Knowledge Update

​London, July 10 (IANS) Immunotherapy has the potential to reduce the risk of heart disease in patients suffering with rheumatoid arthritis, finds a study.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease in which cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFI) and interfero-gamma (IFN), which normally protect the body, attack healthy cells

The findings showed that the combination of two anticytokines containing extra-low doses of antibodies against TNFI and IFN could improve the efficacy of standard rheumatoid arthritis therapy and decrease heart disease risk.

"In rheumatoid arthritis, patients have painful and inflamed joints. They are also at increased cardiovascular risk, particularly if their rheumatoid arthritis is not controlled," said Aida Babaeva, Professor at Volgograd State Medical University in Russia.

Further, the patients taking the combination of anticytokines had a lower rheumatoid arthritis disease activity score, as measured by the DAS28,2 and more dramatic decreases in IL-1, IL-6 and TNF alpha than the group on standard therapy alone.

The incidence of cardiovascular events (unstable angina, severe hypertensive crisis, and deterioration of chronic heart failure) was more than double in the group on conventional disease-modifying drugs alone (37 per cent) compared to those also taking the combination of anticytokines (13 per cent).

"Our findings suggest that the decreased rheumatoid arthritis disease activity with the combination of anticytokines translates into decreased cardiovascular risk," Babaeva said.

Rheumatoid arthritis is also associated with dysfunction of the blood vessel lining (called endothelium), which leads to lipid accumulation in the artery wall, plaque formation and atherosclerosis.

"Thus, decreasing disease activity may also reduce cardiovascular risk by slowing down or halting these processes," Babaeva added.

For the study, the team included 68 patients who had suffered from active rheumatoid arthritis for at least five years.

Patients were randomised to receive the combination of anti-TNF alpha and anti-IFN gamma plus standard disease-modifying therapy (38 patients) or placebo plus standard therapy (30 patients).

We recommend this new approach for preventing cardiovascular events in patients with moderate disease activity who are not receiving the standard biologics and who do not have severe complications."

The research was presented at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2016 in Italy, recently.​

​London, July 10 (IANS) Humans and other terrestrial animals learn how to walk in similar ways, finds an interesting study.

"We look at the emergence of walking behaviours in both human babies and infant animals, as they develop," said lead author Nadia Dominici from VU University in Netherlands.

Movements such as walking are created from the flexible combination of a small set of groups of muscles that simplify the control of locomotion, called "locomotor primitives".

The findings showed that human babies are born with just two walking primitives: the first directs the legs to bend and extend; the second commands the baby's legs to alternate -- left, right, left, right -- in order to move forward.

To walk independently, babies learn two more primitives, which is to handle balance control -- step timing and weight shifting.

These primitives are unexpectedly alike across different animals -- including rats that the study explored.

"Despite all of the differences in body structure and evolution, locomotion in several animal species could start from common primitives, maybe even stemming from a common ancestral neural network," Dominici added.

Babies are born with an instinct for walking and these are reflected when the child is held near to the floor.

The primitive stepping reflex displayed by the child shows the natural "walking" instinct, which becomes the foundation on which children build an independent walking motion, said the paper.

Understanding these first steps can improve the rehabilitation of patients recovering from spinal cord injury, and children with cerebral palsy, the researchers concluded.​

​London, July 10 (IANS) Norwegian researchers have ventured to delve into why people tend to perceive affinities between sound and body motion when experiencing music -- and agreed that it is all rooted in human cognition.

Researchers from the University of Oslo explored the theory behind the relationship between musical sound and body movement -- the so-called 'motor theory of perception'. 

They explored the relationship between musical sound and body movement -- and came up with results that showed these similarity relationships are deeply rooted in human cognition. 

The results indicated a fair amount of similarity among the participants' gestures, particularly between the vertical positioning of their hands and the pitch of the sound, according to the study published by the Journal of New Music Research.

For the study, the participants were played three-second sounds that varied in pitch and other musical qualities and were asked to trace the sounds in the air using motion capture technology. 

"Music-related motion -- both sound producing and sound accompanying -- leaves a trace in our minds and could be thought of as a kind of shape representation, one intimately linked to our experience of the salient features of musical sound," said Professor Rolf Inge Godoy of the University of Oslo.

In general, some sound features such as rhythm and texture seem to be strongly related to movement while others, such as dissonance, have a weaker sound-motion relationship. 

As a result, the researchers intend to focus their future work on researching large-scale statistical sound-motion feature correlations, providing us with more data on sound-motion similarity relationships in all kinds of musical experience.

"The basic notion here is that images of sound-producing and other sound-related motion are actively re-created in listening and in musical imagery, hence the idea that motor theory could be the basis for the similarities between sound and body movement when we experience music,” added Godoy.

Although links between musical sound and motion can be readily observed, the researchers argue that a more systematic knowledge of them is required.

In order to perceive something, one must actively simulate the motion associated with the sensory impressions.

So, when one listens to music, the person tends to mentally simulate the body movements that have gone into producing the sound. Thus the experience of a sound entails a mental image of a body motion.​

​Ottawa, July 10 (IANS) Coffee lovers who like to attend rock music concerts or work at airports should be cautious as a recent study indicates that caffeine has a serious impact on hearing.

According to a research by the McGill University in Canada, regular caffeine consumption can greatly impede hearing recovery from loud noise, even making the damage permanent, Xinhua news agency reported.

"When the ear is exposed to loud noise, it can suffer from a temporary hearing reduction, also called auditory temporary threshold shift. This disorder is usually reversible in the first 72 hours after the exposure, but if symptoms persist, the damage could become permanent," said Dr Faisal Zawawi, an otolaryngologist at McGill.

The researchers found this impact through an experiment on guinea pigs. They grouped the pigs and tested them in environments of noise without coffee, and noise with coffee.

The noise the animals were exposed to for one hour per day is similar as what people hear at a rock concert. After eight days, significant difference of hearing loss is recorded between the two groups, according to the research team.

In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority published an advice that caffeine intakes from all sources up to 400 mg per day and single doses of 200 mg might be safe for adults in the general population.

But the McGill research suggests that exposure to loud noises coupled with daily consumption of 25 mg of caffeine may have a clear negative impact on hearing recovery.​

​Beijing, July 9 (IANS) The World Trade Organisation has launched a new indicator designed to predict short-term trends in global trade ahead of a meeting of G20 trade ministers.

​New York, July 8 (IANS) If you find it hard to set aside time specifically for exercise, riding an electrically-powered bicycle on a regular basis can provide you with an effective workout while improving some aspects of cardiovascular health, suggests new research.

Electric-assist bicycles (pedelecs) are equipped with a built-in electric motor that provides modest assistance while the rider is actively pedalling, making it easier to cover greater distances and hilly terrain.

"Commuting with a pedelec can help individuals incorporate physical activity into their day without requiring them to set aside time specifically for exercise," said lead author of the study James Peterman at University of Colorado Boulder in the US.

Pedelecs have steadily grown more popular with consumers over the past decade, especially in Europe and Asia.

While an assist from an electric motor would get a rider disqualified from a competitive cycling competition such as the Tour de France, the researchers wanted to find out whether or not pedelecs could help physically inactive non-cyclists achieve recommended daily fitness levels.

To conduct the study, they recruited 20 non-exercising volunteers who were sedentary commuters (car commuters).

The researchers tested various aspects of their health, including blood glucose regulation and fitness.

The volunteers were then asked to substitute their sedentary commute for riding their pedelec at the speed and intensity of their choice for a minimum of 40 minutes three times per week while wearing a heart monitor and a GPS device.

After a month, the volunteers came back to the lab and had their health tested again. The researchers noticed improvements in the riders' cardiovascular health, including increased aerobic capacity and improved blood sugar control.

The findings were published online in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Pedelec bicycles are designed to provide motorised assistance up to speeds of 32 km per hour.

Above that speed, riders must provide all the pedalling power themselves. ​

New York, July 9 (IANS) Social media giant Facebook has said that it has begun offering an option to encrypt messages -- a way to have secret conversations with other users -- to some of 900 million users of Messenger, its messaging app.

​Toronto, July 9 (IANS) An international team of scientists has created a massive open-access database on human cultures to help answer long-standing questions about the forces that shaped human cultural diversity.

Singapore, July 8 (IANS) Prominent wealth funds of Singapore have shown keen interest in investing in India, a senior Indian official said on Friday.

"Lot of interest and deep appreciation in Singapore about reforms and policy initiatives in India," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said in a tweet about his ongoing

New York, July 8 (IANS) A study of numerous seasonal dark streaks called "recurring slope lineae" or RSLs found at a canyon network on Mars has offered important clues that liquid water could be present on the Red Planet.

Water pulled from the atmosphere by salts, or mechanisms with no flowing water involved, remain possible explanations for the occurrence of RSLs in part of the Valles Marineris region near Mars' equator.

"There are so many of them, it's hard to keep track," said study led author Matthew Chojnacki from the University of Arizona.

"The occurrence of recurring slope lineae in these canyons is much more widespread than previously recognised. As far as we can tell, this is the densest population of them on the planet, so if they are indeed associated with contemporary aqueous activity, that makes this canyon system an even more interesting area than it is just from the spectacular geology alone," he added.

The team examined the geological context of canyonland RSL sites and also calculated how much water would need to be present if the streaks are due to liquid water seeping through a thin surface layer to darken the ground.

Many of the sites where RSLs were previously identified are on inner walls of impact craters. At that type of site, a conceivable explanation could be that an extensive underground layer holding water was punctured by the crater-forming impact long ago and still feeds warm-season flows.

If it is seeping water that darkens RSLs, the amount of liquid water required each year to form the streaks in the studied portion of Valles Marineris would total about 10 to 40 Olympic-size swimming pools (about 30,000 to 100,000 cubic metres), the researchers estimate. 

However, no such underground layer fits the ridge or peak shapes at several of the RSL sites in the new study.

Another possible mechanism previously proposed for RSLs is that some types of salts so strongly pull water vapour out of the Martian atmosphere that liquid brine forms at the ground surface. 

The new study results, reported recently by NASA, bolsters the link between RSL and salts. Some sites bear bright, persistent streaks near the dark, seasonal ones. The bright streaks might result from salt left behind after evaporation of brine.

"There do seem to be more ways atmosphere and surface interact in the canyons than in blander topography, such as clouds trailing out of the canyons and low-lying haze in the canyons," Chojnacki said.

Another factor added by the new study is that RSLs not only darken the surface, but are also associated with material moving downslope. The research documents slumping and other three-dimensional changes at some RSL sites, occurring seasonally in tandem with the streaks.​