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Category Archives: Mind Building
Design of inorganic materials for brain-like computing
That future may not be now, but it’s one step closer, thanks to a Texas A&M University-led team of scientists and engineers and their recent discovery of a materials-based mimic for the neural signals responsible for transmitting information within the human brain.
The multidisciplinary team, led by Texas A&M chemist Sarbajit Banerjee in collaboration with Texas A&M electrical and computer engineer R. Stanley Williams and additional colleagues across North America and abroad, has discovered a neuron-like electrical switching mechanism in the solid-state material ?’-CuxV2O5 — specifically, how it reversibly morphs between conducting and insulating behavior on command.
The team was able to clarify the underlying mechanism driving this behavior by taking a new look at ?’-CuxV2O5, a remarkable chameleon-like material that changes with temperature or an applied electrical stimulus. In the process, they zeroed in on how copper ions move around inside the material and how this subtle dance in turn sloshes electrons around to transform it. Their research revealed that the movement of copper ions is the linchpin of an electrical conductivity change which can be leveraged to create electrical spikes in the same way that neurons function in the cerebral nervous system — a major step toward developing circuitry that functions like the human brain.
Their resulting paper, which features Texas A&M chemistry graduate students Abhishek Parija (now at Intel Corporation), Justin Andrews and Joseph Handy as first authors, is published today (Feb. 27) in the Cell Press journal Matter.
In their quest to develop new modes of energy efficient computing, the broad-based group of collaborators is capitalizing on materials with tunable electronic instabilities to achieve what’s known as neuromorphic computing, or computing designed to replicate the brain’s unique capabilities and unmatched efficiencies.
“Nature has given us materials with the appropriate types of behavior to mimic the information processing that occurs in a brain, but the ones characterized to date have had various limitations,” Williams said. “The importance of this work is to show that chemists can rationally design and create electrically active materials with significantly improved neuromorphic properties. As we understand more, our materials will improve significantly, thus providing a new path to the continual technological advancement of our computing abilities.”
While smart phones and laptops seemingly get sleeker and faster with each iteration, Parija notes that new materials and computing paradigms freed from conventional restrictions are required to meet continuing speed and energy-efficiency demands that are straining the capabilities of silicon computer chips, which are reaching their fundamental limits in terms of energy efficiency. Neuromorphic computing is one such approach, and manipulation of switching behavior in new materials is one way to achieve it.
“The central premise — and by extension the central promise — of neuromorphic computing is that we still have not found a way to perform computations in a way that is as efficient as the way that neurons and synapses function in the human brain,” said Andrews, a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow. “Most materials are insulating (not conductive), metallic (conductive) or somewhere in the middle. Some materials, however, can transform between the two states: insulating (off) and conductive (on) almost on command.”
By using an extensive combination of computational and experimental techniques, Handy said the team was able to demonstrate not only that this material undergoes a transition driven by changes in temperature, voltage and electric field strength that can be used to create neuron-like circuitry but also comprehensively explain how this transition happens. Unlike other materials that have a metal-insulator transition (MIT), this material relies on the movement of copper ions within a rigid lattice of vanadium and oxygen.
“We essentially show that a very small movement of copper ions within the structure brings about a massive change in conductance in the whole material,” Handy added. “Because of this movement of copper ions, the material transforms from insulating to conducting in response to external changes in temperature, applied voltage or applied current. In other words, applying a small electrical pulse allows us to transform the material and save information inside it as it works in a circuit, much like how neurons function in the brain.”
Andrews likens the relationship between the copper-ion movement and electrons on the vanadium structure to a dance.
“When the copper ions move, electrons on the vanadium lattice move in concert, mirroring the movement of the copper ions,” Andrews said. “In this way, incredibly small movements of the copper ions induce large electronic changes in the vanadium lattice without any observable changes in vanadium-vanadium bonding. It’s like the vanadium atoms ‘see’ what the copper is doing and respond.”
Transmitting, storing and processing data currently accounts for about 10 percent of global energy use, but Banerjee says extrapolations indicate the demand for computation will be many times higher than the projected global energy supply can deliver by 2040. Exponential increases in computing capabilities therefore are required for transformative visions, including the Internet of Things, autonomous transportation, disaster-resilient infrastructure, personalized medicine and other societal grand challenges that otherwise will be throttled by the inability of current computing technologies to handle the magnitude and complexity of human- and machine-generated data. He says one way to break out of the limitations of conventional computing technology is to take a cue from nature — specifically, the neural circuitry of the human brain, which vastly surpasses conventional computer architectures in terms of energy efficiency and also offers new approaches for machine learning and advanced neural networks.
“To emulate the essential elements of neuronal function in artificial circuitry, we need solid-state materials that exhibit electronic instabilities, which, like neurons, can store information in their internal state and in the timing of electronic events,” Banerjee said. “Our new work explores the fundamental mechanisms and electronic behavior of a material that exhibits such instabilities. By thoroughly characterizing this material, we have also provided information that will instruct the future design of neuromorphic materials, which may offer a way to change the nature of machine computation from simple arithmetic to brain-like intelligence while dramatically increasing both the throughput and energy efficiency of processors.”
Because the various components that handle logic operations, store memory and transfer data are all separate from each other in conventional computer architecture, Banerjee says they are plagued by inherent inefficiencies regarding both the time it takes for information to be processed and how physically close together device elements can be before thermal waste and electrons “accidentally” tunneling between components become major problems. By contrast, in the human brain, logic, memory storage and data transfer are simultaneously integrated into the timed firing of neurons that are densely interconnected in 3-D fanned-out networks. As a result, the brain’s neurons process information at 10 times lower voltage and an almost 5,000 times lower synaptic operation energy in comparison to silicon computing architectures. To come close to achieving this kind of energetic and computational efficiency, he says new materials are needed that can undergo rapid internal electronic switching in circuits in a way that mimics how neurons fire in timed sequences.
Handy notes that the team still needs to optimize many parameters, such as transition temperature and switching speed along with the magnitude of the change in electrical resistance. By determining the underlying principles of the MIT in ?’-CuxV2O5 as a prototype material within an expansive field of candidates, however, the team has identified certain design motifs and tunable chemical parameters that ultimately prove useful in the design of future neuromorphic computing materials, a major endeavor that has been seeded by the Texas A&M X-Grant Program.
“This discovery is very exciting because it provides fertile ground for the development of new design principles for tuning materials properties and also suggests exciting new approaches to researchers in the field for thinking about energy efficient electronic instabilities,” Parija said. “Devices that incorporate neuromorphic computing promise improved energy efficiency that silicon-based computing has yet to deliver, as well as performance improvements in computing challenges like pattern recognition — tasks that the human brain is especially well-equipped to tackle. The materials and mechanisms we describe in this work bring us one step closer to realizing neuromorphic computing and in turn actualizing all of the societal benefits and overall promise that comes with it.”
Can’t sleep? Prebiotics could help
Think dietary fiber is just for digestive health? Think again.
Specific fibers known as prebiotics can improve sleep and boost stress resilience by influencing gut bacteria and the potent biologically active molecules, or metabolites, they produce, new University of Colorado Boulder research shows.
The research could ultimately lead to new approaches to treating sleep problems, which affect 70 million Americans.
“The biggest takeaway here is that this type of fiber is not just there to bulk up the stool and pass through the digestive system,” said Robert Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology and lead author of the study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports. “It is feeding the bugs that live in our gut and creating a symbiotic relationship with us that has powerful effects on our brain and behavior.”
Food for our bugs
Most people are familiar with probiotics, friendly bacteria present in fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut. More recently, scientists have taken an interest in prebiotics — dietary compounds that humans cannot digest but serve as nourishment for our microbiome, or the trillions of bacteria residing within us. While not all fibers are prebiotics, many fibrous foods like leeks, artichokes, onions and certain whole grains are rich in them.
For the study, the researchers started adolescent male rats on either standard chow or chow infused with prebiotics and tracked an array of physiological measures before and after the rats were stressed.
As reported in the researchers’ previous study, those on the prebiotic diet spent more time in restorative non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep. After stress, they also spent more time in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, which is believed to be critical for recovery from stress.
While rats eating standard chow saw an unhealthy flattening of the body’s natural temperature fluctuations and a drop in healthy diversity of their gut microbiome after stress, those fed prebiotics were buffered from these effects.
The new study sheds light on how prebiotics can help bust stress.
“We know that this combination of dietary fibers helps promote stress robustness and good sleep and protects the gut microbiome from disruption. With this new study, we wanted to try to identify the signal,” said senior author and Integrative Physiology Professor Monika Fleshner, director of the Stress Physiology Laboratory.
Using a technology called mass spectrometry to analyze the rats’ fecal samples, the researchers measured metabolites, or bioactive small molecules produced by bacteria as food is broken down.
They found rats on the prebiotic diet had a substantially different “metabolome,” or make-up of metabolites. Theirs was higher in dozens of them, including fatty acids, sugars and steroids which may, via gut-brain signaling pathways, influence behavior. The rats’ metabolome also looked different after stress.
For instance, the rats on the standard chow diet saw dramatic spikes in allopregnanolone precursor and Ketone Steroid, potentially sleep-disrupting metabolites, while those on the prebiotic diet saw no such spike.
“Our results reveal novel signals that come from gut microbes that may modulate stress physiology and sleep,” said Fleshner.
In search of a better sleeping pill
While prebiotic dietary fiber is certainly healthy, it’s uncertain whether just loading up on foods rich in it can promote sleep. The rats were fed very high doses of four specific prebiotics, including: galactooligosaccharides, which are present in lentils and cabbage; polydextrose (PDX) an FDA-approved food additive often used as a sweetener; lactoferrin, found in breast milk; and milk fat globular protein, abundant in dairy products.
“You’d probably have to eat a whole lot of lentils and cabbage to see any effect,” said Thompson.
Prebiotic supplements already abound on natural food store shelves. But Fleshner said it’s too soon to say whether a supplement or drug containing such compounds would be safe and effective for everyone. Depending on what their microbial make-up is, different people might respond differently.
“These are powerful molecules with real neuroactive effects and people need to exercise some caution,” she said.
Human studies are already in the works at CU Boulder.
Ultimately, Fleshner believes what they are learning in her lab could lead to a new class of options for people who can’t sleep but don’t like taking narcotics.
“Armed with this information, we might be able to develop a targeted therapeutic that boosts the molecules that buffer against stress and tamps down the ones that seem to disrupt sleep,” she said. “It’s exciting to think about.”
The study was funded in part by Mead Johnson Nutrition, formerly an infant formula company.
Jellyfish help us understand timing of egg production
In animals, releasing eggs in a timely manner is vital to maximize the chances of successful fertilization.
However, how this process evolved and is controlled in different species is poorly understood. A new regulator of egg release has been identified in jellyfish in a new study published March 3 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Gonzalo Quiroga Artigas and Evelyn Houliston of Sorbonne University, France, and colleagues. The finding sheds light on how the complex hormonal control of sexual reproduction in animals evolved.
Clytia hemisphaerica is a small marine jellyfish, common across the world’s oceans. It is part of the phylum Cnidaria, a large and diverse group of invertebrate animals that includes jellies, anemones, corals, and sea urchins. While the cellular events of meiosis (chromosome shuffling and genome reduction) are similar in eggs of all animals including cnidarians and vertebrates, the hormonal control of the process to ensure that eggs are produced at the best time to maximize fertilization success differs considerably, and key steps in the regulation of cnidarian gametogenesis are only partially understood.
In Clytia, formation of mature eggs (which have one set of chromosomes) from immature oocytes (which have four) is triggered every morning by release of a maturation-inducing hormone (MIH) from the surrounding tissue when it is stimulated by light at dawn. Previous studies had identified this neuropeptide hormone, but its receptor was unknown. However, the authors knew that stimulation by MIH produced a rise in levels of the signaling molecule cyclic AMP within oocytes, and that such a rise is typically associated with activation of a type of receptor called a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR).
From that clue, they identified 16 GPCRs from the Clytia genome that are made in oocytes. Using a synthetic MIH neuropeptide as bait, they then identified the GPCR that it stuck to most strongly, on the grounds that it was likely to be the MIH receptor (MIHR). To confirm that this receptor was involved in MIH-stimulated signaling, they mutated the MIHR gene using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing. This mutation produced severe defects in development or release of eggs in females and of sperm in males. These effects could be mimicked by injection of an antibody that blocked part of the normal receptor, and mitigated by treatment of the mutant with an analogue of cyclic AMP, bypassing the mutant receptor and restoring the downstream signal.
The family tree of the receptor sequence showed that it is related to a large set of GPCRs in other cnidarians, and also to a set of peptide hormone receptors in vertebrates . These include receptors for hormones that regulate both sexual reproduction and feeding, including neuropeptide Y and gonadotrophin inhibitory hormone in humans.
“The discovery of this receptor will help us understand the critical process that transforms animal oocytes into eggs,” Houliston said, “and may help reveal important steps in the evolution of the hormone systems that regulate and link sexual reproduction to nutrition in animals.”
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Health24.com | Late bedtimes in preschool years could bring weight gain
Little ones who stay up late may have a higher risk of becoming overweight by the time they are school-age, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that young children who routinely got to sleep after 9pm tended to gain more body fat between the ages of two and six. Compared with kids who had earlier bedtimes, they had bigger increases in both waist size and body mass index (BMI) – an estimate of body fat based on height and weight.
The findings do not prove that later bedtimes cause excess weight gain, said Dr Nicole Glaser, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study, which was published online in Pediatrics.
But the report adds to evidence linking sleep habits to kids’ weight, according to Glaser, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, Davis.
Causality difficult to establish
Specifically, studies have found higher rates of obesity among kids who either get too little sleep or have trouble falling or staying asleep.
“At this point, I think it’s clear that there is a relationship between [sleep quality and obesity risk],” Glaser said. “The big question is whether the relationship is a causal one.”
Dr Claude Marcus, senior researcher on the study, agreed. “The causality is difficult to establish,” he said.
Kids’ sleep habits do not exist in a vacuum, and it’s possible that other factors cause both late bedtimes and greater weight gain, said Marcus, a professor of paediatrics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
For example, it’s possible that kids who stay up late are eating more at night, or that their parents put fewer limits on them in general, he said.
Marcus also pointed to stress, which could feed both poor sleep and overeating.
Obesity prevention project
Then there is what’s happening in the brain. Glaser said research shows that several brain areas that regulate the sleep-wake cycle also help govern appetite – and some of the same hormones and brain chemicals are involved.
It’s “certainly possible,” she said, that poorer sleep alters young children’s metabolism – or behaviour, like physical activity during the day.
But, Glaser added, “It’s equally possible that the association between sleep patterns and obesity simply reflects the fact that similar brain centres are involved in modulating both.”
The findings are based on 107 young children who were part of an obesity prevention project. Sixty-four had overweight or obese parents, so they were considered at high risk for excessive weight gain.
Between the ages of two and six, kids’ sleep habits were recorded for one week each year, with the help of a wrist device that monitors activity.
On average, the study found, children who routinely went to bed after 9pm showed somewhat greater gains in BMI and waist size over the years. The link was independent of total time asleep, and it remained even after the researchers accounted for factors like kids’ exercise habits and “screen time”, and parents’ education levels.
Earlier bedtime a good idea
The connection was stronger among children whose parents were obese. Their waist size grew by an average of 3.5cm more, compared to kids with earlier bedtimes and average-weight parents, the findings showed.
The researchers said that might mean late bedtimes made it more likely that high-risk kids would gain extra weight. Or late bedtimes may simply be part of a general lifestyle that promotes obesity.
But while the cause-and-effect question remains unanswered, the message for parents may still be straightforward.
“An earlier bedtime for kids is absolutely a good idea,” Glaser said. Whether that promotes a healthier weight or not, she noted, there are other benefits, including well-rested kids and parents.
Good sleeping habits
“Parents can have some much needed quiet time and time together to recharge the batteries, so they can have more energy for their kids the next day,” she said.
Marcus said sleep should be seen as an important element of a healthy lifestyle, along with diet and exercise.
“A well-organised life with good sleeping habits may be of importance, whether it is directly affecting weight or if it is a marker of living habits in general,” he said.
Kids, like adults, do vary in how much sleep they need, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In general, the group recommends toddlers get 11 to 14 hours of sleep each day (naps included), while three- to five-year-olds should get 10 to 13 hours.
READ | How do you help when your child’s battling with a weight problem?
READ | Kids raised by grandparents more likely to pile on the kilos
READ | How much does your kid weigh? Chances are, you’re underestimating
Image credit: iStock
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Reducing Mental Effort – Part 2
We continue the series on reducing mental effort.
Distracting thoughts are a major source of wasted mental energy, so in this part we’ll cover a few ways to reduce internal distractions.
Empty your head
One reason we dwell on certain thoughts is that we’re trying to remember certain to-dos, ideas, and items that require deeper consideration. Refreshing these items in our minds sucks up extra neural energy and doesn’t necessarily move much towards completion.
If your brain is using its working memory to continually bring up distracting thoughts, you can often free up extra processing power by allowing your brain to forgot. This helps you feel less mentally and emotionally fatigued as well.
A simple practice for when your mind feels cluttered and distracted is to do a brain dump. Write down every distracting thought you can think of, either on paper or one of your devices. Get the info out of your head, and externalize it somewhere.
Write down incomplete projects and unfinished items. Write down ideas that keep popping into your mind. Write down any worries or concerns. Write down anything you’ve been trying not to forget. Whatever your brain has been nagging you about, dump it onto paper or a screen.
Really squeeze your brain to get this info out, even if you have to do a few sessions over a few days.
This practice allows your brain to relax more, knowing that it can reference those details somewhere else instead of having to refresh the info internally. Even if your brain dump list is in random order and looks chaotic, it’s still a big step forward. Your brain can let go of having to refresh the info as often, which means less neural energy wasted and more neural energy available for you to use productively.
You may find this experience a bit overwhelming at first, especially if you see that you’ve been stuffing way too much into your working memory. When it all drains onto the page or the screen, you may see that it’s a lot, perhaps more than you can realistically deal with. But you may also discover that your mind feels more peaceful and relaxed afterwards. It’s more restful for the mind when it knows that it doesn’t have to keep refreshing all of this info internally.
Organize your tasks and projects
Another step is to process and prioritize some of that info you’ve just dumped from your brain. Turn those to-dos into tasks and projects, and organize them into a list or a system, so you can track them more intelligently.
There are many tools to choose from that can help you do this. I recommend testing several of them before you choose.
My current favorite tool for keeping track of tasks and projects is Nozbe. Nozbe comes with a free 30-day trial if you want to check it out. I’ve been using it since June 2019 and appreciate the clean, straightforward interface. It’s easy to learn and fast to use, especially for individuals and small teams. I especially like that I can create reusable templates with it. It’s good at hiding complexity, so the screen layout feels restful to me.
Here’s a screen shot of my current Nozbe templates. Each template is a basically a saved to-do list that I can reuse to spawn a new project whenever I want.
Since I have some of trips coming up this year, I could use the “Plan & book next trip” template to add a few projects with these names: Plan Portland trip, Plan Northern Ireland trip, Plan Milwaukee/Chicago trip, and Plan Costa Rica trip. Each project will be pre-filled with the to-do items from the template. And then I can individually customize each project with trip-specific actions.
Using project templates frees up mental energy because I don’t have to remember common action steps for the types of projects I do repeatedly. A new course launch, for instance, has hundreds of action steps, and it’s more restful for my brain if I capture all of those steps into a system. Then I can focus on doing the action steps in the proper order when I’m in the midst of the launch, trusting that the whole plan is solid and that I haven’t forgotten anything important. My brain doesn’t have to waste energy trying not to forget something. All of the details are captured in the system.
I’ve also used Asana for about a year (mid-2018 to mid-2019), but I didn’t like their web-based interface as much, and to be honest, Asana simply annoyed me into looking for a competing option. I started with their free version and soon upgraded to their premium version. I liked the premium version, which provided everything I could want and more. But after a while, their interface started pestering me to upgrade again to a business account, which had features that were overkill and unnecessary for the size of my team. I found this distracting and counter-productive, so when someone told me about Nozbe, I gave it a try, liked it better (especially the distraction-free interface), and quickly switched.
I probably would have stuck with Asana for years if they’d been satisfied to simply let me enjoy the benefits of the premium version instead of pushing for more. I absolutely don’t want a productivity app injecting extra distractions into their interface. That just seems like a ridiculous design choice. What sense does it make to use a productivity tool that increases mental load with extra annoyances?
Your choice of tools is your choice. The best system for you is the one you’ll actually use. Take the time to find something you like, and don’t just go with what’s popular or trendy. I often find that the most popular tools that I hear people buzzing about aren’t a good fit for me – I’m often disappointed when I actually test them. In general I tend to find that the popularity of a tool tends to have more to do with its marketing than with its actual utility. So don’t beat yourself up if you’ve fallen into the trap of acquiring tools that you don’t actually use. Keep looking to find the ones you will use.
A good system should be quick and efficient to use. It should feel peaceful and relaxing. If you feel stressed when using it or if you feel you must push and discipline yourself to use it regularly, dump it. If simple pen and paper would feel better to you, go with that. Don’t overburden your mind with even more complexity when you’re trying to simplify and reduce mental clutter.
I hope you’re enjoying this series so far. We’ll continue with Part 3 tomorrow.
Health24.com | How years of endurance exercise could change the heart’s structure
Triathlons, rowing, mountaineering, cross-country skiing: Tough exercise like this done over decades appears to reshape the heart, new research shows.
In older adults, long-term endurance exercise seems tied to an enlargement of the aorta – the large artery that carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the rest of the body. But whether that change is beneficial or harmful remains unclear, US researchers said.
It’s long been known that endurance athletes have larger hearts on average than the general population, and that heart enlargement is a healthy adaptation to exercise, the study authors noted.
But whether that’s true for the aorta isn’t clear.
Young, competitive athletes
“The prevailing wisdom is that the aorta is a relatively stable structure with minimal plasticity,” said study co-author Dr Aaron Baggish, an investigator at the cardiovascular performance programme at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in Boston.
“But this concept comes from studies done almost exclusively on young competitive athletes – typically under 25 years of age,” he added in a hospital news release.
The study began after Dr Timothy Churchill, a sports cardiology fellow at MGH, noticed that a high number of older athletes were coming in for an evaluation of an enlarged aorta. Churchill wanted to determine just how common the condition was in these types of patients.
So, Baggish, Churchill and colleagues evaluated the aortas of 442 veteran endurance athletes, aged 50 to 75. All were taking part in athletic competitions across the United States.
“We set up study sites at several large-scale rowing and running events that attract high-caliber masters athletes, and did cardiac ultrasounds at the race venues,” Churchill said.
A high percentage of the athletes – 20% to 25% – had aortas that were larger than the upper limit of what’s typical in the general population.
Unresolved complications
Baggish said, “It was proof of concept for us because while we’d been seeing it in the clinic for a long time, it had never been studied in an isolated fashion.”
But whether an enlarged aorta in older endurance athletes is healthy or unhealthy is unclear, the researchers said.
Churchill explained that non-athletes with a dilated aorta are at increased risk for a leak or rupture, and death rates for patients with sudden problems involving the aorta are as high as 50%.
“We want to know whether this enlargement means the same thing in an athlete as in a non-athlete,” Churchill said.
According to Baggish, “The findings from the study are pushing us to do more science, as there are two viable yet unresolved implications of our work. The first option is that aortic enlargement among master athletes is a benign adaptation and another feature of the so-called athlete’s heart, where big is good. The alternative is that being a lifelong exerciser may cause dilation of the aorta with the [same] sort of attendant risk seen in non-athletes.”
The researchers plan to follow the athletes in this study for four to five years.
“If we find that big aortas are a benign adaptation, doctors can be reassured when they see it and not put patients through unnecessary testing and surgery. If we find that they really are an indicator of risk, then we have to think about screening people who fit this bill,” Baggish said.
Cardiac screening
Two cardiologists unconnected to the study agreed that the report raises interesting questions.
The findings “may lead cardiologists to more closely surveil these athletes for aortic dilation,” said Dr Benjamin Hirsh. He directs preventive cardiology at Northwell Health’s Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital, in Manhasset, New York. But he agreed that the jury is still out on whether the dilation poses a health threat.
Dr Satjit Bhusri is a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He said that “the major take-away is that all performance athletes should obtain cardiac screening for various heart conditions that are unique to them, including a physical exam for murmurs, and electrocardiogram, and an echocardiogram. Additional testing such as cardiopulmonary stress testing may also be beneficial in the screening process.”
The study from the team at MGH was published online in JAMA Cardiology.
READ | Only endurance exercise slows down ageing
READ | Human endurance may have its limits, and our digestive capability could be the reason
READ | Exercise and heart disease
Image credit: iStock
Health24.com | What is the difference between Covid-19 and coronavirus?
What is coronavirus?
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines coronaviruses as a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases.
The name comes from the Latin word “corona”, which means “crown” or “halo”, and refers to the shape of the virus particle when viewed under a microscope.
“Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people,” the WHO says.
Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), kidney failure and even death, it adds.
But what is this Covid-19 being referred to everywhere?
It’s the disease caused by a “novel coronavirus” which originated in Wuhan, China.
On February 11 the WHO named the disease Covid-19 – short for Coronavirus Disease.
According to the WHO, the responsibility for naming diseases falls with the organisation itself and “are named to enable discussion on disease prevention, spread, transmissibility, severity and treatment”.
What could cause confusion is that viruses and the diseases they cause often have different names. More familiar examples of this would be HIV – the virus, which causes the disease Aids, and rubeola – the virus, that causes measles.
So what is the name of this new coronavirus?
On the same day that the disease was named, the “novel coronavirus” was given a name, by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV).
According to the WHO, “there are different processes, and purposes, for naming viruses and diseases.
“Viruses are named based on their genetic structure to facilitate the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines and medicines.”
They add that virologists and the wider scientific community do this work, so viruses are named by the ICTV.
The virus was named “severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2” – or SARS-CoV-2.
The WHO stresses that while the SARS CoV-2 and SARS-Cov (the major outbreak in 2003) are genetically related, they are different.
So why are we not calling the virus by its name SARS-CoV-2?
The WHO says that “from a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS can have unintended consequences in terms of creating unnecessary fear for some populations, especially in Asia which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003”.
It says it refers to the virus carefully as “the virus responsible for Covid-19” or “the Covid-19 virus” in communications.
But, it stresses, that these terms are not meant to replace the official name.
READ | Scientists make coronavirus breakthrough which may help doctors diagnose the virus earlier
READ | Best first-line treatment for coronavirus might be existing drugs
Image credit: Getty Images
Women with endometriosis ‘finally being believed’
MPs will hear the experiences of women with endometriosis as part of an inquiry into the condition.
Engineers zap and unstick underwater smart glue
With a small zap of electricity, biomedical engineers at Michigan Technological University take an underwater smart glue prototype from sticky to not in seven seconds.
Turning adhesion on and off is what makes a glue smart. It’s one thing to do this in the open air and quite another under water. Inspired by nature, catechols are synthetic compounds that mimic the wet-but-still-sticky proteins secreted by mussels and offer promise for smart adhesives that work in water. The technology could help with underwater glue, wound dressings, prosthetic attachments or even making car parts and in other manufacturing.
Bruce Lee, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan Tech, is a part of the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) and showed how to use pH to make smart underwater adhesives. Along with doctoral researcher Saleh Akram Bhuiyan, Lee developed a new method using an electrical current to turn off the adhesion of a catechol-containing material.
The team’s findings came out in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and detailed the stickiest part of the process — creating a repeatable contact mechanics test that can measure adhesion before and after a jolt of electricity.
“A lot of people have been using catechol to mimic mussels and their adhesive proteins, but applying electricity to deactivate it is new,” Lee said. “It’s more convenient than using pH like what we were using before and it should be easier to integrate with electronic devices, which means detaching could be automated and could be as simple as pushing a button.”
One day catechol adhesives may help attach equipment to the hulls of submarines but testing prototypes in scuba gear isn’t how new tech gets created. Instead, Lee and Bhuiyan need to control a suite of variables in a small lab space. Simple as it sounds, running a current through a material and checking its stickiness is actually quite difficult to do over and over again.
Bhuiyan developed a setup that uses a titanium sphere and a platinum wire electrode to apply electrical stimulation to the adhesive that is in contact with the sphere in the presence of salty water. This method makes it easy to control the voltage applied through the wire, glue and sphere as well as how salty the water is around them. The amount of time the current runs is also important. With more time, voltage and salt, the more the catechol adhesives gets oxidized and the less adhesive it becomes. With strong enough voltage, the glue detaches in only seven seconds.
“The novelty is application of the electricity and the short amount of time it takes to detach,” Bhuiyan said. “What I find most unusual about the experiment is the color change. It starts white and when I apply the electricity and the material is deactivated, it oxidizes and turns a red color — and we really like to see that red color.”
The next step in the research will be taking that red and trying to turn it back into white. The hallmark of a smart glue is not only deactivating adhesion, but turning it back on. Lee and doctoral graduate Ameya Narkar were able to accomplish this feat by playing with pH, which earned them the Bhakta Rath Research Award, and Bhuiyan hopes to apply the lessons from that research to using electrical current.
From painless bandages to underwater glue, from automotive gear to prosthetic limbs, catechol-containing adhesives are versatile and promising materials.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Michigan Technological University. Original written by Allison Mills. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
