Knowledge Update

​New York, Jan 18 (IANS) Fungal infections that are often poorly diagnosed worldwide causes doctors to over-prescribe antibiotics, increasing harmful resistance to antimicrobial drugs, resulting in 1.5 million deaths a year, according to a study.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. 

The study showed that inadequate attention by physicians to fungal infection is the major cause failure of antibacterial treatment. 

"If we're trying to deliver globally on a comprehensive plan to prevent antimicrobial resistance and we're treating blindly for fungal infections that we don't know are present with antibiotics, then we may inadvertently be creating greater antibiotic resistance," said lead author David Perlin, Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

Fungal infections, often undiagnosed, result in 1.5 million deaths a year, said researchers from the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI) - a Britain-based organisation to promote global awareness of fungal disease.

"Fungal disease diagnostics are critical in the AMR fight and will improve survival from fungal disease across the world," added David Denning, Professor at the University of Manchester.

Inexpensive, rapid diagnostic tests are available for important fungal infections but are not being widely used.

Better training is needed to encourage health care practitioners to test for fungal infections so the correct drugs are administered.

Paying closer attention to underlying fungal infections is necessary to reduce drug resistance, Perlin said.

The study was published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

New York, Jan 17 (IANS) At a time when existing LEDs are helping to keep electricity bills low, a group of scientists has developed a more efficient and low-cost alternative to the materials used in traditional LEDs.

Princeton engineering researchers refined the manufacturing of light sources made with crystalline substances known as perovskites that provide more efficiency, lower-cost and long life to the new LEDs.

In this technique, nanoscale perovskite particles self-assemble to produce more efficient, stable and durable perovskite-based LEDs and the working was published in journal Nature Photonics.

"Our new technique allows these nanoparticles to self-assemble to create ultra-fine grained films, an advance in fabrication that makes perovskite LEDs look more like a viable alternative to existing technologies," said lead researcher Barry Rand. 

Rand's team and others researchers are exploring perovskites as a potential lower-cost alternative to gallium nitride (GaN) and other materials used in LED manufacturing. Lower-cost LEDs would speed the acceptance of the bulbs, reducing energy use and environmental impacts.

Perovskite is a mineral originally discovered in the mid-1800s in Russia and named in honour of the Russian mineralogist Lev Perovski. 

Sydney, Jan 17 (IANS) Australian astrophysicists have come a step closer to solving a galactic murder mystery on Tuesday when they studied the effects of dark matter in 11,000 galaxies, a media report said.

They saw that when gas was rapidly stripped from a galaxy, the building block of stars was lost and the galaxy was "effectively killed", said study leader Toby Brown of Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology.

The study was conducted by researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, Xinhua news agency reported. 

"Galaxies are embedded in clouds of dark matter that we call dark matter halos. During their lifetimes, galaxies can inhabit halos of different sizes, ranging from masses typical of our own Milky Way to halos thousands of times more massive," Brown said.

"As galaxies fall through these larger halos, the superheated intergalactic plasma between them removes their gas in a fast-acting process called ram-pressure stripping. 

"You can think of it like a giant cosmic broom that comes through and physically sweeps the gas from the galaxies," Brown explained.

The study combined the world's largest galaxy survey -- the Sloan Digital Sky Survey -- with the largest ever set of radio observations for atomic gas -- the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey in order to solve the case.

But according to Brown, ram-pressure stripping is not the only way a galaxy can die, galaxies can also be "strangled."

"Strangulation occurs when the gas is consumed to make stars faster than it's being replenished, so the galaxy starves to death," he said.

"It's a slow-acting process. On the contrary, what ram-pressure stripping does is bop the galaxy on the head and remove its gas very quickly -- of the order of tens of millions of years -- and astronomically speaking that's very fast." 

​Beijing, Jan 17 (IANS) China will launch a satellite this year to gather electromagnetic data which may be used in monitoring and forecasting earthquakes.

According to China's earthquake administrative agencies on Tuesday, the satellite will be launched in the latter half of this year, Xinhua news agency reported. 

Movements of the Earth's crust generate electromagnetic radiation which can be observed from space.

By collecting data on the Earth's electromagnetic field, ionosphere plasma and high-energy particles, the satellite will be used in real-time monitoring of earthquakes and possible seismic precursors in China and neighbouring regions.

The satellite will be China's first space-based platform for earthquake monitoring, providing a new approach for research.

According to Shen Xuhui, deputy chief of the mission, it is designed to remain in orbit for five years and record the electromagnetic situation of earthquakes above 6 magnitude in China and quakes above 7 magnitude all over the world.

Scientists are expecting to find common factors that may be used to develop earthquake forecasting technology, Shen said.

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK have teamed up to air a colonoscopy being performed live on a patient in what the two organisations claim is the world's first TV ad showing a live surgical procedure.

The 90-second TV ad, which will rather incongruously air at 3.25 p.m. on Wednesday during the property programme "A Place In The Sun", will demonstrate an operation to remove two bowel polyps from inside Philip McSparron, the Guardian reported on Monday.

McSparron, who started getting regular screenings for cancer after his brother's bowel cancer was spotted in early 2010, said he hoped the live broadcast of his procedure would show people that it is "not something to be frightened of".

"Hopefully people will be interested in seeing the live footage and it will encourage them to be more willing to talk about cancer and think about taking up regular screening," he said. McSparron is not being paid for his appearance in the ad.

The surgery will be performed at the Cardiff and Vale University hospital, who will give a running commentary on what viewers are seeing.

The TV ad, titled Live from the Inside, will be promoted from Monday with 10-second teaser trails on Channel 4.

The charity will simultaneously stream the ad on Facebook, with a cancer nurse to field questions posted by social media users. 

Channel 4 will also simultaneously broadcast the event across its social media accounts.

In 2008, 2.2 million viewers watched the live broadcast of a team skydive in a three-minute ad for Honda. 

Almost 170,000 viewers tuned in just to watch the TV advert. It was the first live ad broadcast on UK TV.

New York, Jan 16 (IANS) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a multiregional brain-on-a-chip that models the connectivity between three distinct regions of the brain.

The in-vitro model was used to extensively characterise the differences between neurons from different regions of the brain and to mimic the system's connectivity.

"The brain is so much more than individual neurons. When modelling the brain, you need to be able to recapitulate that connectivity because there are many different diseases that attack those connections," said Ben Maoz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 

Researchers from the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS and the Wyss Institute modelled three regions of the brain most affected by schizophrenia - the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

They began by characterising the cell composition, protein expression, metabolism, and electrical activity of neurons from each region in vitro.

"It's no surprise that neurons in distinct regions of the brain are different but it is surprising just how different they are," added Stephanie Dauth, co-first author of the paper.

"We found that the cell-type ratio, the metabolism, the protein expression and the electrical activity all differ between regions in vitro. This shows that it does make a difference which brain region's neurons you're working with," Dauth noted.

The team then looked at how these neurons change when they're communicating with one another. 

"When the cells are communicating with other regions, the cellular composition of the culture changes, the electrophysiology changes, all these inherent properties of the neurons change," said Maoz in a paper published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. 

The team doped different regions of the brain with the drug Phencyclidine hydrochloride -- commonly known as PCP -- which simulates schizophrenia. 

The brain-on-a-chip allowed the researchers for the first time to look at both the drug's impact on the individual regions as well as its downstream effect on the interconnected regions in vitro.

"The brain-on-a-chip could be useful for studying any number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury," the authors wrote.

​New York, Jan 15 (IANS) A new image analysis technique can use cell phone images to quickly find and track important biological molecules, including tell-tale signs of disease.

Developed by scientists from the University of Southern California (USC), "Hyper-Spectral Phasor" analysis, or HySP, has the ability to look at many different molecules in one pass.

"By looking at multiple targets or watching targets move over time, we can get a much better view of what is actually happening within complex living systems," said Francesco Cutrale from the USC.

The study says that one day it might also be possible for clinicians to use HySP to analyse cell phone pictures of skin lesions to determine if they are at risk of being cancerous.

Clinicians could examine the patient further to be certain of a diagnosis and respond appropriately.

Researchers use fluorescent imaging to locate proteins and other molecules in cells and tissues that works by tagging the molecules with dyes that glow under certain kinds of light.

"Both scientists at the bench and scientists at the clinic will be able to perform their work faster and with greater confidence in the results," Cutrale said in a study published in the journal Nature Methods.

Beijing, Jan 15 (IANS) Beijing, one of the most polluted cities of the world, will spend $2.6 billion to curb deadly air pollution.

The city of about nearly 22 million has been grappling with suffocating smog for years thanks to unbridled industrialisation in and around the capital city. 

Beijing will spend 18.2 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) to fight air pollution in 2017, officials were quoted by Xinhua news agency. 

This year, Beijing will replace coal with clean energy for 700 villages and phase out 300,000 high-polluting old vehicles. 

It will close or upgrade 2,570 polluting factories, said acting mayor Cai Qi Cai said Beijing will take tougher measures to improve the city's air quality in 2017. 

Acts of excessively or secretly discharging pollutants will be severely punished, Cai added. 

Beijing will also set up environment police thie year. 

The environment police squad can detain suspects in serious environment-related cases, the official told municipal lawmakers. 

The environment police will work with the city's environmental protection authorities to crack down on violations in environmental protection, Fang Li, head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. 

​London, Jan 15 (IANS) Want to make your New Year resolution successful? Try relocating, as it may help to overcome the things one wants to change in themselves, a new study says.

The study showed that the time for successful habit change is not based on the calendar, but on big changes in our everyday lives like moving to a new home."Changing your habits is very difficult, including finding the right moment to make a change," said Bas Verplanken, Professor at the University of Bath in Britain.

New Year may be a nice moment to mark the start of a new phase, but "the change in behaviour is embedded in other changes," Verplanken explains."In the case of moving to a new home for instance, people may need to find new solutions for how to do things in the new house, where and how to shop, commute, and so on. All of these aspects are absent when talking about New Year resolutions," Verplanken added.

For the study, the researchers studied the behaviours of over 800 people, half of whom had recently moved and the rest who had been at the same home for several years.The participants responded to questions on 25 environment related behaviours including water and energy use, commuting choices, and waste (food waste, recycling).

The result showed that people who recently relocated reported more change eight weeks later on a composite of twenty-five environment-relevant behaviours compared to participants who had not recently relocated.These results were consistent in spite of the strength of previous habits and views, and are consistent with research from others. The study was presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention in the US.

New York, Jan 14 (IANS) Wish to live longer? Eating hot red chilli peppers with cholesterol lowering properties may help, researchers say.

The findings showed that consumption of hot red chilli peppers can lead to a 13 per cent reduction in total mortality, primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke.

People who were regular consumers of hot red chilli peppers showed lower cholesterol.

Although the researchers are not certain about the mechanism by which peppers could delay mortality, "transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, which are primary receptors for pungent agents such as capsaicin -- the principal component in chilli peppers -- may in part be responsible for the observed relationship," said Mustafa Chopan from University of Vermont in the US. 

Capsaicin is believed to play a role in cellular and molecular mechanisms that prevent obesity and modulate coronary blood flow and also possesses anti-microbial properties that "may indirectly affect the host by altering the gut microbiota," Chopan said.

Peppers and spices have been for centuries thought to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases.

For the study, the team examined more than 16,000 Americans who were followed for up to 23 years. 

The results found that consumers of hot red chilli peppers tended to be "younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and consume more vegetables and meats... had lower HDL-cholesterol, lower income, and less education," in comparison to participants who did not consume red chilli peppers. 

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.