SCIENCE NEWS - Decreasing HIV infection risk through Breast feeding

Mothers infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, face a dilemma when it comes to feeding baby: Because some of their virus can be shed in breast milk, babies risk becoming infected as they drink it.

Two research teams are now investigating a germ-warfare strategy to treat such vulnerable infants. They would supplement breast milk with HIV-quashing bacteria. These beneficial microbes can’t guarantee a child won’t become infected, but they could greatly diminish the chance this will happen, says HIV specialist Ruth Connor of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H. They reported isolating certain lactic acid bacteria from the breast milk of healthy women that substantially inhibit the growth and infectivity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1, or HIV-1. b. In test-tube studies, all 38 strains of bacteria tested — representing 15 different species — showed some inhibition of HIV.

Lin Tao, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Oral Biology, has spent the better part of a decade working on a probiotic treatment for infants whose mothers are infected with HIV. The strain his group is studying does far better than others but still falls short of wiping out all HIV that might enter an infant’s gut. That’s why his group’s new strategy is to include a second probiotic, one that can bolster an infant’s immune system. The first bacterium reduces the number of virus particles that survive in the infant gut. The second bug, by enhancing immunity, increases the threshold number of viruses needed to cause infection, Tao says.

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SCIENCE NEWS - A new vaccine-delivery system with 100 tiny dissolvable needles in a Band-Aid–like patch

The worst thing about getting a vaccination is the big, scary hypodermic needle. So researchers have invented a new vaccine-delivery system that replaces the large single needle with 100 tiny dissolvable ones embedded in a Band-Aid–like patch. 

Once the microneedles pierce the skin, they dissolve into the surrounding bodily fluid, releasing the vaccine in the process. The whole thing takes anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes, says Sullivan, its lead developer, on July 18 in Nature Medicine.

Since the patch just needs to be slapped on and can be stored at room temperature, medical training and careful handling aren’t required. People could pick up the patches from the pharmacy or even get them in the mail and vaccinate themselves, says Sullivan, who now works for medical device manufacturer Becton, Dickinson and Company. The researchers say that the patch could be used to replace a number of needle vaccinations, including the annual flu shot.

SO YOU CAN VACCINATE YOURSELF without going to a doctor!!! Sounds exciting!!

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SCIENCE NEWS - Pseudogenes are no more vestigial.

Pseudogenes, are defective copies of protein-encoding genes. Many pseudogenes can make RNA copies of the instructions contained within their DNA, but have flaws that prevent the next step in the process, making proteins. Because pseudogenes don’t make proteins, most biologists have thought of these genes as vestigial copies of functioning genes. But a new study, published in the June 24 Nature, shows that pseudogenes aren't dead yet, and may in fact be important regulators of their protein-producing twins. This discovery that pseudogenes may indeed have a function could transform biology, says Pier Paolo Pandolfi, a cancer geneticist and biologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School who led the study.

In particular, Pandolfi’s group found that RNA from a pseudogene called PTENP1 acts as a decoy by drawing tiny regulatory molecules called microRNAs away from the pseudogene’s protein-producing counterpart, a powerful anticancer gene called PTEN. MicroRNAs are small pieces of RNA that bind messenger RNAs, also known as mRNAs. MicroRNA binding either causes the mRNA to be degraded or blocks protein production, effectively quashing activity of the gene. Many kinds of microRNAs can bind to the PTEN mRNA and reduce its ability to make protein. That could be disastrous, because cells are very sensitive to levels of PTEN protein. Lowering levels of the protein just 20 percent from normal is enough to cause precancerous changes in mice, the researchers previously discovered.

That’s where PTENP1 comes in. The pseudogene looks just like PTEN, except for a mutation that prevents it from making protein. Pandolfi reasoned that the microRNAs attracted to PTEN wouldn’t be able to tell the twin genes apart and that some microRNAs might go after the pseudogene, thereby protecting PTEN from too much attention. When researchers tested that idea by making more PTENP1 mRNA in cells, levels of PTEN protein increased, indicating that the pseudogene was acting as a sponge to mop up microRNAs that would otherwise reduce PTEN production. Removing PTENP1 from cells had the opposite effect — with nothing to distract the microRNAs, the regulatory molecules latched on to PTEN and squelched protein production.

The researchers also found that tumors from colon cancer patients were sometimes missing PTENP1, indicating that the pseudogene could help protect against tumors. A cancer-causing gene called KRAS also has a pseudogene, KRAS1P, that may be involved in stimulating tumor growth.

SCIENCE NEWS- How the leopard got its spots and the zebra its stripes!!!

British mathematician Alan Turing was one of the first scientists to explain how color patterns might form. Biologists are beginning to pinpoint the molecular mechanisms animals use to deck themselves out with colorful swirls, stripes, spots and dots.

A team led by Sean B. Carroll, a developmental and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, recently found molecular evidence that preexisting patterns are important in directing color patterns to form. The researchers studied a species of fruit fly called Drosophila guttifera, which sports 16 black spots and four gray shadows on each wing. The black spots develop where wing veins cross, while the shadows form in the spaces between veins. Molecular detective work revealed that a protein called Wingless helps draw the spots. Wingless has many different jobs during fruit fly development, including properly orienting the fly’s body segments, directing where legs and wings will grow, and helping set up part of the digestive system. At some point in evolution, Carroll says, an ancestor of D. guttifera and some related fly species co-opted the Wingless system to create color patterns.

Still, the mechanism might also occur in other insects. Nijhout says that butter­flies, for instance, might use Wingless to create stripes on their wings, since the protein is made in the same places where bands of color later appear. A similar mechanism may paint the eyelike spots on some butterfly wings, using proteins called Distal-less and Notch instead of Wingless.

Animals such as fish, tigers and zebras don’t seem to position their spots and stripes over any particular body structures. And the pattern can be slightly different from one side of the animal to the other. Such clues suggest that pigment cells, which are born in one part of the body and migrate to their eventual location on the skin, assemble themselves into patterns according to a Turing-like mechanism.

David Parichy, a developmental and evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle,

worked in zebrafish and supports the idea that multiple mechanisms are in play. He studies the way zebrafish form multicolored stripes along their bodies and on their fins. Along with colleague Jessica Turner, Parichy found that delaying the development of yellow pigment cells as fish transitioned from larvae to adults could cause their tail stripes to switch from horizontal to vertical. Some unknown factor, which the researchers are investigating now, must orient pigment cells in the right direction. And once pigment cells begin migrating, something has to tell them where to settle down. One protein Parichy’s group knows to be involved in making fish patterns is called basonuclin-2, which helps keep pigment cells healthy and allows the stripes to form. Fish that lack baso­nuclin-2 in their skin also lack stripes, the researchers reported last year in PLoS Genetics. “If the pigment cells are paints, the basonuclin-2 is essentially priming the canvas to receive these paints,” Parichy says. Until his team discovered basonuclin-2’s role in the skin, all of the other proteins known to affect stripe development were found in the pigment cells themselves. So fish may deploy a combination of pre­patterning along with a Turing-like mechanism to create their stripes, Parichy says.

Insects and fish are easier to work with in the lab than large cats like tigers or leopards, so scientists know much more about smaller creatures. For now, no genetic evidence indicates mammals might make patterns differently, or that leopard spots are fundamentally different from butterfly dots.

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SCIENCE NEWS - Antibiotic laden wound dressings

Bacterial infections are a serious problem for patients with burns and other wounds. While many wound dressings today contain silver to thwart microbial activity, the metal can hurt human cells that are trying to regrow. The silver may also cull out weaker bacteria, leaving the survivors even more of a threat than before.
Scientists from the University of Bath, England have set out to build a better dressing by peppering it with tiny capsule-like vesicles that look to bacteria exactly like cells prime for infection. But when the bacteria do attack, they release an antibacterial agent that kills them and any of their kind that happen to be nearby.

The researchers tested their strategy by inoculating pieces of fabric with two harmful bacteria — a species of Staphylococcus and a member of the Pseudomonas group, as well as a harmless type of E. coli. In the study, the harmful bacteria were killed presumably because they released toxins and other chemicals which break the vesicle membrane releasing the antibiotic which kills the bacteria while the harmless group did not cause vesicle lysis and hence survived.
For now, the team is trying to make vesicles that last longer than the current span of minutes to hours.

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SCIENCE NEWS - Dark roasted coffees may produce a compound that reduces acid production

The discovery may explain why dark roasted brews are gentler on the stomach than their lighter peers, and could lead to a new generation of tummy-friendly coffees. Roasting coffee beans doesn’t just impart bold, rich flavor. It also creates a compound that helps dial down production of stomach acid, according to research presented on March 21.

To explore the science behind these gentler brews, researchers used water and three other solvents to extract compounds from regular commercial coffee blends. Each solvent extracted a different profile of compounds, including caffeine and  N-methylpyridinium (NMP), a ringed compound that doesn’t appear in green coffee beans but is created in the roasting process. Stomach cells exposed to each suite of compounds upped their acid secretion, except for the cells exposed to the extract containing NMP. The team then compared the chemical profiles of a dark roasted and light roasted brew made with regular roasted and steam-treated beans. Both versions of the dark roasted coffee had more than 30 milligrams per liter of NMP, as compared with the lighter roast, which had 22 mg/l. The light roast that was subjected to steam treatment, a technique thought to weaken coffee’s stomach-provoking powers, had a mere 5 mg/l of NMP.

How NMP acts on the gastric system isn’t well understood. Acid secretion didn’t change noticeably in stomach cells treated with NMP alone. The friendlier darker brews also had less caffeine than their  lighter-brewed counterparts. This lower caffeine may also contribute to the darker roasts’ antacid powers.

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SCIENCE NEWS - Oils from human skin fight off Ozone but at a cost!!!

Ozone is a chemical that can be both friend and foe to human beings — depending on where it is. In the atmosphere, high overhead, ozone protects Earth from harmful radiation that comes from the sun. But at Earth’s surface, ozone is better known as air pollution, and breathing it can be dangerous. Inside a building, levels are much lower than outside because ozone changes when it runs into something like furniture. A new study identified yet another layer of protection that keeps ozone out of our bodies — human skin.

Skin contains many different kinds of oils.When ozone in the air meets the oils in human skin, there is a chemical reaction. That means that the molecules of ozone — and possibly the molecules of oil — change. For the new study, the scientists gathered information about the dust in the bedrooms of 500 children who live on the Danish island of Fyn. This dust, the scientists found, contained many different chemicals. One was a phthalate but they were surprised to find large amounts of cholesterol and squalene (Squalene is a fat that makes up about 10 percent of the oil in human skin.). Then the researchers realized that both of these things can be found in human skin. The human body regrows its outer layer of skin every two to four weeks, and bits and pieces of the old skin break off — to become dust. In this study, the researchers determined that skin flakes on surfaces were covering those surfaces with squalene, thus making those windows, doors or couches break up ozone as well as skin does.

It may seem like good news that human skin helps indoor spaces fight off dangerous ozone.In a different experiment, scientists in Austria mixed together ozone and skin oils in the laboratory. They found that, even though this mixing gets rid of ozone, it also creates new kinds of pollution. One in particular, called 4-oxopentanal (or 4-OPA), might be particularly dangerous. 

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SCIENCE NEWS - Multicelled animals may live oxygen-free

Until now, biologists had expected only one-celled organisms such as bacteria to thrive in oxygen-depleted places. Multicellular animals were known to pass through or hunker down temporarily in environments without oxygen, but in all cases needed to have it in some way at some time.

But marine biologists seem open to the idea that multicellular animals can live without oxygen though the evidence is indirect. Three species of loriciferan appear to go their whole lives without oxygen, researchers report in BMC Biology. Pulled out of a briny, sulfurous hellhole 3.5 kilometers below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, the newly found creatures look like tiny cups with tentacles sticking out. Loriciferans are real, multicellular animals though, so different from other creatures that the tiny marine oddballs have their own phylum on a par with mollusks and arthropods. Following molecular tests and microscope work, the scientists who found the three species propose that the loriciferans in the muck aren’t just visiting down there but are full-time residents.

Three research expeditions — in 1998, 2005 and 2008 — have found loriciferans in core samples from the basin. When researchers first found the animals, they thought they were cadavers. To see if the loriciferans had just wafted down after dying elsewhere, researchers brought up more sediment cores and tested them on ship in nitrogen-filled incubators protected from oxygen. In molecular tests, the animals appeared to be alive and metabolizing. The presence of cast-off skins also suggests that the loriciferans are growing on location. They may be reproducing there too -Two individuals had eggs.

Also, the loriciferans aren’t even a millimeter long and have limited mobility, so it’s unlikely that they’d move through the 50 meters of oxygen-free water above them. Thus, the researchers argue, it’s most likely the basin is their full-time home. Their cells don’t appear to have mitochondria, which use oxygen to generate energy. Instead, images of loriciferan tissue reveal what look like hydrogenosomes, organelles that power some anaerobic single-celled creatures.

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SCIENCE NEWS - Insulin-producing cells can renegerate

Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland have published a report in Nature on April 4 saying that Alpha cells in the pancreas can spontaneously transform into insulin-producing beta cells. The study, done in mice, is the first to reveal the pancreas’s ability to regenerate missing cells. Scientists were surprised to find that new beta cells arose from alpha cells in the pancreas, rather than stem cells.

If the discovery translates to people, scientists may one day be able to coax type 1 diabetics’ own alpha cells into replacing insulin-producing cells. Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, results when the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas. People with the disease must take lifelong injections of insulin in order to keep blood sugar levels from rising too high.

Even if human pancreases can perform the alpha to beta conversion, the immune system in type 1 diabetics would kill the newly transformed cells unless researchers could figure out how to stop the immune system attack and reduce inflammation in the pancreas that accompanies diabetes. Efforts to control the immune system could give the pancreases of type 1 diabetic patients a chance to recover at least some function. “The life of diabetics would change even if the pancreas is only able to produce 1 or 2 percent of normal insulin levels,” say researchers.

The team is now trying to determine if older mice retain the regenerative capacity seen in the young mice used in the study and which signal tells alpha cells to begin transforming into beta cells.

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BIOBASICS Question of the Week?

What are leguminous crops? Explain and Exemplify.

BIOBASICS Solution: The term 'Legume' is derived from the Latin word legumen (with the same meaning as the English term), which is in turn believed to come from the verb legere "to gather." A legume in botanical writing is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or a fruit of these specific plants.A common name for this type of fruit is a pod, although "pod" is also applied to a few other fruit types, such as vanilla. A pulse is an annual leguminous crop yielding from one to twelve grains or seeds of variable size, shape, and color within a pod. Pulses are used for food and animal feed. The term "pulse", as used by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), is reserved for crops harvested solely for the dry grain. This excludes green beans and green peas, which are considered vegetable crops. Also excluded are crops that are mainly grown for oil extraction (oilseeds like soybeans and peanuts), and crops which are used exclusively for sowing (clovers, alfalfa).

Legumes are rich in essential amino acid lysine but contain relatively low quantities of the methionine. Since grains like Wheat or Rice are poor in lysine content and high in methionine, so grains are usually teamed with legumes in vegetarian diets e.g. Dal and Rice or Wheat bread in India.

Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, soy, and peanuts.

QUESTION OFTHE WEEK?

BIOBASICS Question of the week:

Why do the nitrogen fixing bacteria form nodules only on the roots of leguminous plants?

BIOBASICS Solution: The roots of leguminous plants like Pea secrete compounds called Flavanoids which attract nitrogen fixing bacteria and activate the genes which cause nodule formation in the roots.

SCIENCE NEWS - Acne drug minocycline inhibits HIV activation

In most people, HIV can be controlled with a drug combination called HAART, short for highly active antiretroviral therapy. But HAART doesn’t wipe out the virus, and stresses on the immune system such as an infection can reactivate the latent virus and trigger its spread.

An inexpensive antibiotic might complement standard drugs in fighting the AIDS virus, a new study shows. The drug, called minocycline, has been used for decades to control acne, but the new findings suggest it inhibits HIV that has infected cells from reactivating and replicating itself.

In the new study, molecular biologist Janice Clements of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and her colleagues infected human T cells with HIV in lab dishes, then added minocycline to some of these batches. After 24 hours, the minocycline-treated cells contained half as much HIV RNA as the other cells, suggesting the drug had inhibited the ability of the virus to replicate. The scientists also tested minocycline on T cells obtained from HIV patients who had been treated with HAART. Minocycline again stalled HIV replication, as demonstrated by a 60 percent decline in activity of a key gene that HIV needs to awaken and replicate.

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SCIENCE NEWS - The first known amphibious insects!!

Terrestrial moths evolved new lifestyle in the islands - They don’t surf, but caterpillars found only in Hawaii are the first insects known to feed and grow as readily in water as on land.

Evolutionary biologist Daniel Rubinoff of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and his colleagues have described amphibious habits of larvae in 12 new species in the moth genus Hyposmocoma (Adult insect is shown in the picture above - note the unique hair on hind wing).
Young of each species can thrive both underwater in rushing streams and exposed to air on rocks poking out of the water. Hyposmocoma moths live only in the Hawaiian islands, and most species in the genus spend their caterpillarhood exclusively on land before flitting away as full-grown moths. Yet genetic analyses show that within the genus, landlubber lineages have independently evolved amphibious caterpillars. A wood boring caterpillar of this genus is shown below.
In lab studies, the researchers found that these caterpillars don’t have gills or a natural scuba mechanism of trapping air bubbles. Instead, they appear to get oxygen directly from water. To survive submerged, the caterpillars need fast-flowing waters where they shelter on the downstream sides of rocks and spin tethers to keep from washing away. Caterpillars in this genus crawl around partly covered by silk-spun cases of a variety of shapes and sizes that they add to as they grow. Species in the newly described amphibious lineages, still awaiting formal scientific names, make cases called cones, bugles and burritos. Researchers have also found cases in the shapes of cigars, candy wrappers, oyster shells, dog bones and bowties. “We’re running out of names to describe them,” Rubinoff says.

Besides introducing some remarkable caterpillars, the work emphasizes the importance of islands in the study of evolution. Isolated mixes of the relatively few kinds of creatures that arrive on islands can come up with novelties unknown elsewhere. “Islands are clearly these crucibles of evolution,” Rubinoff says.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

BIOBASICS QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

What is DANDRUFF & how is it formed?
A fungus is at least partly to blame for the presence of Dandruff on your scalp. Dandruff is related to the presence of certain species of Malassezia—ubiquitous, hard-to-eradicate fungi that live on humans and other mammals.

Malassezia live on your scalp--whether or not you have dandruff—and dine on the oil that your scalp excretes, the researchers say. The fungi break down the oil, called sebum, into free fatty acids, which can irritate the scalp. Irritation prompts the scalp to try to repair itself through extra cell production, which leads to dandruff. The repair also stimulates more sebum secretion, which means more fungi food.
Researchers don't know why only some people get dandruff. Everybody has got Malassezia and everybody has got sebum... but for some reason some people get dandruff and other people don't.

The M. globosa genome has revealed a few interesting facts. First, the fungus lacks the gene that produces lipids. M. globosa can't make fats itself which explains why it is dependent on our sebum.
Another key finding--with implications for the fight against dandruff--is what the fungus uses to break down the sebum. The researchers found that M. globosa secretes several types of proteins—lipases and proteases—that can break up sebum into something the fungus can digest. Inhibition of these lipases would probably be a good thing for starving out the bug. Inhibition of proteases would be a good way to kill the bug.

SCIENCE NEWS - Unique Bacteria on hand provide another form of fingerprint

Unique bacterial profiles give criminals another reason to wear gloves. Bacteria may one day help crime scene investigators catch criminals dirty-handed. Having found previously that everyone’s hands carry a unique bacterial population, researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder have now shown that the mix of microbes left on a computer keyboard can be used to tell if a particular person had used it.


Their tests, reported online the week of March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raise the possibility that hand bacteria could potentially serve as a new type of fingerprint. Noah Fierer and his colleagues wondered if bacteria could be used in forensic tests when fingerprints fail, such as when the prints are smudged or evidence consists of fabric or other soft surfaces that don’t lend themselves to fingerprinting. After all, says Fierer, “you only need to smudge a fingerprint, but you can’t sterilize a surface just by wiping it off.”

Fierer and his colleagues swabbed the hands of three people and took samples of bacteria from keyboards used exclusively by each of the three. The researchers then created DNA profiles of bacterial populations from the hands and keyboards. The bacteria on an individual’s keyboard closely matched bacteria on their hands, the team found. And the bacterial DNA remained useful for at least two weeks after swabbing. Fierer agrees that much more testing is needed to determine whether bacterial fingerprinting will be a useful forensic tool. The researchers are now trying to determine how many times people must touch objects to leave their bacterial signatures behind and whether bacterial fingerprints can be lifted from cloth or other soft surfaces.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

BIOBASICS QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

Which of the following structures is specialized to perform Nitrogen Fixation in Cyanobacteria?

a. Akinetes

b. Zoospores

c. Heterocysts

d. Tetraspores

BIOBASICS Solution: C. Heterosysts are thick walled structures which provide anaerobic environment necessary for the activity of Nitrogenase enzyme which fixes nitrogen.

SCIENCE NEWS - Some body parts like APPENDIX seem pointless but in fact have purpose

Throughout history, scientists, too, have wondered about structures that don’t seem to do anything useful. The appendix is a popular example. This little, worm-like pouch is about four inches long and less than half an inch wide.The organ grows near where the long intestine meets the short intestine. The intestines are essential for digestion, but the appendix appears to just sit there.
“It’s a dead-end sack,” says William Parker, an immunologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”Parker didn’t start out intending to study the appendix. His specialty is the immune system — a collection of organs, cells and molecules that our bodies use to stay healthy. But his research led him to the appendix anyway.
Parker knew that the human body is full of tiny organisms called bacteria, which can overwhelm the immune system, cause infections and make a person sick. He also knew that some bacteria are good for human health. Among other benefits, these “good” bacteria help people digest food and fight off “bad” bacteria that cause disease.The immune system doesn’t just benefit from good bacteria, though. In the 1990s, Parker and colleagues began to figure out that the immune system also helps good bacteria flourish. These bacteria appear in thin layers called biofilms, which grow on the side of the gut near and inside the appendix. These biofilms, the researchers learned, provide a barrier that keep out bad bacteria. “Once we figured that out, it should have been obvious to us what the appendix did,” says Parker, whose team also found that the appendix has a particularly robust biofilm. “It’s in the perfect spot to harbor bacteria — out of the flow and with a thin, narrow opening. And there’s a large amount of immune tissue associated with it.”
After stumbling on a possible link between the immune system and the appendix, though, the scientists still had some clues to compile before being sure of the organ’s purpose.

Hangout for good bacteria

In 2007, Parker’s team put together all the evidence they had gathered and came up with a conclusion: The appendix serves as a “safe house,” Parker says, a storage bin for good bacteria. If bad bacteria attack, good bacteria emerge from the appendix and come to the rescue.
Having a safe space for good bacteria should be especially useful in parts of the world that are poor and undeveloped — places where people are starving, medicine is hard to come by, clean water is scarce and diarrhea can kill. In those places, Parker says, the appendix probably helps keep people alive, especially young children.
In fact, people in the developing world rarely get infected appendixes, like Smith’s. Most cases of appendicitis, in fact, occur in the United States and other developed countries, where water is purified, hospitals are sterilized and medical care is easier to get.

Those trends suggest that the appendix evolved in our ancestors to maintain health in a bacteria-filled world. Today, places such as the United States might be too sterile for the appendix. When the organ has nothing do, the immune system can turn on itself, sending people to the emergency room, Parker says. Other problems, such as allergies and immune diseases, might have similar roots.

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SCIENCE NEWS - The superheavy COPERNICUM takes its place in the Periodic Table

Everything on Earth that scientists can see, measure or study is made of atoms — and atoms are named by what type of element they are. You probably know the name of many elements, such as oxygen, gold or hydrogen. Others, such as cadmium or xenon, may sound strange and exotic. In any case, elements are everywhere: You, your shoes, your desk, cars, water, air — all made of elements.

Now, there’s a new kid on the block: Elements, meet copernicum.

This element was officially named on February 19, but the element itself isn’t new. German scientists made and observed it in 1996. But in the 14 years since then, other scientists have been working to study and validate the original findings. A scientific breakthrough is “validated” when other scientists can perform the same experiment and get the same results. Validation is an important part of the scientific process because it demonstrates that a scientific discovery was not a mistake.

All that hard work finally paid off when the element finally received its name, copernicum, from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (the organization in charge of making sure chemists all over the world use the same words to mean the same things.) Copernicum is named in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus, a 16th century Polish scholar who proposed that Earth orbits the sun (rather than that everything orbits Earth) and that Earth turns on its own axis. These ideas may seem obvious now, but in 16th century Europe, they were revolutionary.

Scientists organize all the elements on a chart called the Periodic Table. Each element gets a symbol and its own number, and copernicum gets the symbol Cn and the number 112. This number means that inside every atom of copernicum are 112 protons. Protons are particles inside the nucleus, or core, of every atom. The lightest element, hydrogen, has only one proton inside each atom.

Its 112 protons make copernicum the heaviest known element with a name. It was first observed by Sigurd Hofmann, a scientist at the Center for Heavy Ion Research, or GSI, in Darmstadt, Germany. Hofmann and his team created copernicum in the laboratory when they blasted atoms of lead (each with 82 protons) with zinc isotopes, kinds of zinc atoms that each had 30 protons.

SCIENCE NEWS - Taste is not just for the tongue

Scientists are discovering that TASTE is a whole-body sensation. There are taste cells in the stomach, intestine and, evidence suggests, the pancreas, colon and esophagus. These sensory cells are part of an ancient battalion tasked with guiding food choices since long before nutrition labels, Rachael Ray or even agriculture existed. While taste cells in the mouth make snap judgments about what should be let inside, new work suggests that gut taste cells serve as specialized ground forces, charged with preparing the digestive system for the aftermath of the tongue’s decisions.

Stimulating these gut cells triggers a complex series of events that can dial down, or amp up, the digestion and absorption of the body’s fuel. When hit by bitter — potentially toxic — substances, gut taste cells sound an alarm that may lead to slower absorption or spur vomiting. And when the gut’s taste sensors encounter something sweet, they send a “prepare for fuel” missive that results in cranked-up insulin levels in the blood.

Though scientists don’t fully understand what follows, studies hint at a tantalizing, if convoluted, connection between gut taste cell activity and metabolism. Figuring out such connections may one day lead to new therapies for treating type 2 diabetes, obesity and other disorders. And the sweet-focused research could help explain recent counter-intuitive findings that link such problems with drinking diet soda.

Diet drinks are often enjoyed without food, which means the gut may be preparing for fuel that never arrives.

So beware those little white lies. Thousands of years of evolution have yielded a finely tuned digestive machine, one that recognizes incoming energy and knows how to make the most of it. These intricate chains of events evolved during a time when that sweet zing reliably indicated food rich in valuable calories. And for thousands of years, the gut reacted appropriately.

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SCIENCE NEWS - New dinosaur species found in China

Paleontologists in China Saturday claimed to have found the skeleton of a new species of carnivorous dinosaur that believed to have lived about 80 million years ago. Experts have found an intact and complete skeleton fossil of a previously undiscovered dinosaur species in north China, the team's leading scientist Xu Xing said.

The fossil was one of the world's most well-preserved specimen of small predator dinosaurs that lived about 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, said Xu, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. About 2.5-metre long and weighing 25 kg, the dinosaur would have been a fast and agile predator and, like other dromaeosaurids, possessed large 'killing claws'.

The new dinosaur was found in the rocks of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region by an international team which consisted of members from China, the US and Britain, Xinhua reported.
The region is known for the huge presence of dinosaur fossils buried in aeolian rocks formed by sandstorm, which the experts believe killed the dinosaurs, resulting in comparatively intact preservation.

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