Knowledge Update

New York, May 8 (IANS) Climate change is likely to accelerate rates of chronic kidney disease worldwide as rising temperatures and heat stress harm kidneys.

New findings show that heat stress nephropathy -- chronic kidney diseases are on the rise, especially in many rural communities in hot regions.

With rise in temperature worldwide, dehydration and heat stress are likely to take a toll on the kidneys, emerging as a major cause of poor kidney health in the near future.

"A new type of kidney disease, occurring throughout the world in hot areas, is linked with temperature and climate and may be one of the first epidemics due to global warming," said Richard Johnson, from the University of Colorado in the US.

Also, global warming and a rise in extreme heat waves have increased the risk of kidney disease, especially for the agricultural workers, who are exposed to the heat for longer duration.

Decreasing amounts of rain contribute to the growing epidemic of the chronic kidney disease consistent with heat stress -- by reducing water supplies and quality as temperatures rise, the researchers noted.

"We were able to connect increased rates of chronic kidney disease in different areas to an underlying mechanism -- heat stress and dehydration -- and to climate," Johnson said.

The findings will be detailed in forthcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Governments and scientists need to work together to learn more about this threat and take action to reduce the risk of climate change-linked kidney disease, the researchers said.​

Washington, May 8 (IANS) NASA's MESSENGER mission has unveiled the first global digital elevation model (DEM) of Mercury, revealing in stunning detail the topography across the entire innermost planet.

It will also pave the way for scientists to fully characterise Mercury's geologic history.

"The wealth of these data has already enabled and will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come," said Susan Ensor, software engineer at The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

This new model reveals a variety of interesting topographic features, including the highest and lowest points on the planet.

The highest elevation on Mercury is at 4.48 km above Mercury's average elevation, located just south of the equator in some of Mercury's oldest terrain.

The lowest elevation, at 5.38 km below Mercury's average, is found on the floor of Rachmaninoff basin, an intriguing double-ring impact basin suspected to host some of the most recent volcanic deposits on the planet.

More than 100,000 images were used to create the new model.

"This has become one of my favourite maps of Mercury. Now that it is available, I'm looking forward to it being used to investigate this epic volcanic event that shaped Mercury's surface," added Nancy Chabot, instrument scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) in a NASA statement.

"During its four years of orbital observations, MESSENGER revealed the global characteristics of one of our closest planetary neighbours for the first time.

The data from the mission will continue to be utilised by the planetary science community for years to come.​

New York, May 8 (IANS) Introducing a noise net around airfields that emit sound levels equivalent to those of a conversation in a busy restaurant could prevent collisions between birds and aircraft, saving lives and billions in damages, new research has found.

Filling a controlled area with acoustic noise around an airfield, where the majority of collisions tend to take place, can reduce the number of birds in the area by 80 percent, the findings showed.

"We are using a different kind of deterrent - trying to stop birds from hearing one another by playing a noise that is at the same pitch as the alarm calls or predator noises they are listening out for," said lead researcher John Swaddle, professor of biology at College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, US.

"By playing a noise at the same pitch, we mask those sounds, making the area much riskier for the birds to occupy. The birds don't like it and leave the area around the airfields, where there is potential for tremendous damage and loss of life," Swaddle noted.

The researchers set up speakers and amplifiers in three areas of an airfield in Virginia state and observed bird abundance over eight weeks, the first four weeks without noise and the second four weeks with the noise turned on.

Results showed a large decrease in the number of birds in the 'sonic net' and areas just outside and found that it was particularly effective at deterring a number of species that were at high risk of bird strike such as starlings.

"We have conducted prior research in an aviary but this is the first study done out in the field to show the efficacy of the sonic net," Swaddle, who is also a visiting research associate at University of Exeter in Britain, said.

The study was published in the journal Ecological Applications.

Bird strikes cost the aviation industry worldwide billions of dollars annually, and were responsible for 255 deaths between 1988 and 2013, yet measures to reduce these have been largely ineffective, the study noted.

Techniques to deter birds from airports include shooting, poisoning, live-capture and relocation, and the use of scare technologies, but these have proved largely ineffective.​

​New York, May 9 (IANS) Researchers have developed a device with the potential of shortening the time required to rapidly diagnose bacterial infections from days to a couple of hours.

The system could also allow point-of-care diagnosis, as it does not require the facilities and expertise available only in hospital laboratories, the study said. 

"Health-care-associated infections are a major problem that affects more than 600,000 patients each year, more than 10 percent of whom will die, and incurs more $100 billion in related costs," said co-senior author of the study Ralph Weissleder from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, US.

"Rapid and efficient diagnosis of the pathogen is a critical first step in choosing the appropriate antibiotic regimen, and this system could provide that information in a physician's office in less than two hours," Weissleder noted.

The system developed by the MGH team, dubbed PAD for Polarization Anisotropy Diagnostics, allows for accurate genetic testing in a simple device. 

In this study, the team used a prototype PAD system to test clinical samples from nine patients and compared the results with those acquired by conventional microbiology cultures. 

Testing for the presence of five important bacterial species -- E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staph aureus -- and for factors indicating the virulence and antibiotic resistance of specific strains produced identical results with both procedures. 

But while PAD provided results in less than two hours, the bacterial culture process took three to five days. 

The findings were reported in the journal Science Advances.

"We can see three immediate applications for a system that can provide such rapid and accurate results - quickly diagnosing a patient's infection, determining whether antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in a group of patients, and detecting bacterial contamination of medical devices or patient environments," co-senior author Hakho Lee, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, pointed out.​

New York, May 6 (IANS) Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have compiled a comprehensive list of potential gases to guide search for life on exoplanets.

Biosignature gases emitted by exoplanetary life forms could be detected remotely by space telescopes but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the Earth's atmosphere.

“This work reminds me of Charles Darwin's voyage aboard 'The Beagle', exploring the vast diversity of life by sailing around the world," said Nancy Y Kiang, scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 

“In the search for life beyond our planet, we are currently at a similarly exciting, early but rapidly evolving stage of exploration as the discovery of exoplanets accelerates,” he added.

Instead of netting strange creatures from the bottom of the sea, the authors searched and found thousands of curious, potentially biogenic gas molecules. 

“These will inspire a new body of research into identifying also larger molecules, investigating their origin and fate here, and their potential expression on exoplanets as signs of life,” Kiang added.

This approach maximises the chances of identifying planets orbiting nearby stars that support life.

According to S Seager, W Bains and J.J. Petkowski from MIT and Rufus Scientific from the University of Cambridge in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, all stable and potential volatile molecules should be considered as possible biosignature gases.

Beijing, May 6 (IANS) Chinese archaeologists said they have found a paddy field more than 8,000 years old. This could be the earliest wet rice farming site in the world.

The field, covering less than 100 square metres, was discovered at the neolithic ruins of Hanjing in Jiangsu province in November 2015, Xinhua quoted a spokesman with the archaeology institute of Nanjing Museum as saying.

At a seminar held in late April to discuss findings at the Hanjing ruins, 70 scholars from universities, archaeology institutes and museums in China concluded that the wet rice field was the oldest ever discovered.

Researchers with the institute found that the field was divided into parts with different shapes, each covering less than 10 square metres.

They also found carbonised rice that was confirmed to have grown more than 8,000 years ago based on carbon dating as well as evidence that the soil was repeatedly planted with rice.

Lin Liugen, head of the institute, said Chinese people started to cultivate rice about 10,000 years ago and carbonised rice of the age has been found in the past but paddy remnants were quite rare.​

​London, May 6 (IANS) Insulin when taken in conjunction with metformin -- a cheap and common drug that helps control blood sugar levels -- has the potential to reduce mortality risk and heart attacks in people with Type 2 diabetes, a new study has found.

"In this research we found that there was a considerable reduction in deaths and heart problems when this cheap and common drug was used in conjunction with insulin,” said lead author Craig Currie, professor at Cardiff University in Britain.

Increased dosage of insulin has been previously known to raise the risk of cancer, heart attacks and mortality. 

But the findings have shown that metformin can attenuate the risks associated with insulin.

However, according to researchers, there was no difference in the risk of cancer between people treated with insulin as a single therapy or in combination with metformin.

The retrospective research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, looked at people with Type 2 diabetes who were treated with insulin with or without metformin from the year 2000 onwards. 

12,020 people were identified from a general practice data source, and the research team tracked them for three-and-a-half years on average, from the time they were first prescribed insulin.

"While this research indicates the potential of using these treatments together, further studies are needed to determine the risks and benefits of insulin in Type 2 diabetes and the possible benefits associated with the administration of metformin alongside insulin," Currie concluded.

New York, May 6 (IANS) It is possible for us to intentionally forget past experiences by changing how we think about the context of those memories, says a study.

The findings have a range of potential applications centred on enhancing desired memories, such as developing new educational tools, or diminishing harmful memories, including treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Memory theorists have known for long that we use context -- or the situation we are in, including sights, sounds, smells, where we are, who we are with -- to organise and retrieve our memories. 

But this study wanted to explore whether and how people can intentionally forget past experiences. 

The researchers showed participants images of outdoor scenes, such as forests, mountains and beaches, as they studied two lists of random words.

The study's participants were told to either forget or remember the random words presented to them interspersed between scene images. 

"We used fMRI ( functional magnetic resonance imaging) to track how much people were thinking of scene-related things at each moment during our experiment. That allowed us to track, on a moment-by-moment basis, how those scene or context representations faded in and out of people's thoughts over time," said study lead author Jeremy Manning, assistant professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US.

Right after they were told to forget, the fMRI showed that they "flushed out" the scene-related activity from their brains.

"It's like intentionally pushing thoughts of your grandmother's cooking out of your mind if you don't want to think about your grandmother at that moment," Manning said. 

"We were able to physically measure and quantify that process using brain data," Manning noted.

But when the researchers told participants to remember the studied list rather than forget it, this flushing out of scene-related thoughts did not occur. 

Further, the amount that people flushed out scene-related thoughts predicted how many of the studied words they would later remember, which shows the process is effective at facilitating forgetting.

The study appeared in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.​

New York, May 6 (IANS) Your favourite strawberries and bananas can stay fresh for more than a week without refrigeration if they are coated in a thin, odourless, biocompatible silk solution, says a study.

Silk's unique crystalline structure makes it one of nature's toughest materials. Fibroin, an insoluble protein found in silk, has a remarkable ability to stabilise and protect other materials while being fully biocompatible and biodegradable.

For the study, the researchers dipped freshly picked strawberries in a solution of one percent silk fibroin protein. The coating process was repeated up to four times. 

The silk fibroin-coated fruits were then treated for varying amounts of time with water vapour under vacuum (water annealed) to create varying percentages of crystalline beta-sheets in the coating. 

The strawberries were then stored at room temperature. Uncoated berries were compared over time with berries dipped in varying numbers of coats of silk that had been annealed for different periods of time. 

At seven days, the berries coated with the higher beta-sheet silk were still juicy and firm while the uncoated berries were dehydrated and discoloured.

Tests showed that the silk coating prolonged the freshness of the fruits by slowing fruit respiration, extending fruit firmness and preventing decay.

"The beta-sheet content of the edible silk fibroin coatings made the strawberries less permeable to carbon dioxide and oxygen. We saw a statistically significant delay in the decay of the fruit," said senior study author Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.

Similar experiments were performed on bananas, which, unlike strawberries, are able to ripen after they are harvested. 

The silk coating decreased the bananas' ripening rate compared with uncoated controls and added firmness to the fruit by preventing softening of the peel.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Half of the world's fruit and vegetable crops are lost during the food supply chain, due mostly to premature deterioration of these perishable foods, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.​

London, May 6 (IANS) Banking on new research and modern detective technologies including DNA science, a team of specialists has come together to create new insights into the life of Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci.

The “Leonardo Project” is in pursuit of several possible physical connections to Leonardo - beaming radar, for example, at an ancient Italian church floor to help corroborate extensive research to pinpoint the likely location of the tomb of his father and other relatives. 

A collaborating scholar also recently announced the successful tracing of several likely DNA relatives of Leonardo living today in Italy.

If granted the necessary approvals, the “Leonardo Project” will compare DNA from Leonardo's relatives past and present with physical remnants -- hair, bones, fingerprints and skin cells -- associated with the Renaissance figure whose life marked the rebirth of western civilisation.

“Everyone in the group believes that Leonardo, who devoted himself to advancing art and science, who delighted in puzzles and whose diverse talents and insights continue to enrich society five centuries after his passing, would welcome the initiative of this team -- indeed would likely wish to lead it were he alive today,” explained Jesse Ausubel, vice chairman of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and sponsor of the project's meetings.

Born in Vinci, Italy, da Vinci died in 1519 at age 67 and was buried in Amboise, southwest of Paris. 

His creative imagination foresaw and described innovations hundreds of years before their invention, such as the helicopter and armoured tank. His artistic legacy includes the iconic “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper”.

If DNA and other analyses yield a definitive identification, conventional and computerised techniques might reconstruct the face of da Vinci from models of the skull.

In addition to Leonardo's physical appearance, information potentially revealed from the work includes his ancestry and additional insight into his diet, state of health, personal habits and places of residence.

It may also make a lasting contribution to the art world, within which forgery is a multi-billion dollar industry, by advancing a technique for extracting and sequencing DNA from other centuries-old works of art, and associated methods of attribution.

One objective is to verify whether fingerprints on Leonardo's paintings, drawings and notebooks can yield DNA consistent with that extracted from identified remains.

If human DNA can one day be obtained from da Vinci's work and sequenced, the genetic material could then be compared with genetic information from skeletal or other remains that may be exhumed in the future.

“The fact that a team of eminent scholars from different academic disciplines and parts of the world has united with the common objective of furthering investigation into one of the greatest geniuses is positive and very important,” added Eugenio Giani, president of the Regional Council of Tuscany.

The idea behind the project has united anthropologists, art historians, genealogists, microbiologists, and other experts from leading universities and institutes in France, Italy, Spain, Canada and the US, including specialists from the J. Craig Venter Institute of California which pioneered the sequencing of the human genome.

The project's objectives, motives, methods and work to date are detailed in a special issue of the journal Human Evolution​