22nd power stars, the team found that human civilisation is likely to be unique in the cosmos only if the odds of a civilisation developing on a habitable planet are less than about one in 10 billion trillion, or one part in 10 to the 22th power.

Another technological species likely has evolved on a habitable planet in our own Milky Way galaxy if the odds against it are better than one chance in 60 billion.

The universe is more than 13 billion years old.

That means that even if there have been a thousand civilisations in our own galaxy, if they live only as long as we have been around -- roughly 10,000 years -- then all of them are likely already extinct. 

“And others won't evolve until we are long gone. For us to have much chance of success in finding another "contemporary" active technological civilization, on average they must last much longer than our present lifetime,” the author noted.​

London, April 29 (IANS) When medication is used to shut off the oxygen supply to tumours, the cells adapt their metabolism in the medium term -- by switching over to producing energy without oxygen, new research has found.

Medicines can initially slow or even stop tumour growth. However, as the treatment goes on, the tumours begin to develop resistance to these therapies -- and they start to grow again.

The new findings, reported in the journal Cell Reports, could be used for treatments that can inhibit tumour growth in the long term.

Today, it is common knowledge that the disease develops in a series of stages. One of these stages, tumor angiogenesis, involves the formation of new blood vessels to supply oxygen and nutrients to the growing tumour.

Now, the research team has shown that, although the latest medications are effective at preventing blood vessel formation, the tumours can continue growing even without a supply of new blood vessels.

Analysis of this finding from a biochemical and molecular genetic perspective revealed that the tumour cells convert to a different type of metabolism. They no longer produce energy using oxygen delivered via the blood vessels -- but instead switch over to glycolysis, a form of anaerobic energy production. 

The lactic acid formed as a result is delivered to cells that are still receiving sufficient oxygen and that can use the lactic acid, together with the oxygen, to produce energy.

The research group also showed that this specific mode of metabolism -- and therefore the tumour's growth -- can be interrupted, namely by inhibiting anaerobic energy production or transport of the lactic acid. 

"Our findings open up new approaches for the optimisation of anti-angiogenic therapies and for inhibiting tumor growth effectively in the long term," said lead researcher Gerhard Christofori, professor at University of Basel in Switzerland.​

​London, April 29 (IANS) The very oldest pieces of rock on Earth -- zircon crystals -- are likely to have formed in the craters left by violent asteroid impacts that peppered our nascent planet rather than via plate tectonics as previously believed, researchers report.

The tiny crystals probably formed in huge impact craters not long after Earth formed, some four billion years ago.

Rocks that formed over the course of Earth's history allow geologists to infer things such as when water first appeared on the planet, how our climate has varied, and even where life came from.

Ten years ago, a team of researchers in the US argued that the ancient zircon crystals probably formed when tectonic plates moving around on the Earth's surface collided with each other in a similar fashion to the disruption taking place in the Andes Mountains today.

However, current evidence suggests that plate tectonics -- as we know it today -- was not occurring on the early Earth.

So, the question remained: Where did the crystals come from?

Recently, geologists suggested these grains may have formed in huge impact craters produced as chunks of rock from space, up to several km in diameter, slammed into a young Earth.

To test this idea, researchers from Trinity College Dublin decided to study a much younger impact crater to see if zircon crystals similar to the very old ones could possibly have formed in these violent settings.

With the support of the Irish Reseach Council (IRC) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), the team collected thousands of zircons from the Sudbury impact crater in Ontario, Canada.

After analysing these crystals at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, they discovered that the crystal compositions were indistinguishable from the ancient set.

“What we found was quite surprising. Many people thought the very ancient zircon crystals couldn't have formed in impact craters, but we now know they could have,” said Gavin Kenny from Trinity's school of natural sciences in a paper published in the journal Geology.

“There's a lot we still don't fully understand about these little guys but it looks like we may now be able to form a more coherent story of Earth's early years,” he added.

Kenny recently presented the findings at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Houston, Texas.​

Washington, April 29 (IANS) Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other optical telescopes, astronomers have developed a powerful new method for investigating dark energy - the mysterious energy that is currently driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

The technique takes advantage of the observation that the outer reaches of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity, show similarity in their X-ray emission profiles and sizes.

More massive clusters are simply scaled up versions of less massive ones.

“In this sense, galaxy clusters are like 'Russian dolls', with smaller ones having a similar shape to the larger ones,” said Andrea Morandi from University of Alabama in Huntsville.

“Knowing this lets us compare them and accurately determine their distances across billions of light years,” he added.

By using these galaxy clusters as distance markers, astronomers can measure how quickly the universe was expanding at different times since the Big Bang.

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the rate of expansion is determined by the properties of dark energy plus the amount of matter in the Universe, where the latter is mostly made up of unseen material called dark matter.

The latest results confirm earlier studies that the properties of dark energy have not changed over billions of years.

They also support the idea that dark energy is best explained by the “cosmological constant,” which Einstein first proposed and is equivalent to the energy of empty space.

“Although we’ve looked hard at other explanations, it still appears that dark energy behaves just like Einstein's cosmological constant,” added study co-author Ming Sun.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers studied 320 galaxy clusters with distances from Earth that ranged from about 760 million light years to about 8.7 billion light years.

“We think this new technique has the ability to provide a big leap forward in our understanding of dark energy,” the authors noted in a paper appeared in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.​

​New York, April 29 (IANS) Tiny doses of a cancer drug may stop the raging, uncontrollable immune response to infection that leads to sepsis, say researchers.

A small dose of topoisomerase I (Top 1) inhibitor can dampen an acute inflammatory reaction to infection while still allowing the body's protective defense to take place, showed the findings published in the journal Science.

The treatment may help control not only sepsis but also new and brutal assaults on human immunity such as novel influenza strains and pandemics of Ebola and other singular infections, said the study's senior investigator, Ivan Marazzi, assistant professor at Icahn School of medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Sepsis -- deadly infections often acquired in hospital by patients with a weak immune system -- is caused by an excessive host response to infection, which in turn leads to multiple organ failure and death. 

The team found that use of one to three doses of a Top 1 inhibitor that is one fiftieth the strength of normal chemotherapy was enough to rescue 70-90 percent of mice from an inflammatory storm death due to either acute bacterial infection, liver failure, or virus-bacteria co-infection. 

The treatment did not produce overt side effects.

They also tested the inhibitor in cells infected with influenza, Ebola, and other viral and bacterial microbes that over-stimulate the immune system, and found the drug blunted a dangerous immune reaction.

"Our results suggest that a therapy based on Top 1 inhibition could save millions of people affected by sepsis, pandemics, and many congenital deficiencies associated with acute inflammatory episodes -- what is known as a cytokine, or inflammatory, storm," Marazzi said.

"These storms occur because the body does not know how to adjust the appropriate level of inflammation that is good enough to suppress an infection but doesn't harm the body itself," he said. 

"This drug appears to offer that life-saving correction," Marazzi explained​