RxPG News : Special Topics

Behold India's unfolding democratic revolution

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:12:16 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A unique revolution is unfolding across India. No matter what is the immediate outcome of this popular upsurge, triggered by the inspiring determination of a 74-year-old man's refusal to eat food till the first step towards containing the hydra-headed monster of state-encouraged corruption is taken, Anna Hazare's fast has already become an event of great historic proportions.

Take a few recent developments in the so-called developed democracies of the West. In the United Kingdom marauding mobs robbed innocent people, burned down neighbourhood shops and houses and attacked police with guns and petrol bombs. In otherwise placid Norway, extreme hate-filled anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant mindset led to the mass carnage of innocent students and bombing of buildings in Oslo. In the preacher of democracy, the United States, a prolonged recession, mounting unemployment and venal partisan politics have led to hardening of anti-immigrant prejudices, instead of a pan-American protest movement. A similar narrow-minded response is on display across crisis-ridden Europe.

Now contrast that with India's sweeping mass movement. It is peaceful, non-violent and all-inclusive, propagating a 'middle path' shunning the extremism of Maoists on the one hand and rightwing bigotry on the other. We must remember that ordinary Indians have been brutalised for far too long by tyrannical state functionaries ranging from a ruthless policeman to a shameless minister looting public money to a pitiless judge allowing the innocent to rot in prison.

And yet, Indians have not swung either to the extreme left or to the extreme right. They have steadfastly remained on the middle path. In a dazzling display of noble human emotions, Indians are helping each other in this mass uprising in a spirit of service and fellow feeling. Look at that family of 40 from Ludhiana distributing food and water at Ramlila grounds and the traders from Shahdara who are running community kitchens to feed people and the grandmother from Kurukshetra who cooks food and brings it to Delhi and shares it with anyone sitting next to her at Ramlila grounds. Such stories abound across the country.

There is, as if, a race to do as much as one can to help the fellow human being braving the punishing heat and a callous government apparatus. There was a blind teacher from Delhi University who came with his blind wife so that they could let their one-year-old son see and hear Anna Hazare. There was an 80-year-old ailing professor from Patna who was brought in a wheelchair by his daughter-in-law so that he could be part of this social churning before he dies. Groups of poor homemakers from the suburb of Palwal came every day after finishing their household chores along with babies in their arms. Taxi-drivers skipped their work one evening and brought their taxis in a procession and many gave free rides to fellow protesters. Diasporic Indians also took to streets from Toronto to London and New York to feel emotionally connected with the movement back home.

No other popular movement since independence has been able to generate such nationwide enthusiasm in such a grand scale that is totally peaceful and non-violent. Even the 'total revolution' call by Jayaprakash Narayan in the seventies evoked a response mainly among the youth and stayed confined to northern and western India and sometimes degenerated into violent outbursts.

Cynics and sceptics, unwittingly propping up the indefensible case of an insensitive and insular ruling establishment, have variously tried to run down the uprising by picking up a stray slogan here or an out-of-context comment there or by plainly circulating lies and misinformation. That is why they are as disconnected from the ground reality and popular aspirations as the government and its corrupt minions are.

We must celebrate the swelling popular participation in the uprising that has forced the elected representatives to be accountable in an unprecedented way. If the legislators were truly representing the people, they would be milling among the peaceful crowds, and not hide in fear in their well-guarded, fenced and usurped prime real estate.

This churning will go toward strengthening democracy and making it more meaningful and relevant. Democracy does not mean voting once in five years and allowing the elected politician to lord over people and to loot public money and resources, secured in comfortable enclaves and protected by phony legalese.

It is the criminal masquerading as politician who has degraded parliament and its procedures, not the long suffering Indian people who are out on the street today demanding accountability and transparency - two hallmarks of real democracy. And the citadel of corruption is shaking. It is time to be proud of India's vibrant and exemplary democratic revolution.

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Chinese woman cuts open her belly to save surgery cost

Wed, 25 May 2011 16:14:25 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A Chinese woman cut open her stomach with a kitchen knife to relieve fluid accumulation so that she didn't have to pay the surgery cost, a media report said.

China Daily reported that 53-year-old Wu Yuanbi, a migrant worker living in Chongqing municipal area, had not bought medical insurance as she wanted to save money.

After her plight came to light, she was taken to a hospital and is now being given treatment free of cost.

Wu is suffering for the past 13 years from Budd-Chiari syndrome, which is a condition in which her stomach fills with fluid.

In 2002, her family pooled its savings to pay for a surgery that led to a large amount of fluid being taken out.

When she suffered a relapse, her family was too poor to pick the 50,000 yuan - tab for the second operation, the media report said.

As Wu was desperate to relieve the pressure in her stomach, she cut herself open with a kitchen knife May 8.

Her husband, Cao Yunhui, had left for work when she slit open her stomach and she had to endure intense pain for hours.

When Cao returned later in the day, he found Wu with a 10 cm-long wound in her stomach. She was lying in a fluid pool.

Wu was immediately taken to hospital.

'If I had passed away, I would have at least spared my family the trouble of looking after me,' Wu was quoted as saying.

Improved Sense of Smell Produced Smarter Mammals

Sun, 22 May 2011 13:28:18 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An improved sense of smell jump-started brain evolution in the ancestral cousins of present-day mammals, according to paleontologists.

The findings may help explain why mammals evolved such large and complex brains, which in some cases ballooned 10 times larger than relative body size.

By reconstructing fossils of two early Jurassic period mammals - Morganuocodon and Hadrocodium - researchers provide new evidence that the mammalian brain evolved in three major stages.

First by improvements in sense of smell, next by an increase in touch or tactile sensitivity from body hair and third by improved neuromuscular coordination or the ability to produce skilled muscle movement using the senses, reports the journal Science.

'Now we have a much better idea of the historical sequence of events and of the relative importance of the different sensory systems in the early evolution of mammals,' said Tim Rowe, who led the study at the University of Texas in Austin.

'It paints a much more vivid picture of what the ancestral mammal was like and how it behaved, and of our own ancestry,' said Rowe, also the university's director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab, according to a Texas statement.

The study used a medical imaging technique called X-ray computed tomography - to reconstruct brain moulds of the 190 million year old Morganuocodon and Hadrocodium fossils from China.

These tiny, shrew-like critters are thought to be precursors to existing mammals or 'pre-mammals.'

Two-year-old world's first to have extra DNA strand

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:11:27 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A British toddler has become the first person in the world to be diagnosed with an extra strand in his DNA.

Two-year-old Alfie Clamp from Nuneaton in Warkwickshire was born blind and with severe disabilities, which led doctors to carry out various tests.

They found out that his seventh chromosome had an 'extra arm' which has never been documented anywhere in the world before, according to the Daily Mail.

Doctors were baffled at his condition, which is so rare it does not have a name.

They also do not have no idea whether the medical condition will improve or reduce the boy's life span.

His parents, Gemma and Richard Clamp, only discovered something was wrong with their son after they first took him home.

A few days later he stopped breathing and his lips turned blue and had to be rushed back to hospital.

Doctors discovered he had a rare abnormality in his DNA only when he was six weeks old.

His condition left Alfie unable to see until he was three months old.

He still suffers from digestive problems and needs to take many medicines every day to help his body absorb vital nutrients.

The Clamps, who also have a 10-year-old daughter, who is perfectly healthy, had their DNA tested but were not found to be carriers of the different strand.

172,155 kidney stones removed from one patient!

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:39:54 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A doctor in Maharashtra's Dhule district has been awarded the Guinness record for removing a record number of 172,155 kidney stones from a single kidney.

Ashish Rawandale-Patil removed the stones from a single kidney of his patient Dhanraj Wadile in December last year.

Wadile, 45, owned a betel shop in Shahada town and was suffering the pains for six months before he approached Rawandale-Patil of Tejnaksh Healthcare's Institute of Urology.

'Wadile was suffering from severe lower abdominal pain. He had consulted many doctors and was on medication for months but could not get relief. We found Wadile had Pelvi-Ureteric Junction obstruction of the left kidney,' said Rawandale-Patil.

Rawandale-Patil decided to post the patient for surgery. After getting medical fitness of the patient, he made a detailed plan of surgery because the patient was observed to be having huge number of renal stones.

'The doctors who helped me operate upon Wadile could not believe the number of stones we removed after the surgery that lasted for four hours,' Rawandale-Patil said.

The stones were mainly made of calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate and were one millimetre to 2.5 cm big.

'Getting the exact count of the stones was going to be another major job. I decided to call for a diamond worker, who regularly counts and verifies diamonds and teamed him up with one of my doctors,' he said.

Rawandale-Patil mentioned that they worked for three hours a day for a month to finish counting the stones.

'I then wrote to the Guinness Book of World Records and they asked me to send the stones and related documents. They verified it and wrote back to me in October telling me that I have made a record,' the doctor said.

'I got the hard copy of the certificate only a couple of days back,' he added.

Rawandale-Patil said: 'This is an important milestone for me and my institute. It is the combined effort of my team that could take this small town to an international level.'

'Primodial Soup' theory for origin of life rejected in paper

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:04:25 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London. "We present the alternative that life arose from gases (H2, CO2, N2, and H2S) and that the energy for first life came from harnessing geochemical gradients created by mother Earth at a special kind of deep-sea hydrothermal vent – one that is riddled with tiny interconnected compartments or pores."

The soup theory was proposed in 1929 when J.B.S Haldane published his influential essay on the origin of life in which he argued that UV radiation provided the energy to convert methane, ammonia and water into the first organic compounds in the oceans of the early earth. However critics of the soup theory point out that there is no sustained driving force to make anything react; and without an energy source, life as we know it can't exist.

"Despite bioenergetic and thermodynamic failings the 80-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life," said senior author, William Martin, an evolutionary biologist from the Insitute of Botany III in Düsseldorf. "But soup has no capacity for producing the energy vital for life."

In rejecting the soup theory the team turned to the Earth's chemistry to identify the energy source which could power the first primitive predecessors of living organisms: geochemical gradients across a honeycomb of microscopic natural caverns at hydrothermal vents. These catalytic cells generated lipids, proteins and nucleotides giving rise to the first true cells.

The team focused on ideas pioneered by geochemist Michael J. Russell, on alkaline deep sea vents, which produce chemical gradients very similar to those used by almost all living organisms today - a gradient of protons over a membrane. Early organisms likely exploited these gradients through a process called chemiosmosis, in which the proton gradient is used to drive synthesis of the universal energy currency, ATP, or simpler equivalents. Later on cells evolved to generate their own proton gradient by way of electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. The team argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor was CO2.

"Modern living cells have inherited the same size of proton gradient, and, crucially, the same orientation – positive outside and negative inside – as the inorganic vesicles from which they arose" said co-author John Allen, a biochemist at Queen Mary, University of London.

"Thermodynamic constraints mean that chemiosmosis is strictly necessary for carbon and energy metabolism in all organisms that grow from simple chemical ingredients [autotrophy] today, and presumably the first free-living cells," said Lane. "Here we consider how the earliest cells might have harnessed a geochemically created force and then learned to make their own."

This was a vital transition, as chemiosmosis is the only mechanism by which organisms could escape from the vents. "The reason that all organisms are chemiosmotic today is simply that they inherited it from the very time and place that the first cells evolved – and they could not have evolved without it," said Martin.

"Far from being too complex to have powered early life, it is nearly impossible to see how life could have begun without chemiosmosis", concluded Lane. "It is time to cast off the shackles of fermentation in some primordial soup as 'life without oxygen' – an idea that dates back to a time before anybody in biology had any understanding of how ATP is made."

Human species could have killed Neanderthal man

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:04:57 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The wound that killed a Neanderthal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neanderthals did not, according to the latest research.

'What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it,' said Steven Churchill, professor at Duke University.

'We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neanderthals. I want to say that loud and clear,' added Churchill.

But Churchill's analysis indicates the wound was from a thrown spear, and it appears that modern humans had weapons that could be thrown and Neanderthals didn't.

'We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression,' he said.

He and four other investigators used a specially calibrated crossbow, copies of ancient stone points and numerous animal carcasses to make their deductions.

Neanderthals, stoutly-built and human-like, lived at the same time and in the same areas as some modern humans before going extinct.

Anthropologists have been puzzling over the fate of Neanderthals for many years, proposing that perhaps they inter-bred with modern humans, failed to compete for food or resources, or were possibly hunted to extinction by humans.

While narrowing the range of possible causes for the Iraqi Neanderthal's wound, and raising the possibility of an encounter between humans and a now-extinct close cousin, the research does not definitively conclude who did it, or why.

The victim was one of nine Neanderthals discovered between 1953 and 1960 in a cave in northeastern Iraq's Zagros Mountains. Now called 'Shanidar 3,' he was a 40- to 50-year-old male with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib, said a Duke release.

The wounded Neanderthal's rib had apparently started healing before he died. Comparing the wound to medical records from the American Civil War, a time before modern antibiotics, suggested to the researchers that he died within weeks of the injury, perhaps due to associated lung damage from a stabbing or piercing wound.

'People have been speculating about that rib injury for 50 years now,' Churchill said. 'Some said it was interpersonal violence. Others said it could have been an accident. Did it involve only Neanderthals? Now we, for the first time, have brought some experimental evidence to bear on these questions.'

The report is now online in the Journal of Human Evolution.

History, geography also seem to shape our genome

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:00:21 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) History and geography shape our genome, according to a new study.

The movements of humans within and among continents, expansions and contractions of populations and vagaries of genetic chance, have influenced the distribution of genetic variations.

In recent years, geneticists have identified a handful of genes that have helped human populations adapt to new environments within just a few thousand years - a strikingly short time scale in evolutionary terms.

However, a team from the Universities of Chicago, California and Stanford, which jointly conducted the study, found that for most genes, it can take at least 50,000-100,000 years for natural selection to spread favourable traits through a human population.

They found that gene variants tend to be distributed throughout the world in patterns that reflect ancient population movements and other aspects of population history.

'We don't think that selection has been strong enough to completely fine-tune the adaptation of individual human populations to their local environments,' says study co-author Jonathan Pritchard, professor in human genetics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

'In addition to selection, demographic history -- how populations have moved around -- has exerted a strong effect on the distribution of variants,' he added.

Selection may still be occurring in many regions of the genome, said Pritchard. But if so, it is exerting a moderate effect on many genes that together influence a biological characteristic, according to a Howard Hughes release.

'We don't know enough yet about the genetics of most human traits to be able to pick out all of the relevant variation,' said Pritchard.

'As functional studies go forward, people will start figuring out the phenotypes - associated with selective signals,' said lead study author Graham Coop.

'That will be very important, because then we can figure out what selection pressures underlie these episodes of natural selection.'

The study was published in the Friday edition of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

3,000 Kerala medical students to attend inter-college meet

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:40:07 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 7 - Nearly 3,000 students from Kerala's 10 private medical colleges will set aside stethoscopes, scalpels and fat medical books for five days next week to participate in an inter-college arts and sports meet.

KONZERIO 2008 is the fourth edition of the medical students' meet. This time, it is being held at the Dr Somervell Memorial CSI Medical College in Karakonam, on the outskirts of the capital.

'The meet will begin with sports events on Tuesday. Besides nearly 3,000 students, 500 teachers will also be here to ensure that the event goes off smoothly,' said KONZERIO coordinator Mohan Gopal. This event also expected to peak the interest of others in the medical field. Many students pursuing health nursing degrees are expected to put their studies on pause as well to attend.

The meet will include dance performances, skits and light music programmes.

'This is going to be a welcome break from our studies. It will be an ideal occasion for budding doctors to interact with each other and explore their talents,' said Mohin George, student in charge of publicity.

Tamil Nadu seeks to control deemed universities

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:18:22 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 16 - The Tamil Nadu government has sought additional powers from the human resource development - ministry to enable it exercise control over deemed universities in the state, a senior government official said Saturday.

Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, in a letter sent to the HRD ministry this week, said the state needed powers to exercise control over these universities and supervision of admissions and fixing fee structure.

Earlier this month, the ministry granted deemed university status to the private Chettinad Medical College without the recommendation of the Tamil Nadu government.

Such self-financing professional colleges, after securing the deemed university status, could take students and fix the fee structure.

Moreover, these institutions were now not required to surrender seats to the government under the new quota guidelines, said the official, who asked not to be quoted.

This has deprived the state of 83 seats under the government quota, he added.

Till now, private players needed to take mandatory clearance from the state's health department for establishing self-financing medical colleges. Only after completing the process would the Medical Council of India gave them permission to run medical colleges.

Spiders which eat together, stay together and multiply

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:53:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Washington, Aug 9 - The ability to work together and capture larger prey has allowed social spiders to flourish beyond the strength of their numbers, according to a new study.

The surface area of the three-dimensional webs social spiders use to capture prey does not grow as fast as the number of spiders in the nests. So the number of incoming prey per spider declines with colony size.

But Anelosimus eximius, a species notable for its enormous colony size - some numbering more than 20,000 individuals - have gained the ability to stretch that law by cooperating and capturing increasingly large insects as their colonies grow.

'The average size of the prey captured by the colony increased 20-fold as colony size increased from less than 100 to 10,000 spiders,' said Leticia Aviles, who studied the spiders in Amazonian Ecuador with undergraduate Eric Yip and graduate student Kimberly Powers.

'So even though the number of prey falls sharply as the colony grows, the biomass that individual spiders acquire actually increases,' said Aviles, who is also the co-author of the study and associate professor at the University of British Columbia.

The study also found that large prey, while making up only eight percent of the colony's diet, contributed to more than 75 percent of its nutritional needs.

'But that only works to a certain point,' said Aviles, who added that the biomass of prey consumed by the colony peaks when the colony reaches between 500 and 1,000 individuals.

As for the scarcity of social Anelosimus species in higher elevations and latitudes, 'there simply aren't enough large insects in those areas to sustain this type of foraging behaviour,' she said.

The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Anna Hazare - the keeper of the earth and human conscience

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:07:36 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Pune, April 16 - A name synonymous with multiple crusades, Anna Hazare, who has won the World Bank's 2008 Jit Gill Memorial Award for outstanding public service, has made a journey from despondency to courage, from humble beginnings to glorious heights.

The 70-year-old social worker, widely seen as a mini Mahatma Gandhi, strives to empower people through his crusades for the right to information. He perpetually keeps the high and mighty on their toes through his fights against corruption.

All this while his model of a self-sustained green village in a rain-starved region of Maharashtra throbs with life, beckoning visitors from all over the world to see the marvel.

Born in Bhingar village of Maharashtra's drought-prone Ahmednagar district in 1938, barely educated and bereft of worthwhile enlightenment save the school book rhetoric of patriotism, Kisan Baburao Hazare became an army recruit during the 1962 India-China war and served as a truck driver till 1975.

Sick of an uninspiring peacetime routine in the army and looking at war as futile, Anna Hazare, as Kisan Baburao Hazare is better known, struggled to seek the meaning of life. He even contemplated suicide when he could not find it.

'I attempted suicide twice. At the mental level, committed it umpteen times,' he would later tell school students coming to his Ralegan Siddhi ashram.

His miraculous escape from an enemy mortar attack that killed most occupants of his truck and maimed the remaining few made him think that his 're-birth' had a special significance. An exhortation of Swami Vivekananda likening service to humanity with service to god further boosted his resolve to live.

Back in his village after voluntarily retiring from the army in 1975, the scenario in the parched countryside - abject poverty, perennial drought and people steeped in addiction - again ignited bouts of depression. This time he resolved to do something to change the situation.

Anna finally swung into action when someone in the village stole the temple bell for liquor. The rest, as they say, is history - and also a living present.

There is paucity of rain even now in Ahmednagar district's Ralegan Siddhi and its surroundings. But a web of soil and water conservation structures - ponds, dug-wells, earthen bunds and percolation tanks - holds the little rainwater that falls in the area and keeps the soil moist. The vegetation is green almost round the year.

While visitors to the self-sustaining model village can see the water harvesting structures even without being taken on a conducted tour, they have to be told that the area once abounded with illicit liquor stills as well as bidi-cigarette kiosks. The 'vice' spots were banished long ago.

The miracle of lush green farms of vegetables, food crops and fruits was the result of participatory action led by Anna - and he is keeping it alive.

A dedicated team of volunteers and the villagers themselves who keep the environs green, clean and free from disputes and vices have enabled their motivator to travel across the length and breadth of the country to carry out other crusades - against corruption and for the right to information.

Indian American scientist wins top IMO prize

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:12:05 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Washington, April 1 - Jagadish Shukla, an Indian American scientist, has been awarded the 52nd International Meteorological Organization - Prize, for his research on monsoons and establishing a scientific model for climate prediction.

Considered the highest international award in the field of meteorology, the prestigious award was presented to Shukla by Alexander Bedritsky, president of the World Meteorological Organization - at a ceremony at the US National Academy of Sciences last week.

Previous winners of the annual prize included several noted scientists like Lennart Bengtsson -, Shukla's long-time collaborator, as well as Jule Charney - and Edward Lorenz -, Shukla's doctoral advisers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Sc.D. in 1976.

Shukla, distinguished professor of George Mason University, was given the award in recognition of '...his research on monsoons and coupled ocean-land-atmosphere interactions establishing a scientific basis for predictability of climate in the midst of chaotic weather.'

His 'contributions to fostering international cooperation in weather and climate research by developing and leading numerous international research programmes and creating new institutions worldwide for improving weather and climate research and the betterment of global society,' were also cited.

In a congratulatory message read out at the ceremony, Indian Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal announced the government's decision to designate Shukla as the Chairman of an International Advisory Panel on Meteorology and Climate. His services will also be used for setting up a world-class institute for climate change research in India.

Recalling Shukla's multifaceted accomplishments, Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen said two decades ago, when he was an aide to then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, he had witnessed the scientist's extraordinary competence and commitment.

When the Reagan administration supplied a Cray supercomputer to India, the first to any country outside the Western military alliance, at the instance of Gandhi, Shukla used it to help set up the National Centre of Medium Range Weather Forecasting in New Delhi within a year.

In his acceptance speech, Shukla demonstrated great pride in his Indian roots and reiterated his commitment to further strengthening strategic partnership between India and the US. He also recounted his journey from the remote Mirdha village in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, to his present position as an internationally acclaimed researcher, educationist and institution builder.

Even as he has steadily gained international recognition, Shukla has continuously retained close and abiding ties with his native country, which he visits at least once every year.

Shukla is the founder-president of premier research institutions like the Centre for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies - and the Centre for Research on Environment and Water -. He also founded and nurtured the Gandhi College in his birthplace at Mirdha village in Uttar Pradesh for education of rural women.

Shukla received his Ph.D. from Benaras Hindu University, India and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has received the Walker Gold Medal of the Indian Meteorological Society, the Carl Gustav Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society, and the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a fellow of the Indian Meteorological Society and an associate fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World.

Shukla is also a Commissioner on the Virginia Governor's Commission on Climate Change. He is currently a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme - of the WMO and Chair of the WCRP Modelling Panel.

Artificial human sperm could make men redundant: experts

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:35:21 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Hamburg -, April 7 - Artificial human sperm could come to the aid of infertile men, according to a team of German scientists who have used lab-grown sperm to inseminate female mice.

Artificial sperm could also make males totally redundant, permitting women to give birth without a biological male mate.

The genetic scientists at the University of Goettingen in Germany have produced 65 mouse foetuses using sperm, which was grown from embryonic stem cells, according to a Deutschlandfunk radio report.

Twelve baby mice have been born using this artificial, lab-grown sperm, said Wolfgang Engel, director of Human Genetics at the medical university.

However, the mortality rate is high, he told the German broadcaster.

'We started out with 65 embryos from egg cells which had been inseminated by the sperm-like cells created in our lab. Of those, 12 reached full term and were born.

'But seven of the newborn animals died within a period ranging from three days to five months after birth of causes which we have not been able to determine,' he said.

'So you can see that this is all still in the very early experimental stages,' he added. 'If it works in the mouse, I'm sure it will also work in the human.'

A sperm cell from an embryonic stem cell would still not give an infertile man a biological tie to his child, however. It would not be any different than using donor sperm.

Engel's team has now turned to generating sperm from very early germ cells taken from the testicles. Another possibility is to try and generate viable sperm cells using stem cells in bone marrow.

'If it works in the mouse, I'm sure it will also work in the human,' he was quoted as saying.

Engel says if sperm can be grown in the lab, it would be possible to take early germ cells from one woman, turn them into sperm cells, and use those to fertilise the egg of another woman.

But Engel said his team would stop short of tests on humans in compliance with federal law in Germany, which bans all genetic research using human stem cells.

He said one member of his team has gone to Newcastle, England, to conduct research on artificial human sperm.

Will autopsy on Benazir's body become necessary?

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:45:08 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Islamabad, Dec 31 - The body of Pakistan's slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto may need to be exhumed for an autopsy if the government allows international experts to institute a probe into her assassination.

Bhutto died after gunshots and a suicide bombing Thursday evening following a public rally at Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh. Though there was no autopsy carried out on her body, the procedure might become necessary now with her Pakistan Peoples Party - demanding a probe by an international team of investigators.

'No investigation will be possible without an autopsy of the body,' said an official here, adding that the government was in touch with international experts who insist on an 'expert autopsy report' to start investigations.

President Pervez Musharraf had said Sunday said that the government would consider a probe by international experts as the PPP had announced a three-member team to talk to the UN to force its hand to do so.

The government has also said it was ready to exhume the body if the PPP agrees to it. Officials said no post mortem was conducted because her husband Asif Ali Zardari.

Zardari gave his reason to journalists at a press conference in Larkana on Sunday: 'I know the way hospitals treat body while conducting the post mortem, I did not want desecration of wife.'

The question of autopsy has gained importance with the mystery around the assassination deepening.

Government spokesperson Javed Iqbal Cheema has been saying that Bhutto died after fracturing her head with the sunroof lever of her Toyota Land Cruiser. But the eyewitnesses and PPP leaders say she was hit by a bullet before falling into the jeep.

One eyewitness, Asif Ali, said he saw the gunman aiming and shooting at Bhutto.

'I was a couple of meters away from the vehicle when I saw gunman aiming and shooting at Benazir Bhutto. He was a clean-shaven man in his 30s,' Ali, a resident of downtown Rawalpindi, told IANS.

Pakistani television channels have also played new images providing evidence that she was fired upon thrice. The video filmed by an unknown person shows Bhutto visible from the sunroof of her Land Cruiser among a few hundred supporters after addressing the rally.

A clean-shaven man with sunglasses is shown with his hand in his pocket. The man is followed by a person with a white shawl, suspected to be the suicide bomber who blew himself seconds later. The sniper moves closer to the vehicle and fires three shots while Bhutto is waving to the crowd.

Three gunshots can be clearly heard followed by the sound of the blast, which killed 20 people.

As the gunman fires, Bhutto can be seen falling inside the vehicle through the sunroof.

Bhutto's close associate Sherry Rehman, who supervised the last bath on Bhutto's body, said that she saw very clear marks of bullet on her head. Zardari also told reporters that his doctor sister saw the bullet wounds on her head.

Political analysts here say that the government has tailored the sunroof lever story to cover up the massive security failure.

The surgeon who treated Bhutto Thursday evening first said she was shot twice in the head and neck. But the next day the hospital changed its earlier statement saying no bullet wounds were found in her head.

Bhutto's political secretary Naheed Khan who was in the jeep described the government claim as 'stupid, ridiculous and dangerous cover-up'.

Murders in 'fit of passion' don't deserve death: Apex court

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:06:09 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 12 - In what has alarmed friends of slain Delhi University law student Priyadarshini Mattoo, the Supreme Court has held that even a double murder committed 'in a fit of passion' after an abortive rape bid does not deserve death penalty.

A bench of Justice S.B. Sinha and Justice Markandey Katju earlier this week upheld a Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling, which commuted a death sentence imposed on a double murder convict by a lower court to life term.

Kulvinder Singh had in August 2002 hacked Hardeep Kaur to death in a Punjab village after she resisted his bid to rape her. He also killed the girl's grandmother who tried to save her.

'While upholding the conviction of the accused for murder, we reduce the sentence to life imprisonment since it appears that the crime was committed in a fit of passion and does not come within the category of the 'rarest of rare' to deserve death penalty,' the apex court bench ruled.

The sessions court had sentenced Kulvinder Singh to death saying: 'The conduct of the accused depicted him as a person who constituted a threat to the society. He has forfeited his right to life by his barbarity.'

The Supreme Court ruling has alarmed Priyadarshini Matoo's friends and relatives. The 23-year-old was raped and murdered in January 1996 by Santosh Singh.

Santosh, son of senior police officer J.P. Singh, had been allegedly stalking the girl for over a year.

Aditya Raj Kaul, who spearheaded the campaign 'Justice to Priyadarshini Mattoo' after a Delhi court acquitted Santosh, said: 'It's a shocking ruling from the highest court of the country.'

'At this rate, Santosh Singh's lawyer may also argue before the apex court that he committed the crime in a fit of passion after he failed to rape her and may escape the gallows.

'After all Santosh Singh and his lawyers can conveniently cite his past conduct of consistently stalking her and convince the court that he had a passion aflame for Mattoo,' he added.

'This judgment has alarmed us. I will soon discuss it with our friends about what we should do in such a situation,' Kaul said.

Low literacy equals early death sentence

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 04:00:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Not being able to read doesn't just make it harder to navigate each day. Low literacy impairs people's ability to obtain critical information about their health and can dramatically shorten their lives.

A new study from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine shows that older people with inadequate health literacy had a 50 percent higher mortality rate over five years than people with adequate reading skills. Inadequate or low health literacy is defined as the inability to read and comprehend basic health-related materials such as prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips and hospital forms.

Low health literacy was the top predictor of mortality after smoking, also surpassing income and years of education, the study showed. Most of the difference in mortality among people with inadequate literacy was due to higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease.

It's a matter of life or death, said David Baker, M.D., lead author of the study and chief of general internal medicine at the Feinberg School. The excess number of deaths among people with low literacy was huge. The magnitude of this shocked us.

When patients can't read, they are not able to do the things necessary to stay healthy, Baker noted. They don't know how to take their medications correctly, they don't understand when to seek medical care, and they don't know how to care for their diseases.ï¿½ Baker thinks this is why they are much more likely to die.

The study will be published in Archives of Internal Medicine July 23.

More than 75 million adults in the United States have only basic or below basic health literacy, according to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

There is a certain minimum set of reading skills that are required to be able to do the things that you're expected to do as a patient, Baker said. And if someone is below that level, bad things are going to happen.

The Northwestern study began in 1997 when research assistants interviewed 3,260 Medicare patients ages 65 and older in Cleveland, Tampa, Miami and San Antonio. Researchers asked about participants' race/ethnicity, education, income, health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise) and chronic medical conditions (diabetes, asthma, arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, depression).

Participants completed a test of health literacy that included reading passages and health-related materials such as pill bottles that required understanding numbers. Then, in 2003, researchers determined which participants had died during the six years after being interviewed by matching their names against the National Death Index.

The results show a dramatic need for health care providers to find better ways to educate low literacy patients about their health.

We need to use plain language, Baker said. We're not talking about dumbing down material. We're talking about using simple language the average person would understand. He'd like to vanquish medical jargon from doctor's language and educational health materials. One example is saying sugar instead of glucose when discussing diabetes.

Many concepts also are easier to understand through graphics and multimedia than words. If one picture is worth a thousand words, maybe one movie is worth 10 pictures, Baker said. So, if you're going to explain to somebody with a condition called heart failure that their heart is not pumping hard enough, a moving image may show this much more clearly than words or a still image.ï¿½

Often, low literacy patients need multiple repetitions to fully understand information.

We need to learn to repeat the material or instructions until someone is able to repeat it back to you in his own words or answer questions about the material,ï¿½ Baker said.

Baker and colleagues are currently designing simpler health education materials for patients about colorectal cancer, asthma and diabetes. They are working directly with patients to find the best words and methods to explain health information.

Much more work is needed, Baker said. In asthma and diabetes, now we actually know what words to use to be understood. But there are hundreds of other topics we haven't addressed. In those, I think we're still doing a poor job.

Changes will benefit all patients, particularly those in late middle age and older. Mental functions begin to decline in the 30's and reading comprehension is much lower among the elderly. As our population ages, Baker said, the problem of inadequate health literacy and the need to improve methods of health education and communication are certain to increase.

New Insights Into the Nature of Pride as a Social Function

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:00:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Pride has perplexed philosophers and theologians for centuries, and it is an especially paradoxical emotion in American culture. We applaud rugged individualism, self-reliance and personal excellence, but too much pride can easily tip the balance toward vanity, haughtiness and self-love. Scientists have also been perplexed by this complex emotion, because it is so unlike primary emotions like fear and disgust.

University of British Columbia psychologist, Jessica Tracy, and Richard Robins of the University of California, Davis, have been exploring the origins and purpose of pride, both in the laboratory and in the field. They wanted to know if pride is as universal as, say, joy or anger.

In the June issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Tracy and Robins review several recent studies on the nature and function of pride.

In one experiment, researchers used photographs of models with varying facial expressions and body language, asking subjects to identify the nonverbal signs of pride. And they did indeed find a prototypical prideful look, which was recognized by children as young as four, and people in many different cultures, including members of an isolated, preliterate tribe in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

So, pride appears to be universal, but that still leaves the question: What is it What is its purpose To explore this, Tracy and Robins first asked people to come up with words that they associated with pride. They found that either people link pride to such achievement-oriented ideas as accomplishment and confidence (authentic pride) or, people connect pride to self-aggrandizement, arrogance and conceit (hubristic pride).

People who tend to feel authentic pride were more likely to score high on extraversion, agreeableness, genuine self-esteem and conscientiousness. However, those who tend to feel hubristic pride were narcissistic and prone to shame. Further, they found that people who felt positive, achievement-oriented feelings of pride viewed hard work as the key to success in life, whereas hubristic people tended to view success as predetermined, due to their stable abilities.

Tracy and Robins argue that the primitive precursors of pride probably motivated our ancestors to act in altruistic and communitarian ways, for the good of the tribe, and the physical display of pride both reinforced such behavior and signaled to the group that this person was worthy of respect. So individual pride, at least the good kind, contributed in important ways to the survival of the community.

But what about pride's dark side Tracy and Robins speculate that hubris might have been a social "short cut", a way of tricking others into paying respect when it was not warranted. Those who could not earn respect the old-fashioned way figured out how to look and act accomplished in order to gain status. Social cheaters puffed themselves up because deep down they did not have what it took to succeed in their world. Whatever respect they got would have been fleeting, of course, as it is today

Girls Select Partners Who Resemble Their Dads - Research

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:00:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Women who enjoy good childhood relationships with their fathers are more likely to select partners who resemble their dads research suggests.In contrast, the team of psychologists from Durham University and two Polish institutions revealed that women who have negative or less positive relationships were not attracted to men who looked like their male parents.

Due to be published in the July issue of Evolution and Human Behaviour, the study investigated evidence of parental sexual imprinting, the sexual preference for individuals possessing parental characteristics, in women. The team used facial measurements to give a clear view of how fathers' facial features relate directly to the features of faces their daughters find attractive.

The study helps shed further light on how we choose partners and the impact of a parent's role in this process, which until recently researchers believed to be a passive one. It adds to growing theories that suggest sexual imprinting is an active process which involves the relationship between the child and the adult upon whom they imprint. This reveals the importance of parental relationships in partner selection, which could move studies in areas like evolutionary biology, fertility and genetics a step forward and offer new insights in areas such as relationship counselling and psychology.

Author Dr Lynda Boothroyd of Durham University explains: "While previous research has suggested this to be the case, these controlled results show for certain that the quality of a daughter's relationship with her father has an impact on whom she finds attractive. It shows our human brains don't simply build prototypes of the ideal face based on those we see around us, rather they build them based on those to whom we have a strongly positive relationship. We can now say that daughters who have very positive childhood relationships with their fathers choose men with similar central facial characteristics to their fathers."

Well known "daddies' girls" such as Nigella Lawson and Zoe Ball back up these findings. A comparison of pictures of Charles Saatchi with Nigel Lawson and Norman Cook with Johnny Ball reveals some close correlations, especially in the central facial area, including the nose, chin and eyes.

The study used a sample of 49 Polish eldest daughters. Each chose the most attractive face from 15 distinct faces, whose ears, hair, neck, shoulders and clothing were not visible, removing any external influences which could potentially skew results. The male stimuli's facial measurements were taken and compared with each daughter's father's measurements, so that the researchers knew which faces correlated most closely with the fathers' faces.

The daughters were asked to rate their paternal relationships looking at areas such as how much a father engaged in bringing up his daughter, how much leisure time he spent with her and how much emotional investment she received from him. These scores then made up an overall "positivity" score.

Study of protein folds offers insight into metabolic evolution

Sun, 20 May 2007 04:00:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Researchers at the University of Illinois have constructed the first global family tree of metabolic protein architecture. Their approach offers a new window on the evolutionary history of metabolism.

The study appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their work relies on established techniques of phylogenetic analysis developed in the past decade to plot the evolution of genes and organisms but which have never before been used to work out the evolutionary history of protein architecture across biological networks.

We are interested in how structure evolves, not how organisms evolve, said professor of crop sciences Gustavo Caetano-Anoll's, principal researcher on the study, which was co-written by graduate student Hee Shin Kim and emeritus professor of cell and developmental biology Jay E. Mittenthal. We are using the techniques of phylogenetic analysis that systematicists used to build the tree of life, and we are applying it to a biochemical problem, a systems biology problem.

To get at the roots of protein evolution, the researchers examined metabolic proteins at the level of their component structures: easily recognizable folds in the proteins that have known enzymatic activities. These protein domains catalyze a range of functions, breaking down or combining metabolites, small molecules that include the building blocks of all life.

Their findings relied on a fundamental assumption: that the most widely utilized protein folds (they looked at proteins in more than 200 species) were also the most ancient.

Protein architecture has preserved ancient structural designs as fossils of ancient biochemistries, the authors wrote.

The team used data from two international compilations of genetic and proteomic information: the metabolic pathways database of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, and the Structural Classification of Proteins database. They combined these two data sets with phylogenetic reconstructions, or family trees, of protein fold architectures in metabolism.

Regulating stem cell research

Fri, 11 May 2007 12:03:55 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Regulations governing human stem cell research must strive to assure strict oversight while simultaneously fostering scientific innovation through collaboration, says a group of scientists from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world's largest supporters of such research.

In November 2004, California voters approved $3 billion over 10 years for public funding of stem cell research through the CIRM. In their policy paper in PLoS Medicine, Geoffrey Lomax, Zach Hall, and Bernard Lo discuss how CIRM came to adopt its legally binding regulations for the stem cell research it funds.

In addition to the goal of "setting high ethical standards," say the authors, there were five other crucial objectives that guided the regulations:

âª Encourage research institutions and researchers to develop best practices for ethical conduct of human stem cell research
âª Avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens
âª Involve the public in developing regulations
âª Be consistent with existing laws, regulations, and ethical guidelines
âª Facilitate collaboration to accelerate scientific progress.

Dr Lomax and colleagues describe two innovative features of the regulations: the informed consent process and the protection of egg (oocyte) donors.

"Because human embryonic stem cell research is controversial," they say, "prospective donors need complete information about possible research uses of embryos, gametes, and tissue that they might donate. If donors have stated restrictions on the future uses of donated materials, CIRM-funded researchers must respect these."

And for oocyte donors, in addition to obtaining consent, researchers must ascertain that such donors fully comprehend eight essential features of the research. "In other research settings," say Dr Lomax and colleagues, "research participants often fail to understand the information in detailed consent forms." The CIRM regulations require that CIRM researchers evaluate whether women have fully understood the benefits and risks of oocyte donation.

The regulations, they say, were developed with extensive public input and are a "critical first step in increasing public trust and support for human stem cell research."

Is Sex Necessary for Evolution?

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:59:12 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) If you own a birdbath, chances are you are hosting one of evolutionary biology's most puzzling enigmas: bdelloid rotifers. These microscopic invertebrates -widely distributed in mosses, creeks, ponds, and other freshwater repositories -abandoned sex perhaps 100 million years ago, yet have apparently diverged into nearly 400 species. Bdelloids (the "b" is silent) reproduce through parthenogenesis, which generates offspring with essentially the same genome as their mother from unfertilized eggs. Biologists have yet to find males, hermaphrodites, or any trace of meiosis- the process that creates sex cells - challenging the long-held assumption that evolutionary success requires genetic exchange.

The genetic variation created by meiosis and fertilization, theory holds, bolsters a species's capacity to weather shifting environmental conditions or resist rapidly evolving parasites. (During meiosis, the genome splits in two, and chromosome pairs swap bits of their DNA; during fertilization, the sex cells fuse to restore the complete genome.) Many multicellular eukaryotes pass through a sexual and asexual phase in their life cycle. But eschewing sex altogether, Ã la bdelloids, is not theoretically consistent with a long-lived evolutionary life span or extensive species diversification.

In a new study, Diego Fontaneto, Timothy Barraclough, and colleagues developed new statistical techniques for combined molecular and morphological analyses of rotifers to test the notion that species diversification requires sex. The researchers show that, despite an ancient aversion for interbreeding, bdelloids display evolutionary patterns similar to those seen in sexually reproducing taxa. How they have avoided the pitfalls of a lifestyle widely regarded as evolutionary suicide remains an open question.

Bdelloids have remained such an enduring enigma in part because biologists are still debating whether species exist as true evolutionary entities. And if they do, what forces determine how they diverge? Traditional taxonomy relies on morphological differences to classify species, but it can't distinguish whether such differences reflect physical variations among a group of clones or adaptations among independently evolving populations. In the traditional view of species diversification, interbreeding promotes cohesion within a population-maintaining the species -and barriers to interbreeding (called reproduction isolation) promote species divergence. With no interbreeding to maintain cohesion, the thinking goes, asexual taxa might not diversify into distinct species.

Fontaneto et al. defined species as independently evolving, distinct populations (or units of diversity) subject to distinct evolutionary mechanisms. They predicted that if factors other than interbreeding - such as niche specialization -controlled species cohesion and divergence, then asexual taxa should diverge along the same lines as sexually reproducing organisms. And if this were the case, they would expect to find genetic and morphological cohesion within independently evolving populations and divergence between them.

To detect independently evolving populations, the researchers analyzed marker genes isolated from clones of bdelloids collected from diverse habitats around the world. They constructed evolutionary trees using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences (the molecular "barcode" cox1and 28S ribosomal DNA sequences, respectively) to identify species within the samples. For the morphological analysis, they measured the size and shape of the rotifers' jaws (called trophi).

The morphological results largely fell in line with traditional taxonomic classifications for most bdelloid species. And species identified as related on the DNA trees typically had similar morphology. The correspondence between the molecular and morphological results suggests that the majority of traditionally identified bdelloid species are what's known as monophyletic- individuals in the same species assort together on the evolutionary tree and share a common ancestor. Only two of these traditional, monophyletic species showed significant variation in trophi size or shape among the populations; both also showed significant divergence in the DNA trees.

Using statistical models to determine the likely origin of the observed DNA tree branching patterns, the researchers show that these distinct monophyletic genetic clusters represent independently evolving entities (rather than variations within a single asexual population). But what caused them to evolve independently? Are they geographically isolated populations that evolved under neutral selection, or did they evolve into ecologically discrete species as a result of divergent selection pressures on trophi morphology?

Scanning electron micrographs showing morphological variation of bdelloid rotifers and their jaws. Have these asexual animals really diversified into evolutionary species? (Image: Diego Fontaneto)

If bdelloids have experienced divergent selection, the researchers explain, they would expect to see high variation in trophi traits between species, and low intraspecies variation (compared to neutral changes). And that's what they found -bdelloids have experienced divergent selection on trophi size (and to a lesser degree, on trophi shape) at the species level.

Altogether, these results show that the asexual bdelloids have indeed experienced divergent selection on feeding morphology, most likely as they adapted to different food sources found in different niches. By showing that asexual organisms have diverged into "independently evolving and distinct entities," the researchers argue, this study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species." They hope others use their approach to study mechanisms underlying species divergence in sexual taxa to clarify the hazy nature of species and biological diversity.

Seven ways to survive life without the Internet

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:22:08 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Hong Kong, Jan 25 - The devastation caused to Internet lines by the Taiwan earthquake before the dawn of 2007 left millions across Asia cut off from email and websites for days.

In a world where high-speed connections have been taken for granted, the event has forced the world to face up to the reality of what life without the Internet would be like. In many cases it exposed people's inability to cope.

It is hard to imagine people ever lived without Google searches, e-bay auctions, online shopping and Skype. But in reality, it is only a matter of a few years since we somehow managed to struggle from one day to the next without ever logging on.

Charles Mok, head of the Hong Kong Internet Society, said the Internet disruption caused by the quake should serve as a 'wake-up call'.

'There are people who should think about whether they can plan their life in a different way,' he said.

'This earthquake ought to make them realise there are other things to do in life than going on the Internet. They should really find a better balance.'

Experts say there is no knowing when it will happen again. So to help prepare for the next time Internet connections in Asia are cut off by a natural disaster, here are seven things you can do to remain sane when the computers are down.

1: Pick up a phone. Put a voice to the names of business contacts you have known for years but never met or spoken to by phoning instead of emailing. Alternatively arrange a meeting over coffee. Hearing a voice or seeing a face is a far better way to build confidence, which can only benefit your career.

2: Use your legs. The world of instant messaging and e-mail has created workplaces in which no one speaks to each other - where orders, reports, requests are sent via the Internet. This may save you time but the consequences can also be bad for your health. Try instead using your legs - get up from your chair, take a walk around the office and talk to your colleagues.

In addition to building relationships, those extra steps and rest periods away from your desk will burn calories, rest tired eyes, stretch muscles and avoid strain which in the long term can result in bad backs and eye strain.

3: Go to the library. An online search may be fast and effortless, but there is nothing like a reference library to make you really appreciate the world of knowledge. Surround yourself in books and get a taste of what it was like to engross yourself in research before the Internet. The process is far more challenging and rewarding.

4: Write a letter. If you want to say something and can't do it in person, there is no better way than a letter. A good letter will be kept for years. Lisa Matthewman, a psychologist at the University of Westminster, says many people find it easier to express their emotions on paper. This form of communication is more appreciated by the person on the receiving end. 'It is a very warm gesture and women in particular appreciate them,' she said.

5: Rediscover the art of conversation. Use the time away from chat rooms and game sites to talk and play with your children, or just to have a family meal together. Resurrect board games, go for a movie, a walk - enjoy some quality time with your family.

6: Go shopping. With Internet shopping becoming more popular, there may come a day when it's not the done thing to go to the mall. Make the most of window shopping rather than browsing, go try on clothes, flick through and feel the weight of a book before buying, handle real cash or simply wander around one of the markets and take in the sights, sounds and smells.

7: Enjoy the freedom. A survey commissioned by Hewlett Packard last year claimed office workers spent more time - an average of four hours a day - talking to friends online and messaging than they did actually working.

Indians make one major human race: US study

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:01:32 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Washington, Dec 27 - Indians make up one of the major human ancestry groups, with relatively little genetic differentiation among the people from different parts of the country, according to a new US study.

Although the study used participants that may not reflect a random sample from India, these results still suggest that the frequencies of many genetic variants are distinctive in India compared to other parts of the world, an Indian American scientist who led the study said.

'We were struck both by the low level of diversity amongst people spanning such a large geographical region, and by the fact that people of the Indian sub-continent constituted a distinct group when compared to populations from other parts of the world,' said Pragna I. Patel.

The study led by Patel, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California -, represents the largest study of Indian genetic variation performed to date, in terms of the total number of sites in the human genome that were surveyed.

Her group is using this study as a foundation for future studies on the genetic basis of various common diseases in Asian Indians - such as heart disease, which is highly prevalent in this population.

For their study, Patel and Noah Rosenberg, assistant professor in the department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, conducted genetic analysis of Indian-born individuals in the US. Their studies of 1,200 genome-wide polymorphisms collected from 432 individuals representing 15 different Indian populations, have begun to shed light on the genetic variations of the diverse population of India.

Patel took up the project as despite the fact that the people of India constitute more than one-sixth of the world's entire population, they have been underrepresented in studies related to genetic diseases.

And with the growth of modernisation, complex genetic diseases associated with urban and western lifestyles have risen to near-epidemic proportions, making genetic cataloguing and association studies of particular importance.

The research group also includes other researchers from the USC Institute for Genetic Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, the University of Michigan, the departments of neurology and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and the Centre for Medical Genetics at the Marshfield Medical Research Foundation, Marshfield, Wisconsin.

The study was funded by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences -, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship - and a grant from the University of Southern California. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute provided additional support for genotyping.

Overcoming Ethical Constraints

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 08:00:37 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Psychological experiments that stopped 40 years ago because of ethical
concerns could instead be conducted in cyberspace in the future.

By repeating the Stanley Milgrams classic experiment from the 1960s on
obedience to authority that found people would administer apparently
lethal electrical shocks to a stranger at the behest of an authority figure
in a virtual environment, the UCL (University College London) led study
demonstrated for the first time that participants reacted as though the
situation was real.

The finding, which is reported in the inaugural edition of the journal PLoS
ONE, demonstrates that virtual environments can provide an alternative way
of pursuing laboratory-based experimental research that examines extreme
social situations.

Professor Mel Slater, of the UCL Department of Computer Science, who led
the study, says:
The line of research opened up by Milgram was of tremendous importance
in the understanding of human behaviour. It has been argued before that
immersive virtual environment can provide a useful tool for social
psychological studies in general and our results show that this applies
even in the extreme social situation investigated by Stanley Milgram.

Stanley Milgram originally carried out the series of experiments in an
attempt to understand events in which people carry out horrific acts
against their fellows. He showed that in a social structure with recognised
lines of authority, ordinary people could be relatively easily persuaded to
give what seemed to be even lethal electric shocks to another randomly
chosen person. Today, his results are often quoted in helping to explain
how people become embroiled in organised acts of violence against others,
for example they have been recently cited to explain prisoner abuse and
even suicide bombings.

Following the style of the original experiments, the participants were
invited to administer a series of word association memory tests to the
(female) virtual human representing the stranger. When she gave an
incorrect answer the participants were instructed to administer an
electric shock to her, increasing the voltage each time she gave an
incorrect answer. She responded with increasing discomfort and protests,
eventually demanding termination of the experiment. Of the 34 participants
23 saw and heard the virtual human and 11 communicated with her only
through a text interface.

The experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual environment, formed
by a computer-generated surrounding real-time display. It delivers a
life-sized virtual reality within which a person can experience events and
interact with representations of objects and virtual humans.

The results show there was a clear behavioural difference between the two
groups depending on whether they could see the virtual human. All
participants in the Hidden Condition (HC) administered all 20 shocks.
However, in the Visible Condition (VC) 17 gave all 20 shocks, 3 gave 19
shocks, and 18, 16 and 9 shocks were given by one person each.

Participants were asked whether they had considered aborting the
experiment. Almost half of those who could see the virtual human indicated
they had because of their negative feelings about what was happening.
Measurements of physiological indicators including heart rate and heart
rate variability also indicated that participants reacted as though the
situation was real.

The results demonstrate that even though all experimental participants
knew that the situation was unreal, they nevertheless tended to respond as
if it were, Professor Slater.

This opens the door to the systematic use of virtual environments for
laboratory style study of situations that are otherwise impossible whether
for practical or ethical reasons for example, violence associated with
football, racial attacks, gang attacks on individuals, and so on. Why do
some people participate in such activities even though it is against their
nature? The original Milgram experiment helps to explain this, and the
exploitation of virtual environments may help to further research into
these difficult and pressing questions.

Drug tests on animals may be unreliable: study

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:55:26 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) London, Dec 16 - Tests of drugs on animals may be unreliable and may not be accurate about their effect on humans, says a new study.

A team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at studies in six areas of treatment and found tests on animals agreed with human trials in just three, said the online edition of BBC News.

The team used corticosteroids to treat head injuries and respiratory illnesses in babies, antifibrinolytics to treat bleeding, thrombolysis and tirilazad for stroke and bisphosphonates for osteoporosis. But there was no consistent agreement between the animal and human studies, the researchers said.

Corticosteroids did not show any benefit for treating head injury in clinical trials but had done so in animal models, the researchers said.

Different results were also seen for tirilazad. Data from animal studies suggested it to be beneficial but the human trials showed possible harm.

However, bisphosphonates increased bone mineral density in both clinical trials and animal studies, while corticosteroids reduced neonatal respiratory distress syndrome in animal studies and in clinical trials, although the data were sparse.

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, suggests that the opportunities presented by animal research often go waste because the trials are 'poorly conducted' and not independently reviewed.

India's patent, copyright laws outdated: US official

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:02:56 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Dec 4 - India needs to update its patent and copyright laws with modern regulatory framework to attract more foreign capital, US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Franklin L. Lavin said here Monday.

'Patent and copyright laws in India are old and backdated and they nowhere match the world standards,' Lavin, who is leading the largest-ever business delegation from the US, told a seminar on India-US trade.

'Both the countries need to sit and work out a proper regulatory framework by identifying the weak areas,' added Lavin, who is on a visit here with over 225 top corporate leaders to explore investment opportunities in India.

Pointing out to other key concern areas, Lavin said, 'India needs to seek more participation by US companies in the fields of retail, financial services sector and infrastructure.'

He said infrastructure was a very important area where India needed to concentrate seriously to sustain the current growth.

Lavin, who is in India to get a better take of Indian policies on overseas investment, also elaborated on the importance of trade and business ties between the two countries.

'There has been an increase of 50 percent in granting business visas this year compared to last year. The waiting time for the same has also been reduced to a week,' he said and expressed interest in opening a US consulate in Hyderabad.

Lauding the open skies policy between the two countries, Lavin said: 'US and India should jointly take it forward for progress.'

After attending a two-day India-US business summit in Mumbai from Nov 29, the delegation split into smaller groups to travel all across India to explore investment opportunities here, US officials said.

Gendered division of labor gave modern humans advantage over Neanderthals

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:38:29 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals, says a new study in the December 2006 issue of Current Anthropology. The study argues that division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia.

"The competitive advantage enjoyed by modern humans came not just from new weapons and devices but from the ways in which their economic lives were organized around the advantages of cooperation and complementary subsistence roles for men, women, and children," write Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner (University of Arizona).

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake. This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons—attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle—suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

The Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal record also lacks the artifacts commonly used to make weather-resistant clothing or artificial shelters, such as bone needles. Thus, it was the emergence of "female" roles – subsistence and skill-intensive craft – that allowed H. sapiens in ecologically diverse tropical and sub-tropical regions to take advantage of other foods and live at higher population densities.

"Earlier hominins pursued more narrowly focused economies, with women's activities more closely aligned with those of men with respect to schedule and ranging patterns," write the authors. "It is impossible to argue that [Neanderthal] females and juveniles were fulfilling the same roles—or even an equally diverse suite of economic roles—as females and juveniles in recent hunter-gatherer groups," they add.

While some degree of niche specialization between adult male and females is documented for many large-mammal species, recent humans are remarkable for cooperative economies that combine pervasive sharing and complementary roles for individuals of different ages and sexes.

Blacks, Whites Divided on End-of-Life Treatment

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:01:33 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Black patients are more likely than white patients to prefer life-sustaining care when confronted with an incurable illness or serious mental and physical disabilities, according to a study by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers.

Because the attitudes of black patients conflict with current prevailing views regarding end-of-life care, they may have difficulty obtaining medical care consistent with their cultural values and beliefs. Physician and health care institutions should develop policies sensitive to diverse approaches to death and dying, the researchers concluded.

“The main message is that there are a wide variety of opinions regarding how to handle care at the end of life, and many conflict with the prevailing medical ethic,” said William Bayer, M.D., the lead author of the article and a clinical assistant professor of family medicine.

For the study, patients, who were 50 years of age and older, were recruited from a primary care practice in the city of Rochester and from a practice in a suburb of Rochester. They were asked whether they would accept or decline life-sustaining intervention in several scenarios, including a terminal illness, a chronic illness, dementia, coma and brain death. The interventions could include a ventilator to maintain breathing, a feeding tube and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

The patients also provided information on religiousness, closeness of family, and experience with a health care proxy and a do-not-resuscitate order. In total, 77 patients were recruited for the study. Although the study was not large, the difference between black and white patients response was significant.

In a terminal illness such as cancer, for example, 72 percent of the black patients and 29.6 percent of the white patients said they would want life-sustaining treatment. In the case of coma, 53.2 percent of black patients would choose life-sustaining care but just 29.2 percent of white patients would make that choice. While about 51 percent of the black patients wanted life-sustaining treatment in a chronic condition and brain death, only 11 percent of the white patients preferred intervention.

“I was very surprised that 26 percent ofblacks surveyed stated they would want continued life-sustaining care in the setting of a terminal illness and brain death while no whites would make that choice,” said Bayer. “It was also interesting to find that religiosity did not correlate strongly with end-of-life decision making.”

Having previously performed a health care proxy was related to wanting less care in end-of-life situations.

“There could be a lot of explanations for this, but I think the act of completing a health care proxy may in itself affect one's attitude toward treatment decisions. I think this would be an interesting area of further research,” Bayer said.

The findings indicate the need for greater education of the public about brain death, coma and other conditions and a much more open process in end-of-life decision making, with the involvement of a broad multicultural team, Bayer said.

Many patients don't understand prescription medicine labels

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:01:14 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) When Michael Wolf paged though dusty, yellowing pharmacists’ logs from the 1890s at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, he found the following entry about a druggist’s encounter with a confused patient: “Shake well,” a patient apparently read out loud to the pharmacist from his prescription bottle label. “Does that mean I shake myself"”

It sounds like the punch line of a bad joke, but it wasn’t. And the confusion experienced by that patient more than a century ago hasn’t changed much.

Many people still don’t fully understand the seemingly simple label instructions on their prescription medication, according to a new study of low-income patients by Wolf, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Wolf found that nearly half of the patients in the study misinterpreted at least one or more out of the five prescription labels they were shown. Patients with low literacy made the most mistakes and frequently were unable to grasp four out of five label instructions. But even people with a high-school education and higher had problems.

“We came at this from a health literacy perspective, but we found it was a problem with many people in general,” said Wolf, director of Northwestern’s new Health Literacy and Learning Program, which aims to improve patients’ ability to understand and act on health information. “It was surprising how prevalent mistakes were regardless of an individual’s literacy level. Just being able to read the label doesn’t mean you’ll be able to interpret it.”

Wolf believes the main culprit is awkward wording. “Why are we not phrasing things properly on bottles"” he asked.

Recent studies have shown that many patients don’t take their medicine properly at home. Wolf’s research with co-lead author Terry Davis, professor at Louisiana State University, is the first to show why the errors occur. Ruth Parker, professor at Emory University, was senior author on the study.

Their research follows Wolf’s widely publicized June, 2006 study, which found patients with low literacy skills had trouble understanding prescription drug warning labels.

Addressing medication error is a high priority within the health care system. In July, the Institute of Medicine reported 1.5 million patients are injured each year by medication errors, of which more than one-third occur at home.

The potential for patient mistakes rises as Americans’ countertops fill with ever more bottles of prescription medicines. The average adult took six or seven medicines a year in 2002 compared to four or five medicines a decade ago. Not only are there more opportunities for mistakes, Wolf’s study showed that the more medications a patient takes, the more likely he or she will misunderstand the labels.

The most common mistake made by patients in the study was misinterpreting dosage instructions (a tablespoon versus a teaspoon) followed by misunderstanding the dose frequency.

“Just being able to read the label doesn’t mean you’ll be able to interpret it. Patients reading at a sixth-grade level or below could read it back. But if you ask them what it means to take two tablets twice daily, only one-third of the patients with limited literacy skills got that correct,” Wolf said.

“What is twice daily"” he asked in what sounded like an opening to a George Carlin comedy routine. “Do you take two at 8 a.m. or two at noon"”

“The most common misinterpretation was to take two pills a day. It’s not that they couldn’t figure out two plus two equals four. Rather, it’s the way the instructions were written. It’s awkward wording,” Wolf said, noting the wording is chosen by the individual pharmacist filling the prescription.

The more numbers included in the dosage, the more likely patients in the study got it wrong. The hardest label to understand: Take 1 teaspoon 3 times a day for 7 days. “It’s possible people read this quickly because they perceive it as simple. They get the numbers flipped. They confuse and misread them,” Wolf said.

The gap between reading and actually understanding the dose means that the current “teach back” technique, in which patients are asked to repeat back instructions to a health care provider, may be inadequate to prevent patient mistakes.

The 395 patients participating in the study ranged from 18 through mid-70s and were from primary care clinics serving indigent populations in Chicago; Shreveport, La.; and Jackson, Mich. Wolf said the study purposely focused on low-income patients because they are disproportionately affected by poor health. A patient was shown each commonly used medicine individually and asked how he or she would take it.

In his Northwestern office, Wolf pulled out giant plastic bags filled with the offending prescription bottles. Family members, friends and colleagues send him their used bottles, which he stockpiles at home. “My wife hates that,” he admitted with a smile. He also has a flourishing collection of pharmacy bags stapled with patient education material.

Another study led by Wolf published in September in Patient Education and Counseling showed those FDA-approved education materials aren’t useful to patients, especially those with low literacy skills. “There’s too much information on them,” Wolf complained.

Wolf proposes a complete redesign and standardization of the text and format of prescription medication labels. The challenge is how to best use the limited “real estate” of the plastic cylinders to clearly instruct patients. He is working with study authors Parker and Davis as part of an American College of Physicians Foundation initiative to design a better label design for prescription bottles. They expect to unveil the new label soon.

He also has a grant from Target Corp. to redesign the warning icons and usage instructions on its medication bottles. “There are 120 possible warnings and instruction stickers. There is little evidence for a lot of these warnings. There is no process to say what warnings should be on the label and which should not,” he said.

Genetic variation: We're more different than we thought

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:40:37 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New research shows that at least 10 percent of genes in the human population can vary in the number of copies of DNA sequences they contain--a finding that alters current thinking that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent similar in content and identity.

This discovery of the extent of genetic variation, by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar Stephen W. Scherer, and colleagues, is expected to change the way researchers think about genetic diseases and human evolution.

Genes usually occur in two copies, one inherited from each parent. Scherer and colleagues found approximately 2,900 genes--more than 10 percent of the genes in the human genome--with variations in the number of copies of specific DNA segments. These differences in copy number can influence gene activity and ultimately an organism's function.

To get a better picture of exactly how important this type of variation is for human evolution and disease, Scherer's team compared DNA from 270 people with Asian, African, or European ancestry that had been compiled in the HapMap collection and previously used to map the single nucleotide changes in the human genome. Scherer's team mapped the number of duplicated or deleted genes, which they call copy number variations (CNVs). They reported their findings in the November 23, 2006, issue of the journal Nature.

Scherer, a geneticist at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, and colleagues searched for CNVs using microarray-based genome scanning techniques capable of finding changes at least 1,000 bases (nucleotides) long. A base, or nucleotide, is the fundamental building block of DNA. They found an average of 70 CNVs averaging 250,000 nucleotides in size in each DNA sample. In all, the group identified 1,447 different CNVs that collectively covered about 12 percent of the human genome and six to 19 percent of any given chromosome--far more widespread than previously thought.

Not only were the changes common, they also were large. "We'd find missing pieces of DNA, some a million or so nucleotides long," Scherer said. "We used to think that if you had big changes like this, then they must be involved in disease. But we are showing that we can all have these changes."

The group found nearly 16 percent of known disease-related genes in the CNVs, including genes involved in rare genetic disorders such as DiGeorge, Angelman, Williams-Beuren, and Prader-Willi syndromes, as well as those linked with schizophrenia, cataracts, spinal muscular atrophy, and atherosclerosis.

In related research published November 23, 2006, in an advance online publication in Nature Genetics, Scherer and colleagues also compared the two human genome maps--one assembled by Celera Genomics, Inc., and one from the public Human Genome Project. They found thousands of differences.

"Other people have [compared the two human genome sequences]," Scherer said, "but they found so many differences that they mostly attributed the results to error. They couldn't believe the alterations they found might be variants between the sources of DNA being analyzed."

A lot of the differences are indeed real, and they raise a red flag, he said.

Personalized genome sequencing--for individualized diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease--is not far off, Scherer pointed out. "The idea [behind comparing the human genome sequences] was to come up with a good understanding of what we're going to get when we do [personalized sequencing]," he explained. "This paper helps us think about how complex it will be."

In a "News and Views" article in the same issue of Nature, HHMI professor Huntington F. Willard writes, "the stage is set for global studies to explore anew…the clinical significance of human variation." Willard is director of the Institute for Genome and Science Policy at Duke University.

To fully extract meaningful data using the human genome maps, researchers must know what's missing and how much variation exists, Scherer said. "Our computer algorithms are smart, but it is hard to find something if it is not there in the reference you are comparing against."

In fact, Scherer's group found some 30 million nucleotides that are seemingly not yet represented at all, or in different copy numbers or orientations, when comparing the Celera assembly to the public human genome sequence. The entire human genome is thought to contain about 3 billion nucleotides.

The discovery of an abundance of DNA variation puts a whole new spin on the study of genetic disease. Most research has focused on small alterations, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It may be, said Scherer, that some diseases are caused by copy number variations rather than SNPs. In fact, recent research has already linked such variations to kidney disease, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and AIDS susceptibility.

The discovery also provides a new outlook on evolution.

"Until now, our focus has been on examining evolution through either small SNP changes or larger chromosomal alterations you can see under the microscope, because that's what we could detect," Scherer said. "But now there's a whole new class of mid-sized variants encompassing millions of nucleotides of DNA to consider."

This change in the way scientists think about human genetics is exciting, but it is still very early to know what all this means, said Scherer. "Though it does make you wonder, he added. "If you have 1 million fewer nucleotides than your buddy, shouldn't you get a break on your golf handicap?"

18 kg tumour removed from woman

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 18:53:11 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Shimla - A team of doctors in Himachal Pradesh have removed an 18 kg ovarian tumour from a woman in her 20s.

The operation was performed Wednesday at a hospital in Kullu, 240 km from here, media reports said Thursday.

Kesari Devi from Sarsed village in Mandi district had reported at the hospital with pain and a swelling in her belly.

'It took about 90 minutes to remove the hard oval shaped tumour from the right side of her body,' said surgeon Sumedh Kaul.

Bibliometrics can improve research into research

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:47:17 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The methods used to evaluate the quality of research can be far more accurate and far-reaching, according to a new doctoral thesis on bibliometrics from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "A common pitfall is that bibliometricians assess the average quality of journals instead of the individual scientific articles," says PhD Jonas Lundberg.

Bibliometrics is used to describe and assess the quality of research, and to give an idea of the influence a research group or university has on a particular field. As research becomes all the more international and competition between researchers stiffens, more exacting systems are needed to assess the quality of research.

"I usually say that I research into research," says Jonas Lundberg at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME). "There are a number of bibliometric methods, the simplest of which measures how often a researcher is published and cited in scientific journals."

His thesis points out the shortcomings of current methods, and shows how bibliometrics can be used more accurately and effectively. He has also developed the method that is today considered the best.

"There are two prevailing opinions on bibliometrics," he says. "One places too much faith in it and attaches great importance to simple bibliometrics. There are many pitfalls with today's measurement methods. Those who don't believe in bibliometrics tend to dismiss it out of hand, when in actual fact it is very useful. You just have to use it correctly and to develop the methods."

One of the most common methodological failings is that instead of reviewing each individual article, bibliometricians simply assess the average quality of journals. Furthermore, many scientists publish their articles in popular science magazines rather than in specialist periodicals, something that regular bibliometric methods fail to take into account.

"We know, for example, that 70 per cent of cancer research is published in magazines other than specialist oncology journals," says Jonas Lundberg.

New approach will pinpoint genes linked to evolution of human brain

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:46:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com )

Six million years ago, chimpanzees and humans diverged from a common ancestor and evolved into unique species. Now UCLA scientists have identified a new way to pinpoint the genes that separate us from our closest living relative and make us uniquely human.

"We share more than 95 percent of our genetic blueprint with chimps," explained Dr. Daniel Geschwind, principal investigator and Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine. "What sets us apart from chimps are our brains: homo sapiens means 'the knowing man.'

"During evolution, changes in some genes altered how the human brain functions," he added. "Our research has identified an entirely new way to identify those genes in the small portion of our DNA that differs from the chimpanzee's."

By evaluating the correlated activity of thousands of genes, the UCLA team identified not just individual genes, but entire networks of interconnected genes whose expression patterns within the brains of humans varied from those in the chimpanzee.

"Genes don't operate in isolation each functions within a system of related genes," said first author Michael Oldham, UCLA genetics researcher. "If we examined each gene individually, it would be similar to reading every fifth word in a paragraph you don't get to see how each word relates to the other. So instead we used a systems biology approach to study each gene within its context."

The scientists identified networks of genes that correspond to specific brain regions. When they compared these networks between humans and chimps, they found that the gene networks differed the most widely in the cerebral cortex -- the brain's most highly evolved region, which is three times larger in humans than chimps.

Secondly, the researchers discovered that many of the genes that play a central role in cerebral cortex networks in humans, but not in the chimpanzee, also show significant changes at the DNA level.

"When we see alterations in a gene network that correspond to functional changes in the genome, it implies that these differences are very meaningful," said Oldham. "This finding supports the theory that variations in the DNA sequence contributed to human evolution."

Relying on a new analytical approach developed by corresponding author Steve Horvath, UCLA associate professor of human genetics and biostatistics, the UCLA team used data from DNA microarrays vast collections of tiny DNA spots -- to map the activity of virtually every gene in the genome simultaneously. By comparing gene activity in different areas of the brain, the team identified gene networks that correlated to specific brain regions. Then they compared the strength of these correlations between humans and chimps.

Many of the human-specific gene networks identified by the scientists related to learning, brain cell activity and energy metabolism.

"If you view the brain as the body's engine, our findings suggest that the human brain fires like a 12-cylinder engine, while the chimp brain works more like a 6-cylinder engine," explained Geschwind. "It's possible that our genes adapted to allow our brains to increase in size, operate at different speeds, metabolize energy faster and enhance connections between brain cells across different brain regions."

Accelerating Loss of Ocean Species Threatens Human Well-being

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:06:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a study published in the November 3rd issue of the journal, Science, an international group of ecologists and economists, including lead author, Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, show that the loss of biodiversity is profoundly reducing the oceans ability to produce seafood, resist diseases, filter pollutants, and rebound from stresses such as over-fishing and climate change. The study reveals that every species lost causes a faster unraveling of the overall ecosystem. Conversely every species recovered adds significantly to overall productivity and stability of the ecosystem and its ability to withstand stresses.

Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire worlds ocean, we saw the same picture emerging, says Dr. Worm. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are beyond anything we suspected.

The four-year analysis is the first to examine all existing data on ocean species and ecosystems, synthesizing historical, experimental, fisheries, and observational datasets to understand the importance of biodiversity at the global scale.

The results reveal global trends that mirror what scientists have observed at smaller scales, and they prove that progressive biodiversity loss not only impairs the ability of oceans to feed a growing human population, but also sabotages the stability of marine environments and their ability to recover from stresses. Every species matters.

For generations, people have admired the denizens of the sea for their size, ferocity, strength or beauty. But as this study shows, the animals and plants that inhabit the sea are not merely embellishments to be wondered at, says Callum Roberts, a Professor at the University of York, who was not involved in the study. They are essential to the health of the oceans and the well-being of human society.

The good news is that the data show that ocean ecosystems still hold great ability to rebound.
However, the current global trend is a serious concern: it projects the collapse of all species of wild seafood that are currently fished by the year 2050 (collapse is defined as 90% depletion).

Collapses are also hastened by the decline in overall health of the ecosystem fish rely on the clean water, prey populations and diverse habitats that are linked to higher diversity systems. This points to the need for managers to consider all species together rather than continuing with single species management.

Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood, says co-author Steve Palumbi of Stanford University.

The impacts of species loss go beyond declines in seafood. Human health risks emerge as depleted coastal ecosystems become vulnerable to invasive species, disease outbreaks and noxious algal blooms.

Many of the economic activities along our coasts rely on diverse systems and the healthy waters they supply. The ocean is a great recycler, explains Palumbi, It takes sewage and recycles it into nutrients, it scrubs toxins out of the water, and it produces food and turns carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. But in order to provide these services, the ocean needs all its working parts, the millions of plant and animal species that inhabit the sea.

The strength of the study is the consistent agreement of theory, experiments and observations across widely different scales and ecosystems. The study analyzed 32 controlled experiments, observational studies from 48 marine protected areas, and global catch data from the UNs Food and Agriculture Organizations (FAO) database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003. The scientists also looked at a 1000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archeological data.

We see an accelerating decline in coastal species over the last 1000 years, resulting in the loss of biological filter capacity, nursery habitats, and healthy fisheries, says co-author Heike Lotze of Dalhousie who led the historical analysis of Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, the Bay of Fundy, and the North Sea, among others.

The scientists note that a pressing question for management is whether losses can be reversed. If species have not been pushed too far down, recovery can be fast but there is also a point of no return as seen with species like northern Atlantic cod.

Examination of protected areas worldwide show that restoration of biodiversity increased productivity four-fold in terms of catch per unit effort and made ecosystems 21% less susceptible to environmental and human caused fluctuations on average.

The data show us its not too late, says Worm. We can turn this around. But less than one percent of the global ocean is effectively protected right now. We wont see complete recovery in one year, but in many cases species come back more quickly than people anticipated in three to five to ten years. And where this has been done we see immediate economic benefits.

The authors conclude that restoring marine biodiversity through an ecosystem based management approach - including integrated fisheries management, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats and creation of marine reserves - is essential to avoid serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability.

This isn't predicted to happen, this is happening now, says co-author Nicola Beaumont an ecological economist with the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life, indeed it may not be able to sustain our lives at all.

New genetic analysis forces re-draw of insect family tree

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:26:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The family tree covering almost half the animal species on the planet has been re-drawn following a genetic analysis which has revealed new relationships between four major groups of insects.

Scientists have found that flies and moths are most closely related to beetles and more distantly related to bees and wasps, contrary to previous theory.

The results are based on an analysis of the same 185 genes found in the genomes of eight different insect families, which together represent 45 per cent of all known animal species.

This enabled the international group of scientists to work out the evolutionary relationships between the insects based on changes and mutations within those genes.

Previously scientists had assumed that flies and moths were most closely related to bees and wasps, with beetles more distantly related to these groups.

This new family arrangement also brings the different species of social insects, such as termites and bees, closer together - suggesting that the ability of insects to cooperate in social groupings may have evolved just once, rather than independently in several different species.

About half of all animal species belong to just four groups of insects but, surprisingly, we never knew for sure how they are related to each other, said Dr Martin Lercher from the University of Bath, who lead the research.

While there was never unequivocal evidence for it, scientists believed for a long time that, based on morphology, flies and moths were most closely related to bees, with beetles more distantly related to these three groups.

By comparing genetic information from 185 genes that were sequenced in species from all of these groups, we found that in fact flies and moths are most closely related to beetles, and more distantly related to bees.

This sheds new light on a large number of evolutionary questions, as a correct understanding of the evolutionary relationships is fundamental to any interpretation of similarities or differences among species.

For example, social colonies are common among bees and wasps and their relatives, ants, as well as among more distantly related insects, such as termites and aphids.

That beetles don't show this tendency, known as eusociality, has been interpreted as a sign that eusociality has evolved several times independently.

Now that we know that bees, wasps and ants are in fact the closest relatives to the more distantly related (or basal) species, it appears more likely that the genetic basis for eusociality may have evolved only once, and was lost in the common ancestor of beetles, moths, and flies.

The researchers used the genomes of six different insects from the holometabolous group of insects (insects which undergo complete metamorphosis): fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), mosquito (Anopheles gambiae), silk moth (Bombyx mori), flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), honey bee (Apis mellifera) and sibling parasitic wasp species (Nasonia vitripennis and Nasonia giraulti).

These insects represent the four major orders of holometabolous insects, beetles (Coleoptera), moths (Lepidoptera), flies (Diptera) and bees and wasps (Hymenoptera), which together represent 45 per cent of the animal species on earth.

They also included one orthopteran (the grasshopper Locusta migratoria) and one hemipteran (the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum), both of which are uncontested out-groups to the holometabolous insects.

Cell Phone Use Associated with Decline in Fertility

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:05:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In an observational study, researchers from Cleveland, Mumbai, and New Orleans found that the number of hours in a day that a man uses his cell phone can affect all aspects of his sperm profile.

Three hundred and sixty-four men undergoing evaluation for infertility were classified into three groups according to their sperm count. Among the men in the group with a normal sperm count, those who did not use a cell phone at all had sperm counts averaging 86 million per milliliter, with 68% motility, and 40% normal forms. Among men in the normal count group who used a cell phone more than four hours a day, the averages were significantly lower: 66 million sperm per milliliter, 48% motility, and 21% normal forms.

The effect of cell phones on sperm parameters may be due to the electromagnetic radiation the devices emit or to the heat they generate. The researchers note that further studies will be necessary to identify the mechanism involved in the reduction of sperm quality due to cell phones.

Marijuana-like Chemical Can Restore Sperm Function Lost to Tobacco Abuse

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:02:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A compound chemically similar to those found in marijuana can improve the ability of smokers sperm to bind to eggs.

Researchers in Buffalo and Boston have previously shown that two-thirds of tobacco smokers sperm showed a significant decline in the capacity to bind to an egg compared to that of non-smokers. They hypothesized that treating the smokers sperm with a cannabinoid compound would improve sperm binding. Human sperm have chemical receptors that respond to both nicotine and cannabinoids- compounds like those found in marijuana.

The eight test subjects, all chronic tobacco smokers, had previously been tested against normal controls in an assay involving incubating their sperm with sections of non-viable donated human eggs. Four of the eight had normal sperm function and four showed reduced function. This Hemizona Assay was repeated, testing a subjects sperm washed in regular medium against the same subjects sperm washed in cannabinoid-containg medium.

After being washed in a low-concentration cannabinoid solution, sperm from smokers with reduced sperm function showed marked improvement. Sperm from the smokers with normal sperm function did not improve after washing in the low-concentration solution. However, a second series of experiments using a higher concentration of cannabinoid, showed improved sperm function in the smokers who had normal sperm function to start.

Craig Niederberger, MD, President of SMRU commented, "Numerous studies have shown that tobacco smoking is harmful to parents, and to their unborn and living children. It is important to note that in this study, sperm were washed with the active chemical in marijuana, as it is also known that smoking or taking marijuana in other ways harms a man's fertility. But the best way to improve a smoker's overall health, his fertility, and the health of his family is to help him quit smoking."

Reporters struggle to cover comas in newspaper articles

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:56:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Newspaper articles skew coverage of comas by focusing heavily on patients who are more likely to awaken and recover, thus possibly leading the public to believe that coma patients have better odds than they truly do.

These findings of a Mayo Clinic study on how U.S. newspapers cover comas are published in the October issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. This study is the first of its kind and follows a study published earlier this year in Neurology on how comas are represented in film. The lead author of both articles is Eelco F.M. Wijdicks, M.D., a neurointensivist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

Dr. Wijdicks traces the public's interest in coma patients to the Terri Schiavo case, which created intense interest in how coma patients are treated. Schiavo's situation illustrates the need for the public to be well informed about comas, Dr. Wijdicks says. The number of newspaper stories about coma increased in Florida after the Schiavo case.

For the Mayo Clinic study published in Proceedings, Dr. Wijdicks and his daughter, Marilou Wijdicks, identified 340 newspaper articles in 50 leading newspapers, one in each state, over five years to ascertain how well newspapers cover comas. California and Florida had the highest number of newspaper articles concerning coma. Few articles had misrepresentations or inaccuracies, but newspaper editors and reporters struggled with a few key issues.

Often, news reports focused on young coma patients who were the victims of violence or had been in an accident. These patients are among the most likely to awaken and recover, Dr. Wijdicks says, compared with the typical patient who is older and in a coma due to a life-threatening illness or due to resuscitation.

"The truth is patients do wake from prolonged coma but often in a disabled state," Dr. Wijdicks says. "Many are severely disabled."

Newspapers also demonstrated a tendency not to mention in the headline that coma patients had been placed into a coma by physician-prescribed medication, the authors say. Only careful reading of the full article would inform readers that a person's coma was medically induced. Without reading carefully, these readers would not realize the cause of coma and probability of awakening.

Reporters also tended to rely on police reports for details in articles, whereas medical sources could provide more thorough and accurate information, Dr. Wijdicks says.

Overall, newspaper reporting on comas is done fairly well, but may give readers a more positive outlook on comas than is witnessed in medical facilities, the study authors say.

Drug Company Research Reports Should Be Read With Caution

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 13:19:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A study published on bmj.com recently has found that reviews of drugs which are supported by the pharmaceutical industry are less transparent, and are more likely to reach favourable conclusion on drugs, than independent reviews.

According to the authors, bias in drug trials is common and often favours the trial-sponsors product. To balance this effect, independent reviews which can have a more critical and systematic approach - are essential to ensure doctors and other health professionals have the information they need on drugs.

The authors, based in Denmark, compared the results of 24 pairs of reviews conducted by different people on the same drugs. Compared to reviews supported by the pharmaceutical industry, reviews undertaken by the Cochrane Collaboration an independent body were of a higher quality and were more likely to address the potential for bias in the review.

Of seven industry-supported reviews, all recommended the experimental drug without reservation, whilst none of the corresponding Cochrane reviews reached the same conclusion. Six of the eight Cochrane reviews analysed had reservations about the quality or relevance of the trials or their findings and two of them noted that the effect decreased with increasing number of patients in the trial. Seven mentioned higher cost of the experimental drug as a problem. In contrast, none of the industry-supported reviews mentioned higher cost as a problem, and two claimed that the experimental drug was cost-effective.

The researchers also found that the reviews with not-for-profit support or no support had similarly cautious conclusions as the Cochrane reviews.

The authors conclude that industry-supported reviews should be read with caution. They also want greater transparency, including the inclusion of more information on methodology and the estimated effects of the drugs, in order to allow readers to judge the reliability of drug reviews.

Giant insects might reign if only there was more oxygen in the air

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:52:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The delicate lady bug in your garden could be frighteningly large if only there was a greater concentration of oxygen in the air, a new study concludes. The study adds support to the theory that some insects were much larger during the late Paleozoic period because they had a much richer oxygen supply, said the study's lead author Alexander Kaiser.

The study, "No giants today: tracheal oxygen supply to the legs limits beetle size,'' will be presented Oct. 10 and 11 at Comparative Physiology 2006: Integrating Diversity. The conference will be held Oct. 8-11 in Virginia Beach. The research was carried out by Alexander Kaiser and Michael C. Quinlan of Midwestern University, Glendale, Arizona; J. Jake Socha and Wah-Keat Lee, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL; and Jaco Klok and Jon F. Harrison, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Harrison is the principal investigator.

The Paleozoic period, about 300 million years ago, was a time of huge and abundant plant life and rather large insects -- dragonflies had two-and-a-half-foot wing spans, for example. The air's oxygen content was 35% during this period, compared to the 21% we breathe now, Kaiser said. Researchers have speculated that the higher oxygen concentration allowed insects to grow much bigger.

Tubes carry oxygen

First, a bit of background: Insects don't breathe like we do and don't use blood to transport oxygen. They take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide through holes in their bodies called spiracles. These holes connect to branching and interconnecting tubes, called tracheae, Kaiser explained.

Whereas humans have one trachea, insects have a whole tracheal system that transports oxygen to all areas of their bodies and removes carbon dioxide. As the insect grows, tracheal tubes get longer to reach central tissue, and get wider or more numerous to meet the additional oxygen demands of a larger body.

Insects can limit oxygen flow by closing their spiracles. In fact, one reason insects are so hardy is that they can close their spiracles and live off the oxygen they already have in their tracheae. Kaiser recalled a caterpillar that fell into a bucket of water in his lab. When the creature was discovered the next day, lab workers thought it had drowned. But when they removed its apparently lifeless little body from the water, they were surprised to see it crawl away.

Tracheae grow disproportionately

This experiment was designed to find out:

* how much room the tracheal system takes up in the bodies of different-sized beetles
* whether tracheal dimensions increase proportionately as the beetles get larger
* whether there is a limit to the size a beetle could grow in the current atmosphere

The researchers used x-ray images to compare the tracheal dimensions of four species of beetles, ranging in size from 3mm (Tribolium castaneum, about one-tenth of an inch) to about 3.5 cm (Eleodes obscura, about 1.5 inches). Beetles were not in existence during the Paleozoic period, but Kaiser's team used the insect because they are much easier to maintain in the laboratory than dragonflies, which are quite difficult.

The study found that the tracheae of the larger beetles take up a greater proportion of their bodies, about 20% more, than the increase in their body size would predict, Kaiser said. This is because the tracheal system is not only becoming longer to reach longer limbs, but the tubes increase in diameter or number to take in more air to handle the additional oxygen demands.

The disproportionate increase in tracheal size reaches a critical point at the opening where the leg and body meet, the researchers found. This opening can get only so big, and limits the size of the trachea that runs through it. When tracheal size is limited, so is oxygen supply and so is growth, Kaiser explained.

Using the disproportional increases they observed among the beetles, the researchers calculated that beetles could not grow larger than about 15 centimeters. And this is the size of the largest beetle known: the Titanic longhorn beetle, Titanus giganteus, from South America, which grows 15-17 cm, Kaiser said.

And why wouldn't the opening between the body and the leg limit insect size in the Paleozoic era, too? After all, dragonflies and some other insects back then had the same body architecture, but they were much bigger.

It is because when the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is high, the insect needs smaller quantities of air to meet its oxygen demands. The tracheal diameter can be narrower and still deliver enough oxygen for a much larger insect, Kaiser concluded.

Infection Status Drives Interspecies Mating Choices in Fruit Fly Females

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:25:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Hybridization is a constant possibility for two closely related species. Geographic isolation prevents interbreeding in some cases, but when the range of the two overlap, other mechanisms must come into play if they are to remain genetically distinct. Behavioral isolation is one such mechanism. If members of each group preferentially mate with their own kind, the two species can remain distinct even while residing together. Over time, such isolating behaviors may become more pronounced, and the genes governing them more widespread, a phenomenon termed reinforcement.

In evolutionary theory, reinforcement has typically been thought to act symmetrically on the two species. In a new study, however, John Jaenike and colleagues show that bacterial infection of one Drosophila species, but not another, and the resulting differences in hybrid viability, may account for highly asymmetrical reinforcement occurring in the two.

Wolbachia is a bacterium that infects many insect species, where it lives within the cells of the host, especially the ova and testes, and is transmitted from infected females to their offspring. Wolbachia infects virtually all members of the fruit fly species Drosophila recens, but not members of the closely related D. subquinaria. When an infected male D. recens mates with an uninfected female D. subquinaria, most offspring die in a process called cytoplasmic incompatibility. In contrast, however, when an infected female D. recens mates with an uninfected male D. subquinaria, the offspring are viable, and the hybrid females are fertile (the males are sterile, a typical result from cross-species hybridization).

Geographical distributions of Drosophila subquinaria (black) and D. recens (gray), showing allopatric populations of D. subquinaria in the west and D. recens in the east, and sympatric populations in central Canada.

To explore the effect of this difference on reinforcement, the authors began by establishing that the two species do indeed overlap in part of their range (a condition called sympatry), in central Canada, while maintaining separate populations elsewhere (allopatry). In the laboratory, uninfected D. subquinaria females from the region of sympatry never mated with D. recens males, while those from the region of allopatry did. They found no such pattern for infected D. recens females; instead, females from both regions were likely to mate with uninfected D. subquinaria males when placed together. The same discrimination or its lack was seen whether the females were presented with only one type of male (no choice conditions), or with males from both species, as might occur in the wild.

These mate-choice experiments illuminated two important phenomena. First, the most discriminating D. subquinaria females were those from populations living side-by-side with infected D. recens males. This makes sense, the authors suggest, given that less-choosy females that engage in such matings would leave few offspring, since almost all die off. Indeed, as the authors discovered, sympatric D. subquinaria females appeared to be so averse to mating outside their group that they also avoided mating with D. subquinaria males that came from the allopatric region. In contrast, allopatric D. subquinaria females, which have not been subjected to the same selective pressure, are not as discriminating. Second, D. recens females did not avoid interspecific matings nearly as strongly, since they also are not under the same selective pressure. Thus, the reinforcement processthe increase in mate discriminationis highly asymmetric between the two species.

Finally, the authors asked whether the behavioral differences between sympatric and allopatric D. subquinaria females correlated with larger-scale genetic differences between the groups. They found it did not, and that overall there is considerable gene flow between the populations. This indicates that the differences in mate choice are likely the result of natural selection acting within the region of sympatry, rather than simple genetic isolation of the two populations. Interestingly, the reproductive isolation of the two D. subquinaria populations has been driven not by factors intrinsic to them, but by infection of entirely different species. It is possible that this isolation will ultimately lead to speciation within D. subquinaria, although the current high degree of similarity and existence of gene flow may suggest otherwise.

Waiting For Trial Results Sometimes Unethical

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 01:17:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Waiting for the results of randomised trials of public health interventions can cost hundreds of lives, especially in poor countries. Researchers in this weeks BMJ argue that, if the science is good, we should act before the trials are done.

Randomised controlled trials are usually required before new interventions are implemented. But in 2003, the BMJ published an article about the lack of trials on parachutes to show that situations still exist where such trials are unnecessary.

This week, US researchers use examples from poor countries to show how an overemphasis on randomised controlled trials poses important ethical and logistical problems and may incur avoidable deaths.

In all three examples, the parachute approach has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, say the authors. For instance, many lives could have been saved if male circumcision had been provided on a large scale from the early 1990s, when data showed that it protected against HIV, instead of waiting 10 to 15 years for more evidence.

Similarly, thousands of women could have been saved if a drug to control blood loss after childbirth was made available in remote areas. But the World Health Organisation has not added it to the essential drugs list because of a lack of evidence from randomised trials in home settings.

The authors stress that randomised controlled trials are needed and, when appropriate, should be part of the empirical evidence necessary for decision making. The question is how much evidence is needed to move from research to practice, when the matter is life saving interventions in poor settings.

The yardstick for decision making should take into account the risks and benefits in the local conditions, not those of an ideal situation, they conclude.

NHGRI Funds Assessment of Public Attitudes About Population-Based Studies on Genes and Environment

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:56:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced it has awarded $2 million to the Genetics and Public Policy Center of the Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University to conduct a public discussion about future potential large U.S. population-based studies examining the roles of genes and environment in human health.

Data from the Human Genome Project, a better understanding of human genetic variation, and major advances in genetic and environmental technologies have provided an unprecedented opportunity to begin contemplating how large, population-based studies might be designed. Such research could help unravel the complex genetic and environmental factors that contribute to common diseases such as cancer and heart disease, said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. However, before we even think of moving forward with such a major national enterprise, it is imperative that we begin a dialogue with the American public. This grant opens the door to that discussion.

In 2005, NHGRI, in collaboration with other NIH institutes, commissioned a group of experts in genetics, epidemiology, biostatistics, and ethical, legal, and social issues to examine the scientific rationale and the logistical and technical challenges of a large, population-based study of genes, environment and health in the United States. Such studies are already underway in several other countries. Although funding for such an endeavor has not been identified, carefully outlining and considering the goals and key design aspects of such studies was deemed of high scientific importance.

A large, population-based study likely would involve the participation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. volunteers, who would be followed for a period of many years to ascertain and quantify the major environmental and genetic contributors to common illnesses. Researchers would analyze genetic risk factors; environmental exposures, such as smoking and dietary intake; and the health-care experiences of a wide cross-section of people in the United States. The study would also provide the opportunity to dissect some of the causes of health disparities between different groups, a topic of much concern.

In October 2005, the Department of Health and Human Services Secretarys Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society held a day-long discussion about the potential of large, population-based studies. The group concluded that broad-based public engagement will be essential in designing and implementing such studies, recommending that efforts begin to assess public attitudes toward this area of research.

It is important that researchers begin working with the U.S. public now so that, in the event these projects are launched, public input and concerns about issues like patient privacy and informed consent can be incorporated into the design and implementation of such studies, said Jean McEwen, JD, Ph.D., a program director of NHGRIs Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Branch.

As part of its two-year, $2 million pilot project, the Washington, D.C.-based Genetics and Public Policy Center plans to obtain input on issues related to large, population-based studies through a series of focus groups in Jackson, Miss.; Kansas City, Mo.; Middletown and Philadelphia, Pa; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Portland, Oregon. In addition to the focus groups, the center will carry out a national web-based survey of 4,000 individuals and will conduct town hall meetings attended by 1,000 people in the five states. Community leaders will be interviewed as well. The grant will also be used to develop educational materials for the participants, providing them with information about large, population-based studies for the focus groups, survey, and town hall meetings.

When, or if, large, population-based studies are launched in the future, the information gathered by the pilot project on public attitudes will be used to develop larger and more targeted forms of community engagement, directed at specific communities from which any potential participants are recruited.

Mother birds give a nutritional leg up to chicks with unattractive fathers

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:38:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Mother birds deposit variable amounts of antioxidants into egg yolks, and it has long been theorized that females invest more in offspring sired by better quality males. However, a study from the November/December 2006 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology shows that even ugly birds get their day. Providing new insight into the strategic basis behind resource allocation in eggs, the researchers found that female house finches deposit significantly more antioxidants, which protect the embryo during the developmental process, into eggs sired by less attractive fathers.

"For female birds, an important aspect of parental investment is the resources allocated to eggs," writes Dr. Kristen J. Navara (Auburn University and Ohio State University) and her coauthors. "The resources available to any female for reproduction and self-maintenance will be finite and she will inevitably be faced with decisions regarding how much resource to invest in each egg in each clutch she lays."

Male house finches display nutrition-linked plumage ranging in color from bright red to drab yellow. The researchers found that eggs sired by unattractive males (those with less brilliant feathers) had more total antioxidants, including 2.5 times the vitamin E levels, than eggs sired by males with redder, more saturated plumage. Thus, they explain, the deposition of more nutrients could represent compensation for the disadvantages experienced by an offspring from a lower quality male, allowing females to supersede limitations of a suboptimal pairing on her own reproductive success.

"For house finches, a species in which individuals are short-lived [and] present a high risk of death, a focus on the immediate reproductive attempts may be the only viable strategy," write the researchers. "By depositing antioxidants in a compensatory manner, females can maximize the reproductive output from the current nesting effort."

Mammals Evolve Faster on Islands!

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:48:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The notion of islands as natural testbeds for evolutionary study is nearly as old as the theory of evolution itself. The restricted scale, isolation, and sharp boundaries of islands create unique selective pressures, often to dramatic effect. Following whatâs known as the âisland rule,â small animals evolve into outsize versions of their continental counterparts while large animals shrink. Once restricted to islands, small animals often lacked predators and the competition between species that constrained the growth of their relatives on the mainland. Large mammals, on the other hand, no longer had access to vast grasslands and other abundant food sources and grew smaller to survive. Giant tortoises and iguanas still inhabit the GalÃ¡pagos and a few other remote islands today, but only fossils remain of the dwarf hippopotami, elephants, and deer that once lived on islands in Indonesia, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific Ocean.

The fossil record suggests that these size changes (as well as other morphological changes) occur rapidly after species become isolated on islands, but this assumption has never been empirically examined in a systematic manner. In a new study, Virginie Millien puts this longstanding hypothesis to the test by analyzing the fossil record and data from living species. Comparing the rates of evolutionary change between island and mainland populations for 88 species at intervals ranging from 21 years to 12 million years, Millien confirmed that island species undergo accelerated evolutionary changes over relatively short time frames, between decades and several thousand years. (One can imagine rats of horror movie proportions if such rates persisted for millions of years.)

Giant tortoises at the Darwin Station on Isla Santa Cruz in the Galápagos Islands. (Photo: Catriona MacCallum)

Measuring rates of evolutionary change has proven difficult because the fossil record rarely captures every morphological shift in a lineage, precise dating isnât always possible, and itâs often not clear when the ancestral form first appeared on the island. To get a robust sample of island and mainland mammalian species, Millien collected data from text, figures, and tables in an extensive survey of the published literature. From these datasets, she calculated a total of 826 evolutionary rates for 170 populations representing the 88 species. (Rates of evolutionary change are measured in units called, appropriately enough, âdarwins.â)

Evolution rates, she found, decreased over time intervals for both island and mainland species, with a slower rate of decrease for island species. The differences in evolutionary rates between island and mainland pairs also decreased over time, becoming statistically insignificant for intervals over 45,000 years. Overall, island species evolved faster than mainland speciesâa phenomenon that was most pronounced for intervals between 21 years through 20,000 years.

Island evolution theory predicts that the most extreme effects of isolation will be seen on the smallest, most far-flung islands. In keeping with theory, Millien found that evolutionary rates for different populations of the same species varied with island locale. Thus, the rate of evolution does not appear to be an evolutionarily conserved trait, like metabolic rate or whiskers.

Because rodents make up nearly half of the worldâs mammalian speciesâand over 70% of taxa on some islands in this studyâMillien repeated her analysis on a subset of the data with equal numbers of rodent and non-rodent taxa. The overrepresentation of rodents had no effect on the results, which still revealed significant differences between island and mainland evolution rates for the same species or populations.

The finding that mammals evolve faster on islands, Millien argues, comports with the island evolution theory prediction that mammals respond to their new island homes with rapid morphological and size adaptations. The brisk pace of these changes may explain why the fossil record harbors few examples of intermediate forms between the mainland ancestor and island descendant. Millienâs results also conform with the hypothesis that evolution rates for island species slow down after the initial period of accelerated change, approaching rates on the mainland.

If island species can evolve quickly, Millien argues, it stands to reason that mainland species retain a similar capacity. As habitat destruction continues to pose the number one threat to biodiversity, many mainland habitats are beginning to resemble islands, with isolated pockets of wildlife separated by degraded or developed lands. Thus, island species may serve as a model for understanding how mainland species will adapt to the rapidly changing environmental conditions brought on by habitat destruction and global warming. It appears that some mainland species are already responding like island species: a 1989 study followed the island rule in linking fragmented habitat to body size changes in 25 European mammals over the past 200 years. How long animals can continue to evolve in the face of these changes, however, remains to be seen.

A Bacterial Protein Puts a New Twist on DNA Transcription

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:16:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) For organisms to adapt, develop, and simply live, they must regulate hundreds to thousands of genes, making fine-tuned, precisely timed adjustments to produce the specific complement of proteins required for the occasion. For bacteria, this task falls largely to proteins called sigma factors. These small proteins associate with RNA polymerase, the enzyme that mediates gene transcription, to form a complex called the holoenzyme. The holoenzyme, guided by the sigma factor, recognizes promoter regions, which are specific DNA sequences that precede protein-coding sequences and mark the transcription start site. Sigma factors also contribute to transcription by facilitating DNA strand separation, which must occur before RNA polymerase can begin copying the DNA code. Once transcription begins, the sigma factor disengages from the RNA polymerase, becoming available for new joint ventures with different RNA polymerases.

A single sigma factor can control the expression of hundreds of genes through these partnerships, carrying out everything from basic metabolic activities to physiological responses to environmental stress (which, for bacteria, might include antibiotic therapy). Knowing how sigma factors bind to DNA is an important step in understanding how they mediate their cosmopolitan regulatory duties. Structural studies provide important clues to the nature and function of associations between sigma factors and DNA. In a new study, William Lane and Seth Darst used structural analysis techniques to determine the detailed shape of one type of sigma factor. They show that it binds to short DNA sequences using a molecular recognition method that has not been seen before in sigma factors.

Sigma factors come in two structurally unrelated families: sigma 54 and sigma 70. The sigma 54 family is associated with a diverse range of metabolic processes. The much larger sigma 70 family encompasses four groups: the Group I primary sigma factors facilitate metabolic and growth processes; the Group IIIV alternative sigma factors mediate specialized processes like sporulation and the environmental stress response. The sigma 70-type sigma factors recruit the RNA polymerase holoenzyme to bipartite promoter sequences, comprising conserved sequence elements centered about 10 and 35 base pairs upstream of the transcription start site. These so-called 10 and 35 elements are recognized by distinct structural domains of the sigma factor. Structures of one of the most studied sigma factors, a primary sigma factor called sigma-A, have been solved in previous studies. Here, Lane and Darst analyzed the 35-element-binding domain (domain 4) of an alternative Group IV sigma factor found in Escherichia coli, called sigma E4. Group IV sigma factors comprise the largest and most diverse set of sigma factors.

Both sigma-A4 and sigma-E4 allow RNA polymerase to bind to the 35 promoter element, but in each case the sequence is very different. In the case of sigma-E4, the sequence is GGAACTT (and others that resemble it). Previous studies showed that sigma-A4 recognizes its consensus sequence, TTGACA, through direct interactions with these six nucleotide bases. It was tempting to assume that sigma-E4 would operate in a similar manner, since the two sigma factors are similar in structure.

But, using X-ray crystallography, Lane and Darst showed that sigma-E4 binds its consensus sequence using a more subtle method. By determining the structure of the sigma factor bound to its consensus sequence, they found that sigma-E4 doesnt recognize the identity of the sequences per se but the shape of the DNA helix at those sequences. While one region of the sigma factor sits deep within a groove along the double helixs side, another region holds the promoter 35 sequence straight. The AA in the center of sigma-E4s consensus sequence, the researchers believe, is required for the DNA to assume this shape.

Because evolution has conserved the site in these proteins that sits alongside the AA of the consensus sequence, Lane and Darst propose that this method of recognizing 35 promoter sequences may be common across the Group IV sigma factors. With further studies of the structures of sigma factors and their means of recognizing specific promotersand thus activating specific genesresearchers can better predict the full complement of genes a given promoter will regulate, and in turn gain insight into the diverse physiological responses they help mediate.

Physicians More Likely To Disclose Medical Errors That Would Be Apparent To The Patient

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:26:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) While physicians in the United States and Canada generally support disclosing medical errors to patients, they vary widely in when and how they would tell patients an error had occurred, according to two articles in the August 14/28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Research has revealed that most patients want detailed information following a medical error, including an explicit statement that an error has occurred, an apology, information about why the error happened and an explanation of what will be done to prevent future errors. However, less than half of harmful errors may be disclosed to patients, according to background information in the articles. This may diminish trust in physicians and may also increase the risk that patients will file malpractice lawsuits.

Thomas H. Gallagher, M.D., University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and colleagues surveyed physicians in the United States and Canada to gauge their attitudes regarding the disclosure of medical errors. The 2,637 physicians had an average age of 49.2 and had been in practice for an average of 16.8 years; 1,233 were from the United States (from Washington and Missouri) and 1,404 were from Canada; about half (49.7 percent) were medical specialists, 40.3 percent were surgeons, 8.5 percent were in family practice, and 1.4 percent did not list their specialty; and 78.6 percent were male and 18.6 percent female.

In the first study, the researchers presented the physicians with one of four scenarios involving a medical error. Two of the scenarios were tailored to internal medicine specialists and two to surgeons; one of each type of error would be apparent to the patient, and the others would not be apparent to the patient if he or she was not informed. For instance, the more apparent surgical error involved a sponge left inside a patient's body and the less apparent surgical error involved an internal injury that a surgeon inflicted because of unfamiliarity with a new surgical tool. The physicians answered a series of questions about the scenario they received, including how likely they would be to disclose the error, what information they would convey if they did disclose the error, how serious the error was and how likely it was to result in a lawsuit.

Eighty-five percent of the physicians agreed that the error they received was serious and 81 percent believed the physician was very or extremely responsible for the error. Overall, 65 percent would definitely disclose the error, 29 percent would probably disclose, 4 percent would disclose only if the patient asked and 1 percent would definitely not disclose. The language the physicians would use also varied widely; 42 percent would use the word "error," 56 percent would mention the adverse event but not the error, 50 percent would give the patient specific information about what the error was and 13 percent would not reveal any details not requested by the patient. Physicians who had a positive attitude toward disclosure and past positive experiences with disclosure, who felt responsible for the error or who were Canadian tended to report that they would disclose more information.

Specialty and the nature of the error affected how likely the physicians were to disclose the error. Surgeons were more likely than other physicians to say they would definitely disclose the error (81 percent vs. 54 percent) but also reported that they would disclose less information-35 percent of surgeons and 61 percent of other physicians said they would disclose specific details about the error. Those who received the more apparent errors were more likely to say they would disclose them than those who received the less apparent errors (81 percent vs. 50 percent) and would also disclose more information about them (51 percent would use the word error, vs. 32 percent). "Some dimensions of errors might justify disclosing less information, such as if the error caused only trivial harm," the authors write. "However, physicians agreed that all the scenarios represented serious errors. Basing disclosure decisions on whether the patient was aware of the error is not ethically defensible or consistent with standards such as those from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations."

In a second study based on the same survey, the researchers report that U.S. and Canadian physicians have similar attitudes toward and experiences with error disclosure despite different malpractice environments, suggesting that the probability of lawsuits is not associated with their support for disclosure. Of the 2,637 physicians:

* 64 percent agreed that errors were a serious problem
* 98 percent supported disclosing serious errors to patients and 78 percent supported disclosing minor errors
* 58 percent had disclosed an error to a patient and 85 percent of those were satisfied with the disclosure
* 66 percent agreed that disclosing a serious error reduces malpractice risk

Physicians' estimates of how likely they were to be sued did not affect whether they supported disclosing errors to patients. "The medical profession should consider whether the culture of medicine itself represents a more important barrier than the malpractice environment to the disclosure of harmful medical errors to patients," the authors conclude. "Patients justifiably expect that harmful medical errors will be disclosed to them. Increasing physician engagement in efforts to communicate openly with patients following errors and to enhance patient safety could provide a much-needed boost to patients' confidence in the quality and integrity of the health care system."

Dissecting Doctor Patient Dialogue

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:12:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An international group of conversation analysts has put together a new anthology of studies that explore communication between primary-care doctors and their patients.

Douglas Maynard, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-edited the new book titled "Communication in Medical Care: Interaction Between Primary Care Physicians and Patients."

"This is the first time there has been a book that anatomizes the primary-care interview from start to finish," says Maynard, who has dissected conversations in various arenas for more than 25 years.

Thinking about doctor-patient interaction is crucial at a time when medical schools are increasingly aware of the need for fruitful interactions between primary caregivers and their patients. Several schools now require students to pass an exam evaluating interaction skills. Meanwhile, medical residency programs are beginning to recruit residents with at least some communication training.

The book targets sociologists, communication experts and medical professionals, and ultimately aims to understand the social organization of medical talk while helping to improve doctor-patient relationships, Maynard says. The sociologist co-edited the anthology with John Heritage, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Eighteen researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland contributed chapters to the book, each analyzing different aspects of the doctor-patient interview. One chapter examines how physicians record patient medical histories, for example, while another analyzes discussions between a doctor and patient about treatment options.

Another chapter, co-authored by Maynard, examines conversations in which physicians announce both bad and good news. Maynard says that is a departure from earlier studies in which researchers primarily focused on doctors delivering bad news, such as a terminal diagnosis or the announcement of a patient's death to family members. Yet, good news can also be problematic in some cases, such as when a patient continues to experience symptoms, even though the doctor has detected no sign of disease.

The book's contributors gleaned insights about communication in the doctor's office through video clips and audio recordings - and the help of very detailed transcripts. Conversation analysts are trained to pick up telling clues from even the tiniest nuance in a verbal exchange. And sometimes, what is not said is almost as important as what is. "Silences in conversations are extremely important," Maynard says. "We actually time them, in tenths of a second."

"Communication in Medical Care" does not mark the first time researchers have thought about doctor-patient interactions, but it is the first time experts have studied in detail the behaviors of both the doctor and the patient, and how the two interrelate.

"Previous work on doctor-patient relationships focused much more on the physicians and what they should or should not do," says Maynard. "But our book is among the first to study how the physician and the patient together contribute to an interaction."

Why Does Sex Exist?

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:51:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Why does sex exist? A long-popular view holds that sexual reproduction creates new gene combinations that help the next generation resist rapidly co-evolving parasites. Each species constantly changes to achieve the same resultevolutionary advantageprompting evolutionary biologists to dub this hypothesis the Red Queen (who tells Alice in Through the Looking Glass it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place).

Recent theoretical studies have challenged the generality of the Red Queen hypothesis, suggesting that even though parasites can exert selection pressures that favor sex under some conditions, more often they select against it. They do this, the studies found, by selecting against genes that increase the degree of genetic mixing. And now, Aneil Agrawal has come to the Red Queen's rescue with his own theoretical analysis. While the recent models assumed that hostparasite encounters are random, Agrawal shows that when nonrandom interactions are assumedso that a host is more likely to acquire parasites from its motherselective pressures from parasites are much more likely to favor sex.

In theoretical models that assume random hostparasite interactions, the host's fitness depends only on its own genetic makeup (or genotype), a scenario called genotypic selection. If the host stands a reasonable chance (above what would be expected to occur randomly) of contracting infection from its mother, host fitness will also depend on the host's genetic similarity to its mother (called similarity selection).

Agrawal's model allows an individual host's fitness to depend both on its own genotype and on its similarity to its mother's genotype. This framework can describe selection by parasites that are encountered randomly or are transmitted by the mother. Risk of maternal transmission will be high when parasites pass directly from mother to offspring through her eggs. The likelihood of transmission will diminish if offspring acquire infection after dispersal. Offspring that have the same genotype as their mother will be more susceptible to parasites from their mother than those with different genes. Thus, Agrawal explains, to the extent that maternal transmission occurs, hosts will be subject to both genotypic and similarity selection.

If the Red Queen hypothesis is true, and hostparasite co-evolution underlies the evolution and maintenance of sex, then these species interactions should create links between gene variants (or alleles) that enhance genetic mixing and alleles related to fitness. (The alleles that influence genetic mixing are called modifier alleles, because they influence the degree of investment into sexual rather than asexual reproduction.)

The Red Queen hypothesis posits that sex allows hosts to evade co-evolving parasites. (Photo: William F. Duffy)

Agrawal first determined how a modifier allele evolves under different scenarios involving genotypic and similarity selection. He then evaluated the extent of genotypic and similarity selection produced by hostparasite co-evolution, and showed how the likelihood of maternal transmission affects whether parasites select for or against sex. He found that even though similarity selection has a much weaker effect than genotypic selection on fitness, it can exert a powerful force on the evolution of modifier alleles (and thus sex). Even a small chance of maternal transmission can lead to parasite selection for sex, Agrawal explains, because similarity selection affects genetic associations between mother and offspring, which tend to be strong (as opposed to genetic associations within offspring, which tend to be weaker).

Previous models have shown that sex is favored under very limited conditions in large, randomly breeding populations because genetic mixing tends to break down beneficial gene combinations produced by selection, which presumably enhance fitness. By incorporating the fitness effects of similarity selection, Agrawal could examine similarity selection's potential impacts on the evolution of modifier alleles independent of its fitness effectsand discover that parasites are much more likely to favor sex. The model predicts that this is most likely to occur when parasites are directly transmitted from mother to offspring, virulence is low, and infection rates are high (otherwise, too few offspring are produced by infected mothers).

While Agrawal doesn't argue that parasites fully explain why sex evolved, his results show that accounting for real-world transmission scenarios puts the ball squarely back in the Red Queen's court. Researchers can use his model to study the evolution of sex under a wide range of scenarios, such as when individual fitness depends on kin or other social groups.

Pseudogenes Research Reinforces Theory of Evolution

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:54:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Scientists led by a Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh geneticist have found new evidence that a category of genes known as pseudogenes serve no function, an important finding that bolsters the theory of evolution.

There are approximately 20,000 pseudogenes in the human and other mammalian genomes. In recent years, there has been growing discussion about the nature of these pseudogenes. The issue centers on whether pseudogenes are functional or merely evolutionary relics with no function. It was long believed by geneticists that they were relics, until basic science research published in 2003 found a mouse pseudogene located within the Makorin family of genes that did have a function, namely to cause polycystic kidney disease and a bone disease known as osteogenesis imperfecta.

This finding, discovered in a mouse model, was hailed by proponents of Intelligent Design (ID). According to the Intelligent Design Network, the premise of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a disagreement with the core scientific basis of evolutionary theory.

However, researchers at Childrens and the Wadsworth Center in New York, including first author Todd A. Gray, PhD, have found scientific evidence that contradicts this finding. The pseudogene in question Mkrn1-p1 indeed is not the cause of those diseases, according to senior author Robert D. Nicholls, DPhil, director of the Birth Defects Laboratories at Childrens. Instead, according to Dr. Nicholls, it merely is an inactive copy of a gene, an evolutionary relic as previously believed.

Discussion over evolution and Intelligent Design really has centered on whether pseudogenes, sometimes called junk DNA, have a function or not. The suggestion is that an Intelligent Designer would not make junk DNA, so if a pseudogene does have a function, this is claimed to support the idea of an Intelligent Designer, Dr. Nicholls said. But there is no evidence that any of the 20,000 pseudogenes are functional. Our research proves this Makorin pseudogene does not have a function. It has continued to mutate over its short life of a few million years, a fact that supports evolution, and eventually will be discarded from the mouse genome.

But the most important implication of this research from a patient perspective is that scientists now must go back to the beginning in terms of discovering the genetic mechanism that causes polycystic kidney disease and osteogenesis imperfecta in the mouse model, according to Dr. Nicholls.

Non-human primates may be linchpin in evolution of language

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:33:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) When contemplating the coos and screams of a fellow member of its species, the rhesus monkey, or macaque, makes use of brain regions that correspond to the two principal language centers in the human brain, according to research conducted by scientists at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), two of the National Institutes of Health. The finding, published July 23 in the advance online issue of Nature Neuroscience, bolsters the hypothesis that a shared ancestor to humans and present-day non-human primates may have possessed the key neural mechanisms upon which language was built. Principal collaborators on the study are Allen Braun, M.D., chief of NIDCD's Language Section, Alex Martin, Ph.D., chief of NIMH's Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, and Ricardo Gil-da-Costa, Gulbenkian Science Institute, Oeiras, Portugal, who conducted the study during a three-year joint appointment at the NIDCD and NIMH.

"This intriguing finding brings us closer to understanding the point at which the building blocks of language appeared on the evolutionary timeline," says James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. "While the fossil record cannot answer this question for us, we can turn to the here and now through brain imaging of living non-human primates for a glimpse into how language, or at least the neural circuitry required for language, came to be."

While non-human primates do not possess language, they are able to communicate about such things as food, identity, or danger to members of their species by way of vocalizations that are interpreted and acted upon. In humans, the two main regions of the brain that are involved in encoding this type of information in language are known as Broca's area and Wernicke's area, named for the physician-researchers who discovered them. Both areas are located along the Sylvian fissure (and are therefore referred to as perisylvian areas) with Broca's area located in the frontal lobe and Wernicke's area located behind it in the temporal and parietal lobes. Scientists once believed that Broca's area was chiefly involved in language production while Wernicke's area dealt more with comprehension, however current thinking suggests that the two areas work in tandem with one another. Although monkeys are not able to perform the mental activities required for language, their brains possess regions that are structurally similar to the perisylvian areas in humans in both hemispheres. The functional significance of such similarities, however, has been unclear up to this point.

To measure brain activity, the researchers injected water labeled with oxygen-15, a biologically safe, fast-degrading radioisotope, into the bloodstream of three adult macaques. As neural activity increases in a given region of the brain, blood and the radioactive water it carries rushes into that region. Using the brain imaging technology known as positron emission tomography (PET), researchers capture an image of the radioactive areas, thus highlighting the regions of heightened activity. In this way, brain scans were taken of the monkeys as they listened to three types of sounds: the recorded coos and screams of other rhesus monkeys, and assorted non-biological sounds, such as musical instruments and computer-synthesized sounds, which matched the vocalizations in frequency, rate, scale, and duration. For each monkey, 16 scans were recorded for each sound type and compared.

Although the coo of a monkey is acoustically very different from a high-pitched scream, the researchers found that both of these meaningful species-specific sounds elicited significantly more activity than the non-biological control stimuli in the same three regions of the macaque's brain. Moreover, these regions correspond to the key language centers in humans, with the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) corresponding to Broca's area, and the temporoparietal area (Tpt) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) corresponding to Wernicke's area. In contrast, the non-biological sounds which were acoustically similar to the coos and screams but had no meaning for the animals elicited significantly less activity in these regions; rather, they were associated with greater activation of the brain's primary auditory areas. (The reason for this, the researchers suggest, is that these sounds were new to the monkeys and the primary auditory areas may be especially attuned to novel stimuli.)

Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that the communication centers in the brain of the last common ancestor to macaques and humans particularly those centers used for interpreting species-specific vocalizations may have been recruited during the evolution of language in humans. In the macaque, these areas may currently play a parallel, prelinguistic function, in which monkeys are able to assign meaning to species-specific sounds. In addition, in light of an earlier study published by the same group, in which species-specific vocalizations of macaques activated brain regions that process higher-order visual and emotional information, the researchers suggest that the language areas of the brain may have evolved from a much larger system used to extract meaning from socially relevant situations a system in which humans and non-human primates may share similar neural pathways.

Further studies to be conducted include investigating which regions of the non-human primate brain are activated when animals listen to meaningful auditory stimuli other than species-specific vocalizations, such as a predators' calls, sounds made by humans, or other relevant environmental stimuli. In addition, they are interested in studying the pattern of brain activation elicited by non-auditory stimuli that convey the same meaning, such as visual images of monkeys producing vocalizations.

Primates developed close-up eyesight to avoid a dangerous predator

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 19:15:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The ability to spot venomous snakes may have played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC Davis.

Primates have good vision, enlarged brains, and grasping hands and feet, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. Scientists have thought that these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their hands and eyes to grab insects and other small prey, or to handle and examine fruit and other foods.

Isbell suggests instead that primates developed good close-up eyesight to avoid a dangerous predator -- the snake.

"A snake is the only predator you really need to see close up. If it's a long way away it's not dangerous," Isbell said.

Neurological studies by others show that the structure of the brain's visual system does not actually fit with the idea that vision evolved along with reaching and grasping, Isbell said. But the visual system does seem to be well connected to the "fear module," brain structures involved in vigilance, fear and learning.

Fossils and DNA evidence show that snakes were likely the first serious predators of modern mammals, which evolved about 100 million years ago. Fossils of snakes with mouths big enough to eat those mammals appear at about the same time. Other animals that could have eaten our ancestors, such as big cats, and hawks and eagles, evolved much later.

Venomous snakes evolved about 60 million years ago, raising the stakes and forcing primates to get better at detecting them.

"There's an evolutionary arms race between the predators and prey. Primates get better at spotting and avoiding snakes, so the snakes get better at concealment, or more venomous, and the primates respond," Isbell said.

Some primate groups less threatened by snakes show fewer signs of evolutionary pressure to evolve better vision. For example, the lemurs of Madagascar do not have any venomous snakes in their environment, and in evolutionary terms "have stayed where they are," Isbell said. In South America, monkeys arrived millions of years before venomous snakes, and show less specialization in their visual system compared with Old World monkeys and apes, which all have good vision, including color.

Having evolved for one purpose, a good eye for color, detail and movement later became useful for other purposes, such as social interactions in groups.

Doctors inadvertently help terminally ill patients to die sooner

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:48:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An Australian psychiatric study has found that doctors may be inadvertently contributing to the desire of many terminally ill patients to die sooner rather than later.

The report into the Association between clinician factors and a patient's wish to hasten death focused on terminally ill cancer patients and found that the doctor-patient relationship was an important factor in a patient's wish to hasten death.

Psychiatrist, Associate Professor Frank Varghese from The University of Queensland's School of Medicine, conducted the study with researchers from across Australia.

They found that less training in the psychological aspects of medicine and counselling was significantly associated with a high reported wish to hasten death by the patient.

"We found that doctors were more willing to hasten the death of patients if it were legal to do so and if a request by the patient was made," Dr Varghese said.

"This may suggest that in a setting where there is a greater perception of a patient's emotional distress and hopelessness, combined with the doctor's limited psychological training and his or her own difficulty in caring for the patient, the doctor may be more inclined to hasten the death of the patient."

It is currently illegal in Australia and most jurisdictions around the world for a doctor to assist suicide but researcher Professor Brian Kelly from the University of Newcastle said the study raised issues related to legislation assisted suicide.

"The report raises serious concerns about the adverse effect such legislation has on the role of a doctor in the care of a dying patient, the goals of medical treatment and the need to promote better skills in the caring for emotional needs of patients who are dying and their families," Dr Kelly said.

"Doctors face many stresses in the care of dying patients, and their reactions to the patients' distress and the doctor's reactions to severe and incurable illnesses in their patients may inadvertently lead the doctor to support the patient in their interest of assisted suicide.

"They should instead be taking an approach that aims to understand the basis of the patients' request and distress in the usual therapeutic role, and identifying the ways of assisting the patient and family."

The study shows that a patient's hopelessness could lead the doctor to have a greater level of hopelessness.

Dr Varghese said an attitude that conveyed endorsement of the wish to hasten death on the part of the doctor could facilitate that stance on the part of the patient.

"A doctor who was overwhelmed by the patient's unaddressed emotional distress, with limited training in the psychological aspects of medicine, may be more inclined to favour hastening death for a patient," Dr Varghese said.

A total of 252 individual doctor-patient pairs participated in the study, which was conducted using patients and doctors from the Princess Alexandra Hospital and Mt. Olivet Hospital in Brisbane. It was supported by the Queensland Cancer Fund, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Princess Alexandra Hospital, the British Red Cross Trust Fund and Mt. Olivet Hospital.

Parsing the Functional Fields of the Auditory Cortex

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:43:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) No self-respecting concertgoer of a certain era would consider wearing earplugs at a show, but that was long before Pete Townsend and other rock icons spoke out about the risk of deafness. Today, most people recognize that high-intensity noise causes hearing lossexcept maybe for those iPod users who routinely blast earsplitting music straight into their brains.

Blaring volume causes deafness by destroying sound-responsive hair cells, but it's unclear how these auditory assaults affect the brain's auditory system. Much of the auditory cortex is organized by sound frequency, but neuroscientists are still figuring out the extent of the spatial organization of frequency-selective neurons and how each auditory field contributes to sound perception. While neurophysiological studies have characterized the functional properties of certain auditory cortical fields (by recording the electrical activity from individual neurons), anatomical studies have identified other fields that had not been functionally characterized.

A new study by Christopher Petkov, Nikos Logothetis, and colleagues fills in some of these gaps by using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on macaque monkeys presented with acoustic stimuli. The researchers used the anatomical and neurophysiological data to see how the fMRI data compared with the already described auditory cortical fields. With a better sense of how to interpret the functional imaging data, they could use fMRI to probe the functional properties of uncharacterized auditory fields. This approach allowed them to show the functional organization of 11 discrete auditory fields in the primate auditory cortexan important step toward understanding how these fields operate together to shape what the primate listener perceives of its acoustical environment.

Petkov et al. first used a broad spectrum of sound frequencies to globally activate the monkeys' auditory cortex. (Six anesthetized monkeys and one monkey trained to stay still were placed in fMRI scanners while presented with acoustical stimuli.) Next, they used low- and high-frequency sounds to identify regions with selectively tuned neurons. Based on predictions that auditory fields follow an alternating pattern of high to low frequency along a posterior to anterior direction, they expected fMRI activity to follow the same patternwhich it did. This now grounded frequency gradient allowed them to match the rest of the activity patterns that they observed with other auditory fields. Significantly, they matched an alternating pattern of high- and low-frequency selective regions with three fields in the primary auditory cortex, or auditory core fields: A1, R, and RT. These core fields are thought to be surrounded by seven or eight so-called belt (non-primary) fields. However, neurophysiological data on RT and many of the belt fields are scant, making it unclear how many functional fields actually exist.

It's thought that auditory fields in the core are tuned to simple sounds, like single-frequency tones, while fields in the belt respond to complex sounds. To better locate activity in the belt regions, Petkov et al. also studied brain responses to more-complex sounds. The results included frequency selectivity patterns consistent with known patterns for four belt fields that had previously been studied neurophysiologically and provided a base outline for the other fieldsbasically functionally tessellating the monkey auditory cortex. Petkov et al. then took advantage of evidence that tones produce a stronger response in the core than they do in the belt fields to outline a border between the core and belt, which helped them to further resolve the position of the core relative to the belt fields.

The extensive patterns of frequency gradients indicated that the three core regions were surrounded by eight belt fields, four on each side, supporting anatomical evidence for about a dozen auditory fields. The researchers then went on to show that neurons in the belt fields responded preferentially to sounds with a broad frequency spectrumin other words, more complex sounds that would have some of the properties of natural sounds. These results fall in line with a model of hierarchical auditory processing in which the core operates during the initial stages of auditory cortex processing, contributing to a frequency analysis of the sounds in the environment. The belt fields function at a higher level to deal with more-complex sounds by integrating sound frequencies. The challenge now is to understand how each of the many fields contributes toward and interacts with others to shape the perception of primates in their typically opulent acousticaland multisensoryenvironments.

This study underscores the value of pooling data from different experimental approaches to study something as intricate as the brain. With this high-resolution functional MRI map of the monkey auditory cortex, researchers can now use both fMRI and neurophysiological techniques to refine each field's particular role within the primate auditory cortex. The map will also guide efforts to better understand the functional organization of the human auditory systeminformation that could certainly identify the impact of peripheral hearing loss on this part of the auditory system. And with functional maps of both monkey and human auditory cortex, researchers can better understand how the specialized auditory fields evolved, ultimately offering insights into the evolution of human language.

Declining Human Fertility is Evolutionary Adaptation

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 14:52:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Before society criticises teenage girls for having sex behind the bike sheds and becoming pregnant, or women in their 60s for seeking IVF treatment, it is important to consider fertility not just in terms of the 21st century but in the context of the past 150,000 years.

Dr Laurence Shaw, told the 22nd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, that it is only in the past 150 years or so that better hygiene, living conditions and medical advances have made it relatively common for people to live into their 60s, 70s, 80s and sometimes beyond. Before that time men and women would have been more likely to die around the age of 50. For women this often meant they died at or before their menopause.

Dr Shaw, deputy medical director, at the Bridge Centre, London, UK, will say: "Homo sapiens has existed for 150,000 years and for all of that time until about 100 to 150 years ago, women had their babies when they were in their late teens and early twenties when their fertility was at its peak. In the subsequent 20 to 30 years, they raised their children, and their declining fertility meant that they were less likely to have further children of their own and could help their daughters to tend their own babies. Most women died before they reached menopause or shortly after.

"Therefore, the accelerated decline in fertility, rather than the menopause itself, is the evolutionary adaptation that has occurred in the human line over the past 2.8 million years, and, until the last 150 years, the postmenopausal state and the prior decline in fertility was positively useful. Living through the menopause and beyond is not a part of our natural life.

"Our improved longevity and other aspects of industrialised society have some incompatibilities with this evolutionary strategy. In particular, there are three serious issues:

1. Our natural time to have children, and the peak of our fertility, is late teens and early twenties, yet Western society regards teenage pregnancy as a 'problem' and cannot cope well with them.
2. We delay our childbearing until we have wealth and stability in later life when women's fertility is declining and then require medical assistance that is often poorly funded by governments.
3. Women now expect to spend more than a third of their life in the post-reproductive part of their life an unnaturally prolonged hormone deficient state when they encounter problems such as osteoporosis with increasing frequency, which they never had to face until recent decades. Worry about the risks of hormone replacement therapy is still seen by some as more relevant than the risk of prolonged hormone deficiency.

"Therefore, before we condemn our teenagers for having sex behind the bike sheds and becoming pregnant, we should remember that this is a natural response by these girls to their rising fertility levels. Society may 'tut, tut' about them, but their actions are part of an evolutionary process that goes back nearly two million years; whilst their behaviour may not fit with Western society's expectations, it is perhaps useful to consider it in the wider context.

"Similarly, we should not be quite so prejudiced about older women who want fertility treatment. Before we criticise 62-year-old women who want to have babies, we should remember that it was not so long ago that women would only have had about 20 or 30 years to care for their offspring and help with the next generation. Nowadays 60-year old women in many industrialised countries, have a life expectancy of 80 or 90, so there is no difference in terms of the length of their survival after the birth of a baby than there would have been for most of human existence."

Although Dr Shaw says that he feels that IVF treatment for women in their 60s would reasonably be considered an excessive burden for state-funded national health services, he thinks the problems associated with women wanting to start families after their fertility has started to decline and their longer life after menopause should be addressed by society, including the medical profession.

"The menopause is not natural because, until recently, we generally didn't live that long. Rapidly declining fertility after the late 20s is a long-term evolutionary adaptation, but a more recent adaptation is our longevity, helped by better hygiene, medicine and so on. So I believe that we should use this same technology to help further with finding better and safer hormone replacement therapies, and with fertility treatments for those seeking pregnancy in their 30s and 40s. We need to look at things not just in terms of the 21st century, but in the overall context of evolutionary progress."

Study shows that threat displays may prevent serious physical harm

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:17:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a paper from the July issue of The American Naturalist, Kristopher Lappin (Northern Arizona University), Yoni Brandt (University of Toronto), Jerry Husak (Oklahoma State University), Joe Macedonia (Arizona State University), and Darrell Kemp (James Cook University), demonstrate that a threat display can provide accurate information about the performance of a weapon.

Working at the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma, the researchers showed that when an adult male lizard gapes his jaws at a rival male during an intense territorial interaction, information is made available to his opponent about how hard he can bite indeed, the lizard's jaw muscles become clearly visible. Further, some lizards have evolved bright patches that reflect ultraviolet light, which lizards can see, to delineate the jaw muscles.

Lappin and colleagues point out that the information about bite force provided by the display does not correspond to body or head size because males of similar size can vary substantially in how hard they can bite. The display thus provides unique and honest information about weapon quality, as well as a mechanism for making the decision to fight or to back down. Adult male collared lizards (the species examined in this study) are larger than the females, have hypertrophied jaw muscles, and are highly territorial toward other males. All of this relates to males having evolved the ability to bite with great force, which means that they can seriously wound rivals in fights.

The colorful and robust head of an adult male eastern collard lizard (Crotaphytus collaris) from the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. The partially unfolded, bright white mouth-corner patch accentuates the jaw muscles during gaping displays. Credit: Courtesy A.K. Lappin

"When you've seen what these lizards can do to each other with their jaws, inflicting deep lacerations and even breaking bones, it makes sense that avoiding fights would be advantageous, even if you are likely to win," Lappin says.

When two competing males engage in a gaping display, each shows off its weapon while simultaneously affording an opportunity to evaluate its rival's weapon. In animals from insects to humans, such displays likely play an important role in assessing the risks associated with fighting, as well as in reinforcing the experiences of past fights with specific individuals.

"You see the same with humans," Lappin explains. "Think back to the rivalries of adolescence. Fights took place in order to establish dominance relationships in the neighborhood, but the fights themselves were rare. Most of it was posturing and showing off, displays per se, that served to advertise physical prowess as well as to reinforce the consequences of previous confrontations."

How animals learn from each other

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:33:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In an exciting study that provides new understanding of how animals learn--and learn from each other--researchers have demonstrated that bats that use frog acoustic cues to find quality prey can rapidly learn these cues by observing other bats. While numerous examples are known of instances where predators can use so-called "social learning" to learn new visual and olfactory cues associated with prey, this kind of learning of an acoustic cue had not been previously described.

The fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, uses frog calls from different species as acoustic cues to assess the palatability of its prey. Previous experiments have shown that T. cirrhosus is extremely flexible in its foraging behavior. In the new study, Page and Ryan investigated the role of social learning in bat foraging flexibility. Comparing three different learning groups, the researchers measured the rate at which bats learned new foraging information: in this case, the novel (experimental) association of the calls of a poisonous toad species with the presence of palatable prey.

The researchers tested the effectiveness of learning this experimental association through three different means: (a) a social learning group, in which a bat inexperienced with the new call-food association was allowed to observe an experienced bat; (b) a social facilitation group, in which two inexperienced bats were presented with the experimental task together; and (c) a trial-and-error group, in which a single inexperienced bat was presented with the experimental task alone. In the social learning group, bats rapidly acquired the novel association in an average of 5.3 trials. In the social facilitation and trial-and-error groups, most bats did not approach the call of the poisonous species even after 100 trials. These results suggest that once acquired, novel prey-cue/prey-quality associations could spread rapidly through bat populations by cultural transmission.

Thermal Adaptation in Bacterial Viruses

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:16:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Assuming the absence of a massive asteroid strike, gamma ray burst, or other globally devastating event, the survival of a species depends on its ability to adapt to environmental changes. To understand how such adaptations occur in nature, scientists study much simpler systems in the lab. A classic lab evolution experiment uses evolutionary responses to temperature as a model for studying how an environmental variable affects the physical expression (phenotype) of an organism's genes. Biologists have typically focused either on the range of physiological responses to temperature or on the genetic changes underlying variations in temperature.

In a new study, Jennifer Knies, Christina Burch, Joel Kingsolver, and colleagues demonstrate the value of using a genetically tractable organismthe bacteria-infecting virus bacteriophage (or phage)to study adaptive responses to temperature. By combining phenotypic and genetic analyses with a new statistical approach, the researchers show that the genetic changes they observed in phages undergoing thermal adaptations in the lab also play a role in thermal performance in natural populations.

A graphical representation of the effect that temperature (the environmental variable) has on a population's growth rate (the performance indicator) is called a thermal reaction norm. (A continuous reaction norm shows these interactions as an ongoing, underlying relationship.) Thermal reaction norms usually have a common shape, showing performance increasing along with temperature, reaching a maximum at an intermediate temperature, and declining with additional temperature increases. Three basic variations on this curve reflect biological responses (see illustration): vertical shifts relate to average performance, horizontal shifts relate to optimal temperature (for growth rate, for example), and width shifts relate to changes in niche range.

Using continuous reaction norms to characterize adaptive responses to temperature, the researchers reexamined a recent study that linked rapid adaptation to specific genetic changes. The study, by Holder and Bull, showed that phage populations quickly evolved higher growth rates at higher temperatures. But, Knies et al. explain, these growth rates were correlated with just one temperature pointthe optimal temperature for the ancestral populations (used at the beginning of the experiment). Knies et al. reexamined phage thermal adaptation by measuring growth rate over a wider range of temperatures, then used a recently developed statistical method to identify the biological determinants of the shifts in the reaction norm shapes, quantify their relative contributions, and identify the genetic basis of the adaptations.

In the evolution experiment, a population of phage clones was propagated through a series of 50 transfersduring each transfer, 1,000,000 phages were added to a culture of 1,000,000,000 reproducing Escherichia coli hostsat 106.7 degrees Fahrenheit (41.5 °C), followed by 50 more transfers at 111.2 °F (44 °C). Knies et al. isolated phages from the evolving populations at the 20th, 50th, and 100th (last) transfer, and characterized their growth rates (and that of the ancestral population) across their entire thermal nichesix temperature points between 80.6 °F (27 °C) and 111.2 °F.

The phages had evolved between each transfer, and their reaction norms had the characteristic shape for performance: growth rate increased with temperature until reaching a maximum at 95 °F (35 °C), and declined as temperatures further increased. Using the statistical model, the researchers estimated the biological components underlying the reaction norm shapes for each evolving population. Although the contributions of the components varied with temperature, Knies et al. found that optimal temperature explained the largest proportion of the variation in reaction norm shape, with smaller contributions from growth rate and niche width.

The researchers knew from the previous study by Holder and Bull that ten adaptive mutations had spread through the population during adaptation to high temperature. By sequencing the genomes of several evolved phages at different transfer stages, they were able to confirm that many of these mutations contributed to adaptation in the laboratory. To determine the effects of these mutations in natural populations, they focused on one mutation that unambiguously contributed to adaptation in the lab and was also present in natural populations. In both laboratory and natural phage populations, the mutation was associated with increased growth rates at high, but not low, temperatures.

The finding that shifts in optimal temperature underlie much of the adaptive response in phage populations supports human antiviral strategies that use cold-adapted vaccines, the researchers argue. These strategies adapt viral strains to grow at temperatures well below body temperature so they don't become virulent when injected as vaccinesa sound approach, based on these results. This study demonstrates a powerful method for integrating biological modes of adaptation to the underlying genetic changesa method the researchers hope will inspire more collaborations between evolutionary geneticists, physiologists, and statisticians.

Genetic quality of sperm worsens as men get older

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:46:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New research indicates that the genetic quality of sperm worsens as men get older, increasing a man's risk of being infertile, fathering unsuccessful pregnancies and passing along dwarfism and possibly other genetic diseases to his children.

A study led by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, found a steady increase in sperm DNA fragmentation with increasing age of the study participants, along with increases in a gene mutation that causes achondroplasia, or dwarfism. The first changes were observed in men in their early reproductive years.

Earlier research by the same team indicated that male reproductive ability gradually worsens with age, as sperm counts decline and the sperm lose motility and their ability to swim in a straight line. In the current study, the researchers analyzed DNA damage, chromosomal abnormalities and gene mutations in semen samples from the same subjects 97 healthy, non-smoking LLNL employees and retirees between 22 and 80 years old and found that sperm motility showed a high correlation with DNA fragmentation, which is associated with increased risk of infertility and a reduced probability of fathering a successful pregnancy.

The study, "Advancing age has differential effects on DNA damage, chromatin integrity, gene mutations, and aneuploidies (chromosome abnormalities) in sperm," appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This study shows that men who wait until they're older to have children are not only risking difficulties conceiving, they could also be increasing the risk of having children with genetic problems," said co-lead author Andrew Wyrobek of LLNL.

"We know that women have a biological time clock," said co-lead author Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, "with an increase in risk of miscarriage and producing children with trisomy (an extra chromosome, such as in Downs syndrome) as women age, and with a seemingly abrupt end of fertility around perimenopause. Our research suggests that men, too, have a biological time clock only it is different. Men seem to have a gradual rather than an abrupt change in fertility and in the potential ability to produce viable healthy offspring."

Mutations in the fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR 3) gene (above) have been linked to achondroplasia, or dwarfism. Sperm analysis shows that mutations associated with dwarfism gradually increased by about two per cent for every year of age. (LANL)

Unlike in women, the researchers found no correlation between male aging and chromosome changes that cause Down's syndrome and other forms of trisomies such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, triple X syndrome, and XYY in offspring that are associated with varying types and severity of infertility as well as physical and neurological abnormalities. They did conclude, however, that some older men could be at risk for fathering children with dwarfism, and that "a small fraction of men are at increased risks for transmitting multiple genetic and chromosomal defects."

In the case of Apert syndrome, a serious disfiguring birth defect, the researchers found that the effects of advancing male age may differ among different groups of men. Apert syndrome gene mutations increased in the sperm of a second group of men recruited in the Baltimore inner city by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, while no age effects were observed in the group of men recruited in California.

Wyrobek noted that these differences in finding suggest that factors other than age may be involved, raising the possibility that socioeconomic or dietary factors or ethnic background may also be involved in how age affects the quality of human sperm.

"Since some forms of genomic damage change with age and others don't," he said, "overall genomic sperm quality cannot be measured by any single sperm test." Dwarfism, a genetic disorder that affects bone growth, is the most common growth-related birth defect, occurring in about one in every 25,000 births. It occurs in all races and in both males and females and causes affected individuals to have very short arms and legs, limiting their full adult height to about four feet.

Wyrobek, Eskenazi and their colleagues analyzed semen from the volunteers using a variety of state-of-the art methods for detecting genetic and chromosomal defects in human sperm. A flow cytometer method was used to detect DNA fragmentation and chromatin defects in collaboration with co-author Don Evenson at South Dakota State University. Gene mutations in the achrondroplasia gene and in the Apert sydrome gene were measured using highly sensitive PCRbased methods developed by co-authors Ethylin Jabs at Johns Hopkins and Norman Arnheim at USC in Los Angeles. The team also used a Livermore-developed chromosome analysis system called sperm FISH (fluorescence in-situ hybridization). They found a strong correlation between age and sperm DNA fragmentation, with genetic mutations associated with dwarfism gradually increasing by about two per cent for every year of age.

The study included at least 15 men from each age decade from 20 to 60 years, and 25 men 60 to 80 years old. The researchers gathered extensive medical, lifestyle and occupational exposure history from the men and excluded current cigarette smokers and men with current fertility or reproductive problems, a previous semen analysis with zero sperm count, vasectomy, history of prostate cancer or undescended testicle, or exposure to chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer.

Understanding the effects of paternal age has become more important as increasing numbers of men are having children at older ages. Since 1980 there has been about a 40 percent increase in 35- to 49-year-old men fathering children, and a 20 percent decrease in fathers under 30. Studies have also shown that it takes longer for older men to conceive, even when the age of the mother is considered.

Songbirds boost size of eggs when hearing sexy song

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 06:04:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a new study published in the latest issue of Ethology researchers show that female songbirds can alter the size of eggs and possibly the sex of their chicks according to how they perceive their mate's quality.

The researchers played back attractive ("sexy") songs and less attractive control songs of male canaries to female domesticated canaries. When the females started egg-laying they varied the size of their eggs in the nest according to the attractiveness of the male's song. That is, the more attractive the song, the larger the eggs. However it is remarkable that while larger eggs were more likely to contain male offspring in natural environments, in the experiment there was no difference in brood sex ratio between the different songs played to the females, which suggests different levels of female control. Male birdsong has long been known to attract females and influence mate choice decisions and even induce an alteration in the offspring's sex ratio. This study by Leitner et al. now shows experimentally that hearing attractive song also has a selective impact on female physiology.

45 female domesticated canaries participated in this study that was a collaboration of Royal Holloway, University of London and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and Radolfzell in Germany. The birds were kept in large aviaries where their daily behaviour was monitored in a colony before they were tested in the song experiments. The females showed a remarkable consistency in their behavioural and reproductive performance and the song stimuli alone were sufficient to elicit a profound physiological change. This study further highlights the importance of behavioural stimuli for reproductive physiology.

Small naps a big help for young docs on long shifts

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 02:39:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The first study to assess the benefits of naps for medical residents during extended shifts found that creating protected times when interns could sleep during a night on-call significantly reduced fatigue.

In the June 6, 2006, issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago report that although average sleep time for interns in the study increased only modestly -- by about one hour -- the interns felt that even small gains in sleep led to substantial improvements in fatigue, sleep quality and ability to care for their patients.

"This is a proven method of alleviating fatigue in industries that combine high intensity with long shifts," said study director Vineet Arora, M.D., instructor of medicine at the University of Chicago, "yet is has been neglected by the one industry that studies sleep. Our results show that a well timed nap can provide a significant boost in physician concentration and take away some of the burden of chronic sleep deprivation."

The researchers studied 38 first-year medical residents (also known as interns) on the general medicine service at the University of Chicago Hospital from July 2003 to June 2004. For several month-long periods during that year, the interns were on-call every fourth night. Interns on-call often work a 30-hour shift, consisting of a full day, then a night on-call, followed by a shorter day. Each intern wore an "Actiwatch" for the entire month, which recorded his or her movements around the hospital, time in bed and time asleep.

For two weeks out of each month on-call, interns followed the standard schedule, grabbing a little sleep whenever they could during the night shift. For the other two weeks they had access to protected time, allowing them to nap. Those on the nap schedule were "strongly encouraged" to forward the care of their patients to a designated "night-float" resident who would cover for them between midnight and 7 a.m.

During 119 total months on service, the 38 interns were randomly prompted during on-call and post-call days (but not between midnight and 7 a.m.) to report their fatigue at that moment, using the seven-point Stanford Sleepiness Scale. One point indicates "feeling active and vital, alert, wide awake," and seven points indicates "almost in reverie, sleep onset soon, losing struggle to remain awake."

Interns on the nap schedule increased their average sleep time by 41 minutes, from 144 minutes a night up to 185 minutes. Interns on the nap schedule who forwarded their pagers to the "night-float" resident increased their sleep times even more, from 142 up to 210 minutes. Sleep efficiency the ration between time in bed and time asleep also improved for those on the nap schedule, from 73 percent, considered abnormal, up to 80 percent.

Study author Dr. Vineet Arora and residents at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

When prompted, interns on the nap schedule reported far less fatigue. They logged an overall sleepiness rating of 1.74 compared to 2.26 for those on the standard schedule. (Lower is better.) They had lower scores while on call, 1.59 versus 2.06, and much lower scores the day after being on call, 2.23 versus 3.16.

"A rating of one or even two is consistent with peak performance," said Arora, but people may start to get "sluggish," she said, at three. Anything above three is "clinically relevant."

The researchers found, however, that despite mounting fatigue and the allure of protected sleep time, interns were reluctant to rely on the night-float residents, forwarding their pagers only 22 percent of available opportunities. When interviewed, interns emphasized the importance of caring for their own patients and concerns about losing important information whenever responsibility is transferred back and forth with another physician.

"Our study," the authors wrote, "suggests that these young physicians are choosing to care for their patients over their own immediate welfare."

Although interns did not mind sacrificing sleep for their own patients, they did not feel the same allegiance when they had to "cross-cover" patients whom they did not know to help other physicians. Many found ways to retain the pages for their own patients but were happy to transfer others to the night-float resident.

At a time, the authors note, when newly imposed restrictions on resident hours result in more frequent cross-coverage, "this finding is concerning."

As hospitals nationwide search for ways to reduce resident sleep deprivation, many have considered shorter shifts. This study suggests that an extended long shift, punctuated by a substantial nap, may be more effective, reducing levels of resident fatigue but also limiting the amount of time that patients would be cared for by covering physicians, "a known risk factor for preventable adverse effects."

In response to this study, all interns on the general medicine service at the University of Chicago Hospitals now have access to night-float coverage and are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to sleep.

Why women live longer than men

Wed, 10 May 2006 12:49:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Despite research efforts to find modern factors that would explain the different life expectancies of men and women, the gap is actually ancient and universal, according to University of Michigan researchers.

"Women live longer in almost every country, and the sex difference in lifespan has been recognized since at least the mid-18th century," said Daniel J. Kruger, a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research. "It isn't a recent trend; it originates from our deep evolutionary history."

This skewed mortality isn't even unique to our species; the men come up short in common chimps and many other species, Kruger added.

Kruger and co-author Randolph Nesse, a professor of psychology and psychiatry and director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program, argue that the difference in life expectancy stems from the biological imperative of attracting mates.

"This whole pattern is a result of sexual selection and the roles that males and females play in reproduction," Kruger said, "Females generally invest more in offspring than males and are more limited in offspring quantity, thus males typically compete with each other to attract and retain female partners."

For example, in common chimps, the greatest difference in mortality rates for males and females occurs at about 13 years of age, when the males are just entering the breeding scene and competing aggressively for social status and females.

From the tail of the peacock to the blinged-out SUV, males compete aggressively for female attention, and that costs them something. In nature, it means riskier physiology and behavior for the males, such as putting more resources into flashy plumage or engaging in physical sparring.

And even in modern life, where most dueling is a form of entertainment, male behavior and physiology is shortening their lifespans relative to women, Kruger said. In fact, modern lifestyles are actually exacerbating the gap between male and female life expectancies.

Male physiology, shaped by eons of sexual competition, is putting the guys at a disadvantage in longevity. Male immune systems are somewhat weaker, and their bodies are less able to process the fat they eat, Kruger said. And behavioral causes---smoking, overeating, reckless driving, violence---set men apart from most women. "Because mortality rates in general are going down, behavioral causes of death are ever more prevalent," Kruger said.

Looking at human mortality rates sliced by socioeconomic status shows that the gender gap is affected by social standing. Human males in lower socio-economic levels tend to have higher mortality rates than their higher-status peers. The impact of social standing is greater on male mortality than on female mortality, Kruger noted, partially because males who have a relatively lower status or lack a mate engage in a riskier pattern of behaviors in an attempt to get ahead, he said.

Indian medical students protest quota policy across the country

Tue, 02 May 2006 22:45:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Medical college students across the country took to the streets Tuesday to protest the government's proposal to increase quotas to 49.5 percent in higher educational institutions.

Though the protests were peaceful, the protest campaign could intensify with students threatening to go on indefinite strikes if the government did not resolve the controversy soon, student leaders warned.

The government intends to make an additional 27 percent reservations for other backward classes (OBC) in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and central universities that will take the overall reserved quota to 49.5 percent.

Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has defended this on the ground that parliament had passed a law on reservations for disadvantaged sections of society.

In New Delhi, hundreds of medical students turned out to protest the proposal.

"When we students do not believe in the caste system and do not follow it, why is the government forcing it on us," asked Vishal Sharma of the University College of Medical Science (UCMS).

According to him, the government had failed to improve educational standards at the primary level but was now promoting reservations as part of its vote bank politics.

The students of the capital's UCMS, Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC), Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College, Lady Harding Medical College, Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) and Delhi University took part in the protests.

Shouting anti-government slogans, around 1,000 students marched from MAMC to Jantar Mantar against the government's reservation policy.

"This protest march is just a show of strength to the government and to make them understand that they should reverse the reservation policy," said Sharad Sharma.

Some OBC students were also amongst the protesters.

"We do not want reservations. We have the ability to get admissions on the basis of merit rather reservations," said Varun Yadav, a Delhi University student.

Another OBC student, Gaurav Kumar said: "The government should provide special facilities at primary education level and not in central universities."

Delhi Police had a difficult time controlling the crowd, leading to traffic jams at several places between MAMC and Jantar Mantar.

In Bihar, over 100 protestors from the Patna Medical College and Hospital and the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital marched in a rally in the scorching heat to protest the government's reservation policy.

The angry students said they would boycott classes and examinations and keep away from the hospital duty. According to the demonstrators, students from other medical colleges in Gaya, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur would also join their protest.

Bihar witnessed violent anti-reservation demonstrations in 1989 when then prime minister V.P. Singh announced reservation for OBCs as per the Mandal Commission report.

In Rajasthan capital Jaipur, the students are divided on the issue.

While students of the College Of Nursing of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Science have flayed the reservations, some students of the S.M.S. Medical College have supported the government's decision.

"We strongly oppose the government's decision to provide special privileges to a certain section of the society merely on the basis of caste. Certain sectors like medical education should be kept away from reservations as this is directly associated with human life," said C.S. Joshi of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences.

VitaCig - Cigarettes with Vitamin C that don't stain teeth

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 19:08:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Cigarettes injected with Vitamin C that don't stain your teeth have been developed by a Canadian researcher.

The new cigarettes, named VitaCig, have been developed by non-smoker Roger Ouellette, reported the online edition of Daily Mail. Canadian company Vita-C Tobacco is distributing the cigarettes.

The 'healthy' cigarettes will be available in about 2,000 outlets in Quebec and, if they prove successful, could be sold across the world, the company claimed.

VitaCig is less likely to stain the teeth and create less of smell too, its creator claimed. It was more "beneficial" to health than regular brands because of the vitamin dose, he said.

Vitamin C reduced the harmful effects of smoking. "We give you all the vitamins you lose, plus some to help you," Ouellette claimed. It could also help keep your teeth white, he said.

However, those who campaign against smoking have disapproved the claim. "I find it hard to believe anyone would take the claims seriously, but some people might be fooled," said Amanda Sandford of Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking charity.

"It is quite a disgraceful form of marketing because it could lure innocent or naive people into thinking they can smoke to get the vitamins they need."

Smoking of cigarettes leads to several health problems, especially lung cancer, emphysema and other disorders.

Indian scribe pleads for mercy killing

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:03:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A 79-year-old freelance journalist here has petitioned the Rajasthan High Court seeking permission for euthanasia, saying he wants to die with dignity.

In his petition filed Wednesday, Giriraj Prasad Gupta pleaded for mercy killing on the ground that he was unable to perform his day-to-day functions independently and did not want to lead a crippled life waiting for death.

He said he had a hearing problem, diabetes, poor vision and heart disorders. He has been operated upon for hernia and prostate, and he had fractured his legs and hands once. He said he wanted to "die with dignity" rather than become a bedridden patient waiting for death.

The journalist clarified that he was loved and taken care of by his family members, who were all well settled. He also said that he was able to earn Rs.8,000 a month.

Arguing that the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita and the Jain philosophy speak of immortality and reincarnation, Gupta said he wanted to facilitate transfer of his soul into a new body.

Gupta's counsel N.C. Goel said his client wanted to die with dignity, for which he would require a doctor's help and the doctor should also not be penalised for it.

A sneeze could give away your personality traits

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 14:51:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) "A-choo!" the sound that comes when you sneeze could reveal details about your personality, said a US body language expert.

Patti A. Wood, an Atlanta-based consultant who created the Achoo IQ Study for Benadryl, said a sneeze could offer a revealing look at someone's personality, reported the online edition of ABC News.

Wood categorised sneezers into four categories: nice, be right, get it done and enthusiastic.

Wood classifies you as a "nice sneezer" if you are a single sneezer and turn away when you do so. People in the category are characterised as being warm, helpful, supportive and nurturing of others.

Or are you the type to let a big loud sneeze out? These sneezers, or "get it done" sneezers, are found to be fast, decisive and to the point. They typically make the best leaders.

Do you always keep tissues handy and cover your mouth when you feel a sneeze coming? These are the "be right" sneezers and are typically the careful, accurate, deep-thinking type, said Wood.

The last group are the enthusiastic sneezers. These are the people with sneezes you notice - such as your grandfather whose sneezes perhaps terrify you, or your co-worker who always sneezes five times.

The enthusiastic sneezers were found to be charismatic and social and have the ability to motivate others.

Two-week-old embedded arrow surgically removed

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:44:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A Madhya Pradesh tribal who was walking around normally with an arrowhead embedded deep in his chest for two weeks, had the weapon piece removed surgically by doctors at Indore.

Gajuram, 35, of Khargone district was hit on April 7 by an arrow by fellow tribesman Kaliya when he refused to give him the hen he wanted. Though Gajuram pulled out the stem of the arrow, the head remained inside, police said.

Gajuram was taken to Khargone hospital where doctors referred him to MY Hospital, Indore, the next day. But Gajuram took it lightly and continued with his routine.

After two weeks a relative brought him to MY hospital where he was operated upon.

"Doctors at the hospital were shocked to see a man surviving for such a long time though the X ray showed that the arrow had pierced deep into his thoracic region, damaging one of his lungs," said R.K. Mathur.

"Doctors were afraid of conducting an operation by giving anaesthesia as they felt with a damaged lung it would be too risky," said another doctor V.S. Bhatia.

Bhatia, who held several rounds of consultations with seniors, undertook the two-hour operation on Saturday by giving Gajuram local anaesthesia.

The arrowhead was removed successfully without any damage to other parts of the body.

"Any other human being would have died with an arrow piercing into his body from the right shoulder to the left side, piercing his lungs," the doctors said.

Fruitfly study shows how evolution wings it

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:56:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In the frantic world of fruitfly courtship, the difference between attracting a mate and going home alone may depend on having the right wing spots. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have learned which elements of fly DNA make these spots come and go in different species. Their studies have also uncovered surprising new evidence supporting the idea that evolution is an incessant tinkerer when it comes to complex traits.

The experiments are among the first to root out "the deep mechanics of evolution" that underpin complex traits, according to the study's senior author Sean Carroll, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Carroll and his Wisconsin colleagues collaborated with researchers from the University of Cambridge and Stony Brook University on the studies, which were published in the April 20. 2006, issue of the journal Nature.

The researchers said their findings emphasize the evolutionary significance of "pleiotropic" genes those with multiple on-switches that enable the expression of a single gene in different tissues or at different stages of development.

"The wing spot on the fruitfly is a particularly good model because we know it constitutes a new feature that is gained or lost by evolution in different species," said Carroll. "And, since it is a spatial pattern, it gives us a chance to analyze the evolution of a physical trait. Such traits have size, shape, and length, and they are more complicated than physiological traits. For example, eye color is not a tricky thing to figure out, since it can be reduced to single genetic changes. But evolutionary biologists want to understand how even complicated bits of anatomy and machinery like the wing or the complex eye are put together in the course of evolution."

Wing spots have evolved in different fruitfly species as part of the courtship displays that males present to females during mating. Thus, they can be under intense evolutionary pressure to appear and be maintained, depending on whether the females find them "attractive," Carroll noted.

In their study, the researchers first organized 77 species of the fruitfly Drosophila into a fly family tree to reveal which species had gained or lost wing spots in comparison to their ancestors. The researchers then analyzed the genetic mechanisms that caused two of the species to gain wing spots independently in comparison to ancestral flies which did not have the wing spots. The researchers also performed similar analyses on two species of flies that had lost wing spots.

Their genetic studies focused on the role of DNA segments called cis-regulatory elements that were thought to be involved in the evolution of wing spots. Cis-regulatory elements (CREs) are DNA segments that nestle around DNA sequences that code for specific proteins and dictate where and when a gene is turned on or off in the body. By having different CREs, the gene's function can vary in different tissues between species.

In earlier studies, Carroll's team had shown that CREs regulating a gene called yellow played a central role in wing spot development. Their studies showed that when a CRE switches on the yellow gene, it produces a spot's black pigment. CREs are important targets for evolutionary experimentation because they can be mutated without compromising the basic function of the gene, said Carroll.

The researchers' comparison of the different species revealed that all the gains or losses of spots involved mutations that altered CREs for the yellow gene. The scientists found that losses of spots in two different groups of Drosophila species involved different, independent mutations in the same CRE. However, said Carroll, the bigger surprise came when they studied the gains of spots in different species.

"The big stunner in this paper was that the two independent gains of spots we studied each resulted from mutations in distinct ancestral CREs," said Carroll. "In the ancestor, one of these CREs controls the expression of the yellow gene in the wing blade and one in the vein.

"This finding is informative because it shows that the wing pattern wasn't generated from scratch," said Carroll. "The fly didn't use naïve DNA that had no job and invent this pattern out of thin air. It used a gene that was already active in the wing, already drawing some kind of pattern in the wing, and modified that pattern. We think that is strong clue to how nature invents, which is by using material that is already available. This demonstrates how evolution is a tinkerer," he said.

The findings also underscore an important role for pleiotropic genes in evolution. "For example, a fly's body has pigmented bristles, mouth parts, thorax and abdomen. These different features are controlled separately, so the same yellow gene can be used in different parts of the body. So this pleiotropy gives evolution an artistic freedom to play with the regulatory elements in specific regions without making mutations that would affect the gene throughout the body."

Carroll said that his future studies will explore how evolution can tinker with the machinery of the fly's nervous system to affect behaviors such as male mating dances and courtship songs, as well as how those are perceived by the female.

More generally, these kinds of molecular studies are enabling new advances in understanding the machinery of evolution. "These techniques are enabling dramatic progress in understanding the deep mechanics of evolution in more and more detail," he said. "Researchers are now finding the actual 'smoking guns' of evolution by documenting specific evolutionary changes at the DNA level.

"And studies of phenomena such as fruitfly wing spots show how evolution is not some one-off process. It repeats itself over and over.

They show that there is more than one way to tinker with the same gene, and by extension, to independently evolve the same trait," Carroll said.

Woman delivers baby on road in West Bengal

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:29:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The plight of a poor woman in West Bengal, who gave birth to a baby in a public street after a government hospital doctor released her, raised public outcry and a call for probes here Tuesday.

Bengali news channel Star Ananda Tuesday beamed images of Basanti Mal of Nijhuri village in Birbhum district, about 180 km from here, lying on a road with her newborn baby after she was forced to leave a hospital in Siuri town.

The district magistrate of Birbhum has ordered a probe into the incident.

Basanti, wife of a daily wage labourer, was admitted Sunday evening in the hospital and was in pain but allegedly not attended upon by either doctor or nurse.

The doctor, Debasish Debangshi, asked the heavily pregnant woman to get a scan report from his private clinic. After Basanti left the hospital for the private clinic Monday morning, she underwent labour pains and delivered on the road at 8.30 a.m.

Luckily, another doctor of the same hospital, Subrata Sarkar, who was passing by came forward to assist the woman.

West Bengal's health department has sought a report of the incident. The state human rights commission was also informed.

According to reports, both the mother - who has been readmitted to the Siuri hospital - and the child are keeping well.

Tantalizing clue to the evolutionary origins of light-sensing cells

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:04:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Lizards have given Johns Hopkins researchers a tantalizing clue to the evolutionary origins of light-sensing cells in people and other species.

Published in the March 17 issue of Science, their lizard study describes how the side-blotched lizards so-called third, or parietal, eye, distinguishes two different colors, blue and green, possibly to tell the time of day. Specialized nerve cells in that eye, which looks more like a spot on the lizards forehead, use two types of molecular signals to sense light: those found only in simpler animals, like scallops, and those found only in more complex animals like humans.

Although the blue-green color comparison method used by the parietal eye is not one shared by humans, it does reveal one potential step in the evolution of color vision, the Hopkins researchers say.

Human light-reception cells responsible for color vision are called cone cells or photoreceptors, and they contain only one kind of pigment per cell red, green, or blue. A color image results when light-triggered signals in the three different types of cone cells are compared by other nerve cells in the retina as well as the brain.

The lizards parietal eye photoreceptors contain two pigments per cell, blue and green. Having two different pigments allows the cell to respond to two different colors of light and process that information within the same cell.

According to the researchers, when the lizards third eye sees blue light, the blue pigment triggers a molecule called gustducin, which is very similar to a molecule found in human photoreceptors as well as the lateral eyes of the lizard those on the sides of its head. But when the lizards third eye sees green light, the green pigment triggers a different molecule called Go, known as G-other, which also signals light responses in the light-sensing cells of the scallop and other creatures without a backbone. That Go is found in spineless creatures suggests it is the evolutionarily more ancient light-triggering signal.

Although gustducin and Go are different molecules, they are similar and considered related proteins. However, gustducin and Go each activate different molecular pathways that work against each other physiologically. Blue light and gustducin generate an off response in the nerve cell while green light and Go generate an on response.

It may seem strange to have two opposing signals in the same cell, says the studys senior author, King-Wai Yau, Ph.D, a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Hopkins, but the unique mechanism renders these parietal photoreceptors most active at dawn and dusk.

So incorporating two different pigments and two separate signaling molecules in one cell may have been an economical way, in a primitive eye with relatively few cell types, to tell the transitions of the day based on changes in the spectrum of sunlight, says Chih-Ying Su, Ph.D., the first author of the study and a former neuroscience graduate student at Hopkins.

Its just like in a small company, says Yau. You have to delegate each person to do more things.

By sharing features found in human photoreceptors as well as those found in simpler organisms like the scallop, the researchers propose that the lizards parietal eye photoreceptor cells represent a missing link between the light-sensing apparatus in lower animals and ours.

It turns out that some frogs and fish also have a spot on their foreheads that might play the role of a light-sensing third eye. Yau hopes to pursue these structures to obtain more clues about how our photoreceptor cells, the rods and cones, came about. As he says, hes most curious about how the same function can be achieved in different ways in different animals.

Relationship of brain and skull more than just packaging

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:17:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) People usually think of the skull as packaging for the brain and researchers usually investigate them separately, but a team of researchers now thinks that developmentally and evolutionarily that the two are incontrovertibly linked.

The researchers, including biological anthropologists, physicians and a computer scientist, looked at the CT scans and MRIs of infants with particular types of craniosynostosis a condition where one or more of the sutures -- fibrous bands that connect the bones -- of the baby's skull close too early and deform the skull and brain.

"We are interested in understanding craniosynostosis," says Dr. Joan T Richtsmeier, professor of biological anthropology at Penn State. "We would like to know why it happens, especially when it is not part of a syndrome, but when it occurs alone."

The researchers report in a recent early online publication of the Journal of Experimental Zoology: Molecular and Developmental Evolution: "Our study represents the first empirical evidence of phenotypic integration of brain and skull in 3D, although indirect evidence has been accumulating for years."

The researchers are also interested in understanding how the skull and brain change jointly through evolution. Vertebrate evolution shows a trend toward fewer skull and jaw bones and loss of some intercranial joints. While craniosynostosis is considered a pathology in modern humans, it shares with evolutionary history a reduction in cranial elements and coincident changes in the shape of the skull and brain. The researchers believe that studying craniosynostosis could shed light on the joint evolution of the brain and skull.

The two types of craniosynostosis the researchers studied were early closure of the sagittal suture the suture that runs down the center of the skull from front to back and unilateral coronal craniosynostosis, early closure of one side of the suture that runs across the top of the head from ear to ear.

Children with craniosynostosis almost universally have surgery to reopen the sutures and allow normal growth of the boney plates of the skull. Premature closure of sutures causes the skull and the brain beneath to deform. However, the researchers had few CT and MRI images to work with because even if both CT and MRI are acquired for a patient, they are rarely obtained the same day.

"We are extremely conservative in requiring that the two types of images be taken within a 24-hour period," says Richtsmeier. "Early brain and skull growth are so rapid that if the images were taken weeks apart, they would not be an exact fit." T scans record a three-dimensional image of the skull while MRIs provide a three-dimensional brain image.

The researchers caution that the number of infants studied in this way is small at this point, but they found that the brain and skull are strongly integrated.

"We also expected to see higher correlation among those brain and skull measures that were close to each other anatomically, but we did not," says Richtsmeier. "We found that the stronger statistical relationships existed between neural structures located near the top of the brain and boney features at the base of the skull."

To look at the correlations between the skull and the brain, the researchers first had to find locations that could be accurately found again and again. Locating reliable markers was easier on the rigid skull than on the brain. Co-author of the paper, Kristina Aldridge, former postdoctoral researcher at Penn State and now at Washington University, looked at the reproducibility of standard anatomical features on the skull and brain.

"We found that the brain landmarks people often use were highly variable and had the biggest errors in reproducibility," says Richtsmeier. "We eventually chose brain locations that were easier to identify reliably such as the most posterior point or the centroid of small neural structures."

The researchers did not compare one brain to another or one skull to another, nor did they use the data in a coordinate system. Instead, they measured the correlations between measure taken on brain and those taken on skull. Overall, they found that the correlations between brain and skull were very high.

Because normal infants almost never have MRIs and CT scans done at the same time, there are no controls available with which to compare the correlation of skull with brain measurements. Because even infants with craniosynostosis usually do not have both CT scans and MRIs done on the same day, the available study population is small, however, the researchers plan to increase the number of infants studied.

Richtsmeier notes that, from a medical point of view, the researchers want to find genetic mechanism underlying craniosynostosis so that the problem can be prevented or cured. From an evolutionary point of view, researchers focus on the developmental basis for the physical change observed in the fossil record and propose hypotheses about the evolution of the genetic traits responsible for these changes. The researchers propose that the genetic basis of the complex regulatory sequences that cause the changes documented in craniosynostosis infants may also account for the changes observed in the evolution of the vertebrate skull.

Restoring virtue for Rs.20,000!

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:13:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A scientific triumph or a regressive procedure that further compromises the position of women in conservative India? Either way, surgeons in Gujarat, India are set to cash in on the demand for hymenoplasty, the term for medical restoration of a woman's technical virginity.

More and more women are queuing up for the surgical procedure that will restore their hymens and keep their virtue intact in the eyes of their future in-laws and husbands. Hymenoplasty had clandestinely begun eight years ago in this city. Of late, however, such surgeries are on the rise.

Young Gujarati girls turn up with the sole intention of "keeping their future in-laws under the illusion that they are virgins", said cosmetic surgeon Hemant Saraiya here.

"Two out of the seven girls who came for hymenoplasty to me said they were sex workers who wanted to get married. One of them didn't want her in-laws to know that she was not a virgin. "The other didn't want her future husband to find out that she had had a premarital affair," said Saraiya.

"They had to pay just Rs.20,000 for the restoration of the hymen," he added.

He described it as a simple surgery that was not too painful for patients. "I operated the first patient eight years ago, but five patients came during the last couple of years," he said.

Plastic surgeon Bijal Parikh said that people were very inquisitive about the surgery although only two patients actually came to him for hymenoplasty.

Astonishingly, it is not just young women getting married who are going in for the procedure.

A middle-aged woman from abroad approached Parikh for the surgery because she wanted to gift the regained virginity to her husband on their 20th wedding anniversary.

"I get queries from Indians in the US and Britain. If the practice becomes a trend, we will strike gold," Parikh said.

"Moreover, the surgery is much cheaper in India. Also, we have five-star hospitals in the city that are economical compared to any of India's metro city hospitals."

While Parikh and Saraiya look at the business aspect, there are many who alarmed at what it portends.

Sociologist Gaurang Jani, for instance, holds medical professionals responsible for "not educating people" in order to profit monetarily from such a gender-biased operation.

"Instead of educating society by spreading information about sex, doctors are making money out of such backward mindsets.

"If hymenoplasty becomes a trend, it will provide our patriarchal set-up with a more conducive environment to retain old mindsets. Only the doctors will prosper."

Jani, however, put aside the question on the future of hymenoplasty by saying, "This is a transitory phase. After a couple of decades, if a boy claims that he has married a virgin, people will laugh at him."

Responsibility in gambling?

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 16:12:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The Grand National spurs over a third of the adult population of the United Kingdom into having a flutter making it the country's single biggest gambling event. However, even with the recent boom in internet gambling, problems with gambling are often overlooked.

Problem gambling is the subject of a new research venture funded by Economic and Social Research Council in partnership with the Responsibility in Gambling Trust (RIGT). Funding worth around £920,000 over a three year period has been awarded to six projects researching the impacts of gambling on those involved as well as the broader implications for society.

Robin Burgess, Director of RIGT, states "Problem Gambling has a profound effect on not only those involved but the wider community around them. This funding, as well as building the research capacity in this field, will help us to understand why people become involved in gambling, how people learn to control their addiction, and how we can prevent people from becoming Problem Gamblers."

Projects, which are just beginning, will look at a range of issues including social contexts for problem gambling; how the distinction between problem and non-problem gambling is made; internet gambling; gambling-related brain responses in social and problem gamblers; impacts of gambling on family life as well as how young and vulnerable gamblers can be deterred. The research being funded has been chosen for its direct applicability to policy and practice in a neglected area. These studies will inform the way services are commissioned and how policy is formed.

"The ESRC is very pleased to be collaborating with the RIGT on this initiative. The studies proposed are of high quality and relevance, offering great potential for our understanding of harm related to gambling and how society can respond through regulation and the development of services," says ESRC Chief Executive, Professor Ian Diamond.

The six projects funded through this venture include:

* Dr Gerda Reith and colleagues at the University of Glasgow and the Scottish Centre for Social Research, for a sociological study of routes in and out of problem gambling. Dr Reith has written extensively on the social, cultural and historical aspects of gambling, as well as the impacts of problem gambling

* A team at Goldsmiths, University of London, for an anthropological study of betting in bookmakers and a study of Chinese community betting. The main author, Dr Rebecca Cassidy, has previously published widely on horseracing.

* University Of Cambridge, for an MRI scanning study to identify brain responses to gambling tasks, especially near misses. Professor Trevor Robbins and Dr Luke Clark, who are leading this study, are world leaders in MRI scanning for compulsive behaviours.

* At University of Cardiff, Dr Stephanie Van Goozen and Dr Simon Moore will lead a multi-disciplinary study of the associations between deviant youth and impulsivity and lack of control to gamble

* Led by Dr Robert Rogers, a team at Oxford University will study internet gambling including personality traits and risk of on-line gamblers

* Professor Gill Valentine and colleagues at Leeds University for a study of patterns of play and harm in families about internet gambling.

Living with boyfriend? You could become obese

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:05:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Living with your boyfriend could make you obese unless you control your diet, says a study which, however, adds that the opposite holds true for men.

Researchers at Newcastle University's Human Nutrition Research Centre looked at a number of dietary studies and found that moving in with the boyfriend is bad for a woman's waistline, reported the online edition of Daily Mail.

During a "honeymoon period" both partners try to please and impress each other. So women eat creamier, heavier dishes such as curry or rich pasta sauces, while the men reduce fat and sugar and consume lighter meals such as salads.

The study suggests that couples need to address their diet as a team early on in the relationship.

"Couples who move in together should use the opportunity of the honeymoon period to make positive changes to their diet and lifestyle by working together and supporting each other," study author Amelia Lake said.

However, women also lose out if the couple split up. They were found to comfortably eat and gain weight after a relationship ended while men did not.

Children's Viewing Time May Increase Requests For Advertised Products

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:34:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Children who spend more time watching television and movies and playing video games may be more likely to ask their parents for toys, food and drinks they saw in advertisements, according to a study in the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a theme issue on children and the media.

The average American child will see more than 40,000 television commercials every year, as well as product placements on TV and in other forms of media, according to background information in the article. Studies have shown that advertising influences children's preferences and requests beginning at a young age. "Since parents control family budgets, child requests are important forces for family spending and may negatively impact interactions between parents and children," the authors write.

Lisa J. Chamberlain, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif., evaluated the connection between screen media exposure and requests for advertised products in a group of 827 third-graders at 12 elementary schools in Northern California. Children who enrolled in the study were interviewed on two weekdays during the fall of their third-grade year (September to October 1999), and again in the spring of third grade, the fall of fourth grade and the spring of fourth grade. They were asked how much time they spent watching television, watching movies or videos on a VCR and playing video games during one or two days of the previous week. They also reported whether, in the past week, they had asked someone to buy them food, drinks or toys they had seen on television. If they said yes, researchers had them write the names of up to four specific products.

Overall, children in the study logged more than 22 hours of total screen time per week, including more than 10 hours of TV. They reported making about one request each week for toys and more than one request every two weeks for food or drinks. Children who watched more TV and had more overall screen time requested advertised toys and food or drinks more often than those with less TV and screen time. For every extra hour per day that children watched television at the beginning of the study, they made on average one extra request for an advertised food or drink every six to 13 weeks at the end of the study, seven to 20 weeks later. Likewise, every extra hour of total screen time resulted in approximately one additional request for advertised food or drink every 13 to 24 weeks and one extra request for an advertised toy every 12 to 18 weeks.

The findings suggest that aiming to reduce television and total screen time could benefit children's health and help fight the current epidemic of obesity, the authors report. "Our study contributes support that reducing children's exposure to screen media may reduce their requests for advertised food and drinks, which are predominantly high in calories and low in nutritional density," they write.

"The current study does document that screen media exposure is a true prospective risk factor for subsequent consumeristic behavior, adding to the evidence supporting behavioral and policy interventions to reduce children's exposure to screen media and advertising, whether implemented at the individual family level, institutional level or the population level through legislation and changes in social norms," they conclude.

Researchers And Parents Should View Media As A Public Health Issue

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:31:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) As technology becomes more advanced and communications tools more widely available, parents and researchers must examine the effects of media use that has pervaded children's lives, according to an editorial in the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Media need to be recognized as a major public health issue rather than as a series of commercial endeavors in need of regulation, as they are among the most profound influences on children in this country; this intersects with many other issues that are critically important to child health, including violence, obesity, tobacco and alcohol use and risky sexual behaviors," write associate editor Dimitri A. Christakis, M.D., M.P.H., and Frederick J. Zimmerman, Ph.D., University of Washington, Seattle, in the editorial.

However, those who focus on only the dangers of children's media use are not seeing the whole picture, they continue. "Television and other media must be viewed as more than sources or evil or mere idle pleasures; their potential to enrich the lives of our children are, in fact, enormous, and that potential needs to be explored and actualized," they write. "We need to find ways to optimize the role of media in our society, taking advantage of their positive attributes and minimizing their negative ones."

More evidence is needed on both sides of the coin, they conclude. For this reason, the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine is a theme issue on children and the media. "Representing the current state of the science in a wide variety of disciplines on the effects of media on children, this issue of the Archives is an important start in furthering this research," Drs. Christakis and Zimmerman conclude. "We hope that it is just that, a start, outlining the important questions that must be addressed. The potential impact of media on our children and our society mandates that these studies lead to a rapid expansion of rigorous controlled trials and long-term follow-up studies to better understand how to reverse the scales and make the effects of media more positive than negative."

Zugunruhe! Resident Birds Display Migratory Restlessness

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:12:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a remarkable display of endurance and fitness, arctic terns fly up to 20,000 miles between their Arctic breeding grounds to the Antarctic seas each year. But most long-distance fliers rack up considerably less mileage, and rely on extra fat storage rather than snacking along the way, as terns do. Still other migrating birds travel just a few miles between alpine meadows and lowlands to find optimal food and shelter. Some fly at night, others during the day; some over land, others over water. No one can say for sure how migration came about, but climate, competition for resources, and the availability of food all likely played some role in this ancient behavior.

Studies of migratory behavior have shown that captive migratory birds demonstrate a seasonally appropriate spontaneous urge to migrate, called Zugunruhe (pronounced zook-oon-roo-ha). This behavior varies with the species studied, with amount and direction of activity reflecting the species' natural migratory distance and route, suggesting that the migratory urge is innate. In a new study, Barbara Helm and Eberhard Gwinner took a different approach to studying migratory behavior. Rather than focusing on a migrating species, they decided to investigate the possibility that resident species also bear elements of Zugunruheand discover that a readiness to move is common in birds.

Helm and Gwinner searched for signs of migratory behavior in two subspecies of stonechats, Saxicola torquata, comparing a migrant that breeds in Austria, S. t. rubicola, and its equatorial resident relative, S. t. axillaris. European stonechats are short-distance, nocturnal migratorsthey winter around the Mediterranean Seathat begin their journey when daylight lasts just over 12 hours. Since they would otherwise be sleeping at night, nocturnal activity can serve as a proxy for Zugunruhe. African stonechats are sedentary species that do not abandon their breeding grounds in Kenya. Since the genetic and evolutionary divergence between stonechat taxa is large (these two subspecies diverged between 1 million and 3 million years ago), it's reasonable to predict that African stonechats would neither possess an internal migratory program nor display migratory restlessness. On the other hand, the evidence that migratory birds adjust their flight patterns in response to environmental changes and the suggestive evidence that resident birds display traces of migratory restlessness raises the possibility that migration may not be an all-or-nothing trait.

To investigate the presence of Zugunruhe in a resident species, the researchers raised and bred the offspring of Kenyan stonechats in their lab in Germany. One group of these birds was held for the duration of a migratory period under the nearly equal light and dark conditions of their native habitat, and a subset remained under these conditions for a year and a half. A control group was exposed to the natural seasonal light fluctuations of southern Germany. Helm and Gwinner recorded the birds' nocturnal movements with infrared motion sensors, and counted the number of movements within ten-minute intervals. If 20 or more movements were noted, the interval was considered active.

Even though the African stonechats experienced no temporal cueslight levels remained constanttheir nocturnal activity roughly tracked the season. The African birds' migratory restlessness, marked by repeated, spontaneous outbursts of nocturnal activity, echoed that seen in European stonechats, though it was less pronounced. The African birds also showed a telling relationship between hatching date and onset of nocturnal activity: just like their migratory counterparts, late-hatching birds became restless earlier and earlier, coinciding with the migratory season.

The African birds' behavior can be attributed only to Zugunruhe, the researchers concluded, suggesting the influence of an inborn, precisely timed migratory program. The presence of this program in both migrants and residents suggests that the urge to migrate may have evolved in their common ancestor.

It's not clear what mechanism preserved the trait in the residents. It could be adaptive: Southern African stonechats, it's thought, migrate short distances up and down mountains, so it's possible that drought or other seasonal conditions could force the Kenyan birds to periodically take wing as well. Alternately, stabilizing selection may have protected the trait from extreme variation, or it may support the dispersal of young birds to new territories.

Whatever forces have retained this trait, Helm and Gwinner propose that it may be a common avian feature. Given the proper environmental triggers, this innate migratory program might kick in to allow birds to escape deteriorating habitats caused by global climate changes or other ecological disturbances. With evidence that Zugunruhe exists in nonmigratory birds, researchers can continue exploring migratory behavior in any number of resident-migratory pairs to probe the many ways birds take flight to improve their chances of survival.

What Does Evolution Do with a Spare Set of Genes?

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:44:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A hundred million years ago, a molecular twist of fate endowed an ancestor of today's baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) with an extra copy of every gene it ownedthe equivalent of a factory one day finding double the number of workers reporting for duty. What did the yeast and the forces of evolution do with this treasure trove of potential? Did the extra gene-workers simply double the output? Did the original crew and the duplicates divvy up the ancestral functions? Or did they take on new tasks? That's what Gavin Conant and Kenneth Wolfe sought to find out in their study of the networks of interactions among genes and other cellular components that emerged in the wake of that landmark event.

Some of the genes from the original doubling disappeared completely from the S. cerevisiae genome in the intervening millennia. But previous research had identified 551 duplicate gene (paralog) pairs that remain. To explore their fate, the authors used information about known co-expression from other S. cerevisiae studies along with an algorithm they developed on these genes pairs, and they identified 19 networks made up of paralogs divided such that there are many interactions within each network but few between the two paired networks. They then set out to explore the extent to which the networks composed of the two sets of paralogs differed from each othera measure of the degree to which they had diverged evolutionarily, and so taken on separate functions, over time.

The first test looked at symmetry between the networks formed by the two sets of paralogs. The researchers found that for many of the network pairs, one set of paralogs had significantly more interactions than the other. The networks also had more redundancymultiple interactions between two pairs of paralogsthan would be found in randomly grouped networks. These findings suggest substantial but incomplete divergence since the original gene-duplicating event.

Second, the authors explored the extent to which the 19 networks they had identified showed evidence of functional significance. To do so, they split the 551 paralog pairs into random networks, then recalculated network partitions for each. Eight of the networks showed significantly better clustering of gene interactions with respect to co-expression data than did the randomized networks, supporting the contention that they do in fact represent modular functional units, not just mathematical constructs. To further provide evidence of potential functionality, the researchers also analyzed whether partitions contained proteins with similar cellular localization and/or upstream regulatory sequence motifs. In the two largest of the networks with significant partitioning, protein localization and regulatory sequences were better conserved within each of the network partitions than would be expected by chance, confirming the functional correspondence seen with gene co-expression data.

To illustrate the adaptive value of network partitioning, the authors described a pair of paralogs whose protein products catalyze the last reaction in glycolysis. One encodes an enzyme induced by a compound present when glucose levels are high, while the other encodes an enzyme that works without this metabolic intermediate. As a result, the yeast can efficiently carry out the reaction in both high- and low-glucose environments.

Finally, the authors tested three mathematical models of network evolution against their observations as a way to gain insights into what actually happened to interactions among genes over the evolutionary history of the yeast. In the first model, which they called uniform loss, interactions were lost at random. In the second model, called the poor-get-poorer model, the probability of loss of an interaction between two genes was set to be inversely proportional to number of ancestral interactions retained. The third, co-loss model, in which the probability of an interaction loss depends on number of shared neighboring genes (the more shared, the less likely a loss) proved to provide the best approximation to which interactions actually were lost and retained over time. The strength of the third model supported the authors' speculation that the partitioned networks originally formed through the partial loss of old function rather than the development of new functions, in contrast to the common belief that increased complexity is largely the consequence of positive selection.

After a genome duplication event, which provides networks with many simultaneously duplicated genes (nodes), the number of nodes in the network has doubled and the number of interactions has quadrupled. The subsequent gain or loss of interactions reduces redundancy.

What does evolution do when handed a spare set of genes? In the case of S. cerevisiae, at least, it appears to have modified interactions among genes and other cellular components to produce a set of partially independent daughter networks from each single ancient network, creating in the process a division of labor that makes the most of the possibilities presented by the fortuitous duplication of the genome in the yeast's ancient past.

Value of services provided by insects is $57 billion in U.S.

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 07:10:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Although the economic importance of insects in providing honey and silk is well known, many other valuable services provided by insects are commonly overlooked. In the April 2006 issue of BioScience, the monthly journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, John E. Losey of Cornell University and Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation estimate the value (as indicated by documented financial transactions) of some less well-known services provided by insects. Understanding such services is important because evidence points to a steady decline in beneficial insect populations.

The article's assessment is restricted to just four services--dung burial, control of crop pests, pollination, and wildlife nutrition--because data are not available to allow a more comprehensive assessment. Moreover, Losey and Vaughan excluded the value of services provided by domesticated insects, mass-reared biological control agents, and commercially raised insects. The authors estimate the annual value of the ecological services that they considered to be at least $57 billion in the United States.

Dung beetles, for example, reduce the effects of parasites and pests on cattle, enhance the palatability of forage to cattle, and make nitrogen in dung more readily available to plants. The authors estimate the value of natural control of crop pests attributable to insects at $4.5 billion annually. Native pollinators--almost exclusively bees--seem to be responsible for over $3 billion-worth of fruits and vegetables in the United States. And insects provide a critical nutritional resource that supports hunting, fishing, and observation of wildlife valued at $50 billion.

Losey and Vaughan stress that their assessment is conservative in that it includes only a fraction of the value of all the services insects provide. They suggest that their estimate implies that an annual investment of tens of billions of dollars would be justified to maintain service-providing insects, and urge that conservation funding pay specific attention to insects and the role they play in ecosystems.

British student to investigate dogs' barks

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:32:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A British postgraduate student of psychology is planning to record the barks and growls of hundreds of dogs as part of a project into how canines communicate.

Anna Taylor, 23, of Brighton in southern England, is looking for about 300 noisy canine volunteers of all shapes and sizes to take part in the study, it was reported Thursday.

'We use all type of techniques to get the dogs to bark and growl including banging on doors and windows, playing with them and isolating them in a room.'

Dog growls are made up of sound components called formants, Taylor explained, which are believed to give information about the dog making the sound, including body size, sexual aggressiveness or weight.

The information collected should allow her to discover whether there is a link between the formant produced and the size and type of each dog, and whether this information is available to human and canine listeners.

Evolutionary theory suggests that the evolutionary history of humans and dogs is inextricably linked, and it may be that domestic dogs vocalise primarily for their human companions.

'It would be interesting to test this theory, for example, by modifying the recordings then playing them back to humans and other dogs to see how they respond, hopefully showing which acoustic notes are important for which species', said Taylor.

'Owners like to think they know what their dog is saying when it barks. Hopefully, this research will help to reveal scientifically what man's best friend is really communicating.'

Two foetuses removed from 45-day-old baby

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:14:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a rare operation, Pakistani doctors Tuesday removed two foetuses, one of them fully grown, from the abdomen of a 45-day-old baby.

The infant, Nazia, was brought to Pakistan's Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad with a swollen abdomen four days ago by her parents who are poor labourers from Swat district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

"Such cases in medical history are very rare," Muqqadar Shah, one of the surgeons who performed the operation, told DPA.

The doctors carried out the surgery after X-ray and ultrasound tests showed abnormal growth in the abdomen. The surgeons were surprised to discover a fully-grown foetus weighing one kg.

"Her mother actually had triplets, but the other two grew in Nazia's abdomen," Shah said.

The condition of the child, who is on life support, is reported to be critical.

Evolutionary biology research techniques predict cancer

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 01:26:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In diverse ecosystems, packed with wildly different species, evolution whizzes along. As different species accumulate mutations, some adapt particularly well to their environment and prosper. It happens in marine sediments, mountain forests and, as a new study illustrates, in precancerous tumors, too.

In a study published online today in Nature Genetics, Carlo Maley, Ph.D., a researcher at The Wistar Institute, and his colleagues report that precancerous tumors containing a population of highly diverse cells were more likely to evolve into cancer than those containing genetically similar cells. The finding suggests that, in at least some forms of cancer, the more genetically diverse a precancerous tumor is, the more likely that tumor is to progress to full-blown cancer. If so, genetic diversity might act as a biomarker for cancer risk among patients with precancerous tissues.

"Although researchers first defined cancer in evolutionary terms in the 1970s, few researchers have actually studied the disease this way," says Maley, lead author on the study and an assistant professor in the molecular and cellular oncogenesis program at Wistar. "We wanted to know: If we measured a precancerous tumor's genetic diversity at baseline, could we predict who would go on to get cancer?"

To find out, the scientists decided to analyze data on a precancerous condition called Barrett's esophagus, in which cells lining the lower esophagus change due to repeated exposure to stomach acid from reflux, a condition often referred to as heartburn. Doctors typically adopt a "wait and watch" approach to treating patients with Barrett's esophagus because the condition only rarely leads to cancer and is difficult to treat surgically.

In the study, Maley and colleagues analyzed precancerous tumor data from 268 patients, including multiple biopsies within each tumor. On average, these patients were followed for 4.4 years, during which time 37 developed cancerous tumors. Overall, the database used in the study represents more than 32,000 distinct genotypes of different cells within the tumors.

Using computational techniques to analyze the data, the researchers calculated measures of diversity inside the tumors. Essentially, they counted cell varieties and measured the genetic difference, or divergence, between those varieties. "Simply put, we took ecology measures of species diversity and translated them into measures of cell diversity within tumors," Maley says. The found a striking correlation between increased diversity of tumor cells and progression to cancer. For every additional cell variety detected in a tumor, the patient was twice as likely to progress to cancer.

Maley suggests that genetically diverse tumors have a high probability of generating mutant cells that will flourish and spread, allowing the tumor to transform and grow. In the future, in addition to serving as a biomarker for cancer risk, he adds, measures of genetic diversity might help doctors assess the success of cancer prevention therapies.

In fact, he speculates, genetic diversity among tumor cells might help explain why therapy sometimes fails. If a tumor contains a diverse population of cells, some of those cells are more likely to resist treatment, Maley says. Adapting to and surviving chemotherapy, these resistant cells could breed, leading to a cancer relapse. He hopes to pursue this hypothesis in the future. "More immediately," he adds, "we intend to validate the new study with other cohorts and other types of tumors."

Papua New Guinea MP accused of spreading HIV

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 17:44:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A member of the Papua New Guinea parliament could become the first person in the South Pacific's biggest country to face court for knowingly infecting others with HIV virus, a report said Thursday.

The unnamed MP could be jailed under a 2003 law that made it an offence to knowingly pass on the HIV virus, The Nation newspaper in Papua New Guinea reported.

The paper said police were confident they had gathered enough evidence to prosecute after looking at medical records and interviewing the man's two partners before they died of AIDS.

The police investigation began after a complaint was made by relatives of one of the MP's partners. She died two weeks after being interviewed. A second partner of the MP was also interviewed by police and died three weeks later.

According to infectious diseases expert John McBride, AIDS is now the primary cause of death for those admitted to Port Moresby General Hospital. McBride, of James Cook University in Australia, warned that more than 1.5 million people - or one third of the country's current population - could be infected by AIDS by 2015.

Peter Piot, the head of the UN AIDS agency, UNAIDS, said at an international conference in Japan last year that AIDS had moved into the general population in Papua New Guinea.

"It's the one that I would see that could have an African-type epidemic," Piot said of Papua New Guinea, a country with a population of 4.5 million.

"That's the one country, I would say I think is really getting out of hand."

Croatian doctors remove 10-kilo tumour from patient

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 17:41:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Surgeons in the western Croatian town of Gospic removed a massive, 10-kilo abdominal tumour from a female patient, the Zagreb daily 24sata reported Wednesday.

The woman, 66, was brought to the hospital from a nearby village after suffering severe stomach pain for several days. Doctors said they were shocked to find a tumour that had virtually filled most of her abdominal cavity.

The tumour was of a huge size in relation to the slightly built patient, who had the appearance of a pregnant woman, the report said.

"It pushed everything aside and was pressing the aorta and lungs, creating vascular and respiratory problems," surgeon Darko Milinovic stated. "The operation was complicated by the size of the tumour and during this the patient received four packages of blood transfusion."

Tumours of that size are almost always benign, but can kill by severing circulation or increasing pressure on sensitive parts of the body.

Two doctors manipulated the tumour around, while Milinovic was cutting around it. It was the largest tumour ever extracted in the Gospic hospital - the old record was four kilos.

The woman was said to be recovering well after Tuesday's operation and is expected to be discharged by the end of the week.

421 kidney stones removed from 60-year-old!

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:21:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Thai doctors removed 421 kidney stones, believed to be a medical record, from a 60-year-old woman who had been complaining of stomach cramps for years, media reports said Friday.

Dr Wattana Parisri, director of the Somdej Phraupharajthabo Hospital in Nong Khai province, 500 km northeast of Bangkok, claimed doctors on his staff had surgically removed the stones from the woman, said Thai Rath newspaper.

The patient, whose name was not disclosed, had sought treatment at several clinics for severe stomach pains and urinary complaints but had been wrongly diagnosed as suffering from ulcers prior to being subject to an ultrasound test at the hospital, Wattana told the Thai Rath.

"This might be the most kidney stones found in one person in medical records," remarked Wattana.

The doctor noted that kidney stones were a common complaint in Northeast Thailand, caused by the diet or genetic proclivity.

Patients agree on ideal physician behaviors

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:54:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A study of Mayo Clinic patients has found seven behaviors define the 'ideal' physician and supports an Institute of Medicine recommendation that quality medical care should include a patient-centered approach.

The Mayo Clinic-led study was designed to develop a comprehensive set of ideal physician behaviors. Telephone interviews were conducted in 2001 and 2002 with 192 patients who were seen in 14 medical specialties of Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Rochester.

Published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the article was based on transcripts of patients detailing their best and worst experiences with a Mayo Clinic physician. From the transcripts, study authors identified seven behaviors that describe the ideal physician -- confident, empathetic, humane, personal, forthright, respectful and thorough.

Conversely, patients who described a "worst physician" experience focused on traits reflecting opposites of desired physician behaviors, especially perceived insensitive or disrespectful behavior.

The study suggests that training new and practicing physicians about interpersonal skills could have far-reaching effects for patients. The quality of a patient's relationship with a physician can affect not only a patient's emotional responses, but also behavioral and medical outcomes such as compliance and recovery.

An editorial in the same issue expands on the patient-physician relationship, saying health institutions ought to follow the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine to improve quality by fostering a patient-centeredness approach to medicine.

James Li, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic Division of Allergic Diseases, writes in an editorial that health care can't meet a standard of quality if the patient-physician interaction is hurried, disrespectful, cold or callous. Dr. Li has been involved with developing programs and curricula for teaching new and practicing physicians at Mayo Clinic about how to strengthen their interactions with patients. Mayo's structure of focusing on the patient also helps nurture strong relationships between physician and patient, he says.

"A physician who pays personal attention to the patient, who is respectful, compassionate and competent, that's what every patient wants," Dr. Li says. "It's really the duty and obligation of the medical community to design a health care system so that physicians are best able to exhibit those qualities for the good of the patient during the clinical encounter."

Dr. Li notes the seven behavioral traits identified by researchers as ideal for physicians can be taught in various settings, such as having medical residents witness positive interactions which they can model.

Of the seven behavior traits, "thorough" was named most often by patients. Patients can sense if a physician is rushed or preoccupied, the study's authors say, just as they can sense a physician's genuine interest.

"If patients have opportunities to tell their stories, to be asked questions and have the physician verbalize understanding of what's been shared, it leaves them feeling like they were heard," Dr. Li says. "This leaves them with the impression that the physician was thorough." In their interviews about physician behavior, patients rarely commented on a physician's technical skill. This doesn't suggest technical skill is less important than interpersonal skill, the authors say, but rather more difficult for patients to judge.

Fighting AIDS for 13 years - and winning

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:38:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Newly married Celina was busy knitting dreams of life and love when destiny dealt a cruel blow - she was infected with AIDS through her husband at the age of 21.

Now, 13 years later, she has not only put up a tough fight against the disease and society but has also been advocating economic independence for women like her.

"When I tested HIV positive, my world crashed. My dreams were shattered, but for the sake of my husband I decided to carry on," said Celina, one of the two million plus HIV/AIDS women patients in India.

"When my in-laws came to know about his (husband's) illness, they did not touch him. Even the doctors did not pay any attention and we were told that he should take rest at home."

She says her husband may have contracted the disease from a prostitute.

"A few months after my husband came to know about his illness, he died and my fight for both life and livelihood started," she added, confessing that she wanted to commit suicide initially.

She remembers how, when her husband died, even the priest showed a lot of hesitation in completing the funeral rituals. After experiencing her in-laws' attitude towards her, she did not go to her parents either, fearing "they too will throw me out of home".

Celina now lives alone in a rented home and is employed with a Delhi-based self-help group that works for the betterment of HIV positive people. A humanities graduate, she manages to earn enough to sustain herself.

"I have gone through a lot of agony, but finally got rid of them all."

Hers has been a journey of self-realisation and independence.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about the disease and disseminating information about it can do wonders in a closed society like India. Ignorance is the biggest enemy of any AIDS patient.

"Even now there are thousands of women who have been suffering from discrimination and all due to ignorance."

Her life can be an inspiration to India's 5.1 million HIV/AIDS patients, 40 percent of whom are women.

"After realising my health problem, I became more conscious of my illness and took care of my health," said Celina who looks fit and cheerful.

"People should not leave everything to destiny and should work towards economic independence. It is a great equaliser and gives women like me a lot of satisfaction."

On the occasion of International Women's Day Wednesday, "all women suffering from AIDS should vow to take care of their own health and live a life of dignity through self-help and economic independence," she added.

Factors influencing death at home in terminally ill patients with cancer

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:10:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Family support and better home-based care are two of the key priorities needed to enable terminally ill cancer patients to die at home, say researchers in this weeks BMJ.

The study, by a team at Kings College London, follows the recent announcement by the UK government to shift the emphasis of care from acute hospitals to primary care.

Well over half of people with a progressive illness want to die at home and several countries, including the UK, are making substantial reforms to enhance home care. But despite these efforts, most people in the UK, the US, Germany, Switzerland, and France die in hospitals. In the UK, the proportion of home deaths for patients with cancer is falling, from 27% in 1994 to 22% in 2003.

To determine what factors influence where patients with cancer die, the researchers analysed 58 studies involving over 1.5 million patients from 13 countries.

The most important factors linked to dying at home were patients limited function and mobility, patients preferences, availability and level of home care, presence of live-in relatives, and extended family support.

Future policies to enable people to die at home should focus on empowering families, public education, and improving home care, say the authors. Risk assessment and training doctors in end of life care are also important priorities.

In the last three years the UK has invested £12m in its end-of-life care programme but has so far failed to stop the trend of hospital deaths. Professor Higginson explains: We have compared the current policies of the Government with the results of our review. All of the actions the Government is recommending and funding in its end-of-life care programme fall short in some ways.

In particular, they are not paying enough attention to assessing who is at risk of experiencing problems, in supporting families and in educating people about what they can expect from care. In Canada they have a new system of providing compassionate leave - like maternity leave - for carers, and perhaps the government needs to think of something like that in addition to ensuring home support.

This model represents an evidence based answer to the rights of terminally ill patients to die at home with dignity, says author, Barbara Gomes. We strongly encourage its use in the development and evaluation of future strategies by policy makers to enable more home deaths and by practitioners to enable their patients to die at home if they wish so.

Hens' teeth not so rare after all

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:32:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Scientists have discovered that rarest of things: a chicken with teeth crocodile teeth to be precise.

Contrary to the well-known phrase, 'As rare as hens' teeth,' the researchers say they have found a naturally occurring mutant chicken called Talpid that has a complete set of ivories.

The team, based at the Universities of Manchester and Wisconsin, have also managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.

Professor Mark Ferguson, one of the scientific team at the University of Manchester, says the research published in Current Biology this week has major implications in understanding the processes of evolution. It could also have applications in tissue regeneration, including the replacement of lost teeth in humans.

"The mutant bird has severe limb defects and dies before it can hatch," explained Professor Ferguson, who is based in the University's Faculty of Life Sciences.

"It was discovered 50 years ago but no one has ever examined its mouth. What we discovered were teeth similar to those of crocodiles not surprising as birds are the closest living relatives of the reptile."

The discovery led the team to wonder whether healthy chickens might still maintain the genetic pathways to re-grow teeth.

"We found we were able to induce teeth to grow in normal chickens by making changes to the expression of particular molecules," said Professor Ferguson.

"All the pathways to make teeth are preserved which helps us understand how evolutionary changes can be brought about by subtle alterations in developmental biology."

Professor Ferguson says a direct application of the research could be in the re-growing of teeth in people who have lost them through accident or disease.

But the study has implications for tissue regeneration more widely.

"The principle of activating specific dormant pathways to stimulate regeneration instead of repair has made applications, to injury, surgery and human disease," he said.

Indeed, building on previous discoveries of scar-free healing in embryos, Professor Mark Ferguson and Dr Sharon O'Kane founded Renovo, a spin-out company from The University of Manchester, which is developing novel pharmaceuticals for the prevention and reduction of scarring.

"Renovo now employs about 100 staff and is the world-leading company in researching and developing novel pharmaceuticals to prevent and improve scarring."

Intellectual property law and the protection of traditional knowledge

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:25:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Growing biopiracy concerns have fueled urgent calls for a new system of legal protection for traditional knowledge. Detractors of the current patent systems say that the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities does not readily fit into the existing rules of the industrialized world and that these rules basically promote the interests of the industrialized world. However, Charles McManis, J.D., IP and technology law expert and the Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that "at least in the short run, existing intellectual property regimes offer the most realistic avenue for securing effective legal protection for traditional knowledge holders."

McManis presented a paper on this topic during the "Ancient Wisdom/Contemporary Science: Traditional Knowledge in the 21st Century," panel held on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement science, held Feb. 16-20 in St. Louis.

According to McManis, existing IP rules, the closely related law of unfair competition, and associated contractual mechanisms can provide far more comprehensive legal protection for the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples than is generally acknowledged.

"Minor modification of the patent application process could not only affirmatively protect the genetic resources of developing countries but also help prevent authentic instances of biopiracy," he says.

"Creating a completely new system is likely to be fraught with far more practical and theoretical difficulties than would be involved in modifying the current patent system to require disclosure of the origin of relevant genetic resources and evidence of prior informed consent of those providing such resources and/or any associated traditional knowledge as a condition for enforcing otherwise valid intellectual property rights."

Something fishy about human brain evolution?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:17:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Forget the textbook story about tool use and language sparking the dramatic evolutionary growth of the human brain. Instead, imagine ancient hominid children chasing frogs. Not for fun, but for food.

According to Dr. Stephen Cunnane it was a rich and secure shore-based diet that fuelled and provided the essential nutrients to make our brains what they are today. Controversially, according to Dr. Cunnane our initial brain boost didn't happen by adaptation, but by exaptation, or chance.

"Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists usually point to things like the rise of language and tool making to explain the massive expansion of early hominid brains. But this is a Catch-22. Something had to start the process of brain expansion and I think it was early humans eating clams, frogs, bird eggs and fish from shoreline environments. This is what created the necessary physiological conditions for explosive brain growth," says Dr. Cunnane, a metabolic physiologist at the University of Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

The evolutionary growth in hominid brain size remains a mystery and a major point of contention among anthropologists. Our brains weigh roughly twice as much as our similarly sized earliest human relative, Homo habilis two million years ago. The big question is which came first the bigger brain or the social, linguistic and tool-making skills we associate with it?

But, Dr. Cunnane argues that most anthropologists are ignorant or dismissive of the key missing link to help answer this question: the metabolic constraints that are critical for healthy human brain development today, and for its evolution.

Human brains aren't just comparatively big, they're hungry. The average newborn's brain consumes an amazing 75-per cent of an infant's daily energy needs. According to Dr. Cunnane, to fuel this neural demand, human babies are born with a built-in energy reservoir that cute baby fat. Human infants are the only primate babies born with excess fat. It accounts for about 14 per cent of their birth weight, similar to that of their brains.

It's this baby fat, says Dr. Cunnane, that provided the physiological winning conditions for hominids' evolutionary brain expansion. And how were hominid babies able to pack on the extra pounds? According to Cunnane their moms were dining on shoreline delicacies like clams and catfish.

"The shores gave us food security and higher nutrient density. My hypothesis is that to permit the brain to start to increase in size, the fittest early humans were those with the fattest infants," says Dr. Cunnane, author of the book Survival of the Fattest, published in 2005.

Unlike the prehistoric savannahs or forests, argues Dr. Cunnane, ancient shoreline environments provided a year-round, accessible and rich food supply. Such an environment was found in the wetlands and river and lake shorelines that dominated east Africa's prehistoric Rift Valley in which early humans evolved.

Dr. Cunnane points to the table scrap fossil evidence collected by his symposium co-organizer Dr. Kathy Stewart from the Canadian Museum of Nature, in Ottawa. Her study of fossil material excavated from numerous Homo habilis sites in eastern Africa revealed a bevy of chewed fish bones, particularly catfish.

More than just filling the larder, shorelines provided essential brain boosting nutrients and minerals that launched Homo sapiens brains past their primate peers, says Dr. Cunnane, the Canada Research Chair in Brain Metabolism and Aging.

Brain development and function requires ample supplies of a particular polyunsaturated fatty acid: docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). DHA is critical to proper neuron function. Human baby fat provides both an energy source for the rapidly growing infant grey matter, and also, says Dr. Cunnane, a greater concentration of DHA per pound than at any other time in life.

Aquatic foods are also rich in iodine, a key brain nutrient. Iodine is present in much lower amounts from terrestrial food sources such as mammals and plants.

It was this combination of abundant shoreline food and the "brain selective nutrients" that sparked the growth of the human brain, he says.

"Initially there wasn't selection for a larger brain," argues Dr. Cunnane. "The genetic possibility was there, but it remained silent until it was catalyzed by this shore-based diet."

Dr. Cunnane acknowledges that for the past 20 years he's been swimming upstream when it comes to convincing anthropologists of his position, especially that initial hominid brain expansion happened by chance rather than adaptation.

But, he says, the evidence of the importance of key shoreline nutrients to brain development is still with us painfully so. Iodine deficiency is the world's leading nutrient deficiency. It affects more than a 1.5 billion people, mostly in inland areas, and causes sub-optimal brain function. Iodine is legally required to be added to salt in more than 100 countries.

Says Dr. Cunnane: "We've created an artificial shore-based food supply in our salt."

Conscientious objection in medicine should not be tolerated

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 00:39:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A doctor's conscience should not be allowed to interfere with medical care, argues an ethics expert in this week's BMJ.

A doctors' conscience has little place in the delivery of modern medical care, writes Julian Savulescu at the University of Oxford. If people are not prepared to offer legally permitted, efficient, and beneficial care to a patient because it conflicts with their values, they should not be doctors.

Imagine an intensive care doctor refusing to treat people over the age of 70 because he believes such patients have had a fair innings. Or imagine an epidemic of bird flu or other infectious disease that a specialist decided she valued her own life more than her duty to treat her patients. Such a set of values would be incompatible with being a doctor.

The argument in favour of allowing conscientious objection is that to fail to do so harms the doctor and constrains liberty. This is true, says the author, but when conscientious objection compromises the quality, efficiency, or equitable delivery of a service, it should not be tolerated.

He believes that doctors who compromise the delivery of medical services to patients on conscience grounds must be punished through removal of licence to practise and other legal mechanisms.

Values are important parts of our lives. But values and conscience have different roles in public and private life, he writes. They should influence discussion on what kind of health system to deliver. But they should not influence the care an individual doctor offers to his or her patients.

The door to "value-driven medicine" is a door to a Pandora's box of idiosyncratic, bigoted, discriminatory medicine. Public servants must act in the public interest, not their own, he concludes.

Patient-doctor nonverbal communication says a lot

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:14:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A shoulder shrug. Lack of eye contact. A hand gesture. What patients don't say can be just as important as what they do, according to a study of nonverbal behavior published in a January issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

According to the study by Richard Frankel, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute and the Center for Implementing Evidence Based Practice at the Indianapolis VA Medical Center, and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Northeastern universities and the Fetzer Institute, nonverbal behavior can be an important diagnostic tool increasing the physician's comprehension of words spoken or thoughts left unsaid.

On the other hand, the nonverbal behavior of the physician can influence the patient's satisfaction with his clinic visit and affect his compliance with the doctor's instructions.

The study on this under-recognized communication tool, entitled "The Expression of Emotion Through Nonverbal Behavior in Medical Visits," was presented at the Ninth Biannual Regenstrief Conference and appears in the supplement to the January 2006 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

"Nonverbal behavior conveys the meaning of words," says Dr. Frankel, a medical sociologist. "The way someone gestures tells you the speaker's stance; words alone don't convey the full picture. Nonverbal behavior can be a duplication of the words or it can contradict what an individual is saying.

"To put it more eloquently, if the words are the musical notes on a Tchaikovsky score, then nonverbal behavior is the interpretation of those notes. A computer always plays the music in the same way without any nonverbal behavior, but Jascha Heifetz would play that score differently than Itzhak Perlman, each violinist conveying a different interpretation of Tchaikovsky's original intent," he said.

Nonverbal communication is a clue to the emotions underlying feelings. Does the patient look at the physician when describing symptoms or does he look down at his feet? Does another patient wring her hands and refuse to meet the doctor's gaze? Either or both patients may be exhibiting signs of humiliation or anxiety.

Does the physician repeatedly glance at her watch or answer his cell phone? Both actions send nonverbal messages to patients, probably messages the physician did not intend to transmit. Those scenarios are in contrast to yet another doctor who makes eye contact and tilts his head while the patient explains complaints of concern; that physician appears empathetic, said Dr. Frankel.

"From studies outside of medicine in the business world, for example - we know we can improve nonverbal sensitivity altering nonverbal cues from ourselves and others," he said. "Our own studies have shown that patients who are satisfied with their physicians perceive their visits were two minutes longer than they actually were and these patients are better at following the physician's instructions. We also found that patients who felt their physician was not empathetic, perceived their visit to be two minutes shortly than it actually was."

This study and the Regenstrief Conference where it was presented developed from the Regenstrief Institute's focus on relationship-centered care. "The mutual influence of patients on physicians and physicians on patients is part of a relationship rather than individual actions or behaviors," said Dr. Frankel.

Yale guidelines for physician interactions with pharmaceutical industry

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 12:54:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) To highlight the importance of impeccable financial relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and physicians, the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine has developed and approved some of the most stringent guidelines for the interactions of their faculty with the pharmaceutical industry.

The Yale guidelines are meant to preserve and enhance the critical role academic medical centers play in establishing professional standards. Detailed in the February 2006 issue of Academic Medicine, the guidelines go beyond existing recommendations and ban faculty from receiving any form of gift, meal, or free drug sample (for personal use) from industry, and set more stringent standards for the disclosure and resolution of financial conflict of interest in Yale's educational programs.

"The overriding goal of the guidelines is to ensure that the integrity of clinical decision making is not compromised by financial or other personal relationships with industry," said lead author David L. Coleman, M.D., professor and interim chair of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Coleman would like the guidelines to promote an effective and ethical partnership between medical schools and the pharmaceutical industry.

The guidelines were developed and refined with extensive faculty input over a 12-month period. It incorporates the input of representatives from several pharmaceutical companies in formulating the guidelines. The Board of Governors of the Yale Medical Group (YMG), a group practice composed of Yale full-time faculty, approved the guidelines in May 2005.

Coleman acknowledges that guidelines alone will not eliminate conflicts of interest. He said it will be important to continue educating faculty and trainees on how to develop and sustain productive and ethical relationships with commercial entities.

"The Yale guidelines are offered as an example of how one medical school has attempted to meet the challenge of maintaining professionalism, integrity and public service," said Coleman. "We will need to monitor the effect of these and other guidelines to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing conflicts and bias in educational programs."

Interesting Findings from fMRI Scans of Political Brains

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:07:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) When it comes to forming opinions and making judgments on hot political issues, partisans of both parties don't let facts get in the way of their decision-making, according to a new Emory University study. The research sheds light on why staunch Democrats and Republicans can hear the same information, but walk away with opposite conclusions.

The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Westen and his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28.

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry). The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering.

Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target's words and deeds were contradictory.

Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush.

While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not so heavily engaged, says Westen.

The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the "stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen says.

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making, Westen says. "Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,' " Westen says.

Coauthors of the study include Pavel Blagov and Stephan Hamann of the Emory Department of Psychology, and Keith Harenski and Clint Kilts of the Emory Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

British grandma recovers sight after heart attack

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:30:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Can a blind person recover sight after suffering a serious heart attack? Yes, that is exactly what happened to 74-year-old Joyce Urch, who was blind for over 25 years but miraculously emerged from the life of darkness when she woke up after the heart operation, baffling medical experts here.

Urch is convinced that it was nothing short of a miracle.

She said: "When I first came round I just opened my eyes and shouted, 'I can see, I can see.' I said to (husband) Eric, 'You've got older haven't you?' But I thought, 'I'm old myself, my husband must be too.'

"The first time you look in the mirror you look at yourself and think, 'Is that really me?' But a lot of things have changed."

Joyce Urch, from Coventry, has been blind since 1979, and has never been able to see her five children properly. Now, for the first time, she can see her 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Doctors at the Walgrave Hospital in Coventry spent three days battling to save her life when she suffered a heart attack. She then woke to a new life, spreading cheer in her family and among friends.

She and her husband Eric Urch celebrated their golden wedding anniversary last weekend in a way she had never dreamed. She said: "I love going out now. I can look around and see the trees and squirrels and pigeons."

Urch, 77, a former coal miner, told The Telegraph: "I didn't believe it when she said she could see me. I said 'What colour pullover am I wearing?' She said 'grey', and she was right. When Joyce first went blind it made a huge change to our life. Everything seemed to fall away from us. She couldn't do anything.

"She does little chores now. We try to do everything between us. This has given us both our lives back."

Their eldest daughter, Carol Obeirne, 46, said: "When she first came round we thought, 'This is not going to last, she is going to die.' Then she started shouting, 'I can see'. I was just so excited.

"My mother has never been given any medical explanation as to why she lost her sight, nor has she ever been offered any medical explanation as to how she recovered it."

Martin Breen, consultant cardiologist at the Walgrave Hospital, said: "I am not able to give a medical explanation. When she was admitted to hospital, she had suffered a serious heart attack and our main concern was to save her life.

"I am delighted that she has fully recovered, and it is an added bonus that she has also recovered her sight."

No incidences of physician-assisted suicide in the UK

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:21:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The results of the first UK-wide study into euthanasia are revealed in the recent edition of medical journal Palliative Medicine. The survey, carried out by a Brunel University academic, shows the proportion of UK deaths in which doctors report having assisted patients suicide, carried out euthanasia, or taken other medical decisions relating to the ending of life. This is the first time such a comprehensive survey of UK medical practice has been reported. Because the same survey has been done in other countries, rates in the UK can be compared with rates elsewhere.

According to the results, there are no incidences of physician-assisted suicide in the UK. Incidences of voluntary euthanasia and ending of life without an explicit request from a patient (both of which are illegal practices) were reported, however both of these occur significantly less frequently than in most of the other countries where the survey has been carried out.

A small proportion of the 857 doctors who replied to the survey felt UK law had inhibited or interfered with their preferred management of the patient on whose care they reported (4.6% of doctors) or that a new law would have facilitated better management of that patient (2.6% of doctors). 51 doctors wrote comments on the questionnaires containing views about the desirability of legal change or of medical involvement in hastening death. The majority of these (82%) supported the current legal ban on medical involvement in euthanasia or assisted suicide.

857 medical practitioners responded to the anonymous survey, providing details on the last death they attended. The doctors' replies were used to estimate the proportion of UK deaths where particular end-of-life decisions were made. The author of the report, Clive Seale, Professor of Sociology at Brunel University, West London comments: This is the first time a nationally representative survey of end-of-life decisions taken by doctors in the UK has been done and it has produced some interesting results. Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are understandably very emotive subjects, but this work shows that UK doctors are less willing to take such actions than in several other countries. We have a very strong ethos of providing excellent palliative care in the UK, reflected in the finding that doctors in the UK are willing to make other kinds of decisions that prioritise the comfort of patients, without striving to preserve life at the cost of suffering. The results suggest that providing the best kind of patient care is a major driver behind medical decision making.

The study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and carried out by Professor Clive Seale of the School of Social Sciences and Law, Brunel University. 857 UK medical practitioners responded to a postal survey in 2004, using the same questionnaire employed by other countries. Returns were rendered anonymous using the same procedures as in other countries. This means that doctors were free to report their experiences honestly, and results are comparable with other countries where the survey has been done. Each doctor reported in detail on the last death they had attended. The responses were then compared with the results of similar surveys conducted in the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.

In 2004 there were 584,791 deaths in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, sponsored by Lord Joffe, was debated in the House of Lords in October 2005.

The British Medical Association voted in its 2005 annual meeting to drop its resistance to a change in the law on assisted suicide and adopt a stance of neutrality, making it a matter for society to decide. To date various forms of medically assisted dying that are currently illegal in the UK (for example, euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide) have been legalised in countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Oregon, USA

Current interpretation of the data protection law is hampering epidemiological research

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:22:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Overly strict interpretation of the data protection law is hampering epidemiological research (the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations), argue researchers in this week's BMJ.

The UK Data Protection Act 1998 is intended to accommodate medical research. The law allows personal information to be used and disclosed without explicit consent, subject to certain safeguards, when it is impractical to obtain consent and an important public interest is at stake.

Despite this, some data controllers continue to interpret the law in a restrictive way, write the authors.

They describe how such interpretation of the law currently threatens a planned study of UK military personnel who served in Bosnia so much that if it were to proceed, the results are likely to be too small and biased to reach useful conclusions.

They argue that adverse events or detriment from participation in epidemiological research are extremely rare and they call for a less rigid policy towards data sharing in this type of research.

We are not arguing that epidemiological research should always proceed without consent. But it should be allowed to do so when the privacy interference is proportionate, they write. Regulators and researchers need to improve their ability to recognise these situations and adjust their approach.

With over 250 studies granted access to information without consent, the real issue is not that few studies have been given support to do this, but the stringency of the criteria for support, argues Peter Goldblatt of the Office for National Statistics. What is needed to achieve a consensus on this issue is further evidence on when the effort and impact of seeking consent undermines the public interest in good quality research.

We have an ethical responsibility to facilitate and not hinder research for the ultimate benefit of our patients, adds a senior doctor in an accompanying editorial. We have to strike a balance between rights of the individual to privacy and needs of the community to answer important medical questions, and existing legislation allows that.

A new Academy of Medical Science report, which argues strongly for a clearer framework to deal with the use of personal health data in research, should be essential reading for data controllers and researchers, and will surely prompt more debate, he concludes.

A 'ghost' fights for life

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:52:00 PST

( from http://www.rxpgnews.com ) He seems to be a case of dead man walking. Villagers consider him a 'ghost' as his last rites have been performed. But Raju Raghuvanshi is very much alive and wants to prove it.

Raghuvanshi, 45, is being ostracised by people in his village Katra in Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh as they consider him 'dead'.

Villagers start giggling and whispering among themselves the moment they see him. Many run shouting 'ghost, ghost,' much to the chagrin of Raghuvanshi.

An angry but hurt Raghuvanshi has complained to the police that he was being harassed. But they have expressed their helplessness in the case.

A police official in Mandla said: "We registered Raghuvanshi's complaint but we cannot arrest anybody because no one has harmed or threatened him. We have asked him to approach the court."

An orphan, Raghuvanshi eked out a living by doing odd jobs in the village. Around four months ago the police arrested him for possessing drugs and illicit liquor. He was sent to the district jail in Mandla.

There he suffered some serious stomach ailment and was shifted to the district hospital. When his condition deteriorated further, Raghuvanshi was sent to the medical college in neighbouring Jabalpur district.

Lachchhu, Raghuvanshi's cousin, told IANS: "A fortnight back I was informed by a relative that Raghuvanshi had died in the hospital while undergoing treatment."

Media reports say none of his family members visited Raghuvanshi at the hospital and they believed the version of the relative, who said since his body lay unclaimed for days, the authorities in Jabalpur cremated it.

So after receiving the news of his 'death', his family consulted the village 'panchayat' (council), which suggested that Raghuvanshi's last rites be performed.

As per Hindu customs, Lachchhu conducted the last rites of Raghuvanshi and all male members of his family even got their heads tonsured.

But Raghuvanshi had not died. He returned to the village after being released by the hospital only to find that the villagers were shunning him and considered him a 'ghost'.

Raghuvanshi said: "I am shocked as people run away shouting 'ghost', 'ghost' on seeing me.

"When I met Lachchhu, I realised that I was dead for the villagers."

But if Raghuvanshi did not die in the hospital, whose body was cremated? No one seems to know.