Ease of Implementation

“Persons who have acted piously in previous lives and in this life, whose sinful actions are completely eradicated and who are freed from the duality of delusion, engage themselves in My service with determination.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 7.28) Pick up any book on Hinduism and you will surely get a brief rundown of the several avenues available for self-realization, for attaining the highest state known for the soul, which is the essence of individuality, that autonomous entity residing within every life form that is immune to the effects of the material existence driven by the dualities of love and hate, acceptance and rejection, and happiness and misery. Within this rundown, bhakti, or devotion, is commonly mentioned as being the easiest of the various processes. With the ultimate aim being defined as the realization of Brahman, or the Absolute Truth, the method that can be taken up by the most people and which has the least prerequisites and difficulties as far as skillset and attributes will be labeled the easiest. Yet if we actually look at the number of people who take up bhakti-yoga sincerely compared to its apparent ease of implementation, we see that bhakti is actually the most difficult of all the methods of self-realization, as it is the only process that directly corresponds with the properties of the soul in its pure form. Only once all past sinful effects and reactions have exhausted can one actually take up pure loving service to God. What are the different methods of self-realization? How can there even be more than one avenue towards salvation? Can’t we just pick one person and worship Him exclusively? The Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India, the tradition that is today known as Hinduism, actually provide the most concrete information about the soul, the meaning of life, and what can be done to attain the ultimate goal, the best destination. In this sense sectarianism and sentimentalism towards a particular faith without having knowledge of the intricacies of life and the justifications for requiring such worship are immediately bypassed by the Vedic tradition. There are different methods of self-realization, because not everyone will be willing to return to their constitutional position right away. The first instruction taught to aspiring transcendentalists in the Vedic school is aham brahmasmi, which means “I am Brahman, or a spirit soul.” This information is important to learn, because in the absence of knowledge of Brahman, the individual will adopt a false identification. What does it mean to wrongly identify oneself? Let’s say that we have graduated the first grade and then started the second grade of elementary school the next year. If we base our identity on our class standing from the previous year, we will obviously not make any progress, and we won’t be engaging in the proper activities. First grade classwork is meant for students of a particular level of intelligence. The second grade is there for those who have advanced past the first grade. If our identification remains flawed, we will not be able to take full advantage of the ascension to the second grade. In a similar manner, if the spirit soul granted a human form of body doesn’t understand who they truly are, they will remain in the mindset accepted in their previous life form. We know from our own experiences that animals are not very intelligent, as a fish doesn’t even know that it is wet, nor does any animal have any idea of impending death. The human being has the increased potential for intelligence, so in taking advantage of this feature the first thing to do is understand who we really are. The knowledge capacity given to the human being reveals the real purpose to religion, or spirituality. More than just surrendering to a particular divine figure out of fear, there must be some intelligence to guide the individual and keep them committed to voluntarily adopting that level of service. Otherwise, the devotion will be rooted completely in a mood of defense, which is an animal instinct. Brahman is beyond the dualities of material existence, which function through the repetition of birth, old age, disease and death. With every new birth comes a new instance of the cycle. The soul remains the same in quality throughout these changes; hence it is referred to as Brahman, or Truth. If we are already Brahman, why do we even need an education? If I am a spirit soul at the core, above the mundane existence, why do I need to be reminded of this fact? Though we are Brahman, or spirit soul, we are actually part of an energy that has a marginal position. From God comes the total energy, which includes both the internal and external. Material nature, that which is dull and lifeless in the absence of a spiritual injection, is the external, or inferior, energy. Spirit, which is always dominant over matter, is the superior energy. God is the source of both, so He is never subject to delusion or forgetfulness. He never needs educating or self-realization. We spirit souls, being part and parcel of Brahman, are marginal in the sense that we have choice in association. By constitution we are spirit, but we can associate with matter if we like. Deciding in the wrong direction brings forgetfulness of our real position; hence the need for self-realization. Understanding that we are spirit soul is the first step, but where we go from there is dependent on our desires and natural proclivities. “Perform your prescribed duty, for action is better than inaction. A man cannot even maintain his physical body without work.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 3.8) One avenue for self-realization is known as karma-yoga. At its core karma just means “work”, actions which have commensurate reactions. The different material bodies are formed as the result of karma, so the kind of work we take up is very important. In the absence of Brahman realization, the false identification with material elements will continue. Thus the default is to take to activities in karma. With karma-yoga, however, the results of action are renounced; they are sacrificed in favor of advancement in consciousness. This method can be likened to going to work on a regular basis, living within your means, but then sacrificing the results by being charitable and performing religious functions recommended by spiritual authority figures. The aim is to perform prescribed duties while remaining detached from the outcome. Another avenue is known as jnana-yoga, which is the pursuit of esoteric knowledge. Through this method one studies the differences between matter and spirit and slowly but surely renounces activities that further solidify the false identification with the body. The more material activities are renounced, the easier it becomes to realize Brahman. This method is much more difficult to implement, as the conditioned soul is naturally prone towards explicit action. Jnana-yoga is especially feared by parents of young children, for if their kids take to studying Brahman, they might live a life of austerity and thus have no steady source of income or food when they grow up. For the jnana-yogis this is by design, as less attachment is seen as being beneficial towards ultimate realization of the Absolute Truth. Another method is meditational yoga, wherein one combines different aspects of jnana and karma. In karma there is work, and in jnana there is inaction, so meditational yoga takes elements of both to create a regimen dedicated to performing breathing exercises and sitting in certain postures for extended periods of time. Since there is dedication towards physical activity, there is some karma involved, and since the discipline rewards renunciation from worldly attachment, there is a jnana element as well. This is likely the most difficult method of self-realization, for performing meditational yoga properly carries strict requirements. Many of them are detailed in the Bhagavad-gita, the most concise and complete treatise on Vedic philosophy delivered by the object of sacrifice, the Supreme Lord Himself, Shri Krishna. “The culmination of all kinds of yoga practices lies in bhakti-yoga. All other yogas are but means to come to the point of bhakti in bhakti-yoga. Yoga actually means bhakti-yoga; all other yogas are progressions toward the destination of bhakti-yoga.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Bg. 6.47 Purport) This brings us to bhakti. On the surface, bhakti seems the easiest to implement out of the different yogas. One doesn’t even have to give up their job. A bhakta can work, study scriptures and do meditation, all while increasing their knowledge of God and the soul. At the heart of bhakti-yoga is practicing devotion. This is facilitated through acts of love, which in their pure form lack both motive and interruption. Just based on these two properties alone we see that bhakti is superior. Indeed, the secret known only to those who practice bhakti-yoga as a way of life is that all other forms of yoga are meant to culminate in devotional practice. You’ll never see someone attain the highest platform of God consciousness in a mood of pure love and devotion and then subsequently take to some other method of self-realization. On the other hand, there have been countless instances of great historical personalities attaining the brahma-bhutah platform of consciousness, the understanding of Brahman, and then still not finding full satisfaction. It was not until they took up bhakti that they realized the true fruit of their birth. How do we practice bhakti? What is its central component? For the ascetic dedicated to advancing in spiritual life, at the heart of their practice is penance. An ascetic without penances is a spiritualist in name only. Similarly, a yogi without dedication to meditation is also a pretender. The life of the karma-yogi is the sacrifice of the fruits of their labor. For the devotee, the life and soul of their practice is the holy name. Through regularly reciting sacred formulas like, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”, the bhakta stays always connected with God. Krishna and Rama are Sanskrit names that apply to the Supreme Lord, the singular entity who is everyone’s God, even if they don’t know it. Only the narrow-minded think in terms of “my God” and “your God”, for if there is to be a Supreme Being, His mercy must extend to everyone, including life forms beyond the human community. Bhakti is considered the easiest yoga, because its implementation is not difficult at all. Even a small child who has no inkling towards self-realization or understanding the worthiness of worship of the Supreme Lord can take to bhakti by chanting, dancing, or singing. Indeed, even language barriers are absent in bhakti. One needn’t know Sanskrit to chant the maha-mantra and enjoy the effusive transcendental sound vibrations that are produced. Women, children, the unintelligent, and anyone else for whom the other practices of yoga are deemed too difficult to perform can take to bhakti and make full advancement. Bhakti is transcendental love after all, so who isn’t capable of offering their heartfelt love and respect to the Supreme Lord? What’s interesting to note, however, is that bhakti is actually very difficult to adopt with any level of sincerity. For starters, unless one understands who the object of worship is and why there is a need for connecting with Him, they will never realize the true benefit and superiority of bhakti. When the aim is to understand Brahman, or the impersonal Absolute Truth, bhakti is taken to be an inferior method. “Oh, if someone isn’t smart enough to study Vedanta or doesn’t have the time to perform meditational yoga, they can still concoct deitymanifestations and keep their focus on spiritual life in that way. By worshiping any deity, it doesn’t matter of which personality, regularly, they can become detached from the senses and gradually realize that they are Brahman. Once they attain that position, they can give up their bhakti as well, for they won’t need it anymore.” Under this thinking the methods of bhakti are seen as something like training wheels, guides that help in the beginning stages but then are eventually renounced. Bhakti, however, is transcendental love. Does a good mother ever stop loving her child? Does the husband tell the wife, “Okay, we’ve been married for a certain number of years, so I’ve loved you enough. It’s now time for me to stop.”? Divine love is actually engrained within the soul; having an attachment to God in full affection is everyone’s constitutional position. The Supreme Lord is directly represented in bhakti, whereas He is partially present in the other types of yoga. We say this with great confidence, because since He is the most merciful, it would make sense that the topmost yoga discipline would be the one that would also be the most benevolent, the method that could be practiced by every single person, irrespective of their level of intelligence or ability to put their arms and legs into impossible positions. Just as those things we actually need in life are relatively inexpensive and abundant, the only method of self-realization that need be adopted is the easiest to find and implement. All you need is the holy name. Simply reciting the name of Krishna or Rama just one time without any offense brings cognition of the forms, pastimes and qualities of the Supreme Person. In the absence of bhakti, the highest stage of understanding the spiritualist can attain is that of Brahman. Maybe Paramatma, the localized aspect of God resting within the heart can be realized, but these features are not complete representations. Through divine love, one remains forever in the company of the Personality of Godhead, whose activities and teachings are so wonderful that one can become enthralled just by hearing about them. Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-gita are the most celebrated, studied and contemplated words on spirituality known the world over. Krishna’s pastimes documented in texts like the Shrimad Bhagavatam and Ramayana have been sung and glorified more than any other person’s. Though life’s necessities like grains, fruits, water and milk are highly abundant and inexpensive, we don’t consider them very valuable. Similarly, since bhakti is available to everyone and easy to implement, it is the least appreciated and least availed of the various disciplinary systems. In the absence of a pursuit of self-realization, the human being imitates the animals and operates exclusively under the mode of sense gratification. In the universe of available activities, it is this pursuit that is the most popular. When spirituality is taken up, every method except bhakti is adopted first. There is a reason for this. With every discipline except bhakti, full surrender unto the highest authority figure is absent. The false ego, which not only identifies with gross matter but also causes the individual soul to view itself as the supreme enjoyer, repels the idea of full surrender to God. This is why out of all the spiritual practices bhakti remains the most difficult to adopt with any level of sincerity. “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.” (Lord Krishna, Bg. 7.3) Lord Krishna even addresses this fact in the Bhagavad-gita, where He states that out of many thousands of men, one may strive for self-realization. And then out of those seekers, hardly one will actually know Krishna in truth. Therefore when we do see someone who is dedicated to bhakti and loving God to their heart’s content, we should appreciate their efforts. The need for surrendering fully unto God is the most difficult fact to accept, but with proper guidance and a sincere desire for achieving a beneficial position, the right mindset can be attained. Since the bhakti platform corresponds directly with the constitutional position of the soul, there is no loss on the devotee’s part. We have everything to gain from connecting with Krishna in consciousness at all times.

Scientist Converts Human Skin Cells Into Functional Brain Cells

Rendering of the brain. A scientist at the Gladstone Institutes has discovered a novel way to convert human skin cells into brain cells, advancing medicine and human health by offering new hope for regenerative medicine and personalized drug discovery and development. (Credit: © ktsdesign / Fotolia)

Science Daily — A scientist at the Gladstone Institutes has discovered a novel way to convert human skin cells into brain cells, advancing medicine and human health by offering new hope for regenerative medicine and personalized drug discovery and development.

"This work could have important ramifications for patients and families who suffer at the hands of neurodegenerative diseases such Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease," said Lennart Mucke, MD, who directs neurological research at Gladstone. "Dr. Ding's latest research offers new hope for the process of developing medications for these diseases, as well as for the possibility of cell-replacement therapy to reduce the trauma of millions of people affected by these devastating and irreversible conditions."

In a paper being published online July 28 in the scientific journal Cell Stem Cell, Sheng Ding, PhD, reveals efficient and robust methods for transforming adult skin cells into neurons that are capable of transmitting brain signals, marking one of the first documented experiments for transforming an adult human's skin cells into functioning brain cells.

The work was done in collaboration with Stuart Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., who directs the Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. Dr. Ding, one of the world's leading chemical biologists in stem-cell science, earlier this year joined Gladstone and the faculty at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), as a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry. Gladstone, which is affiliated with UCSF, is a leading and independent biomedical-research organization that is using stem-cell research to advance its work in its three major areas of focus: cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease and viral infections.

Dr. Ding's work builds on the cell-reprogramming work of another Gladstone scientist, Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD. Dr. Yamanaka's 2006 discovery of a way to turn adult skin cells into cells that act like embryonic stem cells has radically advanced the fields of cell biology and stem-cell research.

Embryonic stem cells -- "pluripotent" cells that can develop into any type of cell in the human body -- hold tremendous promise for regenerative medicine, in which damaged organs and tissues can be replaced or repaired. Many in the science community consider the use of stem cells to be key to the future treatment and eradication of a number of diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. But the use of embryonic stem cells is controversial -- which is one reason why Dr. Yamanaka's discovery of an alternate way to obtain human stem cells, without the use of embryos, is so important.

Dr. Ding's work extends Dr. Yamanaka's by offering still another method for avoiding the use of embryonic stem cells and creating an entirely new platform for fundamental studies of human disease. Rather than using models made in yeast, flies or mice for disease research, all cell-reprogramming technology allows human brain, heart and other cells to be created from the skin cells of patients with a specific disease. The new cells created from the skin cells contain a complete set of the genes that resulted in that disease -- representing the potential of a far-superior human model for studying illnesses, drugs and other treatments. In the future, such reprogrammed skin cells could be used to test both drug safety and efficacy for an individual patient with, for example, Alzheimer's disease.

"This technology should allow us to very rapidly model neurodegenerative diseases in a dish by making nerve cells from individual patients in just a matter of days -- rather than the months required previously," said Dr. Lipton.

In the experiments being reported July 28, Dr. Ding used two genes and a microRNA to convert a skin sample from a 55-year-old woman directly into brain cells. (MicroRNAs are tiny strands of genetic material that regulate almost every process in every cell of the body.) The cells created by Dr. Ding's experiments exchanged the electrical impulses necessary for brain cells to communicate things such as thoughts and emotions. Using microRNA to reprogram cells is a safer and more efficient way than using the more common gene-modification approach. In ensuing experiments, Dr. Ding hopes to rely only on microRNAs and pharmaceutical compounds to convert skin cells to brain cells, which should lead to more efficient generation of cells for testing and regenerative purposes.

"This will help us avoid any genome modifications," said Dr. Ding. "These cells are not ready yet for transplantation. But this work removes some of the major technical hurdles to using reprogrammed cells to create transplant-ready cells for a host of diseases."

Dr. Ding is a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a UCSF professor of pharmaceutical chemistry. Dr. Ding, who performed the work described in this paper at The Scripps Research Institute, has pioneered the development and application of innovative chemical approaches to stem-cell biology and regeneration.

Ancient Tides Quite Different from Today -- Some Dramatically Higher, Some Lower

Tides in the Bay of Fundy, which today are among the most extreme in the world, weren't nearly as large 5000 years ago. Top: High tide in the Bay of Fundy. Bottom: Low tide in the Bay of Fundy. (Credit: Photos courtesy of NASA)

Science Daily — The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes.

Some tides on the East Coast of the United States, for instance, may at times in the past have been enormously higher than they are today -- a difference between low and high tide of 10-20 feet, instead of the current 3-6 foot range.Due to phenomena such as ice ages, plate tectonics, land uplift, erosion and sedimentation, tides have changed dramatically over thousands of years and may change again in the future, a new study concludes.

And tides in the Bay of Fundy, which today are among the most extreme in the world and have a range up to 55 feet, didn't amount to much at all about 5,000 years ago. But around that same time, tides on the southern U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to Florida, were about 75 percent higher.

The findings were just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The work was done with computer simulations at a high resolution, and supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies.

"Scientists study past sea levels for a range of things, to learn about climate changes, geology, marine biology," said David Hill, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. "In most of this research it was assumed that prehistoric tidal patterns were about the same as they are today. But they weren't, and we need to do a better job of accounting for this."

One of the most interesting findings of the study, Hill said, was that around 9,000 years ago, as Earth was emerging from its most recent ice age, there was a huge amplification in tides of the western Atlantic Ocean. The tidal ranges were up to three times more extreme than those that exist today, and water would have surged up and down on the East Coast.

One of the major variables in ancient tides, of course, was sea level changes that were caused by previous ice ages. When massive amounts of ice piled miles thick in the Northern Hemisphere 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, for instance, sea levels were more than 300 feet lower.

But it's not that simple, Hill said.

"Part of what we found was that there are certain places on Earth where tidal energy gets dissipated at a disproportionately high rate, real hot spots of tidal action," Hill said. "One of these today is Hudson Bay, and it's helping to reduce tidal energies all over the rest of the Atlantic Ocean. But during the last ice age Hudson Bay was closed down and buried in ice, and that caused more extreme tides elsewhere."

Many other factors can also affect tides, the researchers said, and understanding these factors and their tidal impacts is essential to gaining a better understanding of past sea levels and ocean dynamics.

Some of this variability was suspected from previous analyses, Hill said, but the current work is far more resolved than previous studies. The research was done by scientists from OSU, the University of Leeds, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, and Tulane University.

"Understanding the past will help us better predict tidal changes in the future," he said. "And there will be changes, even with modest sea level changes like one meter. In shallow waters like the Chesapeake Bay, that could cause significant shifts in tides, currents, salinity and even temperature."

Some Plants Duplicate Their DNA to Overcome Adversity

Some cultivars of Arabidopsis thaliana repeatedly duplicate their chromosomes in response to grazing. (Credit: L. Brian Stauffer)

Science Daily  — Whatever does not kill a plant may actually make it stronger. After being partially eaten by grazing animals, for example, some plants grow bigger and faster and reproduce more successfully than they otherwise would. In a new study, researchers report that one secret to these plants' post-traumatic triumph lies in their ability to duplicate their chromosomes -- again and again -- without undergoing cell division.

"If you talk to a molecular biologist, they might know what endoreduplication is, but they haven't looked at it from the perspective of whole plant reproductive success," Scholes said. "We tried to link the two and found out there is a link there."While this process, called "endoreduplication," is not new to science, no previous study had looked at it in relation to the seemingly miraculous burst of growth and reproductive fitness that occurs in many plants after they have been grazed, said University of Illinois animal biology professor Ken Paige, who conducted the study with doctoral student Daniel Scholes.The study appears in the journal Ecology.

The researchers looked at Arabidopsis thaliana, a flowering plant in the mustard family that repeatedly duplicates its chromosomes in some cell types. The plant begins with only 10 chromosomes -- five from each parent -- but after repeated duplications, some cells contain up to 320 chromosomes.

The researchers compared the DNA content of two cultivars of A. thaliana that respond very differently to being grazed. Of the 160 specimens of each cultivar studied, half were artificially grazed (by clipping their central stems) and half were not. One of the cultivars, Columbia, rebounded dramatically after clipping, quickly regrowing stems and leaves and producing more seeds than the unclipped plants. In the other cultivar, Landsberg erecta, growth remained steady after clipping and the level of seed production declined.

A look at the number of chromosomes in the tissues of each plant type before and after clipping revealed that Columbia was able to rebound in part by speeding up endoreduplication in some tissues after clipping. Its sister cultivar, Landsberg erecta, however, did not.

"The overall DNA content goes up in one of the cultivars after clipping, but it doesn't change in the other," Paige said. "And we think it's that added boost that increases its reproductive success."

The added DNA content could allow the plants to increase production of proteins that are needed for growth and reproduction, Scholes said. More DNA also means larger cells.

"Because you have more DNA in the nucleus, you must have a greater nuclear volume, which causes your entire cell to get bigger," Scholes said. Increases in the size of individual cells can ultimately lead to an increase in the size of the whole plant.

"We tend to think that what you inherit is what you're stuck with," Scholes said. "But we're finding that plants are increasing what they have, and for the first time we're beginning to understand how they do that, and why."

In earlier studies conducted over 30 years, Paige found that -- even in natural settings -- plants can evolve the ability to bounce back after grazing.

"We've tracked the plants through generations, so we know that the ones that get eaten actually have up to a three-fold reproductive advantage over the ones that are never eaten," he said. "Now we are beginning to understand the molecular mechanisms that make this possible."

The National Science Foundation and the University of Illinois Research Board funded this study.

First True View of Global Erosion

These cliffs at Utah's Capitol Reef National Park will, eventually, wear away. But how fast? New UVM research sheds light on global erosion rates. (Credit: Eric Portenga)

Science Daily — Every mountain and hill shall be made low, declared the ancient prophet Isaiah. In other words: erosion happens. But for the modern geologist a vexing question remains: how fast does this erosion happen?

For more than a century, scientists have looked for ways to measure and compare erosion rates across differing landscapes around the globe -- but with limited success.

"Knowing the background rate of erosion for a place is extremely important," says University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman, "if you want to compare it to what's coming off the landscape today because of human impacts like agriculture, development, and forestry."

Since the mid-1980's, measurements of a rare radioactive element -- beryllium-10 that appears in quartz bombarded by cosmic rays in the top few feet of Earth's surface -- have greatly improved geologists' ability to estimate erosion rates. But these experiments have been done on a local or regional scale, using a variety of methods, calculation constants, and corrections. Comparisons between climate zones and differing rock types have been difficult -- cutting off a global perspective.

Now Bierman and his graduate student, Eric Portenga, have taken twenty years worth of this disparate data, compiled 1599 measurements from eighty-seven sites around the world, and recalculated it with a single, up-to-date method.

Their work, "provides the first broad, standardized view of pre-human, geologic erosion rates," they write in "Understanding Earth's eroding surface with ¹⁰Be," published in the August edition of GSA Today, an open-access journal, available online July 26, 2011.

Sustainable Soil

"Nobody has stepped back far enough to look at this big picture," says Bierman, "we all work on our little postage stamps of the world -- Africa, South America, the western US." But many of the pressing questions about erosion are global in scale.

Most urgent, the ability to support the nine billion people forecast to be living on Earth by mid-century rests directly on the resiliency of soil systems and the health of water supplies. And these two pillars of sustainability are directly and deeply affected by erosion.

The method used in this new study can provide a good tool for measuring the sustainability of modern agricultural practices, Bierman notes, since the beryllium-10 data shows the rate at which landscapes have been changing in the recent geologic past: the last thousand to several-hundred-thousand years. "If human impacts result in rates faster than we measure, it's non-sustainable," he says.

Portenga sees how this study can help managers in contested landscapes like the Chesapeake Bay. "Regulators may want to stipulate an ideal amount of sediment coming out of a river system and they may say that they want to get this back to 'normal' standards or 'normal rate.' But what is that rate? What was the erosion like before people started interacting with the landscape?" he says.

Not being able to answer that question well has contributed to many regulatory conflicts. "This work can help give a better idea of what is normal," says Portenga, who was the lead author on the study.

No Smoking Gun

This new study also goes fairly far in identifying the environmental factors -- including latitude, annual precipitation, and, especially, slope -- that drive erosion rates in drainage basins. The mechanisms controlling erosion on outcrops of bedrock are less clear.

Using several statistical tests, Portenga and Bierman were able to explain about sixty percent of what controls differing erosion rates in drainage basins around the world. But their study only explains about thirty percent of the variability between outcrops of bedrock. "This means geologists are missing a lot of the crucial information about what is controlling bedrock erosion," Portenga says.

Little-studied variables -- like the density of fractures in bedrock, the strength of rocks, and their chemistry -- may be controlling erosion rates, the study suggests.

"I don't think we'll ever find the single smoking gun of erosion," says Portenga, "the natural world is so complex and there are so many factors that contribute to how landscapes change over time. But as this method develops, we will have a better sense of what variables are important -- and which are not -- in this erosion story."

For example, it has been a truism of geology for decades that rainfall is the biggest driver of erosion. Semi-arid landscapes with little vegetation and occasional major storms were understood to have the greatest rates of erosion. But this study challenges that idea. "It turns out that the greatest control on erosion is not mean annual precipitation," says Bierman. Instead, look at slope.

"People had always thought slope was important," Beirman says, "but these data show that slope is really important."

Modeling the Future

Their new study, supported by the National Science Foundation, is part of a larger long-term goal of creating a global model that can predict the background rate and patterns of erosion across the whole planet -- and how these erosion rates will respond to changes like human-induced climate change.

"Following this study, we can start to answer big questions like, 'how does climate drive erosion?'" says Bierman. In other words, a clearer picture of what global erosion has looked like in the recent past will start to illuminate what is likely to happen in the future as human impacts and land-use decisions play out.

"We want a predictive model," says Bierman, "we want to be able to have somebody say, 'here's my drainage basin, here's the climate, here's the rock type, here's the slope, here's the mean annual precipitation: how quickly is this eroding?' That's what you need for land management."

Engineers Develop One-Way Transmission System for Sound Waves

The nonlinearity and asymmetry present in this chain of compressed spheres can transform vibrations of one frequency, applied at one end of the chain, to vibrations with broadband frequency content leading to rectification. The amplitude of the vibrations are shown by the height of the peaks. (Credit: Chiara Daraio / Caltech)

Science Daily  — While many hotel rooms, recording studios, and even some homes are built with materials to help absorb or reflect sound, mechanisms to truly control the direction of sound waves are still in their infancy. However, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now created the first tunable acoustic diode-a device that allows acoustic information to travel only in one direction, at controllable frequencies.

Borrowing a concept from electronics, the acoustic diode is a component that allows a current -- in this case a sound wave -- to pass in one direction, while blocking the current in the opposite direction. "We exploited a physical mechanism that causes a sharp transition between transmitting and nontransmitting states of the diode," says Chiara Daraio, professor of aeronautics and applied physics at Caltech and lead author on the study. "Using experiments, simulations, and analytical predictions, we demonstrated the one-way transmission of sound in an audible frequency range for the first time."

The mechanism they developed is outlined in a paper published on July 24 in the journal Nature Materials.

This new mechanism brings the idea of true soundproofing closer to reality. Imagine two rooms labeled room A and room B. This new technology, Daraio explains, would enable someone in room A to hear sound coming from room B; however, it would block the same sound in room A from being heard in room B.

"The concept of the one-way transmission of sound could be quite important in architectural acoustics, or the science and engineering of sound control within buildings," says Georgios Theocharis, a postdoctoral scholar in Daraio's laboratory and a co-author of the study.

The system is based on a simple assembly of elastic spheres -- granular crystals that transmit the sound vibrations -- that could be easily used in multiple settings, can be tuned easily, and can potentially be scaled to operate within a wide range of frequencies, meaning its application could reach far beyond soundproofing.

Similar systems have been demonstrated by other scientists, but they all feature smooth transitions between transmitting and nontransmitting states instead of the sharp transitions needed to be more effective at controlling the flow of sound waves. To obtain the sharp transition, the team created a periodic system with a small defect that supports this kind of quick change from an "on" to an "off" transmission state. According to Daraio, this means the system is very sensitive to small variations of operational conditions, like pressure and movement, making it useful in the development of ultrasensitive acoustic sensors to detect sound waves. The system can also operate at different frequencies of sound and is capable of downshifting, or reducing the frequency of the traveling signals, as needed.

"We propose to use these effects to improve energy-harvesting technologies," she says. "For example, we may be able to scavenge sound energy from undesired structural vibrations in machinery by controlling the flow of sound waves away from the machinery and into a transducer. The transducer would then convert the sound waves into electricity." Daraio says the technology can also shift the undesired frequencies to a range that enables a more efficient conversion to electricity.

The team plans to continue studying the fundamental properties of these systems, focusing on their potential application to energy-harvesting systems. They also believe that these systems may be applicable to a range of technologies including biomedical ultrasound devices, advanced noise control, and even thermal materials aimed at temperature control.

"Because the concepts governing wave propagation are universal to many systems, we envision that the use of this novel way to control energy might enable the design of many advanced thermal and acoustic materials and devices," says Daraio.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the A. S. Onassis Benefit Foundation

Genetic differences distinguish stomach cancers, treatment response

Posted by Biomechanism

CANCER RESEARCH: Stomach cancer is actually two distinct disease variations based on its genetic makeup, and each responds differently to chemotherapy, according to an international team of scientists led by researchers at Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School.

The finding, published in the Aug. 1, 2011, edition of the journal Gastroenterology, is the first large-scale genomic analysis of gastric cancer to confirm the two discrete tumor types.

Caption: Misdiagnosis of early gastric cancer (EGC) in 47-year-old man without gastric cancer. Two-dimensional axial CT image shows focal enhanced wall thickening in gastric body (arrow). Strong enhancement of mucosal layer is seen. Photo: AJR

The researchers also found that a certain regimen of chemotherapy is more effective on one tumor type, while a different drug works best on the other, setting the groundwork for a more effective approach to treating gastric cancer patients.

“Our study is the first to show that a proposed molecular classification of gastric cancer can identify genomic subtypes that respond differently to therapies, which is crucial in efforts to customize treatments for patients,” said Patrick Tan, M.D., PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.

An estimated 21,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year, and 10,570 will die of the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute. Worldwide, only lung cancer is more lethal.

Patients have long had markedly different responses to treatments, suggesting that their tumors may have underlying differences.

Hinting at those differences, a microscopic pathology test developed in the 1960s broadly described how well the tumor cells clumped together, typing them as either “intestinal” or “diffuse.” Known as the Lauren classification, after the doctor who first described the distinctions, the analysis fell short as a reliable prognostic tool.

“Most gastric cancer patients today are still being treated with a common one-size-fits-all regimen,” said Tan, who also serves as group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore and a senior investigator at the Cancer Sciences Institute of Singapore.

“One reason for this is that the Lauren classification requires significant gastric cancer experience and there is considerable variation in classifying gastric cancers, even among qualified pathologists,” Tan said.

But the genetic findings by the Singapore-based researchers add greater specificity to the microscopic classifications and, for the first time, provide some guidance for doctors to prescribe effective treatments.

The team first analyzed 37 gastric cancer cell lines, which were pure cancer cells free of blood, tissue and other adulterations that could skew results.

Gene expression profiles yielded highly distinct patterns that indicated the two subtypes. In 64 percent of cases, the genetic subtypes validated the Lauren classifications – either intestinal or diffuse. In the other 36 percent of cases, the genomic process distinguished the subtypes where the pathology test could not.

Findings were confirmed using tumor samples from 521 cancer patients.

“It was quite reassuring to us that the genomic subtypes were associated with Lauren’s system,” Tan said. “There is a general assumption in the field that intestinal and diffuse gastric cancers (as classified by Lauren) represent two very different versions of gastric cancer, and now genomic data confirms this by demonstrating that the two genomic subtypes have very different molecular patterns.”

Establishing the highly accurate definition of tumor subtypes enabled the researchers to observe the different responses to chemotherapy. The intestinal-type tumors showed significantly better response to the chemotherapies 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin, and were more resistant to cisplatin than the diffuse tumors.

“The exact mechanistic reasons for this difference are currently unclear, and this is an area that we are actively working on,” Tan said, adding that the researchers are working to find subtype-specific molecular vulnerabilities to drugs.

The researchers have launched a prospective clinical trial, called the 3G study, where gastric cancer tumors will be genomically profiled, and treatments will be allocated on the basis of the tumor type.

___________________

The study was funded by the Biomedical Research Council and National Medical Research Council of Singapore, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, and the Cancer Sciences Institute of Singapore. The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.

Artificial nanoparticles influence the heart rate

Posted by Biomechanism 

(“Biomechanism.com“) – For the first time, investigating the heart as a whole.

In light of the increasing demand for artificial nanoparticles in medicine and industry, it is important for manufacturers to understand just how these particles influence bodily functions and which mechanisms are at play – questions to which there has been a dearth of knowledge. Studies on heart patients have shown for decades that particulate matter has a negative effect on the cardiovascular system. Yet, it remained unclear whether the nanoparticles do their damage directly or indirectly, for example through metabolic processes or inflammatory reactions. The reactions of the body are simply too complex.

Caption: With their improved Langendorff heart, the researchers from Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen have now for the first time developed a measurement setup that can be used to analyze the effects of nanoparticles on a complete, intact organ without being influenced by the reactions of other organs. Credit: Andreas Stampfl/ACS

Using a so-called Langendorff heart – an isolated rodent heart flushed with a nutrient solution in place of blood – scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen and the TU Muenchen were for the first time able to show that nanoparticles have a clearly measurable effect on the heart. When exposed to a series of commonly used artificial nanoparticles, the heart reacted to certain types of particles with an increased heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia and modified ECG values that are typical for heart disease. “We use the heart as a detector,” explains Professor Reinhard Nießner, Director of the Institute of Hydrochemistry at the TU Muenchen. “In this way we can test whether specific nanoparticles have an effect on the heart function. Such an option did not exist hitherto.”

Scientists can also use this new model heart to shed light on the mechanism by which the nanoparticles influence the heart rate. In order to do this, they enhanced Langendorff’s experimental setup to allow the nutrient solution to be fed back into the loop once it has flown through the heart. This allows the scientists to enrich substances released by the heart and understand the heart’s reaction to the nanoparticles.

According to Stampfl and Nießner, it is very likely that the neurotransmitter noradrenaline is responsible for the increased heart rate brought on by nanoparticles. Noradrenaline is released by nerve endings in the inner wall of the heart. It increases the heart rate and also plays an important role in the central nervous system – a tip-off that nanoparticles might also have a damaging effect there.

Stampfl and his team used their heart model to test carbon black and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, as well as spark-generated carbon, which serves as a model for airborne pollutants stemming from diesel combustion. In addition, silicon dioxide, different Aerosil silicas used e.g. as thickening agents in cosmetics, and polystyrene were tested. Carbon black, spark-generated carbon, titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide led to an increase in the heart rate of up to 15 percent with altered ECG values that did not normalize, even after the nanoparticle exposure was ended. The Aerosil silicas and polystyrene did not show any effect on the heart function.

This new heart model may prove to be particularly useful in medical research. Here, artificial nanoparticles are increasingly being deployed as transportation vehicles. Their intrinsically large surfaces provide ideal docking grounds for active agents. The nanoparticles then transport the active agents to their destination in the human body, e.g. a tumor. Most of the initial prototypes of such “nano containers” are carbon or silicate based. So far, the effect of these substances on the human body is largely unknown. The new heart model could thus serve as a test organ to help select those particles types that do not affect the heart in a negative way.

Artificial nanoparticles are also used in many industrial products – some of them since decades. Their small size and their large surfaces (compared to their volume) impart these particles with unique characteristics. The large surface area of titanium dioxide (TiO2), for example, leads to a large refractive index that makes the substance appear brilliant white. It is thus often used in white coating paints or as a UV blocker in sunscreens. So-called carbon black is also a widely used nanoparticle (mainly in car tires and plastics) with over 8 million tons produced annually. The small size of these nanoparticles (they measure only 14 nanometers across) makes them well suited as dyes, e.g. in printers and copying machines.

With their enhanced Langendorff heart, the researchers have now for the first time developed a measurement setup that can be used to analyze the effects of nanoparticles on a complete, intact organ without being influenced by the reactions of other organs. The heart is a particularly good test object. “It has its own impulse generator, the sinus node, enabling it to function outside the body for several hours,” Andreas Stampfl, first author of the study, explains. “Additionally, changes in the heart function can be clearly recognized using the heart rate and ECG chart.”

“We now have a model for a superior organ that can be used to test the influence of artificial nanoparticles,” Nießner explains further. “The next thing we want to do is to find out why some nanoparticles influence the heart function, while others do not influence the heart at all.” Both manufacturing process and shape may play an important role. Hence, the scientists plan further studies to examine the surfaces of different types of nanoparticles and their interactions with the cells of the cardiac wall.

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