Knowledge Update

​Sydney, Oct 16 (IANS) Using a new probability model, Australian mental health researchers have made a promising breakthrough in the early detection of the risk of psychosis -- a mental disorder characterised by a disconnection from reality.

The new model could lead to appropriate treatments to prevent psychotic episodes from occurring, the study said.

The new model has shown 70 per cent accuracy in predicting patients who are at greatest risk of developing psychosis.

The model combines medical history, the latest bedside clinical assessment, and biomarkers of fatty acids to determine a patient's risk of psychosis, the researchers observed. 

"Fatty acids such as omega-3 and nervonic acid are critical for the normal functioning of the brain, and low levels have been associated with the development of psychosis in high-risk groups," said lead author Scott Clark from the University of Adelaide in Australia.

In the probability model, fatty acid levels provided improved accuracy of prediction when patients were at intermediate risk following clinical assessment, the authors noted.

"Of those patients who are considered to be 'ultra-high risk', only about 30 per cent of them go on to experience a psychotic episode in the long-term," Clark added.

Currently all patients in the ultra-high risk group are considered to have a similar chance of a future psychotic episode, however we have been able to identify high, intermediate and low-risk groups.

"The new model may help clinicians to decide when a patient's risk of psychosis outweighs any side effects of treatment," Clark said.

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry. 

​New York, Oct 16 (IANS) Activating the oestrogen -- the primary female sex hormone -- receptor-beta protein with a chemical has the potential to increase metabolism as well as help reduce obesity, say researchers including one of Indian-origin.

The findings showed that the activation of a chemical called beta-LGND2 by the oestrogen receptor-beta can help reduce obesity and metabolic diseases in mice by converting bad fat (white fat) into good fat (brown fat). 

This is significant as brown fat increases metabolism and may facilitate weight loss, the researchers said.

"Although there is a general misperception that obesity is not a life-threatening condition, obesity is the underlying cause for several diseases that could result in mortality," said Ramesh Narayanan, a researcher at the University of Tennessee in the US. 

"Safe and effective treatment for obesity is highly needed, and targeting oestrogen receptor-beta might be one of the strategies to safely combat obesity," Narayanan added.

To make their discovery, Narayanan and colleagues used three groups of mice. 

One group was fed with normal rodent diet, while two groups were fed with high-fat diet to make them obese. One of the two high-fat diet-fed groups was treated with beta-LGND2. 

The beta-LGND2-treated mice were significantly leaner than the other mice fed on high-fat diet and they also had higher body temperature and oxygen consumption, indicating higher metabolism rate. 

The research was published online in The FASEB Journal.

​London, Oct 15 (IANS) Researchers have found that a substance - the coenzyme NAD+ -- can both help extend life and postpone the onset of the ageing processes.

The researches also believe that the new findings, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, will be able to help prevent neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Even though the researchers have only examined the effect of the substance on model organisms and not administered the substance to patients, they expect to see the same effect in humans, as the cell repair mechanisms are universal for the cells of all living organisms. 

"We were surprised to see that adding NAD+ postponed both the aging processes of the cells and extended life in worms and in a mouse model," said one of the researchers Vilhelm Bohr, Professor at Centre for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Previous research has shown that a main process in ageing is the capacity of the cells to keep our genes, our DNA, more or less intact. However, changes in the cells' power stations, the mitochondria, also affect aging processes. 

In this study the international team of researchers from University of Copenhagen and the National Institute of Health in the US showed that the substance NAD+ bridges the gap between two main aging theories -- repairs to the DNA and poor functioning mitochondria. 

The researchers have bred mice and roundworm with the illness Ataxia telangiectasia, A-T, for the purpose of the study. 

In these patients the part of the brain that is responsible for coordination gradually degenerates, DNA repairs are lacking, and they experience other symptoms characteristic of early aging.

The study also indicated that damage to the DNA can result in poor functioning mitochondria, and that this can lead to increasing neurodegeneration in A-T patients. 

Adding the substance NAD+ can stop the damage to the mitochondria, the study showed.

"We know from previous studies that a drop in the level of NAD+ results in metabolism errors, neurodegeneration and aging, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear to us. Our new study stresses that the substance NAD+ plays a main role both in maintaining the health of the cells' power stations and in their capacity for repairing the genes," Bohr said.

​Kigali (Rwanda), Oct 15 (IANS) Over 150 countries struck a landmark deal on Saturday to reduce the emissions of powerful greenhouse gases, in a move that could prevent up to 0.5 degrees Celsius of global warming by the end of this century.

The amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer endorsed in Kigali is the single largest contribution the world has made towards keeping the global temperature rise "well below" 2 degrees Celsius, a target agreed at the Paris climate conference in 2015.

"Last year in Paris, we promised to keep the world safe from the worst effects of climate change. Today, we are following through on that promise," said UN Environment chief Erik Solheim.

"This is about much more than the ozone layer and HFCs. It is a clear statement by all world leaders that the green transformation... is irreversible and unstoppable. It shows the best investments... in clean, efficient technologies," Solheim said.

Commonly used in refrigeration and air-conditioning as substitutes for ozone-depleting substances, HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) are currently the world's fastest growing greenhouse gases.

HFCs emissions are increasing by up to 10 per cent each year. They are also one of the most powerful gases, trapping thousands of times more heat in the earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2).

"The faster we act, the lower the financial costs will be, and the lighter the environmental burden on our children," said President of Rwanda Paul Kagame.

"That begins with a clear signal that change is coming and it is coming soon. In due course, new innovations and products will allow us to phase out HFCs even faster, and at lower cost," Kagame said.

The rapid growth of HFCs in recent years has been driven by a growing demand for cooling, particularly in developing countries with a fast-expanding middle class and hot climates.

The amendment, named the Kigali Amendment, provides for exemptions for countries with high ambient temperatures to phase out HFCs at a slower pace.

"It is not often you get a chance to have a 0.5 degrees Celsius reduction by taking one single step together as countries -- each doing different things perhaps at different times, but getting the job done," said US Secretary of State John Kerry.

"If we continue to remember the high stakes for every country on earth, the global transition to a clean energy economy is going to accelerate," Kerry said.

Following seven years of negotiations, the 197 Montreal Protocol parties reached a compromise, under which developed countries will start to phase down HFCs by 2019.

As per the amendment, the A2 (developed) countries have agreed to a baseline of 2011-2013 with cuts in HFCs beginning in 2019. In fact, the US, the European Union and other countries have already started.

Whereas A5 (developing) countries have agreed to two sub-groups with two different baselines.

A5 Group 2 includes India, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq -- with a baseline of 2024 -2026 and a freeze date of 2028 (two years earlier than India had originally proposed).

China, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and more than 100 other developing countries committed to freeze their HFC production and use by 2024.

The baseline year determines the level at which the HFC consumption in countries are capped.

By the late 2040s, all countries are expected to consume no more than 15-20 per cent of their respective baselines, says the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

At the four-day long 28th meeting of the Parties to the 1989 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer that ended Saturday, the countries also agreed to provide adequate financing for HFCs reduction, the cost of which is estimated at billions of dollars globally.

The exact amount of additional funding will be agreed at the next Meeting of the Parties in Montreal in 2017, said the UNEP.

Grants for research and development of affordable alternatives to hydrofluorocarbons will be the most immediate priority.

"In the original proposal we have no freeze year (for HFCs) but on October 14 we clarified that we can have freeze at 2030," India's lead negotiator, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests Manoj Kumar Singh told IANS.

In the second round of talks between Indian Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave and Kerry on Friday, the freezing year was advanced to 2028 with a condition that there would be a review of technology somewhere around 2023 or 2024, Singh said.

"If India finds that the refrigeration sector is growing at much faster rate and it cannot accommodate within the available refrigerant, then India would be free to go to 2030 as freeze year," he added.

Singh said the review would be done by the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel under the Montreal Protocol.

"But it will be mutually agreed upon by India and other parties. Without India, no one can unilaterally decide what is the growth rate which will trigger that mechanism," he said.

For smooth transition to developing new technologies indigenously, there is a huge financial burden on India -- both for the industry and the consumers.

Alternatives to HFCs currently being explored include substances that do not deplete the ozone layer and have a smaller impact on the climate, such as ammonia or carbon dioxide.

Super-efficient, cost-effective cooling technologies are also being developed, which can help protect the climate both through reducing HFCs emissions and by using less energy.

The Kigali Amendment comes only days after two other climate action milestones: sealing the international deal to curb emissions from aviation and achieving the critical mass of ratifications for the Paris climate accord to enter into force

​New York, Oct 15 (IANS) Move over milk, soy protein isolate early in life might be what's needed for strong, healthy bones in adulthood, researchers say.

The findings showed that giving children a diet high in soy protein isolate can protect against serious bone loss during adulthood as well as help ensure overall better bone quality.

"Appropriate early-life nutrition can optimise peak bone mass," said Jin-Ran Chen, researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

"Consumption of soy foods has a variety of health benefits, including amelioration of bone loss during adulthood," Chen added.

For the study, Chen and colleagues used a very young female rat model. 

One group of rats was fed a soy protein isolate diet for 30 days (from postnatal day 24 to 55), and then was switched to a regular standard rodent diet until six months of age. 

The rats were altered to mimic postmenopausal bone loss in women to determine the amount of bone loss. The second group of rats was fed a regular standard rodent diet throughout life. 

"The centuries-old mantra that children need milk to 'grow strong bones' remains true, but the study shows evidence that the protein components of soy 'milk' have key osteogenic effects," said Thoru Pederson, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. 

"The study could ultimately have major pediatric health impacts throughout various parts of the world," he said.

The research was published online in The FASEB Journal.

​London, Oct 15 (IANS) Patients who knowingly took a placebo in combination with traditional treatment for chronic lower back pain had a significant reduction in pain and disability, a study has found.

Conventional medical wisdom has long held that placebo effects depend on patients' belief they are getting pharmacologically active medication, the study said. 

"Our findings demonstrate the placebo effect can be elicited without deception," said lead author Claudia Carvalho from Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada (ISPA) in Lisbon, Portugal. 

For the study, they examined 97 patients with chronic lower back pain (cLBP), which causes more disability than any other medical condition worldwide. 

The researchers gave all patients a 15-minute explanation of the placebo effect. 

The group was then randomised into one of two groups; the treatment-as-usual (TAU) group or the open-label placebo (OLP) group.

The vast majority of participants in both groups (between 85 and 88 per cent) were already taking medications -- mostly non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDS) -- for their pain. 

Participants in both the TAU and OLP groups were allowed to continue taking these drugs.

At the end of their three-week course of pills, the OLP group overall reported 30 per cent reductions in both usual pain and maximum pain, compared to 9 per cent and 16 per cent reductions, respectively, for the TAU group. 

The group taking placebo pills also saw a 29 per cent drop in pain-related disability. Those receiving treatment as usual saw almost no improvement by that measure.

"This new research demonstrates that the placebo effect is not necessarily elicited by patients' conscious expectation that they are getting an active medicine, as long thought," explained Ted Kaptchuk, Associate Professor at the Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. 

Although, one can never shrink a tumour or unclog an artery with placebo intervention, but it can make people feel better, the researchers observed, adding that the placebo intervention cannot be trashed. 

"It has clinical meaning, it's statically significant, and it relieves patients. It's essential to what medicine means," Kaptchuk said, in the paper published in the journal Pain.

​New York, Oct 15 (IANS) A team of researchers has developed a smartwatch prototype that uses the wrist wearing the watch as an always-available joystick to perform touchscreen gestures with one-handed continuous input.

Checking email, tracking fitness and listening to music, are just a few things that a smartwatch can do but what if your hands aren't free? 

WristWhirl is the answer.

While other studies have explored the use of one-handed continuous gestures using smartwatches, WristWhirl is the first to explore gestural input.

"This shows what smartwatches may be able to do in the future, by allowing users to interact with the device using one hand (the one that the watch is worn on) while freeing up the other hand for other tasks," said Xing-Dong Yang, assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College.

To develop the WristWhirl prototype, researchers investigated the biomechanical ability of the wrist by tasking a small group of participants to conduct eight joystick-like gestures while standing and walking.

Participants wore the watch on their left wrist and were asked to use their wrist to make four directional marks similar to flicking a touch screen, and four free-form shapes, such as a triangle.

They were asked to make these gestures with their hand-up in front of their body during which they could see the gesture being drawn on the watch's screen, and with their hand-down alongside their body.

They were able to make directional marks at an average rate of half a second and free-form shapes at an average rate of approximately 1.5 seconds.

WristWhirl was built from a 2-inch TFT display and a plastic watch strap augmented with 12 infrared proximity sensors and a Piezo vibration sensor placed inside the wrist strap.

The project will be presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Tokyo on October 19.

​Washington, Oct 15 (IANS) Mission managers for Juno probe to Jupiter have decided to delay the upcoming burn of its main rocket motor - designed to put the spacecraft closer to the largest planet in our solar system - until December, the US space agency said on Saturday.

The decision was made in order to further study the performance of a set of valves that are part of the spacecraft's fuel pressurisation system.

This burn, originally scheduled for October 19, called the period reduction maneuver (PRM), was to reduce Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53.4 to 14 days. 

"It is important to note that the orbital period does not affect the quality of the science that takes place during one of Juno's close flybys of Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. 

"The mission is very flexible that way. The data we collected during our first flyby on August 27th was a revelation, and I fully anticipate a similar result from Juno's October 19th flyby," Bolton noted.

The most efficient time to perform such a burn is when the spacecraft is at the part of its orbit which is closest to the planet. 

The next opportunity for the burn would be during its close flyby of Jupiter on December 11, NASA said.

Mission designers had originally planned to limit the number of science instruments on during Juno's October 19 close flyby of Jupiter. 

Now, with the period reduction maneuver postponed, all of the spacecraft's science instruments will be gathering data during the upcoming flyby.

The Juno spacecraft launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

New York, Oct 14 (IANS) Men with prostate cancer who are treated with testosterone-lowering drugs are twice as likely to develop dementia within five years as compared to prostate cancer patients whose testosterone levels are not tampered with, say researchers including one of Indian-origin.

"The risk is real and, depending on the prior dementia history of the patient, we may want to consider alternative treatment," said senior author of the study Nigam Shah, Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Testosterone can promote the growth of prostate tumors, and so clinicians have used androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to lower testosterone and other androgens in prostate cancer patients since the 1940s.

The team looked at records from Stanford Medicine's clinical-research data warehouse for nearly 10,000 patients with prostate cancer. 

Of the 1,829 who received androgen deprivation therapy, 7.9 percent developed dementia within five years, compared with 3.5 percent of those not treated with androgen deprivation therapy, said the study published in the journal JAMA Oncology.

The researchers, however, cautioned that prostate cancer patients who are receiving ADT should not make changes to their medications without talking to their physicians.

The new retrospective study of patient records took only a few weeks, Shah said. 

But retrospective studies of patient medical records are not meant to replace randomised clinical trials, he added.

New York, Oct 14 (IANS) Offering new hope for an alternative treatment of brain cancer, researchers have found that depriving the deadly tumour cells of cholesterol, which they import from neighbouring healthy cells, kills tumour cells and causes their regression.

"Disrupting cholesterol import by GBM (glioblastoma) cells caused dramatic cancer cell death and shrank tumours significantly, prolonging the survival of the mice," said senior author Paul Mischel, Professor at University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the US.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive form of brain cancer, which is extremely difficult to treat. The median survival rate is just over 14 months, with few treated patients living five years or more past diagnosis.

"The strategy worked with every single GBM tumour we looked at and even on other types of tumours that had metastasised to the brain," Mischel noted.

Adult brain cancers are almost universally fatal, in part because of the biochemical composition of the central nervous system (CNS) and the blood-brain barrier, which selectively and protectively limits the passage of molecules from the body into the brain, but which also blocks most existing chemotherapies, contributing to treatment failure.

"Researchers have been thinking about ways to deal with this problem," Mischel said.

In previous research, Mischel and others had noted GBM cells cannot synthesise cholesterol, which is vital to cell structure and function, particularly in the brain. 

Instead, GBM cells derive what they need from brain cells called astrocytes, which produce cholesterol in abundance.

The researchers found that the experimental metabolic disease drug candidate named LXR-623 can help disrupt cholesterol import by GBM cells in mice.

The study published online in the journal Cancer Cell found no effect of the treatment upon healthy neurons and other brain cells, but GBM cells were deprived of vital cholesterol, resulting in cell death and tumour regression.

Mischel suggested the GBM strategy could be implemented in clinical trials using drug-candidates under development or in early trials.