Putting the Best Foot Forward for Duck With Foul Foot

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Putting the Best Foot Forward for Duck With Foul Foot Jul 1st 2013, 06:53 Due to this, the duckling could not walk properly. The people who take care of butter cup wished to help the duckling get back on proper two feet. Mike Garey, from the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary in Arlington, Tenn., thought of making a twin, as custom made feet are difficult to find. Mike scanned Buttercup's sister's foot and converted that into a 3-D model. Designed by Mike Garey, the 3-D-printed foot which took 13 hours to print was the only way to get a foot for Buttercup. Mike Garey did just that after taking a bit of help from Nova Copy. In February, Buttercup's bad leg was removed with surgery. After his stump got fully healed, a plastic foot which is the exact copy of his sister Minnie's foot was fitted over his knee. A webbed, flexible silicone prosthetic has given the duckling good mobility to be able to walk and swim, just like the other ducks. Source-Medindia

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Red Meat 'Good for Health', Says Research

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Red Meat 'Good for Health', Says Research Jul 1st 2013, 06:53 Red meat consumption improves cognitive function and body's immune system, suggests new research. The Seven Ages Of Man study found that anything up to one pound of meat can be consumed every week without leading to a greater risk of health problems, the Daily Express reported. Researchers showed that the lean red meat is important in every stage of development starting from infancy to old age. They also urged people to put more red meat into their diets to lessen the gap between mineral and vitamin intake and recommended levels. The report states that there is emerging proof that nutrients found in red meat could play a active role in supporting cognitive function, immune health and addressing iron deficiency. The study for which data from 103 scientific papers was reviewed was drawn up by Emma Derbyshire, senior lecturer in human nutrition at Manchester Metropolitan University and Professor Robert Pickard, Emeritus professor of neurobiology at the University of Cardiff. Source-ANI

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Link Between Fear and Sound Perception Discovered

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Link Between Fear and Sound Perception Discovered Jul 1st 2013, 06:53 "Emotions are closely linked to perception and very often our emotional response really helps us deal with reality," says senior study author Maria N. Geffen, PhD, assistant professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery and Neuroscience at Penn. "For example, a fear response helps you escape potentially dangerous situations and react quickly. But there are also situations where things can go wrong in the way the fear response develops. That's what happens in anxiety and also in PTSD -- the emotional response to the events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli." Geffen and the first author of the study, Mark Aizenberg, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in her laboratory, used emotional conditioning in mice to investigate how hearing acuity (the ability to distinguish between tones of different frequencies) can change following a traumatic event, known as emotional learning. In these experiments, which are based on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, animals learn to distinguish between potentially dangerous and safe sounds -- called "emotional discrimination learning." This type of conditioning tends to result in relatively poor learning, but Aizenberg and Geffen designed a series of learning tasks intended to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the mice, varying the difficulty of the task. What really interested them was how different levels of emotional discrimination would affect hearing acuity - in other words, how emotional responses affect perception and discrimination of sounds. This study established the link between emotions and perception of the world - something that has not been understood before. The researchers found that, as expected, fine emotional learning tasks produced greater learning specificity than tests in which the tones were farther apart in frequency. As Geffen explains, "The animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies, whereas the animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Following the fine conditioning task, they figured out that it's a very narrow range of pitches that are potentially dangerous." When pitch discrimination abilities were measured in the animals, the mice with more specific responses displayed much finer auditory acuity than the mice who were frightened by a broader range of frequencies. "There was a relationship between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart," says Geffen. "In the animals that specialized their emotional response, pitch discrimination actually became sharper. They could discriminate two tones that they previously could not tell apart." Another interesting finding of this study is that the effects of emotional learning on hearing perception were mediated by a specific brain region, the auditory cortex. The auditory cortex has been known as an important area responsible for auditory plasticity. Surprisingly, Aizenberg and Geffen found that the auditory cortex did not play a role in emotional learning. Likely, the specificity of emotional learning is controlled by the amygdala and sub-cortical auditory areas. "We know the auditory cortex is involved, we know that the emotional response is important so the amygdala is involved, but how do the amygdala and cortex interact together?" says Geffen. "Our hypothesis is that the amygdala and cortex are modifying subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex is responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, but it's not necessary for developing specialized or generalized emotional responses. So it's kind of a puzzle." Solving that puzzle promises new insight into the causes and possible treatment of PTSD, and the question of why some individuals develop it and others subjected to the same events do not. "We think there's a strong link between mechanisms that control emotional learning, including fear generalization, and the brain mechanisms responsible for PTSD, where generalization of fear is abnormal," Geffen notes. Future research will focus on defining and studying that link. Source-Eurekalert

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Study Reveals Secret to Long, Healthy Life

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Study Reveals Secret to Long, Healthy Life Jul 1st 2013, 05:54 Three critical factors that are key to a long and healthy life have been revealed in a recent study. Firstly, a little pressure is actually good for you. The key is to find your personal tipping point between pressures that energize and pressures that paralyze you. Next thing to keep in mind is don't think getting older is the end of the world. Researchers found that people in their 30s and 40s who looked on the bright side of aging (it brings wisdom, retirement, and more time with family) were less likely to develop cardiovascular disease later in life-and had lower mortality rates-than those who were more pessimistic. Now that you've socked away money for your golden years, what are you doing to prepare your body? To boost your stores, the answer is simple - exercise. A 2012 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that when middle-aged people made a modest improvement in fitness (equal to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week for six months) by age 50, their chances of developing chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure, colon cancer, and Alzheimer's decreased by 20 percent. Source-ANI

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Comatose New Jersey Man Wakes Up in Poland

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Comatose New Jersey Man Wakes Up in Poland Jul 1st 2013, 05:54 Sixty nine-year old, Wladyslaw Haniszewski, was completely stunned to suddenly find himself in a Polish hospital after he suffered a stroke in New Jersey. An immigrant, he had been living in the US state for more than 30 years before he fell ill and was in a comatose state. In the comatose state he got deported to the country of origin. Authorities found that he was an illegal immigrant and he had no medical insurance. He was deported to his home country even without informing his family or friends. Medical officials in the Polish hospital have expressed their displeasure after the patient was sent in an unconscious state. They have also said that he was literally dumped at their doorstep without their acceptance of such a transfer. Source-Medindia

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Hearing Noises Inside the Body

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Hearing Noises Inside the Body Jul 1st 2013, 05:54 Due to this she can hear all the noises inside her body which others cannot hear. The uncomfortable part is, she can hear her brain wobble, blood move inside the body and her heart beat. Though she underwent a surgery to fill up the holes in her temporal bone, she needs another one to give her a cure for this condition. A bike accident that she suffered two decades ago is believed to be behind this condition. After going through this condition for seven years, there seems to some relief round the corner with a new surgery. Dr Gerald Brookes, a consultant neuro-otologist and skull base surgeon at The Harley Street ENT Clinic in London, said: 'Some people may be born with missing bone, or very thin bone, which "dissolves" with increasing age or may be damaged by a blow to the head. She underwent a complex five hour surgery where the surgeon filled in the holes on the bones to put an end to the sound traveling through them. Mrs Redfern said: 'Even though there were risks I had to have it done, I couldn't have coped with it for another 40 years, and seven was enough.' Source-Medindia

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Would We Be Better Off If Employers Stopped Paying for Health Insurance?

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Would We Be Better Off If Employers Stopped Paying for Health Insurance? Jun 30th 2013, 17:00, by Uwe Reinhardt By Uwe Reinhardt In his "Are Employers to Blame for Our High Medical Prices?," David Dranove takes issue with my statement in a New York Times blog post: "One reason for the employers' passivity in paying health care bills may be that they know, or should know, that the fringe benefits they purchase for their employees ultimately come out of the employees' total pay package. In a sense, employers behave like pickpockets who take from their employees' wallets and with the money lifted purchase goodies for their employees." He writes: "The correct economic argument is a bit more nuanced. Employees do not care about the cost of their benefits; they care about the benefits. If an employer can procure the same benefits at a lower cost, the employer need not increase wages one iota. In this regard, there is nothing special about health benefits. Suppose an employer offers employees the use of company cars. Workers don't care what the employer paid for the cars, and if the employer can purchase cars at a deep discount, it will pocket the savings." So far I can buy the nuance. It is something we could theorize about. But then David he notes that: "Employers may have an incentive to reduce benefits costs yet they are passive purchasers. With a few exceptions, nearly every American corporation outsources its healthcare benefits to insurers and ASO providers and then looks the other was as the medical bills pile up. Sure, they complain about the high cost of medical care, but they don't take direct action by aggressively shopping for lower provider prices. Doesn't this passivity demonstrate a lack of interest? No more so than the fact that auto makers do not aggressively shop the lowest rubber or silica prices implies that they are disinterested in the costs of tires and windows. Auto makers outsource the production of tires and windows (and most other inputs) and let the Michelins and PPGs of the world worry about rubber and silica prices. By the same token, American companies outsource the production of insurance and let the Blues and Uniteds of the world worry about provider prices. This is entirely appropriate." Forgive me if by now I am lost. Do we really believe that modern corporations, whose management and board of directors agonize even over an extra penny of earnings per share (EPS) – believe me, I know whereof I speak – simply outsource the procurement of major inputs and then look the other way? They do seem to do it in health care – which is the puzzle – but they surely do not in connection with other important inputs where smart buying can add pennies to EPS. Supply-chain management is by now a science – globally – and part of supply-side management is the "make-or-outsource" decision, which is constantly being reevaluated by corporations, with keen insight into the prices of the raw materials going into the production of parts – e.g., batteries or car doors or tires. My problem and, I believe, Alain Enthoven's as well, is that corporations have been passive buyers of health insurance for too long and, with it, passive payers for health care. If premiums go down, employers are happy and may even pat themselves on the back. If rates go up – as they did dramatically in the late 1990s and early noughties –employers whine, blame someone else – hospitals, doctors, and, almost always, government – but then just pay. David then notes: "Could employers do more to reduce healthcare spending? Employers have dramatically increased deductibles in recent years, and this has had some effect (though no one is certain just how much.)" Just shifting more of their employee's health spending out of the insurance contract into out-of-pocket spending by employees may constrain employment-based premiums; but whether it will constrain health care prices and total health spending is quite another matter, especially when a common lament among employees with high deductibleshas been that they have so little comparative price information. So, while I appreciate David's comment and will take it under advisement for further thought on the issue, I remain disillusioned with employment-based health insurance whose passivity has weakened the demand side in health care in determining prices. It is one thing to "worry" about health care costs. I have been at hundreds of conferences at which employers have done that. It is another thing "to do something" about it, and passivity is not it. I concur with the conclusions reached by Alain Enthoven and Victor Fuchs in the "Employment-Based Health Insurance: Past, Present, and Future“: "We highlight employment-based insurance's flaws: high administrative costs, inequitable sharing of costs, inability to cover large segments of the population, contribution to labor-management strife, and the inability of employers to act collectively to make health care more cost-effective.” It would be great if some day we could get rid of it. Uwe Reinhardt is recognized as one of the ation's leading authorities on health care economics and the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times Economix Blog.

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Longer Prescriptions at Discharge Causes Cardiac Patients to Continue Taking Medication

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Longer Prescriptions at Discharge Causes Cardiac Patients to Continue Taking Medication Jun 30th 2013, 17:52 The study, published today in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, found longer initial prescriptions when leaving hospital are associated with long-term adherence in elderly patients. The findings suggest prescriptions covering a longer interval of time are both more patient-centered and more effective. "Studies show that adherence to cardiac medications after a cardiac event like a heart attack declines over time. But we know that taking these medications for the long-term is absolutely essential for preventing further cardiac events," said Dr. Noah Ivers, lead author of the study and family physician at Women's College Hospital. "This study shows that longer prescriptions for cardiac patients after leaving hospital increase the likelihood that patients will take the medications for the long term, which may reduce their risk of heart attacks, stroke or even death." In the study, researchers investigated medication adherence of more than 20,000 elderly patients with coronary artery disease to three common classes of cardiac medications - ACE inhibitors, beta blockers and statins. For an 18-month period, the researchers compared the results of those prescribed the medications for less than 30 days, for 30-60 days and for 60 days or more. They found: Patients prescribed the medication for 60 days or more were more likely to adhere to the medication in the long term than those prescribed the medication for 30 days or less Older patients were less likely to adhere to medications. Male patients were more likely to continue to take some medications but not others. Up to 50 per cent of prescriptions covered only 7 days. More than 80 per cent of patients had a follow-up appointment within one month, regardless of prescription length. "The majority of patients in our study left hospital with a prescription for cardiac medications for 30 days or less," said Dr. Ivers. "This may be a result of the common clinical perception that short prescriptions encourage patients to go to their followup appointments, yet our study found regardless of the duration of the prescription, nearly all patients did, in fact, attend their followup appointment." Short prescriptions may inadvertently suggest to patients and family physicians alike that long-term adherence isn't necessary, the authors suggest. "When we reduce the requirement for early refills, patients still follow up with their family physician or cardiologist and they are more likely to remain on the medications as well, Dr. Ivers said. "We certainly want to encourage early outpatient follow up after hospitalization, but holding medications ransom may not be the best way to do it." Modifying the length of a prescription is an easy fix, Dr. Ivers adds. "Forcing elderly patients to frequently visit their cardiologist or family physician to renew prescriptions is only exacerbating the problem," he said. "While dosage adjustments are sometimes required, increasing the duration of a prescription for cardiac patients can easily be done, leading to significant benefits for patients." Source-Eurekalert

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In an Ultramarathon, Running 200-Miles Could be Healthier Than Stopping at 100

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In an Ultramarathon, Running 200-Miles Could be Healthier Than Stopping at 100 Jun 30th 2013, 17:52 Researchers compared athletes who ran 210-mile Tor des Geants and the 103-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, and looked at the effects of sleep deprivation. They also took samples of blood and muscles to measure inflammation and muscle fatigue. Researchers found that after completion of race, the Tor des Geants athletes suffered less muscle fatigues and soreness as compared to their counterparts who ran half the distance, CBS News reported. They also kept track of the vital statistics of 25 Tour des Geants athletes, representing top 33 percent of the group. Researchers collected data before, during and after the race from the athletes, about muscle strain in the knees and foot, and recorded the electrical activity of the muscles through electrical stimulation sensors. Data on the 100-mile runners was gathered from a previous study. They found that longer distance athletes had 30 percent more strength in lower leg muscles than people completing 100-mile course. The reason why 200-mile runners did not suffer as much fatigue as the 100-mile group could be due to pacing. The Tor des Geants runners on an average ran 3.4 miles per hour during their course, while athletes running 100-miles ran at a faster clip of 4.5 miles per hour. Though the Tor des Geants runners tried to ward off sleep in the early stages, they eventually slept up to nine hours during their whole race in 20 to 30 minute naps and spent much more time walking than others, which allowed their muscles to relax and recover. The study has been published in PLOS One. Source-ANI

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Fungal Infections Associated With Contaminated Steroid Injections

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Fungal Infections Associated With Contaminated Steroid Injections Jun 30th 2013, 17:52 Researchers from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)linked the pathological findings from 40 case reports of fungal infection due to contaminated injection to clinical and lab data . The report, published in the September issue of The American Journal of Pathology, alerts clinicians and the general public to the catastrophic dangers of contaminated epidural injections. In September 2012, CDC began hearing multiple reports of fungal meningitis in patients following epidural steroid injections. By June 2013, 745 people had confirmed infections and 58 had died, making this the largest reported outbreak of infections associated with epidural and intra-articular injections. After intensive investigation, the contamination was traced to more than 17,000 vials from three contaminated lots of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) originating from a single compounding pharmacy. More than 13,000 people were injected with the potentially contaminated drug. Most cases were attributable to Exserohilum rostratum, a dark-colored environmental mold that rarely infects humans. Researchers, including the CDC's Exserohilum Infections Working Group, report that of 40 cases reviewed, 16 were fatal, and all except two fatal cases had a clinical diagnosis of meningitis. Autopsy examination showed extensive hemorrhage and necrosis (tissue decay) around the base of the brain and thrombi (clots) involving the basilar arterial circulation. IMAGE: This shows fungal hyphae (red) in brain of a fatal case as seen using polyfungal immunohistochemistry. Click here for more information. Source-Eurekalert

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'three-parent' IVF Purused by the British Government

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'three-parent' IVF Purused by the British Government Jun 30th 2013, 17:52 The British government is all set to push forth a fertility technique that will use DNA from three parents to create an embryo. The IVF-based technique is designed to avoid serious mitochondrial diseases inherited on the maternal side, such as muscular dystrophy. Mitochondria are the structures within cells that convert energy from food into a form that the body can use. The technique would replace some of the unhealthy DNA with healthy DNA from the so-called "third parent". "It's only right that we look to introduce this life-saving treatment as soon as we can," said Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England. Politicians are due to debate the regulations in parliament next year, setting the stage for Britain to become the first country to offer the treatment. One in 200 children is born each year with a form of disease in their mitochondrial DNA. Scientists are developing a technique to remove some of the mitochondrial DNA of the mother and replace it with DNA from the "third parent" to create a healthy embryo. All of a human's visible characteristics are encoded in DNA found in the cell nucleus. This means that any child born using the technique under consideration will only bear the features of two parents. The technique is currently lawful in a laboratory but the embryos cannot be used in treatment. Source-AFP

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Spain's Medical Research in a Financial Crisis

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Spain's Medical Research in a Financial Crisis Jun 30th 2013, 16:52 Theirs is a well-equipped lab, but like researchers across Spain, they warn that steep funding cuts made during the financial and economic crisis are threatening to ground their potentially life-saving work -- and driving the country's most talented scientists away. Vicent's team at the Prince Felipe Research Centre (CIPF) in the eastern city of Valencia specialises in nanomedicine, a way of developing compounds that boost the efficacy of vital drugs. "We were set to be among the best in this field in Spain," she said. "We have made great advances in prostate cancer research. We wanted to go to the next stage with animal tests," she added. "But I am waiting to get specific financing for that because I don't have enough money and it's much more expensive than chemical research." The 52,000 square-metre centre was opened in 2005 at the height of the boom that preceded Spain's economic bust, with 60 million euros ($78 million) of investment. But as Spain scrambled to shore up its public finances, the centre's state subsidies were slashed in 2011 from just under 10 million euros ($13 million) to less than five million, forcing Vicent to rely on European Union funds to continue. The centre had to close half of its 28 labs and fire 114 of its 244 workers. "It was tragic to see such talented people having to leave," Vicent said. Now the centre's hi-tech installations are falling into disuse, with its two mechanised operating theatres for animal research now being used for training courses instead. The Confederation of Scientific Associations of Spain (COSCE) said in a recent report that public investment in scientific research fell by 45 percent from nine billion to five billion euros between 2009, the year after the crisis started, and 2013. Scientists warn this leaves much hard-won progress in a crucial sector at risk of evaporating. "It is a mistake that will cost us very dear," said Josep Maria Gatell of IDIBAPS, a leading biomedical research centre in Barcelona, who has spent the past five years developing a vaccine against AIDS. "In the past 10 or 15 years Spain has made a major effort, which has borne fruit. We had a very good position internationally in research. And with these budget cuts we risk losing gains that took 20 years to achieve. It could take another 20 years for us to catch up again." Three of Gatell's products are being tested on humans, but their progress has slowed due to a lack of funds. "If you have more money you can develop three products at the same time. With less, you have to do one at a time. That delays things," he said. The renowned Vall d'Hebron Research Institute in Barcelona is surviving with three-quarters of its funding coming from international and private investors, according to its director, Joan Comella. Biomedical research, he said, "generates wealth, jobs and companies. It creates links with big industry, which allow you to develop new drugs." The lack of subsidies is causing a chronic brain drain as scientists leave Spain to work abroad, he added. "When a leading scientist decides to leave, he takes with him his team, his knowledge and his capacity to draw funding," Comella warned. The funding problem extends beyond the medical sphere to all sectors of scientific research, observers said. According to COSCE the number of public sector scientific researchers in Spain fell from just under 130,000 in 2010 to 117,000 this year. A Spanish physicist, Diego Martinez, made headlines recently when he was denied a public contract to come back and work in Spain -- despite having won a prize as the best young physicist in Europe. "In my field there were very few such contracts," said Martinez, 30, speaking from Geneva where he works at the groundbreaking European Organization for Nuclear Research. "Basically, when you leave, you won't come back." Source-AFP

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Jungle Graveyard Leaves Experts Mystified

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Jungle Graveyard Leaves Experts Mystified Jun 30th 2013, 15:52 Why the bones were placed in jars on a cliff some 100 metres (320 feet) high in the Cardamom Mountains, or indeed whose remains they are, has long puzzled experts. For seven years Nancy Beavan, an archaeologist who specialises in carbon dating, has been looking for an answer, painstakingly piecing together clues left by the enigmatic people at 10 sites dotted across the area in southwestern Cambodia. Tests show some of the bone fragments are six centuries old, according to the New Zealander. "Why put these bones in jars? This was a practice that was not observed in any other part of Cambodia," she said. Ten jars, dating from the 15th to the 17th centuries, and twelve coffins -- the earliest from the 14th century -- have been found at the Phnom Pel site. Some are believed to have come from the kingdom of Siam, now Thailand. Others, a minority, date back to the powerful kingdom of Angkor, which ruled for six centuries and built the famous Angkor Wat temple complex further to the north. But experts remain mystified as to why the bones were preserved in a Buddhist country where cremation is -- and was -- a key religious custom. Tep Sokha, an expert in Cambodian ceramics, said the jars are of the "highest ceramic quality" and the number indicates that "this was a sacred and widely practiced ritual." If villagers living near the cliff were aware of the jars, they have stayed away, allowing foreigners to study the relics at their leisure. And the whole study has been left to Beavan's team. They are picking through the evidence, often left to guess the origins of the artifacts they find including 12 coffins lined up on a rock that are so small they could not even hold a child's body but which contain the bones of men and women. "These coffins are unique. There is no other example in the history of Cambodia. They are relics that have never been disturbed," Beavan adds. Among her theories is that the bones belonged to Khmer tribesmen who lived deep in the mountains far from the influence of the Angkor kingdom, which spanned Southeast Asia from the ninth to 15th centuries, but perhaps failed to reach this corner. "They have nothing to do with the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Angkor but lived in his shadow," she said. "Who knows, maybe they were also slaves fleeing the Angkor kingdom." The search for answers took a leap forward in 2005 when fisherman off Koh Kong province found the same Siamese jars in their nets, prompting the discovery of a 15th century wreck containing ivory, Chinese porcelain and Siamese and Angkorian jars. The discovery provided the first scientific evidence of how Siamese jars could have been brought to the Cardamoms. Beavan believes the ship came from the Siamese empire to trade jars for ivory and precious wood. Despite the importance of the find, conservation remains a problem. In Koh Kong, hundreds of objects salvaged from the wreck have been left in a back room of the Provincial Court since 2007, despite Cambodia being one of the few Asian countries to have signed up the UN Convention on the preservation of underwater cultural heritage. But the discovery has led local authorities to consider establishing a museum for the artifacts which would preserve a long-neglected part of the nation's heritage. They hope it could become a valuable tourist attraction and spur proposals to protect the region. In 2012, the province recorded 100,000 local and foreign tourists, drawn to the beauty of the Cardamom Mountains, home to stunning waterfalls and one of the region's most biodiverse forests. For all its natural bounty, the Cardamom region has seen some species gradually disappear as its precious wood forests fall prey to loggers and hunters plundering its rare species. For two years, UNESCO has been building a case to list the mountain range as a key "biosphere reserve". The ship wreck, the sacred jars and the coffins add a cultural dimension that could boost the case for listing the area. "To do nothing would be a crime," according to Anne Lemaistre, the director of UNESCO in Cambodia. Time may be running out with many industrial projects, some Chinese-linked, tearing through the heart of the forest and compounding the damage to the ecosystem caused by hunters and loggers. "The scale of development in the Cardamom scares us a little," added Lemaistre. Source-AFP

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Brain's Complex Network Unravelled by a New Tracing Technique

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Brain's Complex Network Unravelled by a New Tracing Technique Jun 30th 2013, 15:52 Their findings offer new insight into how specific brain regions connect to each other, while also revealing clues as to what may happen, neuron by neuron, when these connections are disrupted. A team led by Gladstone Investigator Anatol Kreitzer, PhD, and Salk Investigator Edward Callaway, PhD, combined mouse models with a sophisticated tracing technique-known as the monosynaptic rabies virus system-to assemble brain-wide maps of neurons that connect with the basal ganglia, a region of the brain that is involved in movement and decision-making. Developing a better understanding of this region is important as it could inform research into disorders causing basal ganglia dysfunction, including Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. "Taming and harnessing the rabies virus-as pioneered by Dr. Callaway-is ingenious in the exquisite precision that it offers compared with previous methods, which were messier with a much lower resolution," Dr. Kreitzer, who is also an associate professor of neurology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, with which Gladstone is affiliated, said. "In this paper, we took the approach one step further by activating the tracer genetically, which ensures that it is only turned on in specific neurons in the basal ganglia. This is a huge leap forward technologically, as we can be sure that we're following only the networks that connect to particular kinds of cells in the basal ganglia," the researcher said. The research is published in the journal Neuron. Source-ANI

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Hajj Pilgrimage Raises Concerns of MERS Virus Spread

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Hajj Pilgrimage Raises Concerns of MERS Virus Spread Jun 30th 2013, 15:52 Little is known about the new pathogen, beyond the fact that it can be lethal by causing respiratory problems, pneumonia and kidney failure. It can be transmitted between humans, but unlike its cousin, the SARS virus, which sparked a scare a decade ago, it does not seem very contagious. Even so, for any respiratory virus the mass gathering of the hajj provides a perfect opportunity to first spread at the two holiest Muslim shrines in the cities of Mecca and Medina, and then travel around the globe at jet speed as pilgrims return home. The 2012 hajj drew 3.1 million people -- and this year's event likewise occurs in October, as the northern hemisphere slides into the season for coughs and sneezes. UN World Health Organisation (WHO) head Margaret Chan sounded the alarm to ministers at the agency's annual congress in May. "We need to get the facts clear and get the appropriate advice to all your countries where your pilgrims want to go to Mecca. It is something quite urgent," she said. Experts point first and foremost to figuring out the basics of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. Is it transmitted by contact -- if a patient contaminates his home or workplace with droplets containing virus? Or is it done by breathing in virus from coughs and sneezes? What is the best treatment for it? What about a vaccine? Are there risks of viral mutation? And is there an animal host which acts as a reservoir for the virus? The first recorded MERS death was in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia. The count has ticked up steadily, with a flurry this May and June taking it to 77, the bulk of them in the kingdom. Forty MERS patients have died to date, an extremely high rate of 52 percent, compared to nine percent of the 8,273 recorded patients with SARS, which was centred on Asia. But again, the tally of people who have fallen ill with MERS but not been diagnosed with it, or who may have been infected but not developed symptoms, is simply unknown. As the fight for knowledge unfolds behind lab doors, the WHO is urging nations to monitor respiratory infections, especially among patients returning from the Middle East, but has held off calling for travel restrictions. "This is really a new phenomenon that we're dealing with," Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director general for health security, told the International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control in Geneva this week. "We don't know what the potential is yet, based on the information we have, for sustained human-to-human transmission. We don't know what the full geographic extent of this virus is right now." Leading virologist Laurent Kaiser of the Geneva University Hospitals told AFP: "It's really a balance between too much precaution and no precaution. At this time, we have to be worried, we have to be careful." While MERS centres on Saudi Arabia, there have been laboratory-confirmed cases originating in Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Tunisia have had cases who were either sent there for care or who fell ill after returning from the Middle East. France, Italy, Tunisia and Britain have also seen limited transmission among patients who had not been to the Middle East but had close contact with people who had. So far, MERS has essentially been found in nations with health services capable of tracing and tackling such diseases. But the hajj draws a broad spectrum of Muslims, including from poor countries which struggle to cope even with commonplace diseases. "We don't know if the disease is there right now. They don't have surveillance," Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told AFP on the sidelines of the Geneva conference. Health experts give praise to Saudi authorities for beefing up vigilance for infectious diseases over the years. They also note that the hajj has successfully ridden out two previous viral episodes in the past decade -- SARS in 2003 and H1N1 influenza in 2009, although the difference now is that Saudi Arabia is the apparent hotbed of MERS. Memish, who is also a medical professor and runs a WHO-accredited research centre on the medicine of mass gatherings, pointed to the success of lower-scale umrah pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia this year. "I think it's comforting that as of today, four and a half million people have performed the umrah in Mecca and nothing has happened," Memish said. "But of course we're making all the arrangements and all the planning to do active surveillance, to be able to intervene." Source-AFP

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