Put things in context
Tonight’s Science Saturday OND begins with five stories published in one week. These stories collectively are an example of how mis-information can spread when reporters jump on only one story independent of others.
medical news now and science daily
This published January 18, 2019.
New research indicates that psychological factors could also affect risk. Psychological distress, in particular, may increase the likelihood of developing dementia, suggests the new study. ...]
The study revealed a dose-response link between vital exhaustion in midlife and the development of Alzheimer's later on. The lead author reports, "For each additional symptom of vital exhaustion, we found that the risk of dementia rose by 2 percent."
"Participants reporting five to nine symptoms had a 25 percent higher risk of dementia than those with no symptoms, while those reporting 10 to 17 symptoms had a 40 percent higher risk of dementia, compared with not having symptoms," Islamoska continues.
This one was published on January 21, 2019 and shows a trigger that isn’t tied in with the toxic proteins. So how does this relate to the others that accept the tau and amyloid proteins as diagnostic. (Maybe they are involved — sometimes — but not always.)
Recent research reveals that leaky capillaries in the brain could have a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease. [...]
A new study conducted at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles could pave the way for new, more effective treatments. The findings now appear in the journal Nature Medicine. [...]
Previous studies indicated that two toxic proteins, amyloid and tau, may be "the trigger and bullet" in the development of Alzheimer's. Findings showed that soluble forms of amyloid and tau work together to damage healthy neurons.
The new 5-year study — which involved 161 older adults — revealed that people with the worst memory problems also had leaky blood vessels, regardless of the presence of toxic proteins.
This story published January 22, 2019. The article ends with a note that the protein (NfL) used in the test is also released by other brain disorders like Lewy body dementia, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and in football players immediately after receiving a blow to their heads.
This study is looking at a different protein, not the amyloid and tau usually considered diagnostic.
A blood test for a protein could identify people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease a decade or more before symptoms, such as a decline in memory and thinking, emerge.
The test looks for changes in levels of the neurofilament light chain (NfL) protein. The protein normally resides inside brain cells, or neurons, as part of their internal skeleton.
However, damaged and dying cells can leak NfL into surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. The protein then travels from the fluid into the bloodstream. [...]
Now, in a Nature Medicine paper about the recent study, the authors report how they demonstrated that NfL levels in spinal fluid correlated with levels in blood and "are elevated at the presymptomatic stages of familial Alzheimer's disease."
"This could be . . . a good preclinical biomarker to identify those who will go on to develop clinical symptoms."
Published on January 24, 2019.
A study in mice and people shows that sleep deprivation causes tau levels to rise and tau tangles to spread through the brain. Tau tangles are associated with Alzheimer's disease and brain damage. [...]
These findings, published online Jan. 24 in the journal Science, indicate that lack of sleep alone helps drive the disease, and suggests that good sleep habits may help preserve brain health.
"The interesting thing about this study is that it suggests that real-life factors such as sleep might affect how fast the disease spreads through the brain," said senior author David Holtzman, MD, the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor and head of the Department of Neurology. "We've known that sleep problems and Alzheimer's are associated in part via a different Alzheimer's protein -- amyloid beta -- but this study shows that sleep disruption causes the damaging protein tau to increase rapidly and to spread over time."
This published today, January 26, 2019 and was the one story widely reported. I saw this reported earlier in the week by New Scientist as
We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it. The hyperbolic reporting triggered wild responses, including a Twitter rant (that I can’t find again) about removing teeth and getting dentures as a preventative measure.
...emerging evidence suggests that one of the bacteria involved in periodontitis could also contribute to the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain, which scientists have associated with the development of Alzheimer's disease.
These findings have emerged from a new study in mice that researchers from Cortexyme, Inc., a pharmaceutical company that aims to develop new therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease, have conducted. [...]
The researchers zeroed in on one bacterium — Porphyromonas gingivalis — which is a Gram-negative oral anaerobe that drives the development of gum disease.
P. gingivalis, the researchers note, also appears in the brains of people who doctors have diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which left the investigators intrigued.
When looking at a mouse model, the team found that infection with P. gingivalis led to greater production of beta-amyloid in the rodents' brains.
WELCOME TO THE OVERNIGHT NEWS DIGEST WITH A CREW CONSISTING OF FOUNDER MAGNIFICO, CURRENT LEADER NEON VINCENT, REGULAR EDITORS SIDE POCKET, MAGGIEJEAN, CHITOWN KEV, INTERCEPTOR7, MAGNIFICO, ANNETTEBOARDMAN AND BESAME.
OND IS A REGULAR COMMUNITY FEATURE ON DAILY KOS, CONSISTING OF NEWS STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD, SOMETIMES COUPLED WITH A DAILY THEME, ORIGINAL RESEARCH OR COMMENTARY. EDITORS OF OND IMPART THEIR OWN PRESENTATION STYLES AND CONTENT CHOICES, TYPICALLY PUBLISHING EACH DAY NEAR 12:00 AM EASTERN TIME.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR ARTICLES AND STORIES IN THE COMMENTS.
|
Think big picture
Three stories exemplify the diverse ramifications of climate change.
science daily
Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that haven't been ice-free in more than 40,000 years and the region may be experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds.
"The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, so naturally, glaciers and ice caps are going to react faster," [...]
Baffin is the world's fifth largest island, dominated by deeply incised fjords separated by high-elevation, low-relief plateaus. The thin, cold plateau ice acts as a kind of natural cold storage, preserving ancient moss and lichens in their original growth position for millennia.
"We travel to the retreating ice margins, sample newly exposed plants preserved on these ancient landscapes and carbon date the plants to get a sense of when the ice last advanced over that location," Pendleton said. "Because dead plants are efficiently removed from the landscape, the radiocarbon age of rooted plants define the last time summers were as warm, on average, as those of the past century"
phys.org
Adolescent girls exposed to severe drought conditions in rural Lesotho had higher rates of HIV, according to a new study led by researchers at ICAP at Columbia University….
In Lesotho, a small country in southern Africa, one-fourth of adults are living with HIV. In addition to this challenge, all of Lesotho was affected by a severe drought in 2014-16, which in some areas was the most severe since 1981. Researchers paired satellite-derived data on accumulated rainfall with geospatial data from the survey to determine if there were any associations between drought and HIV related outcomes. Of those interviewed in the survey, 94 percent lived in areas that experienced drought, and according to prior research, approximately one-quarter of the population required emergency food assistance.
The researchers identified an increase in a constellation of risk behaviors associated with HIV infection during the drought period, including transactional and commercial sex, suggesting that some women may have relied on sexual activity to survive. They also observed an increase in early sexual debut and reduced educational attainment in girls in rural areas consistent with the girls being removed from school for transactional partnerships or marriage so that families could benefit from the bride price. According to the researchers, lower school enrollment could have far-reaching consequences, in terms of both HIV acquisition and entrenchment of poverty. In addition, external migration, commonly seen during drought periods, was associated with a higher prevalence of HIV in young people; this is particularly concerning as migrants may have less access to HIV care.
Even though climate change is expected to reduce the total amount of U.S. snowfall this century, it's unlikely to significantly rein in the most powerful nor'easters that pummel the East Coast, new research indicates.
The study finds that smaller snowstorms that drop a few inches will diminish greatly in number by late century. But the most damaging types of storms along the Eastern Seaboard, which strike every few years or so and cause widespread disruption, will remain about as frequent in a warming world.
"What this research finds is almost all of the decrease in snow occurs in weaker, more nuisance-type events," said atmospheric scientist Colin Zarzycki, the author of the study. "The really crippling storms that have major regional impacts on transportation, on the economy, on infrastructure are not significantly mitigated in a warming climate."
The new study is part of a growing body of research into the complex ways that a warmer atmosphere will influence weather patterns and extreme weather events. Scientists have found that storms such as hurricanes and hailstorms are likely to become less frequent in the future—but pack an even more powerful punch in those instances when they're especially intense.
Use nature’s example
Two stories on bio-mimetic research remind us that when we frame questions appropriately and look outside ourselves, nature has answers.
science daily
Researchers have made the first soft robot mimicking plant tendrils: it is able to curl and climb, using the same physical principles determining water transport in plants. In the future this tendril-like soft robot could inspire the development of wearable devices, such as soft braces, able to actively morph their shape. [...]
Barbara Mazzolai was listed in 2015 among the 25 most influential women in robotics by RoboHub, and in 2012 she coordinated the EU-funded project "Plantoid" that brought to the first plant robot worldwide. The research team includes Edoardo Sinibaldi and Indrek Must. It is a small yet well-assorted team, based on complementary backgrounds: Must is a materials technologist with a PhD in engineering and technology, Sinibaldi an aerospace engineer with a PhD in applied mathematics, Mazzolai a biologist with a PhD in microsystems engineering.
Researchers took inspiration from plants and their movement. Indeed, being unable to escape (unlike animals), plants have associated their movement to growth, and in doing so they continuously adapt their morphology to the external environment. Even the plants organs exposed to the air are able to perform complex movements such as, for example, the closure of the leaves in carnivorous plants or the growth of tendrils in climbing plants, which are able to coil around external supports (and uncoil, if the supports are not adequate) to favor the growth of the plant itself.
Engineers detail bird feather properties that could lead to better adhesives (and aerospace materials).
You may have seen a kid play with a feather, or you may have played with one yourself: Running a hand along a feather's barbs and watching as the feather unzips and zips, seeming to miraculously pull itself back together.
That "magical" zipping mechanism could provide a model for new adhesives and new aerospace materials, according to engineers at the University of California San Diego. They detail their findings in the Jan. 16 issue of Science Advances in a paper titled "Scaling of bird wings and feathers for efficient flight."
Nurture your sense of wonder
“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted,
like trees.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke