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Sugar Molecules Discovered Around Sun-Like Star | Search for Life & Alien Planets | Spa... - 0 views

  • The young star
  • , is part of a binary
  • similar mass to the sun and is located about 400 light-years away
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  • sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space
  • according to the researchers, this is the first time they have been spotted so close to a sun-like star
  • the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.
  • glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee
  • found the sugar molecules using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile
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Dextrose rub helps newborns with low blood sugar | Body & Brain | Science News - 0 views

  • Newborns with low blood sugar face the prospect of a trip to the intensive care unit and intravenous infusions of glucose
  • rubbing a sweet gel onto the insides of babies’ cheeks
  • Low blood sugar in newborns, or neonatal hypoglycemia, occurs when the tiny body needs more glucose to meet energy needs than is available in the bloodstream
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  • Prolonged hypoglycemia risks neurological injury.
  • Low blood glucose shows up in 5 to 15 percent of otherwise healthy newborns as measured by blood tests
  • Doctors typically don’t run the analysis on every newborn
  • If they spot low blood sugar symptoms such as poor color, seizures, irritability, lethargy, jittery behavior and a lack of interest in feeding, doctors are more likely to call for the blood test
  • many infants with low blood glucose don’t have such symptoms
  • report designates at-risk infants as those who are born preterm, have diabetic mothers, or are either large or small for their gestational age
  • new study, the researchers identified 237 apparently healthy newborns who had one of those risk factors or who were feeding poorly
  • Half of the babies were randomly assigned to get a gel made of dextrose, a form of glucose, rubbed on the inner cheeks up to six times over 48 hours; the rest received a placebo gel
  • During the following week, 30 babies getting the placebo gel were placed in intensive care for hypoglycemia while only 16 of those getting the dextrose gel needed such care for the condition
  • Dextrose had been tried in the 1990s as an oral rub for infants but wasn’t fully tested or put into widespread use
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New energy source for future medical implants: sugar - 0 views

  • This silicon wafer consists of glucose fuel cells of varying sizes; the largest is 64 by 64 mm
  • MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose
  • This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again
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  • strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current
  • The idea of a glucose fuel cell is not new
  • In the 1970s, scientists showed they could power a pacemaker with a glucose fuel cell, but the idea was abandoned in favor of lithium-ion batteries, which could provide significantly more power per unit area than glucose fuel cells
  • glucose fuel cells also utilized enzymes that proved to be impractical for long-term implantation in the body, since they eventually ceased to function efficiently
  • The new twist
  • is that it is fabricated from silicon, using the same technology used to make semiconductor electronic chips
  • has no biological components
  • consists of a platinum catalyst that strips electrons from glucose
  • mimicking the activity of cellular enzymes that break down glucose to generate ATP
  • So far, the fuel cell can generate up to hundreds of microwatts — enough to power an ultra-low-power and clinically useful neural implant.
  • in theory, the glucose fuel cell could get all the sugar it needs from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathes the brain and protects it from banging into the skull
  • are very few cells in the CSF
  • There is also significant glucose in the CSF, which does not generally get used by the body
  • only a small fraction of the available power is utilized by the glucose fuel cell, the impact on the brain’s function would likely be small.
  • the work is a good step toward developing implantable medical devices that don’t require external power sources.
  • ultra-low-power electronics, having pioneered such designs for cochlear implants and brain implants
  • combined with such ultra-low-power electronics, can enable brain implants or other implants to be completely self-powered
  • group has worked on all aspects of implantable brain-machine interfaces and neural prosthetics, including recording from nerves, stimulating nerves
  • decoding nerve signals and communicating wirelessly with implants
  • designed to record electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex, which is responsible for controlling movement
  • data is amplified and converted into a digital signal so that computers
  • can analyze it and determine which patterns of brain activity produce movement
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A new way to lose weight? Study shows that changes to gut microbiota may play role in w... - 0 views

  • by colonizing mice with the altered microbial community, the mice were able to maintain a lower body fat, and lose weight – about 20% as much as they would if they underwent surgery
  • New research
  • has found that the gut microbes of mice undergo drastic changes following gastric bypass surgery
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  • In some ways we were biasing the results against weight loss
  • the mice used in the study hadn't been given a high-fat, high-sugar diet to increase their weight beforehand
  • The question is whether we might have seen a stronger effect if they were on a different diet
  • finding ways to manipulate microbial populations to mimic those effects could become a valuable new tool to address obesity
  • study suggests that the specific effects of gastric bypass on the microbiota contribute to its ability to cause weight loss
  • need to learn a good deal more about the mechanisms by which a microbial population changed by gastric bypass exert its effects,
  • then we need to learn if we can produce these effects – either the microbial changes or the associated metabolic changes – without surgery
  • it may be years before they could be replicated in humans, and that such microbial changes shouldn't be viewed as a way to lose
  • pounds without going to the gym
  • the technique may one day offer hope to dangerously obese people who want to lose weight without going through the trauma of surgery.
  • may not be that we will have a magic pill that will work for everyone who's slightly overweight
  • But if we can, at a minimum, provide some alternative to gastric bypass surgery that produces similar effects, it would be a major advance
  • While there had been hints that the microbes in the gut might change after bypass surgery, the speed and extent of the change came as a surprise to the research team
  • In earlier experiments, researchers had shown that the guts of both lean and obese mice are populated by varying amounts of two types of bacteria
  • When mice undergo gastric bypass surgery, however, it "resets the whole picture
  • those changes occurred within a week of the surgery, and weren't short-lived – the altered gut microbial community remained stable for months afterward
  • the results may hold out the hope for weight loss without surgery
  • future studies are needed to understand exactly what is behind the weight loss seen in mice
  • A major gap in our knowledge is the underlying mechanism linking microbes to weight loss
  • certain microbes
  • found at higher abundance after surgery,
  • think those are good targets for beginning to understand what's taking place
  • the answer may not be the specific types of microbes, but a by-product they excrete.
  • In addition to changes in the microbes found in the gut, researchers found changes in the concentration of certain short-chain fatty acids
  • Other studies
  • have suggested that those molecules may be critical in signaling to the host to speed up metabolism, or not to store excess calories as fat.
  • hope to continue to explore those questions
  • such studies will allow us to understand how host/microbial interactions in general can influence the outcome of a given diet
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Dog sniffs out grammar | Psychology | Science News - 0 views

  • Chaser isn’t just a 9-year-old border collie
  • She’s a grammar hound.
  • In experiments directed by her owner
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  • Chaser demonstrated her grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”
  • The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions
  • Throughout the first three years of Chaser’s life, Pilley and a colleague trained the dog to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name
  • researchers also taught Chaser the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions
  • Chaser learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.
  • Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear
  • suspects that
  • first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory. Then
  • held that information in mind while deciding which of two objects to bring to which of two other objects.
  • Chaser started sentence training at age 7. She stood facing a pair of objects she knew by name
  • An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.
  • After several weeks of training, two experiments conducted
  • had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair
  • read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training
  • To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly
  • student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”
  • In 28 of 40 attempts, Chaser grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.
  • Another experiment tested Chaser’s ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first
  • with two objects behind her at the other end of the bed
  • After hearing a command, Chaser turned around and nabbed one of the objects.
  • then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials
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Yo-yo dieting can hurt the heart, study finds - 0 views

  • women who lose weight and gain it back again may be increasing their risk for heart disease
  • Although cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides and blood sugar all improve with weight loss, with weight regain they all return to pre-diet levels and, in some cases, to even higher levels
  • r postmenopausal women considering weight loss, maintaining weight loss is just as important as losing weight
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  • Even partial weight regain is associated with worsened diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors
  • studied more than 100 postmenopausal
  • took part in a five-month weight-loss program
  • continued to monitor the women for a year
  • During the weight-loss program the women lost an average of 25 pounds
  • After a year, two-thirds of the women had regained at least four pounds, on average regaining about 70 percent of the weight they had lost
  • Women who regained 4.4 pounds or more in the year following the weight-loss intervention had several worsened cardiovascular and diabetes risk factors
  • women who maintained their weight loss a year later managed to preserve most of the benefits
  • this study highlights the importance of not just losing weight, but the need to develop effective and enduring strategies so that this weight loss can be successfully maintained long term
  • People should be focusing on being healthy, not skinny,
  • create strategies for reaching and maintaining a healthy weight throughout their lifetime
  • Start with simple changes such as swapping seltzer for soda, keeping a daily food record, adding a salad to lunch and substituting a second vegetable for half the starch at dinner
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Scientists study rare dinosaur skin fossil to determine skin colour for first time - 0 views

  • this is only the third three-dimensional dinosaur skin specimen ever found worldwide
  • One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years.
  • the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grande Prairie, Alberta.
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  • One question is whether the hadrosaur skin was green or grey, like most dinosaurs are portrayed, or was it a completely different colour
  • the CLS to look at unique structures called melanosomes, cellular organelles the contain pigments that control the color of an animal's skin.
  • "If we are able to observe the melanosomes and their shape, it will be the first time pigments have been identified in the skin of a dinosaur
  • There has been research that proved the colour of some dinosaur feathers, but never skin
  • Using light at the CLS mid-infrared (Mid-IR) beamline, Barbi and CLS scientists are also looking for traces of organic and inorganic elements that could help determine the hadrosaur's diet and why the skin sample was preserved almost intact
  • the sample is placed in the path of the infrared beam and light reflects off of it.
  • , chemical bonds of certain compounds will create different vibrations
  • For example, proteins, sugars and fats still found in the skin will create unique vibrational frequencies that scientists can measure
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First Evidence of Life in Antarctic Subglacial Lake : The Crux - 0 views

  • The search continues for life in subglacial Lake Whillans, 2,600 feet below the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—but a thrilling preliminary result has detected signs of life
  • At 6:20am on January 28, four people in sterile white Tyvek suits tended to a winch winding cable onto the drill platform
  • One person knocked frost off the cable as it emerged from the ice borehole a few feet below
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  • a gray plastic vessel, as long as a baseball bat, filled with water from Lake Whillans, half a mile below.
  • The bottle was hurried into a 40-foot cargo container outfitted as a laboratory on skis
  • Some of the lake water was squirted into bottles of media in order to grow whatever microbes might inhabit the lake
  • cultures could require weeks to produce results
  • When lake water was viewed under a microscope, cells were seen: their tiny bodies glowed green in response to DNA-sensitive dye. It was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake.
  • (A Russian team has reported that two types of bacteria were found in water from subglacial Lake Vostok, but DNA sequences matched those of bacteria that are known to live inside kerosene—causing the scientists to conclude that those bacteria came from kerosene drilling fluid used to bore the hole, and not from Lake Vostok itself
  • In order to conclusively demonstrate that Lake Whillans harbors life, the researchers will need to complete more time-consuming experiments showing that the cells actually grow
  • dead cells can sometimes show up under a microscope with DNA-sensitive
  • weeks or months will pass before it is known whether these cells represent known types of microbes, or something never seen before
  • t a couple of things seem likely. Most of those microbes probably subsist by chewing on rocks. And despite being sealed beneath 2,600 feet of ice, they probably have a steady supply of oxygen.
  • oxygen comes from water melting off the base of the ice sheet—maybe a few penny thicknesses of ice per year
  • When you melt ice, you’re liberating the air bubbles [trapped in that ice
  • That’s 20 percent oxygen
  • , lake bacteria could live on commonly occurring pyrite minerals that contain iron and sulfur
  • would obtain energy by using oxygen to essentially “burn” that iron and sulfur (analogous to the way that animals use oxygen to slowly burn sugars and fats).
  • The half mile of glacial ice sitting atop Lake Whillans is quite pure—derived from snow that fell onto Antarctica thousands of years ago.
  • contains only one-hundredth the level of dissolved minerals that are seen in a clear mountain creek, or in tap water from a typical city
  • a sensor lowered down the borehole this week showed that dissolved minerals were far more abundant in the lake itself
  • The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on
  • Microbes, in other words, might well be munching on minerals under the ice sheet
  • will take months or years to unravel this picture
  • will perform experiments to see whether microbes taken from the lake metabolize iron, sulfur, or other components of minerals
  • will analyze the DNA of those microbes to see whether they’re related to rock-chewing bacteria that are already known to science.
  • Antarctica isn’t the only place in the solar system where water sits concealed in the dark beneath thick ice. Europa and Enceladus (moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively) are also thought to harbor oceans of liquid water. What is learned at Lake Whillans could shed light on how best to look for life in these other places
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Glooko app offers diabetics easier self-checks - 0 views

  • Glooko helps diabetics check their blood sugar daily. Glooko is a Palo Alto startup that presents its core product as two items: a free-to-download logbook available at iTunes and a fee-charged cable, sold separately, at $39.95 from Amazon
  • MeterSync cable device. You plug it into the meter and the phone, and that is all.
  • the record-keeping features are able to carry information beyond meter readings. The user can generate a more informative record of the condition, by noting down varied factors that affect blood glucose.
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  • Information from the logbook can then be emailed or faxed as a 14-day summary to the doctor
  • The patient can mark off notes about whether the reading was done before or after a meal, the number of carbs consumed, or can click on a predefined list of lifestyle factors
  • nearly 26 million adults and children in the United States -- or 8.3 percent of the population -- have diabetes.
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