Knowledge Update

​New York, June 29 (IANS) Adolescents living in neighbourhoods with more greenery may exhibit less aggressive behaviour, finds a new study.

The findings showed that increasing greenery levels like parks, golf courses or fields, might lead to a 12 per cent decrease in clinical cases of aggressive behaviour. 

"Our study provides new evidence that increasing neighbourhood greenery may be an effective alternative intervention strategy for an environmental public health approach that has not been considered yet," said Diana Younan, doctoral student, at the University of California in the US. 

Nine to 18-year-olds who lived in places with more greenery had significantly less aggressive behaviour than those living in neighbourhoods with less greenery. 

Both short-term (one to six months) and long-term (one to three years) exposure to green spaces within 1,000 metres of residences were associated with reduced aggressive behaviour. 

The behavioural benefit of green spaces equated to approximately two to two-and-a-half years of adolescent maturation.

In addition, these benefits existed for both boys and girls of all ages and races/ethnicities, and across populations with different socio-economic backgrounds and living in communities with different neighbourhood quality.

"It is important that we target aggressive behaviours early. Identifying effective measures to reduce aggressive and violent behaviours in adolescents is a pressing issue facing societies worldwide," Younan added.

Factors such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, parents' educational background, occupation, income level, or marital status and whether their mother smoked while pregnant or was depressed did not affect the findings.

For the study, the team followed 1,287 adolescents from Southern California who were aged nine to 18 years to see whether greenery surrounding the home could reduce aggressive behaviour.

The results will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP). ​

​London, June 28 (IANS) A team of researchers has developed a new approach to find natural researves of helium -- a key element in MRI scanners, welding, industrial leak detection and nuclear energy -- the known reserves of which are quickly running out.

The first use of this method, developed by scientists at Oxford and Durham universities, has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania.

Until now helium has never been found intentionally -- being accidentally discovered in small quantities during oil and gas drilling. 

The study, presented recently at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Yokohama, Japan, shows that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks.

"We show that volcanoes play an important role in the formation of viable helium reserves. Volcanic activity likely provides the heat necessary to release the helium accumulated in ancient crustal rocks," said Diveena Danabalan of Durham University.

"However, if gas traps are located too close to a given volcano, they run the risk of helium being heavily diluted by volcanic gases such as carbon dioxide, just as we see in thermal springs from the region (Tanzanian East African Rift Valley)," she added.

Danabalan and her team are now working to identify the "goldilocks-zone" between the ancient crust and the modern volcanoes where the balance between helium release and volcanic dilution is "just right".

The discovery of helium gas field in Tanzania using the new approach is being considered as a game changer for the future security of society's helium needs.

​New York, June 28 (IANS) Scientists have built a "bionic" cardiac patch that could act similarly to a pacemaker and monitor as well as respond to cardiac problems.

The researchers from Harvard University constructed nanoscale electronic scaffolds that can be seeded with cardiac cells to produce a bionic cardiac patch -- the engineered heart tissue with ability to replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack. 

"I think one of the biggest impacts would ultimately be in the area that involves replaced of damaged cardiac tissue with pre-formed tissue patches," said Charles Lieber, who along with colleagues described the work in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"Rather than simply implanting an engineered patch built on a passive scaffold, our works suggests it will be possible to surgically implant an innervated patch that would now be able to monitor and subtly adjust its performance," he added.

Once implanted, the "bionic" patch could act similarly to a pacemaker -- delivering electrical shocks to correct arrhythmia.

Unlike traditional pacemakers, the "bionic" patch -- because its electronic components are integrated throughout the tissue -- can detect arrhythmia far sooner, and operate at far lower voltages.

"Even before a person started to go into large-scale arrhythmia that frequently causes irreversible damage or other heart problems, this could detect the early-stage instabilities and intervene sooner," Lieber said. "It can also continuously monitor the feedback from the tissue and actively respond," he added.

The patch might also find use as a tool to monitor the responses under cardiac drugs, or to help pharmaceutical companies to screen the effectiveness of drugs under development.

​Beijing, June 28 (IANS) A new study has pinned down an overlooked source of outdoor pollution in Beijing -- residential cooking and heating -- which according to scientists contributes more to the city's choking smog than do the transportation sector and power plants combined.

"Coal and other dirty solid fuels are frequently used in homes for cooking and heating," said Denise Mauzerall from Princeton University who was part of the research team. 

"Because these emissions are essentially uncontrolled they emit a disproportionately large amount of air pollutants which contribute substantially to smog in Beijing and surrounding regions," she added.

According to the team from Princeton, the University of California-Berkeley, Peking University and Tsinghua University, households account for about 18 per cent of total energy use in the Beijing region but produce 50 per cent of black carbon emissions and 69 per cent of organic carbon emissions. 

In the Beijing area, households contribute more pollutants in the form of small soot particles (which are particularly hazardous to human health) than the transportation sector and power plants combined. In the winter heating season, households also contribute more small particles than do industrial sources.

The high levels of air pollutant emissions are due to the use of coal and other dirty fuels in small stoves and heaters that lack the pollution controls in place in power plants, vehicles and at some factories, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The region in the study included the cities of Beijing and the surrounding Tianjin and Hebei provinces.​

New York, June 29 (IANS) Scientists have discovered a new way to potentially treat muscle regeneration in patients with severe burns.

Severe burns results in profound skeletal muscle atrophy -- wasting away of muscles. This persistent muscle loss combined with weakness are major complications that hamper recovery from burn injury.

The findings showed that satellite cells -- the resident stem cell in skeletal muscle cells -- responsible for maintaining and regenerating skeletal muscle following injury was reduced in burn patients.

Further, while a severe burn injury causes cell death in the muscles, it also induces the muscle regeneration properties of satellite cells.

Satellite cells undergo concurrent cell death and activation acutely following a burn, with a net reduction in satellite cell content compared to healthy controls. 

The activation and death of satellite cells likely impacts the recovery of lean tissue following a severe burn, contributing to prolonged frailty in burn survivors.

"Our results highlight the therapeutic potential of satellite cells to aid regeneration and preservation of muscle mass following a severe burn injury," said lead researcher Celeste C. Finnerty, Associate Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in the US.

Additionally, a significant percentage of satellite cells in burn patients expressed protein Ki67, a marker for cellular proliferation

"We found a very high amount of the marker protein Ki67, which indicates that the burn injury activates satellite cells and thus stimulates skeletal muscle regeneration," added lead author Christopher S. Fry, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch. 

For the study, published in The Journal of Physiology, the team collected tissue samples from 12 patients with severe burn injuries and 12 healthy subjects. 

They used immunohistochemical -- the process of detecting antigens in cells of a tissue section -- techniques to analyse and compare the satellite cell content, activation and cell death (apoptosis), as well as muscle fibre regeneration in the tissue samples. 

“Future studies can now investigate therapies that can prevent satellite cells from cell death and promote their activity to regenerate skeletal cells, improving the recovery of severe burns patients," Finnerty noted.​

​London, June 29 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new method to calculate your 10-year risk for heart attack with greater precision than traditional risk factors alone.

Levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, body mass index (BMI), smoking habits and blood pressure are considered as traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

There are several risk prediction calculators available today.

However, the use of risk prediction calculators has declined in the primary care setting because the currently available calculators only explain a modest proportion of the incidence.

For myocardial infarction or heart attack, it is estimated that 15-20 per cent of the patients had none of the traditional risk factors and would be classified as "low risk".

"Our study showed that by measuring a combination of five different microRNAs and adding this information to the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, we could identify those that were going to experience a myocardial infarction with considerably improved precision", said study first author Anja Bye from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). 

The study was published in Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.

The researchers designed this study to explore the possibility of a new type of bio marker called circulating microRNAs, to predict 10-year risk for myocardial infarction.

They included 212 participants (40-70 years) from the Nord-Trondelag Health Study 2 (HUNT2, blood collected in 1996) who either died from heart attack within 10 years or remained healthy at the time of HUNT3 (2006).

New York, June 29 (IANS) Parents who tend to get overly involved in the affairs of their kids, may kindly note: Crossing the line between supportive and too involved could indirectly lead to issues such as depression and anxiety for young adults, a study says.

"Helicopter parents are parents who are overly involved," said one of the researchers, Kayla Reed from Florida State University. 

"They mean everything with good intentions, but it often goes beyond supportive to intervening in the decisions of emerging adults," Reed noted.

For the study, the researchers surveyed more than 460 college students, ages 18 to 25, about how their mothers influenced their life decisions by asking the students how their mothers would respond to sample situations. 

They specifically looked at mothers because they are traditionally in the primary caregiver role.

They also asked students to self-assess their abilities to persist in complicated tasks or adverse situations and then also rate their depression, life satisfaction, anxiety and physical health.

Students who had mothers who allowed them more autonomy reported higher life satisfaction, physical health and self-efficacy. 

However, students with a so-called helicopter parent were more likely to report low levels of self-efficacy, or the ability to handle some tougher life tasks and decisions.

In turn, those who reported low levels of self-efficacy also reported higher levels of anxiety and depression, and lower life satisfaction and physical health.

The findings appeared online in the Journal of Child and Family Studies.

"The way your parents interact with you has a lot to do with how you view yourself," Mallory Lucier-Greer, Assistant Professor at Florida State University, said.

"If parents are simply being supportive, they are saying things like 'you can manage your finances, you can pick out your classes.' It changes if they are doing that all for you,” Lucier-Greer said.

"I think there are good intentions behind those helicopter behaviours, but at the end of the day you need to foster your child's development," she noted.​

New York, June 28 (IANS) Contrary to common perception, chronic fatigue syndrome may not be psychological in origin as researchers have now identified biological markers of the disease in gut bacteria and inflammatory microbial agents in the blood.

The findings suggest that changing diets, using prebiotics such as dietary fibers or probiotics could treat chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition where normal exertion leads to debilitating fatigue that is not alleviated by rest.

Physicians have been mystified by the disease as there are no known triggers, and diagnosis often requires lengthy tests administered by an expert.

Now, for the first time, Cornell University researchers described how they correctly diagnosed myalgic encephalomyeletis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in 83 per cent of patients through stool samples and blood work, offering a noninvasive diagnosis and a step toward understanding the cause of the disease.

"Our work demonstrates that the gut bacterial microbiome in chronic fatigue syndrome patients isn't normal, perhaps leading to gastrointestinal and inflammatory symptoms in victims of the disease," said professor Maureen Hanson, senior author of the study.

"Furthermore, our detection of a biological abnormality provides further evidence against the ridiculous concept that the disease is psychological in origin," Hanson noted.

"In the future, we could see this technique as a complement to other noninvasive diagnoses, but if we have a better idea of what is going on with these gut microbes and patients, maybe clinicians could consider changing diets, using prebiotics such as dietary fibers or probiotics to help treat the disease," first author of the study Ludovic Giloteaux noted.

In the study, published in the journal Microbiome, the researchers recruited 48 people diagnosed with ME/CFS and 39 healthy controls to provide stool and blood samples.

The researchers sequenced regions of microbial DNA from the stool samples to identify different types of bacteria. 

Overall, the diversity of types of bacteria was greatly reduced and there were fewer bacterial species known to be anti-inflammatory in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome compared with healthy people, an observation also seen in people with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

At the same time, the researchers discovered specific markers of inflammation in the blood, likely due to a leaky gut from intestinal problems that allow bacteria to enter the blood, Giloteaux said.​

​London, June 28 (IANS) Touted as man's best friend, canines can now also be trained to sniff out conditions of low blood sugar in patients with Type-1 diabetes, finds an interesting study.

Hypoglycaemia -- low blood sugar -- can cause problems such as shakiness, disorientation and fatigue and comes with little warning. 

If the patient does not receive a sugar boost in time, it can cause seizures and lead to unconsciousness. 

The findings showed that the scent of chemical isoprene found in human breath could act as a warning for patients with Type-1 diabetes experiencing a rapid decline in the blood sugar levels.

"Isoprene is one of the commonest natural chemicals that we find in human breath," said Mark Evans from University of Cambridge. 

In the study, the team analysed eight women with Type-1 diabetes and within an average age of 40.

The participants' blood glucose levels were slowly lowered during controlled conditions.

Researchers used mass spectrometry to distinguish the presence of chemicals in the women's breath that may change as the blood sugar levels change. 

Isoprene levels were found to significantly rise during hypoglycaemia. 

"We suspect it's a by-product of the production of cholesterol, but it isn't clear why levels of the chemical rise when patients get very low blood sugar,” Evans added.

Further, dogs were found to sniff out the start of a hypoglycemic episode and as a result, prevent blood sugar levels from dropping dangerously low. 

"Humans aren't sensitive to the presence of isoprene, but dogs with their incredible sense of smell, find it easy to identify and can be trained to alert their owners about dangerously low blood sugar levels,” Evans explained.

Isoprene provides a 'scent' that could help us develop new tests for detecting hypoglycaemia and reducing the risk of potentially life-threatening complications for patients living with diabetes," the researchers said in the study published in the journal Diabetes Care.

New York, June 28 (IANS) Based on an analysis of cooling rate and the composition of lava deposits on Mercury's surface, a team of geologists has found that the planet likely has the composition of an enstatite chondrite -- a type of meteorite that is extremely rare on Earth.

The new information on Mercury's past is of interest for tracing the Earth's early formation, according to Timothy Grove from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Here we are today, with 4.5 billion years of planetary evolution, and because the Earth has such a dynamic interior, because of the water we've preserved on the planet, [volcanism] just wipes out its past," Grove said.

"On planets like Mercury, early volcanism is much more dramatic, and [once] they cooled down there were no later volcanic processes to wipe out the early history. This is the first place where we actually have an estimate of how fast the interior cooled during an early part of a planet's history," he added.

Grove's team utilised data collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft. During its mission, MESSENGER produced images that revealed kilometre-thick lava deposits covering the entire planet's surface.

An X-ray spectrometer onboard the spacecraft measured the X-ray radiation from the planet's surface, produced by solar flares on the sun, to determine the chemical composition of more than 5,800 lava deposits on Mercury's surface.

In the study, published recently in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the team recalculated the surface compositions of all 5,800 locations and correlated each composition with the type of terrain in which it was found -- from heavily cratered regions to those that were less impacted.

The researchers determined the chemical compositions of the tiny crystals that formed in each sample in order to identify the original material that may have made up Mercury's interior before it melted and erupted onto the surface. 

They found the closest match to be an enstatite chondrite, an extremely rare form of meteorite that is thought to make up only about 2 per cent of the meteorites that fall on Earth.

"We now know something like an enstatite chondrite was the starting material for Mercury, which is surprising, because they are about 10 standard deviations away from all other chondrites," Grove said.​