Knowledge Update

​Paris, Dec 17 (IANS) The Grand Musee de Parfum, Paris' first perfume museum, opened its doors here, inviting visitors to discover perfume history through a quite innovative sensory and olfactory exhibition.

The Grand Musee du Parfum, which opened for public on Friday, is created after noting the absence of an emblematic place of French perfumery in Paris despite the sector's flourishing influence abroad, Xinhua news agency quoted Guillaume de Maussion, the museum president, as saying.

The museum gathered major players in French and international perfume industry, including the Federation of Beauty Enterprises, the French Syndicate of Perfumery and the International Flavours and Fragrances, de Maussion said.

The Grand Musee du Parfum intends to create three spaces with one area dedicated to the history of perfumes.

France has world's leading cosmetics-perfumes sector and its turnover totalled 25 billion euros ($26 billion) in 2014. (1 euro=$1.04)

London, Dec 17 (IANS) The sense of well-being and relaxation experienced during sauna bathing can help reduce risk of dementia, new research suggests. In a 20-year follow-up study involving 2,000 middle-aged men, the researchers found that men taking a sauna four to seven times a week were 66 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those taking a sauna once a week. The more frequently saunas were taken, the lower was the risk of dementia, showed the study published in the journal Age and Ageing. Frequent sauna bathing was earlier found to significantly reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death, the risk of death due to coronary artery disease and other cardiac events, as well as overall mortality. Sauna bathing may protect both the heart and memory to some extent via similar, still poorly known mechanisms, said lead researcher Jari Laukkanen, Professor at University of Eastern Finland. "However, it is known that cardiovascular health affects the brain as well. The sense of well-being and relaxation experienced during sauna bathing may also play a role," Laukkanen noted. The effects of sauna bathing on the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia were studied in the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD), involving more than 2,000 middle-aged men living in the eastern part of Finland. Based on their sauna-bathing habits, the study participants were divided into three groups -- those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna two to three times a week, and those taking a sauna four to seven times a week. Among those taking a sauna four to seven times a week, the risk of any form of dementia was 66 per cent lower and the risk of Alzheimer's disease 65 per cent lower than among those taking a sauna just once a week, the study said.

​London, Dec 17 (IANS) Drugs used to lower blood pressure can potentially block breast and pancreatic cancer invasion by inhibiting their cellular structures, say researchers.

The study discovered that calcium channel blockers -- currently used to treat hypertension -- can efficiently stop cancer cells move and invade surrounding tissue.

Identification of anti-hypertension drugs as potential therapeutics against breast and pancreatic cancer metastasis was a big surprise, said reseachers. 

The targets of these drugs were not known to be present in cancer cells and therefore no one had considered the possibility that these drugs might be effective against aggressive cancer types, said Johanna Ivaska at the University of Turku in Finland. 

The findings showed that aggressively spreading cancer cells express a protein called Myosin-10 which drives cancer cell motility.

Myosin-10 expressing cancers have a large number of structures called filopodia, or sticky finger-like structures the cancer cells extend to sense their environment and to navigate - imagine a walking blind spider, explained Guillaume Jacquemet, postdoctoral researcher at University of Turku. 

The calcium channel blockers target specifically these sticky fingers rendering them inactive, thus efficiently blocking cancer cell movement. This suggest that they might be effective drugs against cancer metastasis, the researchers said.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

​London, Dec 17 (IANS) Dropping cholesterol to the lowest level possible -- to levels similar to those we were born with -- may help reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke or fatal heart disease by nearly one third, a study has found.

Reducing cholesterol as low as possible is safe and more beneficial than the current normal levels -- 100 mg/dL (deci-litres) or below -- achieved with existing drugs such as statins, the study said.

However, participants in the study used a additional novel drug called alirocumab -- for patients whose cholesterol levels are not sufficiently lowered by statins.

The combined effect of the new drug and the statin therapy in the trials meant that patients reached very low cholesterol - lower than 50 mg/dL -- comparable to the levels we are born with.

For every 39 mg/dL reduction in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol -- or 'bad' cholesterol -- responsible for clogging arteries, the risk of heart attack -- stroke, angina or death from heart disease -- decreased by 24 per cent, the researchers observed.

"Experts have been uncertain whether very low cholesterol levels are harmful, or beneficial. This study suggests not only are they safe, but they also reduced risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke," said lead author Kausik Ray, Professor at Imperial College London in Britain.

This lowest cholesterol levels is only achievable in adulthood, through medication, as well as lifestyle changes like healthy food and exercise, the researchers suggested.

For the study, published in the journal Circulation, the team analysed data from 10 trials, involving around 5,000 patients, diagnosed with high cholesterol.

​London, Dec 17 (IANS) Researchers have identified a molecule that impairs the lungs' ability to repair damages on their own after developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that makes it makes it hard for sufferers to breathe.

The first indication of COPD is usually a chronic cough. As the disease progresses, the airways narrow and often pulmonary emphysema develops. This indicates irreversible expansion and damage to the alveoli, or air sacks. 

"The body is no longer able to repair the destroyed structures," explained Melanie Konigshoff from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen -- German Research Centre for Environmental Health.

"In our current work we have been able to show that COPD results in a change in the messengers that lung cells use to communicate with one another," Konigshoff added.

In the study published Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers blamed the increased production of the molecule Wnt5a for this problem.

"Our working hypothesis was that the relationship between different Wnt messengers is no longer balanced in COPD," the study's first author Hoeke Baarsma from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen.

"In both the pre-clinical model and the tissue samples from patients, we found that in COPD tissue particularly the non-canonical Wnt5a molecule is increased and occurs in a modified form," Baarsma added.

Stimuli that typically cause a reaction in COPD, such as cigarette smoke, additionally lead to increased production of Wnt5a and consequently to impaired lung regeneration, the researchers said.

The findings could lead to new therapeutic approaches to treat the disease.

​Tokyo, Dec 17 (IANS) Japanese scientists have in a breakthrough developed a new technique that can manipulate people's brain activity to boosts their self-confidence, a finding that opens the potential treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and phobias.

The new technique called 'Decoded Neurofeedback' identifies brain activity linked to confidence and then amplifies it to a high confidence state.

For patients with PTSD and Alzheimer's disease self confidence is an important aspect, which is often complicated by patients thinking negatively of their own capacities. 

In the study, using this technique, participants' brains were scanned to monitor and detect the occurrence of specific complex patterns of activity corresponding to high confidence states, while they performed a simple perceptual task. 

Whenever the pattern of high confidence was detected, participants received a small monetary reward.

This experiment allowed researchers to directly boost one's own confidence unconsciously, i.e. participants were unaware that such manipulation took place. 

Importantly, the effect could be reversed, as confidence could also be decreased.

"By continuously pairing the occurrence of the highly confident state with a reward - a small amount of money - in real-time, we were able to do just that: when participants had to rate their confidence in the perceptual task at the end of the training, their were consistently more confident," Aurelio Cortese from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, Japan. 

The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

London, Dec 17 (IANS) In a finding that could put an end to the use of medication in the treatment of social anxiety disorder, researchers have shown that structured talk therapy or cognitive alone has the potential to cure social phobia.

In treating patients with social anxiety disorder, cognitive therapy on its own has a much better effect over the long term than just drugs or a combination of the two, said the study.

"This is the most effective treatment ever for this patient group. Treatment of mental illness often isn't as effective as treating a bone fracture, but here we've shown that treatment of psychiatric disorders can be equally effective," said lead researcher Hans Nordahl, Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Social anxiety is not a diagnosis, but a symptom that a lot of people struggle with. For example, talking or being funny on command in front of a large audience can trigger this symptom.

Until now, a combination of cognitive therapy and medication was thought to be the most effective treatment for these patients. 

In this study involving over 100 patients -- published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics -- nearly 85 per cent of the study participants significantly improved or became completely healthy using only cognitive therapy.

"A lot of doctors and hospitals combine medications - like the famous "happy pill" - with talk therapy when they treat this patient group. It works well in patients with depressive disorders, but it actually has the opposite effect in individuals with social anxiety disorders. Not many health care professionals are aware of this," Nordahl noted.

"Happy pills," like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), may have strong physical side effects. 

The researchers noted that when patients have been on medications for some time and want to reduce them, the bodily feelings associated with social phobia, like shivering, flushing and dizziness in social situations tend to return. 

Patients often end up in a state of acute social anxiety again.

"The medication camouflages a very important patient discovery: that by learning effective techniques, they have the ability to handle their anxiety themselves," Nordahl said.

​New York, Dec 17 (IANS) Antiretroviral drugs have been life-changing therapies for HIV patients, but they can have significant side effects including neuronal degeneration, which can be manifested as forgetfulness, confusion and behavioural and motor changes, says a study.

Certain protease inhibitors, among the most effective HIV drugs, lead to the production of the peptide beta amyloid, often associated with Alzheimer's disease, the study found.

"Protease inhibitors are very effective antiviral therapies, but they do have inherent toxicities," said senior author on the study Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, Professor at University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in the US.

The drugs prompt an increase in levels of the enzyme that cleaves the amyloid precursor protein, APP, to produce beta amyloid, which is responsible for the damage to neurons.

Notably, inhibiting that enzyme, called BACE1, protected human and rodent brain cells from harm, suggesting that targetting this mechanism with a new drug could minimise damage to neurons in patients on antiretroviral therapies.

"Our findings may cause us to rethink how we're using these drugs and even consider developing an adjunctive therapy to reduce some of these negative effects," Jordan-Sciutto noted.

To determine whether and how neuronal damage arises from drug treatment and to ascertain the enzyme BACE1's role, the team investigated the effects of protease inhibitors in two animal models, then probed the mechanism of action in cells in culture.

The findings appeared in the American Journal of Pathology.

​London, Dec 16 (IANS) US tech giant Microsoft has teamed up with traffic, navigation and mapping products company TomTom to bring enterprise-grade location-based services to Microsofts Azure Cloud platform.

​Beijing, Dec 16 (IANS) Chinese yuan weakened against the US dollar on Friday for the third-straight day Friday after the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) raised the benchmark interest rate for the first time this year, Xinhua news agency reported.