and this and that.

And WHO DID IT !

From MIT News:

Scientists have now discovered that the soft palate — the soft tissue at the back of the roof of the mouth — plays a key role in viruses’ ability to travel through the air from one person to another.

The findings, described in the Sept. 23 online edition of Nature , should help scientists better understand how the flu virus evolves airborne transmissibility and assist them in monitoring the emergence of strains with potential to cause global outbreaks.

Researchers from MIT and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) made the surprising finding while examining the H1N1 flu strain, which caused a 2009 pandemic that killed more than 250,000 people.

MIT biological engineer Ram Sasisekharan, one of the study’s senior authors, has previously shown that airborne transmissibility depends on whether a virus’ hemagglutinin (HA) protein can bind to a specific type of receptor on the surface of human respiratory cells. Some flu viruses bind better to alpha 2-6 glycan receptors, which are found primarily in humans and other mammals, while other viruses are better adapted to alpha 2-3 glycan receptors, found predominantly in birds.

The researchers then examined tissue from different parts of the respiratory tract and found that viruses with the genetic reversion were most abundant in the soft palate. By three days after the initial infection, 90 percent of the viruses in this region had the reverted form of the virus. Other sites in the respiratory tract had a mix of the two types of virus.

The researchers are now trying to figure out how this reversion occurs, and why it happens in the soft palate.

The study opens up “a new frontier in our fight against future emergence of pandemic influenza viruses,� says Lin-Fa Wang, director of the program in emerging infectious disease at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.

From Frontline:

A total of 87 out of 91 former NFL players have tested positive for the brain disease at the center of the debate over concussions in football, according to new figures from the nation’s largest brain bank focused on the study of traumatic head injury.

Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE , in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players. The disease is widely believed to stem from repetitive trauma to the head, and can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia.

In total, the lab has found CTE in the brain tissue in 131 out of 165 individuals who, before their deaths, played football either professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school.

Forty percent of those who tested positive were the offensive and defensive linemen who come into contact with one another on every play of a game, according to numbers shared by the brain bank with FRONTLINE. That finding supports past research suggesting that it’s the repeat, more minor head trauma that occurs regularly in football that may pose the greatest risk to players, as opposed to just the sometimes violent collisions that cause concussions.

Read the full article here: New results on CTE 

Researchers were surprised to find in a new study that a significant number of breast cancer cells from more than 200 women had evidence of exposure to bovine leukemia virus, or BLV.

BLV infects dairy and beef cattle’s blood cells and mammary tissues, and was for a long time thought not to be able to infect humans.

Nearly all bulk milk tanks at large factory farms are infected with BLV, but only about 5 percent of cows get sick if they have the virus, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture . The same group of researchers at the University of California Berkeley involved in the new study also found last year that BLV could be transmitted to humans .

“The association between BLV infection and breast cancer was surprising to many previous reviewers of the study, but it’s important to note that our results do not prove that the virus causes cancer,” said Dr. Gertrude Buehring, a professor of virology in the University of California Berkeley, in a press release . “However, this is the most important first step. We still need to confirm that the infection with the virus happened before, not after, breast cancer developed, and if so, how.”

Using donated tissue from the Cooperative Human Tissue Network , the researchers compared breast tissue from 239 women who either had breast cancer or did not.

They found that 59 percent of breast cancer cells had evidence of exposure to BLV based on the presence of viral DNA in the cells. Cells from women who had not had breast cancer only had evidence of exposure 29 percent of the time.

When researchers further analyzed the data, they found the risk of developing breast cancer was 3.1 times higher if BLV was present in a woman than if it was not. Buehring said the odds ratio is higher than other well known risk factors for breast cancer, including obesity, alcohol consumption and hormones.

The study is published in PLOS ONE .

From WebMD:

Most people who wash their hands with antibacterial soap do so for less than 30 seconds, Rhee noted, using formulations containing less than 0.3 percent triclosan — the maximum allowed by law. And that combination, he said, is “not adequate for having an antibacterial effect.”

Rhee and his colleagues outline their findings in the Sept. 16 issue of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy .

Triclosan is the antibacterial component of liquid soap. In bar formulations, it’s triclocarban, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These ingredients have been somewhat controversial. Some contend there is no scientific evidence to back up claims that these products are more effective than regular soap. Others have argued that these ingredients aren’t safe.

But there isn’t any proof that triclosan is unsafe, the FDA said. However, the FDA cautioned that animal studies have raised concerns that the antiseptic may interfere with normal hormonal regulation, or may contribute to antibiotic resistance.

Read More: Regular Soap v.s. Antibacterial Soap 

MIT biological engineers have developed a modular system of proteins that can detect a particular DNA sequence in a cell and then trigger a specific response, such as cell death.This system can be customized to detect any DNA sequence in a mammalian cell and then trigger a desired response, including killing cancer cells or cells infected with a virus, the researchers say.“There is a range of applications for which this could be important,â€� says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES). “This allows you to readily design constructs that enable a programmed cell to both detect DNA and act on that detection, with a report system and/or a respond system.â€�Collins is the senior author of a Sept. 21 Nature Methods paper ( “DNA sense-and-respond protein modules for mammalian cells” ) describing the technology, which is based on a type of DNA-binding proteins known as zinc fingers. These proteins can be designed to recognize any DNA sequence.

Read more: Protein-based sensor could detect viral infection or kill cancer cells

From Nautilus:

The researchers hope to help people with anisometropic amblyopia , which begins in early childhood but can go undetected for years. In this disorder, the eyes themselves are fine, but something goes wrong with the connections between the eyes and the brain’s visual processing center. The brain never learns to take in fine details from one side, causing blurry vision in that eye.

The disorder can often be corrected if caught early: A young child’s brain is still learning how to make sense of the visible world so the visual cortex is still “plastic� and changeable. In one standard treatment, the child wears an eyepatch over the good eye, forcing the brain to work with the bad one.

However, sometime between the age of two and six a child’s visual cortex becomes set (it varies between people). If the amblyopic child hasn’t received treatment by that point, he or she will be stuck with that blurry vision. “ Even if they get glasses, it’s too late for the brain to use the good sharp retinal image,� Backus says.

Hence, the approach: Restore amblyopic people’s visual cortices to that changeable, childlike condition with a stint in total darkness.

Backus thinks the darkness may serve as a factory-reset for the visual system, and may therefore improve the patients’ symptoms. A neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, Elizabeth Quinlan , has kept amblyopic rats in total darkness for ten days, and demonstrated that the synapses in their visual cortices became more plastic. When they came out of the dark, it was as if they were seeing the world anew.

Now, with funding and approval for the full-scale experiment involving amblyopia patients, Backus is seeking 24 volunteers who are willing to live in the pitch black for either five or ten days this winter. He knows whom he needs to recruit: “We need people who are adventurous, who are team players, people who would be good astronauts,� he says.He’s looking for amblyopia patients with the right stuff.

Read the full article here:  How Utter Darkness Could Heal Lazy Eye 

From the New York Times:

Childhood exposure to indoor insecticides is associated with an increased risk for certain childhood cancers, a new study has found.

Researchers reviewed 16 studies of children exposed to indoor pesticides, including professional pest control services, indoor flea foggers, flea and tick pet collars, and various ready-to-use roach and ant sprays. The analysis, in Pediatrics , included 7,400 cancer cases matched with 9,437 healthy control subjects.

Exposure to indoor, but not outdoor, residential insecticides was associated with a 47 percent increased risk for childhood leukemia and a 43 percent increased risk for childhood lymphomas. Outdoor pesticides used as weed killers were associated with a 26 percent increased risk for brain tumors.

Read the full article here: Childhood Cancers Linked to Pesticides 

From the Atlantic:

In a small study published today in the journal PeerJ , researchers from the University of Oregon and the Santa Fe Institute found further support for the idea that this signature might be able to identified by sampling only the air in a room.

“As soon as there’s a person in the room, you start to find things like staphylococcus or streptococcus, things that we all have on us,� said James Meadow, the paper’s lead author and a scientist at Phylagen, a company that researches the microbiomes of public spaces like hospitals and offices. (He was a researcher at the University of Oregon while conducting the experiment.) “In my office, when I walk across the room, I’m carrying behind me an invisible train of air. On a microscopic level, it might look something like an 18-wheeler going down a dusty road.�

For the study, the researchers put volunteers in an environmentally controlled chamber for several hours at a time, then collected and analyzed samples of air and dust from inside. The mix of bacteria collected, they found, was distinct from person to person, enough that “you can actually tell who a person was, if you know enough about their microbiome,� he said. Things like diet and travel can change this airborne microbiome slightly, but for the most part, it will remain consistent over time.

Read more: Microbe Auras

Women eating a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil had a lower risk of breast cancer over a five-year period, a new study shows .

The new report, published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine , looked at the outcomes of following two versions of the Mediterranean diet characterized by lots of plant foods and fish: one supplemented with extra virgin olive oil and one supplemented with nuts. The 4,282 women in the two groups had an average age of 67.7 and were also compared to women who had been advised to follow a regular low-fat diet.

The researchers checked in with the women after five years, and found that those who had followed the Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil had a 68% lower risk of malignant breast cancer compared to women on the control diet.

Read the full article here: Olive Oil Rich Diet Linked to Reduced Breast Cancer Ris k