Knowledge Update

New York, March 25 (IANS) Do you love Swiss chocolates more than those from Indonesia? You may thank diverse yeast population for that particular taste as researchers have found that those differences may play an important role in the characteristics of chocolate and coffee from different parts of the world.

In comparison to the yeasts found in vineyards around the world, those associated with coffee and cacao beans show much greater diversity, the findings showed.

"Our study suggests a complex interplay between human activity and microbes involved in the production of coffee and chocolate," said Aimee Dudley of the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute in Seattle, US. 

"Humans have transported and cultivated the plants, but at least for one important species, their associated microbes have arisen from transport and mingling in events that are independent of the transport of the plants themselves," Dudley noted.

Coffee and cacao trees originally grew in Ethiopia and the Amazon rain forest. They are now widely cultivated across the "bean belt" that surrounds the equator. 

After they are picked, both cacao and coffee beans are fermented for a period of days to break down the surrounding pulp. 

This microbe-driven process also has an important influence on the character and flavour of the beans.

To explore further, the researchers bought unroasted coffee and cacao beans grown in Central and South America, Africa, Indonesia or the Middle East and isolated the associated yeast in their Seattle laboratory. 

Genetic analysis of those yeast strains revealed that yeasts from coffee and cacao beans were substantially more diverse than the wine yeasts. 

Interestingly, the genetic signatures of the yeast strains strongly clustered according to the geographic origin of the beans, the study said.

In fact, this association was so strong that they were able to accurately determine the origin of the beans solely from the DNA sequences of their associated yeasts, Dudley said.

The findings appeared in the journal Current Biology.

The findings showed that the yeast strains associated with coffee and cacao have multiple, independent origins. 

The researchers believe that the findings could lead to improvements in chocolate and coffee. ​

​New York, March 25 (IANS) Overweight middle-aged adults losing weight with a protein-rich diet are more likely to sleep better, than those who are losing weight consuming a normal quantity of proteins, say a new study.

"Most research looks at the effects of sleep on diet and weight control, and our research flipped that question to ask what are the effects of weight loss and diet -- specifically the amount of protein -- on sleep," said Wayne Campbell from Purdue University in the US. 

"We found that while consuming a lower calorie diet with a higher amount of protein, sleep quality improves for middle-age adults. This sleep quality is better compared to those who lost the same amount of weight while consuming a normal amount of protein," Campbell added in a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 

The study analysed 44 overweight or obese participants who consumed either a normal-protein or a higher-protein weight loss diet. 

The participants completed a survey to rate the quality of their sleep every month throughout the study. 

The findings showed that those who consumed more protein while losing weight reported an improvement in sleep quality after three and four months of dietary intervention.

"Short sleep duration and compromised sleep quality frequently lead to metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and premature death," said study's first author Jing Zhou. 

"Given the high prevalence of sleep problems it's important to know how changes to diet and lifestyle can help improve sleep," Zhou stated.

"This research adds sleep quality to the growing list of positive outcomes of higher-protein intake while losing weight and those other outcomes include promoting body fat loss, retention of lean body mass and improvements in blood pressure," Campbell said​

​London, March 22 (IANS) The time and date of birth determines our horoscope and the characteristics associated with it. However, a new study reveals a specific marker in our genes, which gives us the horoscope by the seasons of birth and shows how it influences so many things in our life.

The study showed that the season a person is born in influences a wide range of things: From risk of allergic disease, to height and lifespan. 

But, relatively little is known about how a one-time exposure, such as the season of birth, could hold lasting effects.

A specific marker that has been discovered on human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has been instrumental in linking the season of birth to risk of allergy in later life.

“It might sound like a horoscope by the seasons, but now we have scientific evidence for how that horoscope could work. Because season of birth influences so many things, the epigenetic marks discovered in this study could also potentially be the mechanism for other seasonally influenced diseases and traits too, not just allergy,” said lead author Gabrielle Lockett from University of Southampton in Britain.

The findings, published in the journal Allergy, revealed that particular epigenetic marks (specifically, DNA methylation) were associated with season of birth and still present 18 years later. 

Also, this epigenetic marks exposed the link to allergic disease, for example people born in autumn had an increased risk of eczema compared to those born in spring.

“Epigenetic marks are attached onto DNA, and can influence gene expression (the process by which specific genes are activated to produce a required protein) for years, maybe even into the next generation,” explained one of the researchers John Holloway, professor at Southampton University.

While these results have clinical implications in mediating against allergy risk, we are not advising altering pregnancy timing,” Holloway added.

The team conducted epigenetic scanning on DNA samples from a group of people born on the Isle of Wight in Britain and the results were validated in a cohort of Dutch children.​

​London, March 23 (IANS) Microsoft's Xbox Kinect - a popular sensor-based gaming console - can assess the respiratory function of patients and spot conditions such as cystic fibrosis, researchers including an Indian origin scientist report.

​Washington, March 23 (IANS) US-India Business Council (USIBC) has come out in strong support of legislation that recognizes India's status as an essential US defence partner and facilitates additional co-production/co-development and trade.

​Kathmandu, March 22 (IANS) Nepal on Tuesday officially become a Dialogue Partner of the Sanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), after signing a Memorandum of Understanding in Beijing.

​Colombo, March 22 (IANS) Internet giant Google on Tuesday announced that its popular street view feature for Sri Lanka is active and available on Google Maps.

The launch brings the total number of countries where street view is available to 76.

A new technique developed by a team of chemists at Stanford University has shown promise to be thousands of times more sensitive than current techniques to diagnose diseases -- whether it is a cancer or a virus like HIV.

Found effective in laboratory experiments, the technique, described in the journal ACS Central Science, is now being put to test in real-world clinical trials.

When a disease begins growing in the body, the immune system responds by producing antibodies.

Fishing these antibodies or related biomarkers out of the blood is one way that scientists infer the presence of a disease.

This involves designing a molecule that the biomarker will bind to, and which is adorned with an identifying "flag." Through a series of specialized chemical reactions, known as an immunoassay, researchers can isolate that flag, and the biomarker bound to it, to provide a proxy measurement of the disease.

The new technique, developed in the lab of Carolyn Bertozzi, professor of chemistry at Stanford, augments this standard procedure with powerful DNA screening technology.

In this case, the chemists replaced the standard flag with a short strand of DNA, which can then be teased out of the sample using DNA isolation technologies that are far more sensitive than those possible for traditional antibody detections.

The researchers tested their technique, with its signature DNA flag, against four commercially available tests for a biomarker for thyroid cancer.

It outperformed the sensitivity of all of them, by at least 800 times, and as much as 10,000 times.

By detecting the biomarkers of disease at lower concentrations, physicians could theoretically catch diseases far earlier in their progression.

"The thyroid cancer test has historically been a fairly challenging immunoassay, because it produces a lot of false positives and false negatives, so it wasn't clear if our test would have an advantage," said study co-author Peter Robinson.

"We suspected ours would be more sensitive, but we were pleasantly surprised by the magnitude," Robinson noted.

Based on the success of the thyroid screening, the group has won a few grants to advance the technique into clinical trials for screening other diseases including HIV.​

New York, March 20 (IANS)

​London, March 20 (IANS) A team of German scientists has found out what actually happens if we try to remember things that took place years or decades ago?

The study revealed that the neural networks involved in retrieving very old memories are quite distinct from those used to remember recent events.

"For the very first time we were able to show that the retrieval of old and recent memories are supported by distinct brain networks," said Magdalena Sauvage, professor at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.

When we remember events which occurred recently, the hippocampus -- the portion of the brain, thought to be the centre of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system -- is activated, said the paper appeared in the journal eLIFE.

Hippocampus contains the cornu ammonis regions 1 and 3 (CA1 and CA3), which plays a major role in retrieving recent memories.

For the study, the team monitored brain activity in mice during the retrieval of memories that are one day to one year old - e.g. up to the mouse-equivalent of 40 human years.

For their study they applied a high-resolution molecular imaging technique, which detects the expression of a particular gene tied to plasticity processes and this way sheds light on cognitive processes.

The CA3 region, believed to be the place of memory storage in the hippocampus, no longer plays a role when we remember very old memories.

Rather, the involvement of the CA1 region persists and the cortical areas -- largest part of the brain -- adjacent to the hippocampus become involved.

The reason for the differential involvement of the hippocampal sub-regions could lie in the mechanisms supported by CA3.

In CA3, memories can be retrieved on the basis of single features of an original memory, which are used as cues. 

"Since the memory for single features degrades over time, we speculate that they might ultimately be of no more use as cues, hence retrieving memory would then essentially rely on CA1 and other processes taking place in the parahippocampal region of the brain," explained Sauvage.​

​Cape Town, March 20 (IANS) South Africans actively took part in the Earth Hour campaign by switching off lights from 8.30-9.30 p.m., saving an average of 515 mw electricity during the hour, authorities said on Sunday.

As part of its support for the Earth Hour campaign, the country's electricity utility Eskom measured the reduction in electricity used during the hour on Saturday, Xinhua reported.

"We would like to encourage people to take action beyond this one hour, and to make energy efficiency and environmental conservation part of their daily lifestyles," Eskom said.

People are encouraged to reduce their energy consumption every day by using electricity efficiently, and switching off all non-essential lights and household appliances, said the utility.

Commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as computers in standby mode after hours, it added.

Earth Hour is an annual global event, initiated in Sydney, in 2007 to encourage people to switch off lights and unused appliances for an hour as a symbolic demonstration of their commitment to action against climate change.​