Knowledge Update

Toronto, April 7 (IANS) Having a furry friend at home may lead to reduced risk of allergy and obesity in children, suggests a new research.

Babies from families with pets -- usually dogs -- showed higher levels of two types of microbes associated with lower risks of allergic disease and obesity, according to the study published in the journal Microbiome.

"The abundance of these two bacteria were increased twofold when there was a pet in the house," said one of the study authors, Anita Kozyrskyj, from the University of Alberta in Canada.

The latest findings from Kozyrskyj and her team's work on fecal samples collected from infants registered in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study build on two decades of research that show children who grow up with dogs have lower rates of asthma.

In the current study, the researcher found that exposure to pets in the womb or up to three months after birth increases the abundance of two bacteria, Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, which have been linked with reduced childhood allergies and obesity, respectively.

The pet exposure was shown to affect the gut microbiome indirectly -- from dog to mother to unborn baby -- during pregnancy as well as during the first three months of the baby's life. 

In other words, even if the dog had been given away for adoption just before the woman gave birth, the healthy microbiome exchange could still take place.

The study also showed that the immunity-boosting exchange occurred even in three birth scenarios known for reducing immunity - cesarean section versus vaginal delivery, antibiotics during birth and lack of breastfeeding.

New York, April 7 (IANS) Are you a night owl and have trouble getting up in the morning? It may be because your internal clock is genetically programmed to run slowly, researchers have found.

The findings showed that a mutation in a gene called CRY1 alters the human circadian clock, which dictates rhythmic behaviour such as sleep/wake cycles. 

People who are carriers of the gene variant experienced nighttime sleep delays of 2-2.5 hours compared to non-carriers, the researchers reported in the journal Cell.

"Carriers of the mutation have longer days than the planet gives them, so they are essentially playing catch-up for their entire lives," said lead author Alina Patke, from the Rockefeller University in New York City, US.

Night owls are often diagnosed at sleep clinics with delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD) -- where a person's circadian ryhthm is delayed from the typical day/night cycle.

Mutation in CRY1 led to the development of DSPD, which affects up to 10 per cent of the population, according to clinical studies.

People with DSPD often struggle to fall asleep at night, and sometimes sleep comes so late that it fractures into a series of long naps. 

People with DSPD also have trouble conforming to societal expectations and morning work schedules, which leads to anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. 

The gene mutation was discovered while studying the skin cells of people with DSPD. 

The circadian clock responds to external environmental cues, so it is possible for people to manage the effects of the mutation on sleep. 

"An external cycle and good sleep hygiene can help force a slow-running clock to accommodate a 24-hour day," Patke said.

New Delhi, April 7 (IANS) As heart attacks continue to kill one person in every 33 seconds in India, health experts on Friday said that olive oil can help in decreasing cardio vascular diseases.

Olive oil is rich in MUFA or mono unsaturated fatty acids which helps in improving glycemic control and plasma lipid control and increase insulin sensitivity in diabetics and improve cardio vascular health, according to the experts.

The World Heath Organisation estimated that by 2020, cardiovascular disease will be the cause of over 40 per cent deaths in India as compared to 24 per cent in 1990.

"Olive oil contains a very important health benefiting element called oleic acid. It is known to be extremely heart-healthy and capable of fighting free radical damage (or oxidative stress), which has numerous health implications," said Nidhi Dhawan, head dietician at city based Saroj Superspecialty hospital. 

Dhawan said that due to the presence of powerful antioxidants known as polyphenols, olive oil is considered an anti-inflammatory food.

"It has been proven that olive oil is beneficial as it prevents strokes, keeps the heart young, fights osteoporosis, protects from depression, prevents skin and breast cancer," said Neelima Burra, Chief Marketing Officer of Cargill foods. 

The experts were speaking on the occasion of World Health Day.

Unlike other edible oils, olive oil contains about 75 per cent mono saturated fat which makes it the healthiest. 

Cargill food had earlier launched Leonardo Olive -- approved by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) -- keeping in mind the rising cases of cardio vascular and other diseases such as diabetes mellitus, chronic obstructive and pulmonary disease and cancer.

Stating that there was a rise in cardio vascular cases in rural India as well, Burra said that there is a need for the people of rural India to have more awareness about olive oil and its health benefits.

​London, April 7 (IANS) Imagine a milk carton sending you an alert on smartphone when its content is about to go out-of-date. This could soon be possible, thanks to the researchers who have fabricated for the first time printed transistors consisting entirely of two-dimensional nano-materials.

The team used standard printing techniques to combine graphene nano-sheets as the electrodes with two other nanomaterials, tungsten diselenide and boron nitride as the channel and separator (two important parts of a transistor) to form an all-printed, all-nano-sheet, working transistor.

This study, published in the journal Science, opens the path for industry, such as ICT and pharmaceutical, to cheaply print a host of electronic devices from solar cells to LEDs with applications from interactive smart food and drug labels to next-generation banknote security and e-passports, the researchers said.

The research could thus unlock the potential for applications such as food packaging that displays a digital countdown to warn you of spoiling, wine labels that alert you when your white wine is at its optimum temperature, or even a window pane that shows the day's forecast. 

"In the future, printed devices will be incorporated into even the most mundane objects such as labels, posters and packaging," said lead researcher Jonathan Coleman, an investigator in AMBER, the materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

"Printed electronic circuitry (constructed from the devices we have created) will allow consumer products to gather, process, display and transmit information: for example, milk cartons could send messages to your phone warning that the milk is about to go out-of-date," Coleman added. 

These 2D materials combine electronic properties with the potential for low-cost production. 

"We believe that 2D nano-materials can compete with the materials currently used for printed electronics. Compared to other materials employed in this field, our 2D nano-materials have the capability to yield more cost effective and higher performance printed devices," Coleman said.

The research shows that conducting, semiconducting and insulating 2D nano-materials can be combined together in complex devices. 

"We felt that it was critically important to focus on printing transistors as they are the electric switches at the heart of modern computing. We believe this work opens the way to print a whole host of devices solely from 2D nano-sheets," Coleman said.

​New York, April 6 (IANS) Eating potassium-rich foods like sweet potatoes, avocados, spinach, beans, bananas -- and even drinking coffee -- could be key to lowering blood pressure, new research suggests.

"Decreasing sodium intake is a well-established way to lower blood pressure, but evidence suggests that increasing dietary potassium may have an equally important effect on hypertension," said Alicia McDonough, Professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC).

Hypertension is a global health issue that affects more than one billion people worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that hypertension is responsible for at least 51 per cent of deaths due to stroke and 45 per cent of deaths due to heart disease.

For the study, published in the American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism, McDonough looked at population, interventional and molecular mechanism studies that investigated the effects of dietary sodium and potassium on hypertension.

The review found several population studies demonstrating that higher dietary potassium (estimated from urinary excretion or dietary recall) was associated with lower blood pressure, regardless of sodium intake. 

Interventional studies with potassium supplementation also suggested that potassium provides a direct benefit.

To understand the beneficial effects of potassium on hypertension, McDonough reviewed recent studies in rodent models.

These studies indicated that the body does a balancing act that uses sodium to maintain close control of potassium levels in the blood, which is critical to normal heart, nerve and muscle function.

"When dietary potassium is high, kidneys excrete more salt and water, which increases potassium excretion," McDonough said.

When dietary potassium is low, the balancing act uses sodium retention to hold onto the limited potassium, which is like eating a higher sodium diet, she said.

But how much dietary potassium should we consume? 

A 2004 Institute of Medicine report recommends that adults consume at least 4.7 grams of potassium per day to lower blood pressure, blunt the effects of dietary sodium and reduce the risks of kidney stones and bone loss, McDonough said.

​Tokyo, April 6 (IANS) Ever wondered why babies love and adore superheroes? It may be because they are born with a sense of justice -- a concept portrayed through the heroic acts of the characters, researchers say.

The findings showed that infants, as young as six months old, who can barely talk, are capable of recognising the heroic acts of justice and thus find themselves drawn to figures who protect the weak. 

This also explains why kids and adults alike have a never-ending love affair with superhero stories in popular culture, the researchers said.

"Six-month-old infants are still in an early developmental stage and most will not yet be able to talk. Nevertheless they can already understand the power dynamics between different characters, suggesting that recognising heroism is perhaps an innate ability," said David Butler from Kyoto University in Japan.

For the study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the team conducted a series of experiments where infants were shown animations of one geometric character chasing and bumping into another, as a third character watches from a distance. 

In one version, this third party character intervenes, and in another, it escapes in another direction. 

When the infants were then shown real life replicas of these intervening and non-intervening characters, they were more likely to choose the intervener, the researchers said.

"In human society, selflessly protecting the powerless is considered an act of heroic justice," added Yasuhiro Kanakogi from the Kyoto University. 

However, understanding these may be complex as one has to first grasp the power relationship between the actors, then understand that the hero's actions are favourable for the victim but not for the villain, and finally, that the hero acted deliberately, Kanakogi said.

​London, April 5 (IANS) A common antibiotic which is used to treat a wide range of diseases, from acne to urinary tract infections, may also help treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by suppressing fear memory, suggest results of a trial conducted in a group of health volunteers.

PTSD is a term for a broad range of psychological symptoms that can develop after someone experiences or witnesses a traumatic event. 

The disorder is caused by an overactive fear memory, and the new research, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, showed that a common antibiotic, doxycycline, can reduce the fear memory response in healthy volunteers.

"We have demonstrated a proof-of-principle for an entirely new treatment strategy for PTSD," said lead author Dominik Bach from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

The theory is based on the recent discovery that our brains need proteins outside nerve cells, called matrix enzymes, to form memories. 

"Matrix enzymes are found throughout the body, and their over-activity is involved in certain immune diseases and cancers. To treat such diseases, we already have clinically approved drugs that block these enzymes, including the antibiotic doxycycline, so we wanted to see if they could help to prevent fear memories from forming in the brain," Bach, who is also affiliated to University College London, added.

"Our results support this theory, opening up an exciting avenue of research that might help us to find treatments for PTSD," Bach noted.

In the study involving 76 healthy volunteers, participants were given either doxycycline or a placebo and learnt to associate a certain colour with an electric shock. 

The screen would flash either blue or red, and one of the colours was associated with a 50 per cent chance of receiving a painful electric shock. 

A week later they were shown the colours again, accompanied by a loud sound but no shocks, and their fear responses were measured.

The fear response was 60 per cent lower in participants who had doxycycline in the first session compared to those who had the placebo, suggesting that the fear memory was significantly suppressed by the drug. 

Other cognitive measures including sensory memory and attention were not affected.

"When we talk about reducing fear memory, we are not talking about deleting the memory of what actually happened," Bach said.

"The participants may not forget that they received a shock when the screen was red, but they 'forget' to be instinctively scared when they next see a red screen," Bach said.

The findings suggest that doxycycline can disrupt the formation of negative associations in the brain.

Los Angeles, March 30 (IANS) A group of US scientists have predicted that 31 to 67 percent of Southern California beaches could be severely damaged due to rising sea levels by 2100, a new study has revealed.

The study was published online on Wednesday by the American Geophysical Union in their Journal of Geophysical Research, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Beaches are perhaps the most iconic feature of California, and the potential for losing this identity is real. The effect of California losing its beaches is not just a matter of affecting the tourism economy," Sean Vitousek, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

"Losing the protecting swath of beach sand between us and the pounding surf exposes critical infrastructure, businesses and homes to damage. Beaches are natural resources, and it is likely that human management efforts must increase in order to preserve them," said Vitousek.

Scientists applied the "CoSMoS-COAST", a newly-developed shoreline change computer modelling system for coastal hazard assessment and management planning, to simulate sandy shoreline evolution along 500 km of coastline in Southern California, which hosts complex mixtures of beach settings variably backed by dunes, cliffs, estuaries, river mouths, and urban infrastructure, providing applicability of the model to virtually any coastal setting.

"Beaches in Southern California are a crucial feature of the economy, and the first line of defence against coastal storm impacts for the 18 million residents in the region. This study indicates that we will have to perform massive and costly interventions to preserve these beaches in the future under the erosive pressures of anticipated sea level rise, or risk losing many of the economic and protective benefits beaches provide," said US Geological Survey (USGS) geologist and co-author, Patrick Barnard.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the window to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius appears to be closing. Associated projections for sea-level rise generally range near or below 1 metre by 2100.

Toronto, March 30 (IANS) For at least a million years, an asteroid orbiting the "wrong" way around the Sun has been playing a cosmic game of chicken to avoid collision with Jupiter and with about 6,000 other asteroids sharing the giant planet's space, a study says.

The findings published in the journal Nature showed that the orbit has been stable for at least a million years and will be stable for at least a million years more. 

The asteroid, nicknamed Bee-Zed, is the only one in this solar system that is known both to have an opposite, retrograde orbit around the Sun while at the same time sharing a planet's orbital space, said researcher and co-author Paul Wiegert from University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Most of the known asteroids in our solar system travel around the Sun in what is called a prograde motion -- that is, counter-clockwise when visualised from above. 

But asteroid 2015 BZ509 ("Bee-Zed" for short) circles clockwise, in a retrograde motion -- moving against the flow of all other asteroids in the giant planet's orbital entourage.

Put another way, it is as if Jupiter is a monster truck on a track circling the sun, and the asteroids in Jupiter's orbit are sub-compact cars all whizzing along in the same direction. 

Bee-Zed is the rogue -- driving around the track in the wrong direction -- steering between the 6,000 other cars and swerving around the monster truck. 

And it does so every single lap, and has done so for thousands of laps for a million years or more.

So how does it avoid colliding with Jupiter? Jupiter's gravity actually deflects the asteroid's path at each pass so as to allow both to continue safely on their way, Wiegert said.

Little is known about the asteroid, which was discovered in January, 2015. It has a diametre of about three kilometres and it may have originated from the same place as Halley's comet, which also has a retrograde orbit. 

The team has not been able to determine yet if Bee-Zed is an icy comet or a rocky asteroid.

But their analysis -- based on complex calculations and on observations through the Large Binocular Camera on the Large Binocular Telescope in Mt. Graham, Arizona, during a span of 300 days -- show Bee-Zed is somehow able to maintain a stable orbit even as an outlier.

The researchers believe that learning more about the asteroid provides another intriguing glimpse into previously unknown and unmapped features of our solar system. 

"The detective work has just begun," Wiegert said.

​New York, March 29 (IANS) Researchers have found why at around the age of four children suddenly do what three-year-olds are unable to do -- put themselves in someone else's shoes.

This enormous developmental step occurs as a critical fibre connection in the brain matures, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

For the study, the research team from Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, Germany and Leiden University in the Netherlands analysed MRI data and behavioural data of 43 normally developing 3- and 4-year-old children.

"Our findings show that the emergence of mental state representation is related to the maturation of core belief processing regions and their connection to the prefrontal cortex," said the researchers.

The study showed that maturation of fibres of a brain structure called the arcuate fascicle between the ages of three and four years establishes a connection between two critical brain regions.

One region is at the back of the temporal lobe that supports adult thinking about others and their thoughts, and the other is in the frontal lobe that is involved in keeping things at different levels of abstraction and, therefore, helps us to understand what the real world is and what the thoughts of others are. 

Only when these two brain regions are connected through the arcuate fascicle can children start to understand what other people think, the study said.

Interestingly, this new connection in the brain supports this ability independently of other cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, language ability or impulse control, according to the researcher.