Nature and Flowers

Photography by R.Kaliyugavarathan 

New RNA-based therapeutic strategies for controlling gene expression

Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is an authoritative, peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online that focuses on cutting-edge basic research, therapeutic applications, and drug development using nucleic acids or related compounds to alter gene expression. ©2012, Mary Ann Liebert Inc., publishers

Small RNA-based nucleic acid drugs represent a promising new class of therapeutic agents for silencing abnormal or overactive disease-causing genes, and researchers have discovered new mechanisms by which RNA drugs can control gene activity. A comprehensive review article inNucleic Acid Therapeutics

 

, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., details these advances.

Short strands of nucleic acids, called small RNAs, can be used for targeted gene silencing, making them attractive drug candidates. These small RNAs block gene expression through multiple RNA interference (RNAi) pathways, including two newly discovered pathways in which small RNAs bind to Argonaute proteins or other forms of RNA present in the cell nucleus, such as long non-coding RNAs and pre-mRNA.

Keith T. Gagnon, PhD, and David R. Corey, PhD, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, review common features shared by RNAi pathways for controlling gene expression and focus in detail on the potential for Argonaute-RNA complexes in gene regulation and other exciting new options for targeting emerging forms of non-coding RNAs and pre-mRNAs in the article "Argonaute and the Nuclear RNAs: New Pathways for RNA Mediated Control of Gene Expression

 

."

"The field of RNA-mediated control of gene expression is rapidly evolving and the article by Gagnon and Corey provides a highly informative and up-to-date review of this exciting and often surprising area of biomedical research. We are delighted to publish this important review for the field," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Bruce A. Sullenger, PhD, Duke Translational Research Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC.

Provided by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

"New RNA-based therapeutic strategies for controlling gene expression." February 2nd, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-rna-based-therapeutic-strategies-gene.html

 

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek

Emotional grief could lead to heart attack

In the past, suffering from a broken heart was simply a way to describe the emotional pain one felt when dealing with a personal misfortune—a breakup or even the death of a loved one.  

There is a physiological condition, known as broken heart syndrome or stress-induced cardiomyopathy, that does exist, says Imran Arif, MD, UC Health interventional cardiologist, but a new study shows that an actual heart attack can result from life tragedy.

"Stress-induced cardiomyopathy is a known temporary heart condition that causes sudden chest pain and feels like a heart attack,” Arif says, adding that stress and depression have been linked to heart disease and that sudden emotional stress or bad news has been linked to sudden cardiac death as well.

Arif says the symptoms of broken-heart syndrome may be brought on by the heart’s reaction to a surge of stress hormones, and as a result, part of the heart muscle suffers damage.

The newest study by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston shows that the day following the loss of a loved one, a person is 21 times more likely to suffer a heart attack, and the spike occurs even in people at a low risk for heart attack. The study was published in the journal Circulation on Jan. 9.

These researchers reviewed charts or interviewed nearly 2,000 adult heart attack survivors who suffered heart attacks between 1989 and 1994 and determined that 270 people experienced a heart attack within six months of losing someone important to them; 19 people lost a loved one the day before having a heart attack.

Arif says the same reaction to a surge of stress hormones in the body, leading to changes in the way blood clots, could be the reason that this occurs.

"Stress changes coagulation in the body, which increases the risk of heart attack,” Arif says, adding that stress also increases heart rate and blood pressure, which also raise risk for heart attack.

But regardless of whether it’s just emotional hurting, broken heart syndrome or a real heart attack, Arif warns to not ignore symptoms of an impending heart complication.

"Scientists in this study were not sure about how the grief and stress of losing a loved one leads to heart attack,” he says. "The same goes for the true mechanisms behind broken heart syndrome, but everyone should know that if you feel like you are having a heart attack—experiencing symptoms like chest discomfort, nausea, shortness of breath, cold sweats, dizziness or stomach pain—regardless of the cause, call 911 immediately.

"We have no control over tragedy around us, but knowing your risk for certain complications and realizing that you may not just be dealing with grief could save your life.”

Provided by University of Cincinnati

"Emotional grief could lead to heart attack." February 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-emotional-grief-heart.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Man mandir mein...Shirdi Sai Baba

Societal Control of Sugar Essential to Ease Public Health Burden, Experts Urge

A group of researchers argues that sugar -- which they say is fueling a global obesity pandemic -- should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health. (Credit: © Alexey Bragin / Fotolia)

ScienceDaily — Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

---

Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.
In the Feb. 2 issue of Nature, Robert Lustig MD, Laura Schmidt PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that sugar's potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.
This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.
Sugar, they argue, is far from just "empty calories" that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver -- the least understood of sugar's damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.
Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome -- the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer -- are not clinically obese.
"As long as the public thinks that sugar is just 'empty calories,' we have no chance in solving this," said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.
"There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates," Lustig said. "But sugar is toxic beyond its calories."
Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. "We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar," said Brindis, director of UCSF's Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. "Changing these patterns is very complicated"
According to Brindis, effective interventions can't rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.
The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.
"There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality," said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF's Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) and co-chair of UCSF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute's (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on alcohol and addiction research.
"In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level," she said.
The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute, UCSF's National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.
Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.
"We're not talking prohibition," Schmidt said. "We're not advocating a major imposition of the government into people's lives. We're talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get."

Skin Augmented With Spider-Silk Stops a Speeding Bullet

By Clay Dillow 

Skin Augmented With Spider-Silk Stops a Bullet via New Scientist

Extolling the many virtues of spider silk is something of a trend these days, as the fine yet remarkably hardy material continues to best even the strongest synthetic materials (a good spider silk weave is supposedly four times stronger than Kevlar). But this latest application makes transgenic, spider silk-producing goats seem simple by comparison: A bioengineered skin so tough that it stops a speeding bullet from penetrating.
To be perfectly fair up front, the bullet in the first clip in the video below is moving at half speed. Repeated with a round moving at a full 1,080 feet per second, the skin gives way. But both half-speed and full-speed tests were also conducted with real human skin and human skin augmented with regular silkworm silk, as well as with piglet skin. In all cases, the bullet won out. The only exception was the bioengineered spider silk tissue.
Which begs the question: Is it possible to someday augment human skin to make it tougher--possibly even bulletproof? Probably not, and even if so that certainly wouldn’t make the human body impervious to the other factors involved in being struck by a bullet (like the sheer bone-breaking, potentially heart-stopping impact).
Regardless, chalk it up as another potential application for nature’s toughest fiber, one that’s getting closer and closer to mass-production and integration into a range of materials that need strengthening.


[New Scientist]

Handheld Pathogen Sensor Could Diagnose HIV in 30 Minutes

Two techs are better than one

By Clay Dillow 

Chaining Synthetic DNA to Detect Pathogens Two Y-shaped structures of synthetic DNA attach themselves to the target molecule in different places. From there, the other two arms of the "Y" can link with other similar DNA structures, causing pathogens to chain together into easily detectable clumps. Cornell

Working with support of the Bill & Medlinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenge to develop field-worthy point-of-care diagnostics for the developing world, a couple of Cornell researchers are mashing up their individual inventions to create a handheld pathogen detector that can quickly diagnose pathogens ranging from chlamydia and tuberculosis to HIV.
The portable device is a blend of a synthetic DNA tagging technology developed by Cornell biological and environmental engineering prof Dan Luo and a CMOS chip developed by Edwin Kan, an electrical and computer engineering professor. Luo’s technology does the actual detecting, while Kan’s chip is able to identify and respond to the amplified signals generated by the sensor. The result: a handheld disease targeting machine that can diagnose pathogens in half an hour rather than days.

The sensor works via Y-shaped segments of synthetic DNA that Luo’s research group devised. At the bottom of the Y the team installed antibody designed to target and lock onto a certain pathogen. On one of the upper arms it placed a molecule that will link up with other similar molecules in the presence of UV light. In practice, two slightly different Y-structures are introduced to a sample, where they attach themselves to opposite sides of any target pathogen molecule they come in contact with. But tiny strands of Y-shaped DNA attaching themselves to a single molecule doesn’t send a very strong signal--the entire combined structure is still so small that only highly tuned and very precise sensors or microscopes could detect that the DNA had attached itself to the pathogen at all. But if you have a bunch of DNA structures attached to a bunch of pathogen molecules, the signal is clearly amplified. As such, the handheld sensor will bathe samples in UV light causing the DNA structures to begin binding together in a chain that is far easier to detect than a single pathogen molecule or a single DNA structure. Kan’s sensor chip can then measure both the mass and charge of molecules that come in contact with it. From those measurements, the chip can tell whether the synthetic DNA chain is towing pathogen particles along with it--and thus if they are present in the sample or not.
Add some nanofluidics and a power source to the mix, and you basically have an inexpensive handheld diagnostic device ready to go to work far from the convenience of hospitals and well-stocked medical labs. Further tests will ensure that the system is durable enough to take a beating out in the field and still return valid diagnostic results. More via Cornell.

Nanotube Paint Can Spot Structural Defects and Alert Authorities Before Damage Occurs

By Rebecca Boyle 

Nano Paint Mohamed Saafi of the University of Strathclyde examines a piece of material coated with a new nano paint, which can detect structural damage when electrodes are attached. University of Strathclyde

A new paint made of power plant waste and carbon nanotubes can automatically detect structural faults, alerting authorities before damage occurs. It could be a cheaper, easier way to monitor facilities like bridges, mines and even wind turbines.
It’s made from aligned carbon nanotubes, which can carry an electric current, and fly ash, which is a byproduct of coal burning. The paint can be sprayed onto any surface, and electrodes are attached to it, according to developers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. If the nanotubes bend, their conductivity will change, which will be detected by the electrodes. Small wireless transmitters placed throughout the structure would receive data from the electrodes. If they detect a change in conductivity, this would be considered a sign of a defect in the structure. Then the system could conceivably alert the company or government body responsible for maintaining said structure.

Technology, Rebecca Boyle, bridges, carbon nanotubes, coal, coal plants, structural analysis, structural engineering, tunnels, wind turbines

This would be much cheaper and simpler than current monitoring methods, Strathclyde scientists said — currently, wind turbine foundations are inspected visually, and bridges and tunnels only have monitoring networks in certain areas, not throughout the whole structure. Early defect detection could be cheaper to repair, not to mention safer. A network of electrode-embedded nanotubes doesn’t sound inexpensive, but the researchers say it would be cheap — one percent the cost of alternative inspection methods — in part because of the fly ash component. Fly ash is a byproduct of coal combustion and it’s generally stored at power plants and landfills or it’s recycled. The nanotube paint could be one new use for it. It also lends the paint some added durability, which means it could last in a wide range of environmental conditions.
For now, the electrode transmitters would be powered by batteries, but other designs could incorporate solar panels, piezoelectrics or other energy-harvesting technology, the researchers say. Strathclyde Ph.D candidate David McGahon and civil engineering professor Mohamed Saafi have built a prototype and it was shown to be effective, according to a Strathclyde news release. They plan to carry out larger-scale tests in Glasgow in the future.
[via Science Daily]

Three Habits Which Will Ruin Your Chances Of Being Hired

Are you struggling to find a job and unsure of the reason why? Perhaps, you are using some archaic habits which are being looked down upon by potential employers. Stay current, with the best practices for job searching and ensure that you are on the top of every employers list!

“Is it still correct to use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ in a cover letter?” a reader asked in an e-mail.

“That isn’t such a great idea,” I wrote back. “No one uses ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ anymore, unless they’re actually writing to a madam, such as Heidi Fleiss.” I’m not sure my e-mail correspondent caught the joke.

It’s not that using out-of-date job-search approaches brands you as older. Rather, it’s that using no-longer-in-fashion job search techniques marks you as out of touch.

Employers pay us, in part, to be aware of trends and phenomena that affect the workplace. Working people (and job-seekers) should follow the news, keep a bead on our changing world, and stay abreast of changes in business, technology, politics, and cultural shifts. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation. If a job-seeker isn’t curious and perceptive enough to notice that the last time he saw “Dear Sir or Madam” on a letter was around the time Chevy Chase impersonated Gerald Ford falling down the stairs, how will he notice what’s changing in his field?

Here are three formerly useful, now dangerous job-search approaches that hark back to an earlier age. Get them out of your job-search repertoire, pronto.

1. Dedicated Résumé Paper and Envelopes. Don’t use nubbly beige or pink or stone-greyrésumé paper, or any other kind of special paper or matching envelopes, in your job search. Dedicated-use résumé paper is a 1980s artifact. Most of your résumés will reach employers electronically, in which case the employer will print it out. For résumés you print on your own, use plain white bond paper. (If you want to use a heavier stock than usual, do it.) Keep résumé formatting simple. You don’t need horizontal lines or curlicues, unless you are yourself a creative person, in which case you can go hog-wild with artistic expression. What matters in your résumé is its content. You won’t win any points with a résumé or cover letter on fancy paper that whispers, “I have a stack of Christopher Cross cassettes in my car.”

2. Creaky Cover Letter Language. When I read “Dear Sir or Madam,” I instantly get a picture of a person wearing white gloves and carrying tiny mother-of-pearl opera glasses in her handbag. Don’t get me wrong—I have opera glasses and I wish white gloves were still in style. They’re not. Never use “Dear Sir or Madam”—or its cousin, “To Whom It May Concern”—in a cover letter for the same reason. In 2012, companies are porous. We can find our hiring manager’s name in two seconds using LinkedIn. We are obliged to try: Correspondence that begins “To Whom It May Concern” means death to a job search. “Dear Hiring Manager” is just as bad. Find the name of the relevant person or lob a résumé into the Black Hole and skip the cover letter altogether.

3. Here’s Why You Should Hire Me. People get hired when a hiring manager believes, intellectually and emotionally, that the person sitting in front of him or her can do the job. It isn’t a linear process. That’s not great news to people who believe that power comes from their degrees and certifications because those folks are often more comfortable pushing their skills out in front of them than sitting and talking with a manager in a way that inspires confidence and trust. But tons of job-search books and articles nonetheless encourage job-seekers to grovel and beg, as though any manager has ever been convinced of an applicant’s heft and power by hearing the applicant say: “Please hire me—I’ll do anything you want!”

Groveling doesn’t work, which is why compiling and mailing goofy lists such as “here are 10 reasons you should hire me” are terrible things to do. When we write a post-interview thank-you note or e-mail, we should use it to continue the substantive conversation that started during a job interview, not to mewl and beg for a job. We never, ever want to construct lists of reasons an employer should hire us. We won’t convince anyone of our value that way. If the reasons to hire don’t come through in an interview, you’ve already missed the boat.

Get more great tips from Yahoo Finance!

From millions of tasks to thousands of jobs: Bringing digital work to developing countries

Submitted by Vili Lehdonvirta

Every country in the world has probably benefited in some way from the unprecedented access to knowledge and services brought about by the digital revolution. But producing knowledge banks and services has so far been a predominately rich-country business. The world’s poorest countries have generally not been able to participate in the production side of the digital economy and share in its rewards. This is changing, however, and an infoDev-led online challenge called m2Work is helping to drive the change. Job creation continues to be a priority of the World Bank and the m2Work competition shows an innovative approach to addressing this challenge.

As the digital economy grows, it increasingly gives rise to work that is “born digital” – that is, new work that arises out of the possibilities and needs of the digital world. This phenomenon is distinct from how conventional jobs are increasingly digitized in the sense that they make heavy use of information and communication technologies. Most born-digital work represents new work that doesn’t directly compete with old occupations.

For example, hundreds of thousands of people around the world earn income from tasks like moderating images posted by users to an online community, categorizing products on an e-commerce site, and transcribing digital video clips to make them more searchable. Because these tasks are completely digital, they can be physically carried out anywhere a computer can be connected to the Internet.

A recent trend is that demand for such digital blue-collar work is satisfied through so-called “crowdsourcing” and “microsourcing” models. This means that instead of a company hiring a staffer or a contractor to carry out a job, the job is broken down into individual tasks and distributed to a large pool of workers over a digital network.

For example, many companies post their tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), a digital labor marketplace. At any given time, AMT carries around 200,000 micro-tasks, each worth anywhere from a few cents to several dollars. Anyone wishing to earn this money can simply point their web browser to AMT and follow the instructions. Microwork is inclusive in the sense that gender, disability and other personal characteristics do not play a role in digital labor marketplaces.

A 2011 report commissioned by infoDev (a partnership program within the World Bank’s Finance and Private Sector Development Network), titled Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy, assessed the development potential of digital microwork. According to the report, microwork has several features that make it particularly accessible to people in developing countries. Most tasks require few skills or qualifications, as they rely on the fact that humans are inherently better than computers in tasks like image recognition and natural language processing. Microwork is not connected to one particular spot; a web browser is enough. Low labor cost moreover gives a competitive advantage to workers from developing countries.

Many microworkers are indeed located in the developing world. According to one survey, 34 percent of workers on AMT are from India. Two other microwork distributors, Samasource and MobileWorks, have workers in countries such as Kenya, Pakistan and the Philippines. Workers access the tasks from computers in Internet cafés and offices, and earn income in the form of cash, bank deposits and gift cards. In these low- to medium-developed countries, digital microwork seems to be having a real economic impact.

Low-income countries have the most to gain from tapping into this source of digital export income. However, their ability to do so is limited by their digital infrastructure: the availability of computers and Internet cafés from which to access digital labor markets.

Meanwhile, even the most underprivileged people in the world increasingly have access to mobile phones. There are close to 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world, and over half a billion in India alone. In 2011, mobile phone penetration reached almost 80 percent in the developing world.

To help tap into that high level of mobile access, infoDev and Nokia’s IdeasProject have organized the m2Work online challenge, with funding and support from UKaid and the government of Finland. The challenge aims to identify problems and needs that could be addressed by microworkers who use mobile phones – enabling the bottom billions of the economic pyramid to access the digital economy, and enabling the rest of the world to benefit from their intelligence.

A high-level jury consisting of among others the World Bank’s Chief Information Officer, Ms. Shelley Leibowitz, representatives of Nokia and the wider technology sector, will review the submissions. The best ideas will be awarded with individual cash prizes of up to $20,000. Furthermore, infoDev will use its vast network of Mobile Applications Labs (mLabs) and business incubators to help the winning entrepreneurs every step of the way, guiding it from seed-stage idea to a thriving start-up that creates sustainable jobs.

From earlier experiences in other industries, we know that new blue-collar jobs do not necessarily translate into lasting economic and social development, if the jobs build no long-term capacities. But the Virtual Economy report shows that digital labor can be capacity-building, by showcasing earlier examples of born-digital work.  In the end, the m2Work challenge wants to spark a goal-oriented, global discussion about sustainable mobile microwork under the motto of “From millions of tasks to thousands of jobs”.

Brain capacity limits exponential online data growth

Scientists have found that the capacity of the human brain to process and record information - and not economic constraints - may constitute the dominant limiting factor for the overall growth of globally stored information. These findings have just been published in an article in EPJ B by Claudius Gros and colleagues from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany.

The authors first looked at the distribution of 633 public internet files by plotting the number of videos, audio and image files against the size of the files. They gathered files which were produced by humans or intended for human use with the spider file search engine Findfiles.net. They chose to focus on files which are hosted on domains pointing from the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia and the open web directory dmoz.

Assuming that economic costs for data production are proportional to the amount of data produced, these costs should be driving the generation of information exponentially. However, the authors found that, in fact, economic costs were not the limiting factors for data production. The absence of exponential tails for the graph representing the number of files indicates this conclusion.

They found that underlying neurophysiological processes influence the brain's ability to handle information. For example, when a person produces an image and attributes a subjective value to it, for example, a given resolution, he or she is influenced by his or her perception of the quality of that image. Their perception of the amount of information gained when increasing the resolution of a low-quality image is substantially higher than when increasing the resolution of a high-quality photo by the same degree. This relation is known as the Weber-Fechner law.

The authors observed that file-size distributions obey this Weber-Fechner law. This means that the total amount of information cannot grow faster than our ability to digest or handle it.

More information: Gros C., Kaczor G., Marković D., (2012) Neuropsychological constraints to human data production on a global scale, European Physical Journal B (EPJ B) 85: 28, DOI 10.1140/epjb/e2011-20581-3

Provided by Springer

"Brain capacity limits exponential online data growth." February 1st, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-brain-capacity-limits-exponential-online.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Men more likely to have an accurate memory of unpleasant experiences

A woman's memory of an experience is less likely to be accurate than a man's if it was unpleasant and emotionally provocative, according to research undertaken by University of Montreal researchers at Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital.
"Very few studies have looked at how 'valence' and 'arousal' affect memories independently of each other, that is to say, how attractive or repulsive we find an experience and how emotionally provocative it is," said corresponding author Dr. Marc Lavoie, of the university's Department of Psychiatry and the hospital's Fernand-Seguin Research Center. "Our test relied on photos – we found firstly that highly arousing pictures blur women's capacity to determine whether they've seen it before, and secondly that women have a clearer memory of attractive experiences than men. Arousal has an enhancing effect on the memory of men however, as does 'low valence' or unpleasantness."
Participants were shown a variety of images on a computer screen that fell into four categories: "low-valence and low-arousal" such as scenes of babies crying, "low-valence and high-arousal," for example, war photos, "high-valence and low-arousal," which included pictures of kittens, and finally, erotic photos for the "high-valence and high-arousal" group. They were then shown a second round of photos that included the same images as the first round and some new ones. The participants had to push buttons to indicate whether they had already seen it or if it was new, and the speed and accuracy with which they responded enabled the researchers to gauge which factors had the most influence. They were also connected to EEG, a system for measuring the brain's neuron activity, which enabled the researchers to see how their brain was working as they completed the task.
"Interestingly, the scans revealed more activity in the right hemisphere of women's brains for the recognition of pleasant pictures – the opposite of what we witnessed in men" Lavoie said. "This challenges earlier studies using unpleasant pictures that revealed more activity in the left hemisphere for women and in the right hemisphere for men. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of emotional memory and underscore the importance of taking valence, arousal, and sex differences into account when examining brain activity."
The study was published online by the International Journal of Psychophysiology on January 18, 2012, and the research received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a discovery grant to Dr Lavoie and a summer student internship to Emma Glaser. Dr. Marc Lavoie is affiliated with the Fernand-Seguin Research Centre at Louis.-H. Lafontaine Hospital in Montreal and with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal. The University of Montreal is officially known as Université de Montréal.
More information: Emma Glaser, Adrianna Mendrek, Martine Germain, Nadia Lakis, Marc E. Lavoie, Sex differences in memory of emotional images: A behavioral and electrophysiological investigation, International Journal of Psychophysiology, Available online 18 January 2012, ISSN 0167-8760, doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.01.007
Provided by University of Montreal

"Men more likely to have an accurate memory of unpleasant experiences." February 1st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-men-accurate-memory-unpleasant.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

THE SECRET TO A HAPPY MARRIED LIFE.

Once I was asked by my friend,

"What is the secret behind your happy married life?"
 
I said,

"You should share responsibilities with due love and respect each other.

Then absolutely there will be no problems."
   
He asked,

"Can you explain?"
 
I said,

"In my house, I take decisions on bigger issues where as my wife decides on smaller issues.

We do not interfere in each other's decisions."
 
Still not convinced, the friend asked me,

"Give me some examples".
 
I said,

"Smaller issues like,

Which car we should buy,

How much amount to save,

When to visit the super market,

When to go on vacation,

Which sofa,

Air conditioner,

Refrigerator,

Monthly expenses,

Whether to keep a maid or not etc.

Are all decided by my wife.

I just agree to it "
 
He asked,

"Then, what is your role?"
 
I said,

"My decisions are only for very big issues.

Like whether America should attack Iran,

Whether Britain should lift sanctions over Zimbabwe,

Whether to widen the Sri Lankan economy,

Whether Sanath Jayasuriya  should retire from cricket etc., etc. and

Do you know, my wife, NEVER, objects to any of these decisions".

Nothing is more precious than peace...

Heart failure is associated with loss of brain cells and a decline in mental processes

Australian researchers have found evidence that heart failure is associated with a decline in people's mental processes and a loss of grey matter in the brain. These changes can make it more difficult for heart failure (HF) patients to remember and carry out instructions such as taking the correct medication at the right times.

The authors of the study, which is published online today in the European Heart Journal, say: "Our results are consistent with the observation that people with HF have trouble adhering to complex self-care advice, and suggest that simpler approaches to self-management may be required".

Professor Osvaldo Almeida, who is Professor and Winthrop Chair of Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of Western Australia and Director of Research at the Western Australia Institute for Health and Ageing in Perth, and his colleagues carried out cognitive tests on 35 patients with HF, 56 patients with ischaemic heart disease (IHD), which can often but not always accompany HF, and 64 healthy people without HF or IHD. They also used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assess differences in the volume of grey matter in different parts of the brain.

Results showed that patients with HF had worse immediate and long-term memory and reaction speeds (psychomotor speed) than the healthy controls. Heart failure was also associated with changes in brain regions that are important for mentally demanding cognitive and emotional processing.

"What we found in this study is that both IHD and HF are associated with a loss of cells in certain brain regions that are important for the modulation of emotions and mental activity – such a loss is more pronounced in people with HF, but can also be seen in people with IHD without HF," explained Prof Almeida. "Similarly, people with IHD and HF show subtle deficits in cognitive abilities compared with controls without either IHD or HF, and again those deficits are more pronounced in people with HF. Our study was not sufficiently large to show with certainty that the cognitive performance of participants with HF was worse than that of participants with IHD, although both showed deficits compared with controls."

The regions of the brain that showed loss of grey matter are believed to be important for memory, reasoning and planning. "There is evidence that they optimise performance in complex tasks that require 'mental effort'. Consequently, loss of brain cells in these regions may affect a person's performance in a number of different areas, such as memory, behaviour modification, inhibition, both emotional and cognitive, and organisation," said Prof Almeida.

"Our findings indicate that diseases that affect the heart affect the brain as well, and that the changes in organ function and blood circulation associated with HF seem to compound these effects in the brain. For these reasons, primary and secondary prevention are essential to minimise the impact of heart disease on brain structure and function. They are also consistent with the possibility that patients with HF may have trouble following complex management strategies, and, therefore, treatment messages should be simple and clear. Health professionals and patients need to be aware that problems caused by heart disease are not limited to the heart."

The authors write: "As far as we are aware, this is the first study that included an additional IHD control group that shares common risk factors with HF, which allowed us to show that the cognitive losses may be a non-specific consequence of increasing cardiovascular disease burden. Moreover, our analyses revealed that these subtle deficits . . . cannot be explained by impaired left ventricular ejection fraction, prevalent comorbid conditions, or biochemical markers.

"The acquisition of structural brain images allowed us to examine the impact of both HF and IHD on cerebral GM [grey matter] and to show that the people with HF display more widespread and extensive brain changes than adults with IHD."

Prof Almeida and his colleagues say that larger and longer studies are need to clarify the physiological pathways by which HF could lead to loss of brain cells and worse mental processes, and to see whether the changes are progressive; for instance, they are investigating whether grey matter loss increases and the cognitive problems become worse over time. They also want to examine whether HF patients could benefit from cognitive rehabilitation or stimulation.

More information: "Cognitive and brain changes associated with ischaemic heart disease and heart failure". European Heart Journal.doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehr467

 

Provided by European Society of Cardiology

"Heart failure is associated with loss of brain cells and a decline in mental processes." January 31st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-heart-failure-loss-brain-cells.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

'Life and activity monitor' provides portable, constant recording of vital signs

This small device, only about two inches wide, can monitor vital signs while being worn outside the body. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

Researchers have developed a type of wearable, non-invasive electronic device that can monitor vital signs such as heart rate and respiration at the same time it records a person's activity level, opening new opportunities for biomedical research, diagnostics and patient care.

The device is just two inches wide, comfortable, does not have to be in direct contact with the skin and can operate for a week without needing to be recharged. Data can then be downloaded and assessed for whatever medical or research need is being addressed.

The technology has been reported at a professional conference, and research is continuing to make it even smaller and less costly.

"When this technology becomes more miniaturized and so low-cost that it could almost be disposable, it will see more widespread adoption," said Patrick Chiang, an assistant professor of computer engineering at Oregon State University. "It's already been used in one clinical research study on the effects of micronutrients on aging, and monitoring of this type should have an important future role in medicine."

Vital sign data can be relayed by the small electronic device worn on the body. (Image courtesy of Oregon State University)

Called a "life and activity monitor," the system uses different sensors to detect heart rate, respiration, movement and similar vital signs. It will provide doctors, researchers and clinicians a continuous flow of data over time, reduce the need for more frequent office visits, and ultimately provide better care at lower cost.

The system was developed by scientists and engineers at Oregon State University and the University of California at San Diego.

Final designs of the technology may be as small as a disposable bandage, researchers say.

Provided by Oregon State University

"'Life and activity monitor' provides portable, constant recording of vital signs." February 1st, 2012.http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-life-portable-constant-vital.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

How antipsychotic medications cause metabolic side effects such as obesity and diabetes

In 2008, roughly 14.3 million Americans were taking antipsychotics—typically prescribed for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a number of other behavioral disorders—making them among the most prescribed drugs in the U.S. Almost all of these medications are known to cause the metabolic side effects of obesity and diabetes, leaving patients with a difficult choice between improving their mental health and damaging their physical health. In a paper published January 31 in the journalMolecular Psychiatry, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) reveal how antipsychotic drugs interfere with normal metabolism by activating a protein called SMAD3, an important part of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFbeta) pathway.

The TGFbeta pathway is a cellular mechanism that regulates many biological processes, including cell growth, inflammation, and insulin signaling. In this study, all antipsychotics that cause metabolic side effects activated SMAD3, while antipsychotics free from these side effects did not. What's more, SMAD3 activation by antipsychotics was completely independent from their neurological effects, raising the possibility that antipsychotics could be designed that retain beneficial therapeutic effects in the brain, but lack the negative metabolic side effects.

"We now believe that many antipsychotics cause obesity and diabetes because they trigger the TGFbeta pathway. Of all the drugs we tested, the only two that didn't activate the pathway were the ones that are known not to cause metabolic side effects," said Fred Levine, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Sanford Children's Health Research Center at Sanford-Burnham and senior author of the study.

In a previous study aimed at developing new insights into diabetes, Dr. Levine and his team used Sanford-Burnham's high-throughput screening capabilities to search a collection of known drugs for those that alter the body's ability to generate insulin, the pancreatic hormone that helps regulate glucose. That's when they first noticed that many antipsychotics alter the activity of the insulin gene. In this current study, the researchers set out to connect the dots between antipsychotics and insulin. In doing so, experiments in laboratory cell-lines showed that antipsychotics known to cause metabolic side effects also activated the TGFbeta pathway—a mechanism that controls many cellular functions, including the production of insulin—while the drugs without these side effects did not.

Wondering whether their initial laboratory observations were relevant to the human experience, the researchers reanalyzed previously published gene expression patterns in brain tissue from schizophrenic patients treated with antipsychotics. What they found supported their earlier findings—TGFbeta signaling was activated only in those patients receiving antipsychotic treatment. Looking further, they found that the extent to which each antipsychotic drug activated the TGFbeta pathway in human brains correlated very closely with the extent to which those same drugs activated SMAD3 and affected the insulin promoter in their cell culture experiments.

The TGFbeta pathway also plays an important role in metabolic disease in people who don't take antipsychotic medications. "It's known that people who have elevated TGFbeta levels are more prone to diabetes. So having a dysregulated TGFbeta pathway—whether caused by antipsychotics or through some other mechanism—is clearly a very bad thing," said Dr. Levine. "The fact that antipsychotics activate this pathway should be a big concern to pharmaceutical companies. We hope this new information will lead to the development of improved drugs."

Provided by Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute

"How antipsychotic medications cause metabolic side effects such as obesity and diabetes." February 1st, 2012.http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-antipsychotic-medications-metabolic-side-effects.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek