The Regular News Thread

[Gliondrach]

Smoking, Diabetes, Obesity May Shrink Your Brain

Study adds to evidence that good living preserves mental abilities

By Maureen Salamon
HealthDay Reporter

1 Aug 2011

MONDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- As if there weren't already enough good reasons to avoid smoking and keep your weight, blood sugar levels and blood pressure all under control, a new study suggests these risk factors in middle age may cause your brain to shrink, leading to mental declines up to a decade later.

Evaluating data from 1,352 participants whose average age was 54 in the Framingham Offspring Study -- which began in 1971 -- researchers from the University of California, Davis found that smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and being overweight were each linked to potentially dangerous vascular changes in the brain.

"We can't cure disease or cure aging, but the idea of a healthy body, healthy mind is very real," said study author Dr. Charles DeCarli, director of UC Davis' Alzheimer's Disease Center. "People should stop smoking, control their blood pressure, avoid diabetes and lose weight. It seems like a no-brainer."

The study is published Aug. 2 in the journal Neurology.

Participants were given blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes tests and had their body mass and waist circumference measured. They also underwent MRI brain scans over the course of a decade, the first one about seven years after the initial risk factor exam.

Those with stroke and dementia were excluded at the outset, and between the first and last MRIs 19 participants suffered a stroke and two developed dementia.

Those with high blood pressure experienced a more rapid worsening of test scores of planning and decision-making, which corresponded to a faster rate of growth of small areas of vascular brain damage than those with normal blood pressure.

Those with diabetes in middle age experienced brain shrinkage in an area known as the hippocampus faster than those without, and smokers lost brain volume overall and in the hippocampus faster than nonsmokers, with a more rapid increase of small areas of vascular brain damage.

Meanwhile, participants who were obese at middle age were more likely to be in the top 25 percent of those with faster declines in tests of executive function, DeCarli said. Those with a high waist-to-hip ratio were more likely to be among the 25 percent with a faster drop in brain volume.

"I do think it's an important study and has practical importance in confirming there are things we can do in middle age that can have effects 10, 20 and 30 years down the line to improve cognitive health," said Dr. Raj Shah, medical director of the Rush Memory Clinic in Chicago. "It may seem we're talking about things that are somewhat common knowledge, but really, we always hypothesize these things could happen, but to show they actually do in a study is very important."

DeCarli noted that the effects of the risk factors studied are likely to be even more compelling in the general population, since study participants were largely healthy individuals with normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels and a low diabetes rate.

"It could be so much worse in a representative group of Americans," he said, adding that all study participants were white and only 5 percent were diabetics, compared to a nearly 50 percent rate for Hispanics over age 65. And, "the study certainly doesn't represent the growing obesity problem seen in the South."

One of the strengths of the research was that it used a large sample of people from a well-known study, said Catherine Roe, an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. However, the results don't prove these risk factors caused the brain changes, she added.

"We know smoking and being overweight are bad for other parts of your health," Roe said. "This is just one more reason to get these things under control."

ht--tp://health.usnews.com/health-news/diet-fitness/diabetes/articles/2011/08/01/smoking-diabetes-obesity-may-shrink-your-brain

[Gliondrach]

Not exactly news. It was published in 2007.

MIT biologists solve vitamin puzzle

Anne Trafton, News Office

Solving a mystery that has puzzled scientists for decades, MIT and Harvard researchers have discovered the final piece of the synthesis pathway of vitamin B12--the only vitamin synthesized exclusively by microorganisms.

B12, the most chemically complex of all vitamins, is essential for human health. Four Nobel Prizes
have been awarded for research related to B12, but one fragment of the molecule remained an enigma--until now.

The researchers report that a single enzyme synthesizes the fragment, and they outline a novel
reaction mechanism that requires cannibalization of another vitamin.

The work, which has roots in an MIT undergraduate teaching laboratory, "completes a piece of our understanding of a process very fundamental to life," said Graham Walker, MIT professor of biology and senior author of a paper on the work that will appear in the March 22 online edition of Nature.

Vitamin B12 is produced by soil microbes that live in symbiotic relationships with plant roots.

During the 1980s, an undergraduate research course taught by Walker resulted in a novel method
for identifying mutant strains of a soil microbe that could not form a symbiotic relationship with a plant.

Walker's team has now found that one such mutant has a defective form of an enzyme known as BluB that leaves it unable to synthesize B12.

BluB catalyzes the formation of the B12 fragment known as DMB, which joins with another fragment, produced by a separate pathway, to form the vitamin. One of several possible reasons why it took so long to identify BluB is that some bacteria lacking the enzyme can form DMB through an alternate pathway, Walker said.

One of the most unusual aspects of BluB-catalyzed synthesis is its cannibalization of a cofactor derived from another vitamin, B2. During the reaction, the B2cofactor is split into more than two fragments, one of which becomes DMB.

Normally, the B2-derived cofactor would assist in a reaction by temporarily holding electrons and then giving them away. Such cofactors are not consumed in the reaction.

Cannibalization of a cofactor has very rarely been observed before in vitamin synthesis or any type of biosynthetic pathway, says Michiko Taga, an MIT postdoctoral fellow in Walker's lab and lead co-author of the Nature paper.

"There are almost no other examples where the cofactor is used as a substrate," she said.

One early clue to BluB's function was that a gene related to it is located near several other genes
involved in B12 synthesis in a different bacterium. Still, the researchers were not convinced that one enzyme could perform all of the complicated chemistry needed to produce DMB.

"It looked like a number of things had to happen in order to make the DMB," said Walker. "We originally thought that BluB might be just one of several enzymes involved in DMB synthesis."

Therefore, it came as a surprise when Taga isolated the BluB protein and showed that it could make DMB all by itself.

Nicholas Larsen, lead co-author and a former college classmate of Taga's now at Harvard Medical School, did a crystallographic analysis of the protein after Taga told him about her research over coffee one day. The protein structure he developed clearly shows the "pocket" of BluB where the DMB synthesis reaction takes place.

Still to be explored is the question of why soil bacteria synthesize B12 at all, Walker said. Soil
microorganisms don't require B12 to survive, and the plants they attach themselves to don't need it either, so he speculates that synthesizing B12 may enable the bacteria to withstand "challenges" made by the plants during the formation of the symbiotic relationship.

More than 30 genes are involved in vitamin B12 synthesis, and "that's a lot to carry around if you don't need to make it," Walker said.

The full implications of the new research will probably not be known for some years, which is often the case with basic research, Walker said. "I've been in many other situations in research where we did something very basic and did not immediately realize the importance of it, and subsequently the implications were found to be much more broad-reaching," he said.

Other authors on the paper are Annaleise Howard-Jones, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, and Christopher Walsh, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial
Fund for Medical Research.

h--ttp://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/b12.html

[Gliondrach]

Monkeys Recall and Reproduce Simple Shapes from Memory

Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 9, 774-778, 28 April 2011

Authors
Benjamin M. Basile, Robert R. Hampton
Department of Psychology and Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

Highlights
We report the first recall test for monkeys directly comparable to human tests

Monkeys reproduced simple shapes from memory on a touchscreen

Monkey performance paralleled that of humans; recall does not require language

Recall may have been adaptive since before human and rhesus lineages split

Summary
If you draw from memory a picture of the front of your childhood home, you will have demonstrated recall. You could also recognize this house upon seeing it. Unlike recognition, recall demonstrates memory for things that are not present. Recall is necessary for planning and imagining, and it can increase the flexibility of navigation, social behavior, and other cognitive skills. Without recall, memory is more limited to recognition of the immediate environment. Amnesic patients are impaired on recall tests [1,2], and recall performance often declines with aging [3]. Despite its importance, we know relatively little about nonhuman animals' ability to recall information; we lack suitable recall tests for them and depend instead on recognition tests to measure nonhuman memory. Here we report that rhesus monkeys can recall simple shapes from memory and reproduce them on a touchscreen. As in humans [4,5], monkeys remembered less in recall than recognition tests, and their recall performance deteriorated more slowly. Transfer tests showed that monkeys used a flexible memory mechanism rather than memorizing specific actions for each shape. Observation of recall in Old World monkeys suggests that it has been adaptive for over 30 million years [6] and does not depend on language.

h--ttp://ww--w.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900348-4

[Gliondrach]

Antibiotic-resistant infections spread through Europe

Experts blame overuse of medicines for huge rise in bacteria that are almost impossible to treat

The world is being driven towards the "unthinkable scenario of untreatable infections", experts are warning, because of the growth of superbugs resistant to all antibiotics and the dwindling interest in developing new drugs to combat them.

Reports are increasing across Europe of patients with infections that are nearly impossible to treat. The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) said yesterday that in some countries up to 50 per cent of cases of blood poisoning caused by one bug – K. pneumoniae, a common cause of urinary and respiratory conditions – were resistant to carbapenems, the most powerful class of antibiotics.

Across Europe, the percentage of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae has doubled from 7 per cent to 15 per cent. The ECDC said it is "particularly worrying" because carbapenems are the last-line antibiotics for treatment of multi-drug-resistant infections.

Marc Sprenger, the director, said: "The situation is critical. We need to declare a war against these bacteria."

In 2009, carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae was established only in Greece, but by 2010, it had extended to Italy, Austria, Cyprus and Hungary. The bacterium is present in the intestinal tract and is transmitted by touch.

Resistant strains of E.coli also increased in 2010. Between 25 and 50 per cent of E.coli infections in Italy and Spain were resistant to fluoroquinolones in 2010, one of the most important antibiotics for treating the bacterium.

In the UK, 70 patients have been identified carrying NDM-1-containing bacteria, an enzyme that destroys carbapenems. Separate research has shown that more than 80 per cent of travellers returning from India to Europe carried the NDM gene in their gut.

Researchers speak of a "nightmare scenario" if the gene for NDM-1 production is spread more widely.

The UK Health Protection Agency warned doctors last month to abandon a drug usually used to treat a common sexually transmitted disease because it was no longer effective. The agency said that gonorrhoea – which caused 17,000 infections in 2009 – should be treated with two drugs instead of one and warned of a "very real threat of untreatable gonorrhoea in the future."

Discovering new medicines to treat resistant superbugs has proved increasingly difficult and costly – they are taken only for a short period and the commercial returns are low. The European Commission yesterday launched a plan to boost research into new antibiotics, by promising accelerated approval for new drugs and funding for development through the the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a public-private collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry.

An estimated 25,000 people die each year in the European Union from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Countries with the highest rates of resistant infections, such as Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, also tended to be the ones with the highest use of antibiotics.

World Health Organisation scientists warned two years ago that overuse of antibiotics risked returning the world to a pre-antibiotic era in which infections did not respond to treatment. The warnings have been ignored.

Professor Laura Piddock, president of the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, said politicians and the public had been slow to appreciate the urgency of the situation. In The Lancet, she writes: "Antibiotics are not perceived as essential to health, despite such agents saving lives." Global action to develop new antibiotics is required, she says.

The Department of Health published guidance aimed at curbing the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals, by avoiding long treatment and replacing broad-spectrum antibiotics with those targeted at the specific infection. Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer, said: "Many antibiotics are prescribed... when they don't need to be."

Case study: Holiday fever that took two months to control

In August 2010, Paolo, 55, a university professor in Rome, was on holiday on the island of Ponza, when he fell ill with a fever and shaking chills. He had a urinary tract infection and his brother-in-law, a doctor, prescribed a commonly used antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.

Three days later he was no better and still feverish but continued with the drugs for a week. He returned to the mainland where his urine was tested and found to be infected with a strain of E.coli resistant to many antibiotics including ciprofloxacin.

He was prescribed a different antibiotic, which he took for four weeks. He got better but four days after stopping the treatment, his symptoms returned and he became feverish again.

He then called a friend, an infectious disease specialist, who suggested a third antibiotic which he took for 21 days. Two months after he began treatment, that finally cured his infection.

Jeremy Laurance

independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/antibioticresistant-infections-spread-through-europe-6264079.html

[Gliondrach]

I hope he was happy. He had a good innings.

Tarzan's chimp Cheetah dies aged 80

Cheetah the chimpanzee from the Tarzan films of the 1930s has died at the age of 80.

The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbour, Florida, announced on its website that Cheetah died on December 24 of kidney failure.

Sanctuary outreach director Debbie Cobb told The Tampa Tribune that Cheetah was outgoing, loved finger painting and liked to see people laugh. She said he seemed to be tuned into human feelings.

Cheetah was the comic relief in the Tarzan series starring American Olympic gold medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller.

Ms Cobb said Cheetah came to the sanctuary from Weissmuller's estate sometime around 1960.

Ms Cobb said Cheetah was not a troublemaker. Still, sanctuary volunteer Ron Priest said when the chimp did not like what was going on, he would throw faeces.

ht--tp://uk.movies.yahoo.com/tarzans-chimp-cheetah-dies-aged-80-103934591.html

[gabbles]

:( I didn't know he had lived so long.

[Quistiadess]

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/harvard-declares-dairy-not-part-of-healthy-diet.html

Harvard says milk isn't part of a healthy diet!!! whoo! (http://www.care2.com/greenliving/harvard-declares-dairy-not-part-of-healthy-diet.html)

[Gliondrach]

Adoption of soybeans was earlier than thought, and widespread, archaeologists say

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Nov. 17, 2011) -- Human domestication of soybeans is thought to have first occurred in central China some 3,000 years ago, but archaeologists now suggest that cultures in even earlier times and in other locations adopted the legume (Glycine max).

Comparisons of 949 charred soybean samples from 22 sites in northern China, Japan and South Korea -- found in ancient households including hearths, flooring and dumping pits -- with 180 modern charred and unburned samples were detailed in the Nov. 4 edition of the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

The findings, say lead author Gyoung-Ah Lee, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, add a new view to long-running assumptions about soybean domestication that had been based on genetic and historical records.

"Preserved beans have been carbonized, and that distorts the sizes," Lee said. "So we experimented with modern soybeans, charring them to compare them with historical samples. All the different sizes and shapes of soybeans may indicate different efforts in different times by different cultural groups in different areas."

Experts argue that larger beans reflect domestication, but the transition zone between smaller wild-type soybeans and larger hybridized versions is not understood, Lee said. Small-seeded soybeans indicating wild-type soybeans date to 9,000 years ago. Historical evidence to date shows a close relationship between soybeans and use in China during the Zhou Dynasty, about 2,000 years ago. The new study moves domestication back to perhaps 5,500 years ago.

"Soybeans appeared to be linked to humans almost as soon as villages were established in northern China," said co-author Gary Crawford, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, in a news release. "Soybean seems to be a plant that does well in human-impacted habitats. In turn, humans began to learn how tasty soybean was and how useful it was."

Today, of course, soybeans are used as livestock feed and to make cooking oil, tofu, tempeh, edamame and protein powder for human consumption.

The new archaeological evidence, Lee says, should be a springboard for archaeologists, crop scientists and plant geneticists to collaborate on understanding cultural contributions, which may lead them to better soybean characteristics. Cultural knowledge, she said, could fill in gaps that relate to domestication and genetic changes of the legume.

"I think one contribution that archaeologists can make is how peoples in ancient times contributed to our heritage of this viable crop and how we can trace their efforts and the methods to help guide us to make even better crops today," Lee said.

In Lee's homeland of South Korea, the research team uncovered evidence for a cultural selection for larger sized soybeans at 3,000 years ago. The evidence for such dating, which also surfaced in Japan, indicates that the farming of soybeans was much more widespread in times much earlier than previously assumed, researchers concluded.


ht--tp://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2011/11/adoption-soybeans-was-earlier-thought-and-widespread-archaeologists-say

[Gliondrach]

I've just read that there's a report that loggers in Brazil captured an 8-year-old girl from one of the last uncontacted tribes and burnt her alive as a warning to other Indians. This is said to have happened last year in October or November.

It's being investigated by Brazil's Indian Affairs department. The Indigenous Missionary Council, a Catholic group, has confirmed that they saw video footage of the girl's charred remains.

If this is true it just confirms what evil scum infest this world.

[Gliondrach]

They want to build 1,000 houses on Watership Down. The area mentioned in the book is a real place just to the south of Newbury in Berkshire. It's called Sandleford.

h--tp://ww--w.saynotosandleford.org.uk/

:dutchbun: :dbun:

[Gliondrach]

Mad cow disease discovered in California

24 Apr 2012

The United States revealed Tuesday that a case of mad cow disease had been discovered in California as it scrambled to reassure consumers around the world.

No meat has entered the food chain and the cow "at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," the Department of Agriculture said, pointing out that the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), cannot be transmitted through milk.

Despite the reassurances, the case set alarm bells ringing as previous mad cow discoveries in the US, Canada, Israel, Europe and Japan have caused disruptions to the global food trade worth billions of dollars.

A stream of sanctions and restrictions had to be introduced in some cases and entire herds of cattle had to be slaughtered, destroying the livelihoods of many farmers.

The US government went to great pains to stress that everything was under control.

"Evidence shows that our systems and safeguards to prevent BSE are working, as are similar actions taken by countries around the world."

According to the US Meat Export Federation, beef brings more than $353 million into the United States, with Mexico, Canada, South Korea and Japan among the main export markets.

The United States has an estimated 90.8 million head of cattle, forming a large chunk of the economy in states like Texas, Nebraska, Kansas and California.

Around 40,000 US cattle are tested by the Department of Agriculture each year.

Samples from infected animal were sent to a laboratory in Ames, Iowa, where they proved positive for a rare form of the disease. The results are now being shared with labs in Britain and Canada.

"The US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has confirmed the nation's fourth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a dairy cow from central California," the government statement said.

"USDA remains confident in the health of the national herd and the safety of beef and dairy products. As the epidemiological investigation progresses, USDA will continue to communicate findings in a timely and transparent manner."

On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange the price of cattle futures fell on rumors of the news.

The biggest fear for US farmers will now be for sanctions on US beef, a possibility the Department of Agriculture tacitly addressed, and refuted.

"This detection should not affect US trade," they said.

More than 190,000 cases of mad cow disease have been detected in the EU since it was first diagnosed in Britain in 1986, forcing the destruction of millions of cows.

More than 200 people around the world are suspected to have died, most of them in Britain, from the human variant of the disease, which was first described in 1996.

Scientists believe the disease was caused by using infected parts of cattle to make feed for other cattle.

Authorities believe eating meat from infected animals can trigger the human variant of the fatal brain-wasting disease.

h--ttp://ww--w.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9224985/Mad-cow-disease-discovered-in-California.htm

[Bladerunner]

We don't seem to hear much about BSE these days. I remember in the late 80s, you could hardly watch the news without at some stage seeing pictures of cows when suffering from the disease, falling over. That was the trigger that started me going veggie.