Knowledge Update

​New York, Feb 3 (IANS) Sleep may be regulated in part by several brain-based immune proteins, says a study that could pave the way for new therapies to treat chronic sleep disorders and sleep disturbances secondary to other diseases.

The immune proteins -- collectively called inflammasome NLRP3 -- recruit a sleep-inducing molecule to trigger somnolence following sleep deprivation and exposure to a bacterial toxin, showed results of the study published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

Animals lacking genes for this protective immune complex showed profound sleep aberrations.

"Our research points, for the first time, to the inflammasome acting as a universal sensing mechanism that regulates sleep through the release of immune molecules," said study senior investigator Mark Zielinski from Harvard Medical School. 

In a series of experiments, the scientists demonstrated that following sleep deprivation or exposure to bacteria, the inflammasome activates an inflammatory molecule called interleukin-1 beta, known to induce sleep and promote sleep intensity. 

The brain cells of mice lacking the gene coding for inflammasome NLRP3 showed a marked absence of this sleep-inducing molecule.

Going a step further, the investigators compared the behaviour, sleep patterns and electrical activity in the brains of mice lacking the inflammasome gene to those in a group of mice with intact inflammasome genes.

Mice lacking the inflammasome gene had abnormal sleep responses following sleep deprivation. 

On average, such mice slept less and experienced more sleep interruptions than mice with their genes intact.

The latter group also slept more and harder following bacterial exposure -- the expected physiological response following infection, the researchers said.

Tokyo, Feb 3 (IANS) Examining a molecular cloud with enigmatic motion, a team led by researchers in Japan has found signs of stray black hole hiding in the Milky Way.

It is difficult to find black holes, because they are completely black. In some cases black holes cause effects which can be seen. 

Theoretical studies have predicted that 100 million to one billion black holes should exist in the Milky Way, although only 60 or so have been identified through observations to date. 

"We found a new way of discovering stray black holes," said one of the researchers Tomoharu Oka, Professor at Keio University in Japan.

The researchers used the ASTE Telescope in Chile and the 45-m Radio Telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory, both operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, to observe molecular clouds around the supernova remnant W44, located 10,000 light-years away from us. 

A supernova is the explosion of a star -- the largest explosion that takes place in space, according to NASA.

The primary goal of the researchers was to examine how much energy was transferred from the supernova explosion to the surrounding molecular gas, but they happened to find signs of a hidden black hole at the edge of W44, said the study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

During the survey, the team found a compact molecular cloud with enigmatic motion. 

To investigate the origin of this cloud, named the "Bullet", the team performed intensive observations of the gas cloud.

The data indicated that the Bullet seems to jump out from the edge of the supernova remnant with immense kinetic energy. 

"Most of the Bullet has an expanding motion with a speed of 50 km/s, but the tip of the Bullet has a speed of 120 km/s," Masaya Yamada, a graduate student at Keio University, said.

"Its kinetic energy is a few tens of times larger than that injected by the W44 supernova. It seems impossible to generate such an energetic cloud under ordinary environments," Yamada added.

The researchers believe that a dark and compact gravity source, possibly a black hole, has an important role in the formation of the Bullet.

​New York, Feb 1 (IANS) It is true that money does not grow on trees but electricity might someday, as scientists have developed a prototype biomimetic tree that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind.

Researchers from Iowa State University found that the technology could spawn a niche market for small and visually unobtrusive machines that turn wind into electricity.

"The possible advantages here are aesthetics and its smaller scale, which may allow off-grid energy harvesting. We set out to answer the question of whether you can get useful amounts of electrical power out of something that looks like a plant," said Michael McCloskey, associate professor at Iowa University.

Cell phone towers in some urban locations, such as Las Vegas, have been camouflaged as trees, complete with leaves that serve only to improve the tower's aesthetic appeal. 

"Tapping energy from those leaves would increase their functionality," McCloskey said.

This prototype device features a metallic trellis, from which hang a dozen plastic flaps in the shape of cottonwood leaves.

"It's definitely doable, but the trick is accomplishing it without compromising efficiency. More work is necessary, but there are paths available," said Curtis Mosher of Iowa State University. 

In a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers explained that small strips of specialised plastic inside the leaf stalks release an electrical charge when bent by wind.

​London, Feb 2 (IANS) Scientists have identified new ways to provide vaccines against polio which do not require the growth of live virus for their manufacture, thereby reducing risk of virus escaping into the environment.

Polio is on the verge of being eradicated world-wide, but even when it has been officially declared as extinct as a disease, governments will need to continue to vaccinate to ensure against it recurring.

Using current technology, the production of vaccine requires the growth of enormous quantities of live virus, which is then chemically killed, thus presenting a dangerous security risk of virus escaping into the environment.

"Continuing to vaccinate after polio has been eradicated is essential to ensure against the disease recurring, but there are significant biosafety concerns about current production methods," said co-leader of the study David Rowlands, Professor of Molecular Virology at University of Leeds in Britain.

"Our new method of creating the vaccine has been proven to work in lab conditions and on top of that we've proved it's actually more stable than existing vaccines," Rowlands said.

Despite the success of vaccines produced from 'virus-like particles' (VLPs) for hepatitis B and human papilloma viruses, poliovirus VLPs have proved to be too unstable to make practical vaccines.

The research team found a new way to modify these VLPs, also known as 'empty capsids' by identifying mutations which make their structures sufficiently stable to act as vaccines.

The empty capsids change shape when warmed and become unusable as vaccines, but the mutations identified in this research prevent these damaging changes.

These new stabilised VLPs are suitable as replacements for the current killed poliovirus vaccines and can be produced in ways that do not require the growth of live virus, said the study published in the Journal of Virology.

Using the newly developed stabilised VLPs would be best used after the virus has been eradicated, the researchers said.

This study was a lab experiment, which shows stabilised VLPs to be effective in a controlled environment. 

Further research using animals (rats and mice) is planned, as part of the essential process of making sure the new VLPs are safe and effective for use in humans, the researchers said.

​Tokyo, Feb 2 (IANS) Electronics giant Panasonic has urged its employees to leave office by 8 p.m., during a time when Japan is reviewing its long working hours following the 2015 suicide by a young woman who had put in more than 100 hours of overtime per month.

Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga personally took charge of e-mailing its 100,000 employees in Japan about the decision, a company spokeswoman confirmed to Efe news on Thursday.

The regulation that came into force on February 1, also applies to executive posts, but does not affect the board of directors.

The idea of work-life balance has been gaining momentum in Japan in the light of the suicide case from 2015.

For example, Daiwa Securities Group recently approved a campaign urging employees to leave the office at 7 p.m., while Unicharm, a hygiene products manufacturer, has prohibited overtime after 10 p.m.

Historically, Panasonic has been among those Japanese firms which have paid more attention to such moves; in 1965, it prohibited the 6-day working week amidst the Japanese economic boom, something which most other firms did not change until the 1980s.

The suicide by Matsuri Takahashi in December 2015, after just seven months employment with advertising giant Dentsu, has put the spotlight back on Japanese companies' working hours and "karoshi", or death by excessive work.

The labour ministry has decided to take Takahashi's case to court on the grounds that Dentsu did not comply with labour norms, systematically tampering with their employees' overtime records.

​New York, Feb 2 (IANS) Examining a Martian meteorite found in Africa, scientists have uncovered evidence of at least two billion years of volcanic activity on Mars.

The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, offer new clues to how the planet evolved and insight into the history of volcanic activity on Mars, said lead author of the study Tom Lapen, Professor at University of Houston in the US.

Much of what we know about the composition of rocks from volcanoes on Mars comes from meteorites found on Earth. 

The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa 7635 and discovered in 2012, was found to be a type of volcanic rock called a shergottite. 

Eleven of these Martian meteorites, with similar chemical composition and ejection time, have been found.

"We see that they came from a similar volcanic source," Lapen said. 

"Given that they also have the same ejection time, we can conclude that these come from the same location on Mars," Lapen noted.

Together, these meteorites provide information about a single location on Mars. Previously analysed meteorites range in age from 327 million to 600 million years old. 

In contrast, the meteorite analysed by Lapen's research team was formed 2.4 billion years ago and suggests that it was ejected from one of the longest-lived volcanic centers in the solar system.

The finding confirms that some of the longest-lived volcanoes in the solar system may be found on the Red Planet.

London, Feb 2 (IANS) Do you chronically spend sleepless nights, have poor sleep quality or face difficulties initiating or maintaining sleep? Beware, you may be more than thrice at risk of developing asthma in adulthood, researchers have warned.

Asthma affects approximately 300 million people worldwide, with major risk factors including smoking, obesity and air pollution.

"The study found that those people with chronic insomnia had more than three times the risk of developing asthma, suggesting that any changes in the body due to insomnia may accumulate and result in more severe harmful effects on the airways," said lead author Ben Brumpton from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway.

More recently, symptoms of depression and anxiety have also been associated with a risk of developing asthma in adulthood, the researchers said.

For the study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, the team used statistical analysis to assess the risk of asthma among 17,927 participants aged between 20 and 65 years in Norway. 

The results showed that those participants reporting difficulty falling asleep "often" or "almost every night" during the last month had a 65 per cent and 108 per cent increased risk of developing asthma over the following 11 years, respectively.

Similarly, those who reported waking too early without being able to go back to sleep "often" or "almost every night" had a 92 per cent and 36 per cent increased risk of developing asthma. 

For people who reported poor quality sleep more than once a week, the risk of developing asthma increased by 94 per cent.

"As insomnia is a manageable condition, an increased focus on the adverse health effects of insomnia could be helpful in the prevention of asthma," suggested Linn Beate Strand from NTNU.

Beijing, Feb 1 (IANS) In a first, Chinese scientists have used a novel version of the CRISPR gene-editing technology to successfully produce live cows with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis (TB).

The researchers from Northwest A&F University in China used a modified version of the CRISPR system called CRISPR/Cas9n to insert a new TB resistance gene -- NRAMP1 -- into the genome of bovine foetal fibroblasts -- a cell derived from female dairy cows.

"We used a novel version of the CRISPR system to successfully insert a TB resistance gene into the cow genome. We were then able to successfully develop live cows carrying increased resistance to TB," said led author Yong Zhang.

These cells were then used as donor cells in a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, where the nucleus of a donor cell carrying the new gene is inserted into an egg cell, known as an ovum, from a female cow.

These ovum were then nurtured in the lab into embryos before being transferred into mother cows for a normal pregnancy cycle, in which cows were produced with no off target effects on the animals' genetics -- a common problem when creating transgenic animals using CRISPR.

"Importantly, our method produced no off target effects on the cow genetics meaning the CRISPR technology we employed may be better suited to producing transgenic livestock with purposefully manipulated genetics," Zhang added in the study published in the journal Genome Biology.

For the study, the team used CRISPR to insert the new gene in 11 calves.

The results revealed that NRAMP1 had successfully integrated into the genetic code at the targeted region in all of the calves. 

When exposed to Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) -- the bacterium that causes bovine TB -- the transgenic animals showed an increased resistance to the bacteria measured by standard markers of infection in a blood sample.

Further, white blood cells taken from the calves also showed much resistance to M. bovis exposure in laboratory tests.

​London, Feb 1 (IANS) Observing a curious neutron star in a binary system known as the 'Rapid Burster', scientists have found that its magnetic field could explain 40-year-old mystery surrounding its puzzling X-ray bursts.

Discovered in the 1970s, the Rapid Burster is a binary system comprising a low-mass star in its prime and a neutron star -- the compact remnant of a massive star's demise. 

The scientists discovered that its magnetic field creates a gap around the star, largely preventing it from feeding on matter from its stellar companion. 

Gas builds up until, under certain conditions, it hits the neutron star all at once, producing intense flashes of X-rays. 

The discovery, reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, was made with space telescopes including European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and Swift missions.

In a a binary system known as the 'Rapid Burster', the gravitational pull of the dense remnant strips the other star of some of its gas; the gas forms an accretion disc and spirals towards the neutron star.

As a result of this accretion process, most neutron star binaries continuously release large amounts of X-rays, which are punctuated by additional X-ray flashes every few hours or days.

Scientists can account for these 'type-I' bursts, in terms of nuclear reactions that are ignited in the inflowing gas -- mainly hydrogen - when it accumulates on the neutron star's surface.

But the Rapid Burster is a peculiar source: at its brightest, it does emit these type-I flashes, while during periods of lower X-ray emission, it exhibits the much more elusive 'type-II' bursts - these are sudden, erratic and extremely intense releases of X-rays.

"The Rapid Burster is the archetypal system to investigate type-II bursts - it's where they were first observed and the only source that shows both type-I and type-II bursts," said lead author Jakob van den Eijnden from Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Despite 40 years of searches, type-II bursts have been detected only in one other source besides the Rapid Burster. 

Known as the Bursting Pulsar and discovered in the 1990s, this binary system exhibits only type-II bursts.

Because of the scarcity of sources that display this phenomenon, the underlying physical mechanisms have long been debated, but the new study of the Rapid Burster could provide evidence for what is occurring.

New York, Feb 1 (IANS) Researchers have invented a hand-held breath monitor that can potentially detect flu virus and help prevent flu epidemics from spreading.

The device could eventually be available in drug stores so that people can be diagnosed quickly and take advantage of medicines used to treat the flu in its earliest stages. 

"I think that technology like this is going to revolutionise personalised diagnostics," said Perena Gouma, Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington in the US.

"This will allow people to be proactive and catch illnesses early and the technology can easily be used to detect other diseases such as Ebola virus disease, simply by changing the sensors," said Gouma, who has described her invention in the journal Sensors.

Gouma's device is similar to the breathalysers used by police officers when they suspect a driver to be under the influence of alcohol. 

A patient simply exhales into the device, which uses semiconductor sensors like those in a household carbon monoxide detector.

The difference is that these sensors are specific to the gas detected, yet still inexpensive, and can isolate biomarkers associated with the flu virus and indicate whether or not the patient has the flu. 

Researchers believe that the device may help prevent flu epidemics from spreading, protecting both individuals as well as the public health.

Gouma and her team relied on existing medical literature to determine the quantities of known biomarkers present in a person's breath when afflicted with a particular disease, then applied that knowledge to find a combination of sensors for those biomarkers that is accurate for detecting the flu. 

Gouma found that the breath monitor may detect the flu virus possibly as well as tests done in a doctor's office.