Monthly Archives: September 2015

Researchers Reveal Mechanism that Impairs Blood Flow with Aging

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Erika Boerman, PhD

The Physiological Society’s Journal of Physiology recently published a study led by Erika Boerman, identifying an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction.

 

 

With the world’s elderly population expected to double by 2050, understanding cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, is often highlighted and now University of Missouri researchers have identified an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction, a finding that could lead to future treatments.

“Aging affects everyone and causes changes throughout our bodies,” said Erika Boerman, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology at the MU School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “We found that older arteries had a significantly lower number of sensory nerves in the tissues surrounding them and they were less sensitive to an important neurotransmitter responsible for dilation.”

Boerman’s study focused on mesenteric arteries ― a type of artery that supplies blood to the small intestines ― of mice that were 4 months and 24 months old. These ages correspond to humans in their early 20s and mid-60s, respectively. Without stimulation, the diameter of the blood vessels of both younger and older mice was approximately the same. However, when stimulated to induce dilation, differences between the age groups became apparent.

“The younger arteries dilated as expected,” Boerman said. “However, when we performed the same stimulation to the arteries of older mice, the vessels did not dilate. When we examined the presence of sensory nerves, we noted a 30 percent decrease in the amount surrounding the older arteries compared to the younger arteries.”

Additionally, the researchers found that even when purposefully exposing older mesenteric arteries to defined amounts of the neurotransmitter calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP, the arteries’ ability to dilate was greatly reduced.

“Poor neurotransmitter function and a reduced presence of sensory nerves surrounding older vessels lead to age-related dysfunction of mesenteric arteries,” Boerman said. “The importance of this discovery is that if we can identify why this happens to mesenteric arteries, it may be possible to prevent the same thing from happening to other blood vessels throughout the body.”

More research is needed to understand why aging affects sensory nerve distribution and neurotransmitter performance. However, identifying this new mechanism of vascular dysfunction opens the door for future studies that could eventually lead to the treatment of health issues such as stroke and cardiovascular disease.

The study was published in The Physiological Society’s Journal of Physiology.

Blood Vessels Can Actually Get Better With Age

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Although the causes of many age-related diseases remain unknown, oxidative stress has been linked to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases including diabetes, hypertension and age-related cancers.

However, researchers at the University of Missouri recently found that aging actually offered significant protection against oxidative stress, suggesting that aging may trigger an adaptive response to counteract the effects of oxidative stress on blood vessels.

“Molecules known as reactive oxygen species, or ROS, play an important role in regulating cellular function,” said Steven Segal, at the MU School of Medicine and senior author of the study. “However, the overproduction of ROS can help create a condition referred to as oxidative stress, which can alter the function of cells and interfere with their growth and reproduction.”

To understand the effects of aging on the function of blood vessels when they are exposed to oxidative stress, Segal’s team studied the inner lining, or endothelium, of small resistance arteries. Resistance arteries are important to cardiovascular function because they regulate both the amount of blood flow into tissues and systemic blood pressure.

“We studied the endothelium from resistance arteries of male mice at 4 months and 24 months of age, which correspond to humans in their early 20s and mid-60s,” Segal said. “We first studied the endothelium under resting conditions and in the absence of oxidative stress. We then simulated oxidative stress by adding hydrogen peroxide.

When oxidative stress was induced for 20 minutes, the endothelial cells of the younger mice had abnormal increases in calcium when compared to the endothelial cells of the older mice. This finding is important because when calcium gets too high, cells can be severely damaged.”

When oxidative stress was extended to 60 minutes, Segal’s team found that the death of endothelial cells in the younger mice was seven times greater than those from the older mice. These findings indicated that with advancing age, the endothelium had adapted to preserve cellular integrity when confronted with oxidative stress.

“This finding contrasts with the generally held belief that the functional integrity of the endothelium is compromised as we age. Our study suggests that blood vessels adapt during the aging process to regulate ROS and minimize cell death when subjected to an abrupt increase in oxidative stress. This adaptation helps to ensure that the arteries of older individuals can still do their jobs.”

The study was published in the Physiological Society’s Journal of Physiology.

Selena Gomez Uploads Nude Photo on Facebook

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Selena Gomez has silently updated her Facebook page with a nude picture sending shock waves across the globe, especially for her fans.

 

Star of “Wizards of Waverly Place”, Selena has been a symbol of deceny for long and her break up with boyfriend Justin Biber has hurt more of their fans than the couple themselves who have carved out their own niche area of expertise and fame.

The nude picture uploaded on September 8 on Facebook has already received more than 1,956,794 likes and 15,160 have shared the page. However, some comments were outrageous, while others just applaud the beauty behind the photo.

Arif Munir was first to compare her to another Miley Cyrus on the cards while Gyzelle Rodriguez wanted to be more artistic in his appreciation when he said: “Girl! You are beautiful! There is a huge difference between miley naked and selena naked. Its called class. Selena brings the art out of the female form. Miley brings out vulgarity.”

Laser Breakthrough Could Speed up Self-Driving Cars on to Roads

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Google’s self-driving car relies on a roof-mounted LIDAR sensor to see the world around it.

 

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley say they’ve developed a new breed of laser technology that could significantly reduce the size, weight, cost, and power consumption of LIDARs, potentially leading to a much broader range of autonomous vehicles.

LIDAR is a portmanteau of “light” and “radar.” In essence, these sensors monitor their surroundings by shining a light on an object and measuring the time needed for it to bounce back. They work well enough, but they aren’t without their drawbacks. Today’s self-driving cars typically use LIDARs that are quite large and expensive. Google, for instance, used $80,000 LIDARs with its early designs. “Most vehicles in the DARPA urban challenge put half-a-million-dollars worth of sensors on the car,” says Daniela Rus, the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, referring to the government-backed competition that helped spawn Google’s autonomous vehicles.

“This is important for unmanned vehicles on land and in the sky,” says Weijian Yang, one of the researchers behind the project.

Yang’s work is part of a wider effort to refine LIDARs and build a cheaper breed of autonomous cars and other vehicles. A German company called SICK already offers a LIDAR that sells for less than $10,000, and researchers from MIT and the National Research Foundation of Singapore, including Rus, recently built a self-driving golf cart using no more than four of these units (see video below).

As LIDAR technology improves—and as we improve the algorithms that process the data gathered from these sensors—we’ll bring autonomy not just to cars but smaller contraptions, including golf carts, robots, and flying drones.

Anatomy of a LIDAR

A LIDAR operates by repeatedly changing the wavelength of a laser, so that the sensor can properly identify the light as it bounces off an object and returns to the sensor, and such wavelength changes require the precise manipulation of a mirror—or sometimes multiple mirrors. Typically, a separate electrical device moves these mirrors to and fro. But at Berkeley, Yang and his team developed a new option. They can move the mirrors with the laser itself.

“You don’t need an external electrical source,” says Yang, the lead author on the paper describing the technology, which was published today in the journal Scientific Reports. “The laser can change the position of the mirror automatically. The light has some kind of force.”

The result: they don’t need that outside electrical device, the sensor is smaller and lighter, and it consumes less power. The laser can be integrated with the mirror. The whole device can squeeze into a few hundred square micrometers of space. And it can be powered with the equivalent AA battery.

A More Accurate Picture

According to Yang, this same technology could improve optical coherence tomography, or OCT, which is used in medical imaging equipment. But the most intriguing possibilities lie in the world of robotics. Among other things, Yang explains, Berkeley’s method allows lasers to change wavelengths more frequently—one microsecond versus 10 or so milliseconds—and that means a LIDAR could potentially take more readings, more quickly. In other words, it could provide a more accurate picture of its surroundings.

Emilio Frazzoli, an MIT researcher who worked alongside Rus on those self-driving golf carts, says that smaller, cheaper LIDARs aren’t essential to the near future of self-driving cars. “Right now, these sensors are still expensive, but they’re becoming better and cheaper, and I don’t see them as a bottleneck,” he says, pointing out that even with today’s sensors, the price of a self-driving car compares favorably to how much you’d speed for a standard car and a full-time driver.

But he says that better sensors are certainly welcome, particularly for other applications. Indeed, Yang believes that his work could help drive the creation of additional autonomous vehicles and robots, including contraptions the size of a smartphone. In the years to come, more machines will have eyes than you might expect.

Crocodiles Set to Face Extinction, Says Australian Researcher

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An estuarine crocodile, also known as a “saltie”.

Many of the world’s 27 species of crocodylians will soon be either totally or locally extinct due to human population expansion and intensive land-use for agriculture depleting the water bodies, which provide succour to crocs, said a University of Queensland researcher.

Emeritus Professor Gordon Grigg of UQ says the fact that these reptiles had survived millions of years was no good owing to current rate of human expansion and encroachment of natural resources. “The current human population level and its magnitude and rate of resource consumption are unprecedented,” Professor Grigg said.

Only those crocs living in remote wetland habitats in which humans see no benefit may survive into the future, he said. Some crocodylians might have already become extinct if not for active conservation management undertaken in the second half of the 20th Century.

“For some species, the incentive for conserving them has been the commercial value of their hides, but that is dependent upon its use in high fashion garments and accessories, and that is a somewhat fragile foundation,” he said.

On flip side, the rising temperatures and sea levels may turn a more positive note for crocodylians, as it may create more habitat that will be suitable for any species to survive the human onslaught, he said wryly.

The largest living crocodiles, the estuarine or saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), are found in Northern Australia and can grow to six metres and weigh more than 900 kilograms.

Professor Grigg said estuarine crocodiles, also known as Indo-Pacific crocodiles or “salties”, were one of the luckier species because human populations across Australia’s north were unlikely to increase significantly in the next few decades.  They might be among the survivors.

Professor Grigg and illustrator and biologist David Kirshner, in their recent book, Biology and Evolution of Crocodylians, reviewed the biology of the crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials, and also discusses the great diversity of their gigantic extinct ancestors, some of which were probably warm-blooded.

Gaza May Become ‘Uninhabitable’ in 5 Years: UNCTAD

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Palestinian families take shelter at an UNRWA school in Gaza City (13 July 2014). File Photo: UNRWA/Shareef Sarhan

Living conditions in Gaza are so bad that they’ve been described as “less than human” and potentially uninhabitable by 2020, the UN has said sending out warning signals, which have emanated from the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, in its report into the Palestinian economy.

In addition to severe crises linked to water and electricity shortages, the UN agency says that Gaza’s 1.8 million residents have yet to recover from the destruction of last year’s conflict with Israel.

Three wars in six years and eight years of economic blockade have been blamed for terrible living conditions in the Territories Occupied by Israel, the UN trade and development agency (UNCTAD) said Tuesday.

In its latest report into Gaza and the West Bank, UNCTAD experts warn that development is not merely hindered, but reversed. In fact, the figures show that for the first time since 2006, the Palestinian economy has gone into recession.

The conflict in 2014 was particularly damaging, with whole areas of Gaza still flattened by attacks. So says UNCTAD’s Mahmoud Elkhafif.

“The fact that electricity is not enough, that a number of hospitals have been destroyed, the fact that there is no drinking water enough, it’s just what any rational human would (not) doubt what’s going to happen. I mean, we had had a study before the destruction of 2014 indicating that Gaza won’t be liveable in 2020, it’s not that things stayed as they were in 2020 but they got much, much worse in 2014.”

Israel is criticised for withholding almost USD $700 million of import tax revenue from the Palestinian authorities in the first four months of the year.

According to the UN agency it’s the sixth time Israel has withheld the monies since 1997, which are far and away the main source of public revenue in the West Bank and Gaza.

In another sign of the deteriorating conditions on the ground, UNCTAD said that in the year 2000, 72,000 people depended on food aid, but now that number has risen to almost a million. And in Gaza, unemployment is as high as 80 per cent, the UN agency said.

 

 

UN Seeks Humanitarian Intervention to Help Syrian Refugees

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Razor wire surrounds Debrecen centre for asylum-seekers in eastern Hungary. Parts of the centre are “open” but the facility also contains a unit for detaining asylum-seekers considered at risk of absconding. Photo: IRIN

In the wake of the grim discovery of the bodies of more than 70 people inside a truck abandoned near Austria’s border with Hungary, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the world to come together to provide comprehensive responses to migration issues, including tackling smugglers and resolving ongoing conflicts, among other root causes.

“I am horrified and heartbroken at the latest loss of lives of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean and Europe, declared the Secretary-General following the discovery of the bodies in the abandoned vehicle, and upon hearing reports that many of the victims were Syrian asylum seekers – including children.

Meanwhile in Geneva, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Melissa Fleming said, “this tragedy shows people smugglers have no regard for human life and are only after profit. It also underscores the desperation of people seeking protection or a new life in Europe.”

Austrian police say that they believe the truck came from Hungary and entered Austria on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, and that the victims might have been dead for one or two days. Their identity is still unknown but it is presumed that they were being transported by smugglers.

After establishing that there were no survivors, the police closed the truck and moved it to another location for further investigations.

UNHCR expressed its hope that this incident will result in strong cooperation among European police forces, intelligence agencies and international organisations to crack down on the smuggling trade while putting in place measures to protect and care for victims.

Ms. Fleming reiterated UNHCR’s call to European countries to approach the refugee crisis “in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation and to provide those seeking safety in Europe with safe legal alternatives – including resettlement or humanitarian admission programmes, flexible visa policies and family reunification – to dangerous irregular voyages.”

Every day last week, the Hungarian border police intercepted more than 2,000 people crossing the border from Serbia. On Wednesday, police reported 3,241 new arrivals, including 700 children – the highest number in a single day so far this year.

Syrian refugees constitute the majority of the asylum-seekers, many of whom are women and children. They travel in large groups of over 200 – walking along rail tracks or crawling under barbed wire – as work continues on a 175 kilometres long wall at the Hungarian-Serbian border.

 

With a maximum capacity of 5,000 people, Hungary’s four reception centres are overcrowded, causing long waits and further exacerbating asylum-seekers’ angst. The Hungarian police do not have social workers or enough interpreters in Arabic, Dari, Pashto and Urdu, which makes communication difficult.

According to the latest official statistics, so far this year more than 140,000 people have sought asylum in Hungary, compared to 42,000 people last year. Most of those lodging asylum applications are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and they include some 7,000 unaccompanied children.

 

 

Kurdi Image: UNICEF Seeks Urgent Succour to Syrian Refugees, Children

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On 26 August 2015, a distressed child rests over the shoulder of the man carrying him, in the town of Gevgelija, on the border with Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Photo: UNICEF/Tomislav Georgiev

As the “heart-breaking” image of a drowned refugee boy who washed up on a beach in Turkey ricocheted around the world on social media, along with equally painful images of children lying suffocated in the backs of trucks crossing borders and being passed over barbed wire fences by desperate parents, Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today made a powerful plea for action to protect migrant and refugee children.

“It is not enough for the world to be shocked by these images. Shock must be matched by action,” declared the UNICEF chief.

In a statement issued by the agency, Mr. Lake advocated that all decisions regarding the child migrant and refugee crisis in Europe be guided by the best interests of the children involved, and that measures be taken to ensure they receive adequate health care, food, emotional support, education, shelter and protection.

UNICEF estimates that at least a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of people who have sought refuge in Europe are children, many of whom have fled the conflict in Syria.

Some 2,500 people have died or gone missing this year while attempting the crossing to Europe.

“Our hearts go out today to the families who have lost children – off the coasts, on the shores, and along the roadsides of Europe,” said Lake. “As the debates on policies proceed, we must never lose sight of the deeply human nature of this crisis. Nor of its scale,” he added.

“And we should never forget what lies behind so many of the stories of families seeking sanctuary in Europe: terrible conflicts such as that in Syria, which already has forced some 2 million children to flee their country. Only an end to these conflicts can bring an end to the misery of so many.”

Muhammad Yunus Opens Narayana Hridayalaya Hospital in Mysore

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Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Mohammad Yunus, who was in Mysore to open a 200-bed multi-specialty hospital for the working class on Friday, said the need for social entepreneurship is the new call of the day.

The 200-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya will have only general wards and taking cue from Yunus, NH founders have set up a hospital simple and pro-poor in ambience.

“I had heard about the revolution Yunus had created when I was working in Kolkata,” said Dr Devi Shetty, founder of Narayana Health. To make poor people who get scared when they go to corporate hospitals and instead squat on the floor, the new hospital will be friendly for all, insisted Dr Shetty.

Muhammad Yunus at a special summit hosted by the University of Salford.

Known for his innovative pro-poor model of empowering women in 1976, Dr Yunus, an economic professor, founded Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank and went on to win Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The first microfinance lending bank has benefitted more than 8.5 million women.

When women in his country got into microfinancing, it changed women’s marriage equation too, he said. “When I started the bank, I was clear that 50% of our borrowers must be women. Now rural women have money and their husbands borrow from them,” he told TOI in an interview.

“Money means power. It has given them confidence. And has helped them in their children’s education. Worldwide wherever I go, I see young doctors and engineers who tell me that they hail from the villages of Bangladesh and were assisted by Grameen Bank. That gives me immense satisfaction,” said Yunus.

His advice amid increasing criticism against misadventure of microfinance model in Andhra Pradesh was to be a social entrepreneur. Business does not mean money-making, he reiterated.

“Dissociate selfishness. I delinked business from money-making. Social entrepreneurs can touch the lives of many. It’s not rocket science to create a business model,” Yunus said.

Missing Mobile Phone? Don’t Let it Take Over as Phobia!

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Apple’s iPhone 6

Call it missing mobile phone phobia or nomophobia or just another day of anxiety when you miss your device at home or office.

Scientists from Iowa State University have identified four dimensions of the phobia after a survey conducted on participants, who responded on a scale of one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree).

More to do with the fear of losing connectedness with friends and family or not being able to access information, the fear of remaining incommunicado even for few hours haunts majority of them.

Initially the researchers interviewed nine students and based on their responses, developed a questionnaire which was given to 301 students.

Research student Caglar Yildirim at the Iowa State University (ISU) and Ana-Paula Correia, an associate professor in ISU’s School of Education finally came out with a set of four dimensions to detect the most-prevalent modern-day phenomenon that is often taking the shape of phobia.

Based on the score, the researchers said the higher scores corresponded to greater nomophobia severity, and vice versa. The team findings have been published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Here are the sample questions in the questionnaire:

— “I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone”

— “I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my smartphone when I wanted to do so”.

“Being unable to get the news on my smartphone would make me nervous” or
“I would be annoyed if I could not use my smartphone and/or its capabilities when I wanted to do so”.

— “Running out of battery in my smartphone would scare me”

— “If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic” and
“If I did not have a data signal or could not connect to Wi-Fi, then I would constantly check to see if I had a signal or could find a Wi-Fi network”.

Here are some typical answers from the participants:

— “If I could not use my smartphone, I would be afraid of getting stranded somewhere”.

— “If I could not check my smartphone for a while, I would feel a desire to check it”.

To a question as to how they would react if they did not have their smartphone with them, they responded with statements like:

— “I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and/or friends”

— “I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.”

Karnataka Farmers’ Association Calls for Bandh Over Farmers’ Suicides

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The sugarcane farmers’ associations in Karnataka have called for a bandh on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2015 which may see some key areas of northern and northwestern Karnataka closed, while Bangalore and southern Karnataka districts will remain unhit due to it.

While it is unlikely to hit normal life in Bangalore and across Karnataka, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) officials said there will be no disruption in bus services tomorrow.

Otherwise, autos and taxis will run as usual in Bangalore. Many schools remain closed on Saturday but those on six-day a week schedule may opt to remain open, except in those districts where bandh will be forced upon them by activists.

All hospitals, medical shops will remain open.

The bandh was called by Karnataka State Sugarcane Growers’ Association (KSSGA) in protest against Karnataka government’s apathy to the rising farmer suicides in the state.

KSSGA president Kurubur Shanthakumar said the state-wide bandh was the culmination of one-month old strike going on in the state by farmers. “In order to put pressure on the authorities, the association will observe a bandh and also be part of the agitation till the demand is met,” he told the New Indian Express.

The farmers’ demands include waiving off of crop loans from nationalised and cooperative banks as the drought situation in the state has adversely affected agricultural production. The farmers are also demanding a Vidarbha-like Package of Rs.10,000 crore for Karnataka.

Other demands include compensation of families of farmers who committed suicide to the extent to Rs. 10 lakh, raising issue price of sugarcane, implement the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project, that was stalled in 2002 due to objections raised by Goa. The project was to provide drinking water to Belgaum, Dharwad and Gadag districts.

Apart from Sept. 5 bandh, the KSSGA also plans to hold a rally in Bangalore on September 7 and also stage a dharna in front of the Chief Minister’s residence. While no political parties were allowed to attend their protest, Shanthakumar said, Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) has extended its support to the protest.

India Internet Users Now More Than US Population Put Together

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India’s current Internet users have crossed 352 million with the liberal addition of 52 million in the first half of 2015 by IAMAI, whose report is apparently based on estimates and not on empirical data.

Otherwise, the number is overwhelming as it is more than the entire population of the US put together. As of 2014, the US population was 319 million.

The mobile and Internet research body said in its January release that its estimates show mobile users by June 2015 would reach 213 million and now that the first half of the year is over, the sequel release has put forward the exact figure of 213 million, without explaining the methodology.

In January, IAMAI said, “The number of mobile internet users in India is expected to reach 213 million by June 2015.” In August, IAMAI  report listed the same figure of 213 million, raising eye-brows as to how the exact figure was reached.

On the sideslines of the report, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said it took more than 10 years to move from 10 million to 100 million in India but now the time period has shrunk to just 3 years to jump from 100 to 200 million.

Afterwards, in just one year, the number rose to 300 million, thanks to mobile phone users increasig in number rapidly, said a release by IAMAI.