Health24.com | More proof high-fibre diets help prevent cancers and heart disease

Posted on 16/02/2019 by Boris Clair

A large, new analysis helps confirm that eating lots of grains, vegetables and fruit lowers your risk of dying early from cancer or heart disease.

When compared with those who consume very little fibre, people at the high end of the fibre-eating spectrum saw their risk for dying from heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and/or colon cancer plummet by 16 to 24%, investigators reported.

A range of conditions

The team also concluded that more is definitely more: For every additional 8g of dietary fibre a person consumes, the risk for each of those illnesses was found to fall by another 5 to 27%.

“The health benefits of fibre are supported by over 100 years of research into its chemistry, physical properties, physiology and effects on metabolism,” said study author Andrew Reynolds, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

“What really surprised us was the range of conditions that higher intakes of dietary fibre seemed to improve,” Reynolds added. “Heart disease, type 2 diabetes and [colon] cancers are some of the most detrimental diseases of our time.”

The conclusions follow a deep-dive into the results of 185 observational studies conducted over the last four decades, alongside the findings of another 58 clinical trials involving more than 4 600 participants.

Reynolds and his colleagues reported their work, which was commissioned by the World Health Organization, in the online edition of The Lancet.

Greater protection against premature death

The research team noted that worldwide most people eat less than 20g of fibre each day, a figure that dips to just 15g per day among Americans. For examples of foods: 1 slice of whole wheat bread has 2g of fibre; 1 cup of boiled broccoli has 5g; 1 medium orange has 3g, and 1 cup of cooked black beans has 15g.

But investigators found that taking in 25 to 29g of dietary fibre per day is just an “adequate” starting point, with greater protection against premature death accruing more heartily to those who routinely consume even greater amounts of fibre.

For example, every additional 15g bump in daily whole grain intake was found to curtail an individual’s overall risk of early death – as well as their risk of early death from heart disease – by between 2 and 19%.

What’s more, the researchers found little evidence that eating more dietary fibre was in any way risky.

And even for those whose diets have for years largely sidestepped fibre, Reynolds suggested it’s never too late to start embracing fibre’s benefits.

“We saw this from the trials where participants were asked to increase their fibre intakes,” he said. “When considering all the trials of increasing fibre intakes, those participants that did reduced both their body weight and the total cholesterol in their blood, two important predictors of disease.”

A change in dietary recommendations

That thought was seconded by Dr Gerald Bernstein, programme coordinator for the Friedman Diabetes Institute at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“I do not think there is a time to start that is not beneficial,” he said. “Of course, combined with some exercise and calorie control the benefits become exponential.”

As to the New Zealand study results, Bernstein observed that “none of this is surprising.” But he suggested that the findings “should lead to a change in dietary recommendations.”

That thought was seconded by Lona Sandon, programme director and associate professor in the department of clinical nutrition for the school of health professions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

“This is just one more that supports and further solidifies the recommendations registered dietitian nutritionists have been making for years,” said Sandon.

“It’s never too late to start on a healthy diet,” she said. “Sure, you may have missed out on some health prevention years and therefore your risk will not be as low as someone who has been eating whole grains all their life. But you have nothing to lose by giving a healthy diet a try.”

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Health24.com | Train like a beast with the bodyweight system called Animal Flow

Posted on 16/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Forget caveman workouts: you can build functional, flexible muscle and primal fitness with bodyweight system Animal Flow.

If you’re at all sceptical about moves with names like “travelling ape”, just try it before you scoff. “It’s surprising how difficult this stuff is,” says Mike Fitch, Animal Flow creator, PT and all-round bodyweight training don. “You take these really big, strong guys, get them on the floor and they struggle – it’s pretty humbling for them.” If you haven’t heard of the latest primal fitness trend to come out of the US, Animal Flow is a hybrid that takes in gymnastics, parkour, capoeira, and even breakdancing. What makes it so hard is also what makes it so effective. “Using all of your limbs at the same time through multiple planes of motion, as they were intended, has a carry-over to power, strength, endurance and fat loss. Even if you simply want to improve your ability to lift weights, this will do it.”

Not that you’ll want to: Fitch hasn’t lifted anything other than his own body for years, having become disillusioned with getting “jacked” (not to mention injured). “I’ve never looked or felt better. You never forget your first handstand push-up, your first flag. These are benchmarks as a bodyweight athlete – and as a human being.” Consider this your induction into the jungle gym.

Try the Animal Flow workout

Depending on how hard you want to work, you can use Animal Flow as a high-intensity workout, dynamic warm-up or active recovery. You can also slot individual moves into other circuits to see huge improvements in strength, not to mention shoulder and arm muscle.

Go with the flow: Animal Flow moves are used in seamless combos, so you’re constantly moving and working. Below is an example routine, but once you’ve mastered it you can build your own or freestyle.

Forward-travelling beast (5 steps each side)
Side kickthrough (5 each side)
Front step (5 each side)
Lateral-travelling ape (5 each side)
Forward-travelling crab (5 steps each side)
Underswitch (4 full rounds each way)

^{Originally published on} ^{menshealth.com}

^{Image credit: iStock}

Short bursts of intense exercise ‘better for weight loss’

Posted on 16/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Researchers suggest bursts of high intensity workouts, like sprinting, are more effective for weight loss.

Graphene-based wearables for health monitoring, food inspection and night vision

Posted on 16/02/2019 by Boris Clair

The first of ICFO’s devices on display will allow customers to monitor their level of exposure to sunlight through a UV sensor. Designed as a flexible, transparent and disposable patch, it connects to a mobile device and alerts the user once he or she has reached a defined threshold of sun exposure.

Using the same core technology as the UV patch, ICFO’s fitness band is being developed to measure heart rate, hydration, oxygen saturation, breathing rate and temperature, while monitoring the user when he or she is exercising, for example. However, the fitness band does more than simply measure physical activity.

Consider the following scenario. A person is trekking in the remote amazon jungle with limited access to water. By measuring the skin hydration of their body with ICFO’s fitness band, the user can optimize water intake, preventing any sort of dehydration. Similarly, an explorer hiking to the peak of mount Everest could use the band to accurately monitor oxygen saturation in blood. The high altitude can severely effect oxygen saturation in the body. Using the band, the hiker could monitor these levels and emit a warning if oxygen saturation in the blood decreases drastically below a certain level.

In addition to these prototypes being exhibited at MWC 2019, ICFO will also showcase two other light-based graphene technologies. These include the world’s smallest single pixel spectrometer and a graphene-enabled hyperspectral image sensor, both with broadband capabilities, beyond to what was once perceived possible without the use of costly and bulky photodetection systems.

By enabling spectroscopy in such small dimensions, consumers could now be equipped with tools that previously were only available to highly specialised laboratories. From the detection of counterfeit drugs to the identification of harmful substances within a product that we use or food that we eat, compact, low-cost spectrometers could become an indispensable accessory of our everyday life.

“Built into a smart phone camera, the graphene-based camera sensor allows phones to see more than what’s visible to the human eye,” comments Frank Koppens, group leader at Graphene Flagship partner ICFO, and Chair of the Graphene Flagship MWC Committee. “Made up of hundreds of thousands of photodetectors, this incredibly small sensor is highly sensitive to UV and infrared light.”

“This technology would allow users in the supermarket to hold the camera to fruit and infer which is the freshest piece. Or, in a more extreme example, the camera could be used for driving in dangerously dense fog by providing augmented outlines of surrounding vehicles on the windscreen.”

To find out more about these technologies and to meet the team of experts that have developed these applications, visit the Graphene Pavilion at MWC in NEXTech Hall 8.0 Stand 8.0K31 on February 25-28.

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Hope for fighting disease known as Ebola of frogs

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Despite widespread infection, some frog populations are surviving a deadly disease that is the equivalent of humankind’s Ebola virus. The reason — genetic diversity.

That’s the finding of a new study published this week in the journal Immunogenetics. Anna Savage, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Central Florida, is the lead author of the study.

The research is important because frogs are facing what may be a mass extinction as a result of disease, Savage says.

“If you have more genetic variation, you have more potential to respond and adapt to anything,” Savage says.

However, protecting frog habitats from destruction and pollution is critical, she says.

“Don’t destroy habitats, maintain large population sizes — these simple things are the best actions to implement, given whatever limited information we have, to give populations the chance to rebound,” she says.

The virus Savage and her colleagues studied is called Ranavirus. It affects cold-blooded animals, such as amphibians, reptiles and fish. It causes a tadpole’s internal organs to fill with blood and explode, much like the Ebola virus does in humans. It is one of the top two pathogens causing worldwide amphibian decline.

Researchers suspect that Ranavirus and other similar pathogens have long been in the environment, but they are exploring why the pathogens are now causing so many disease outbreaks.

“Certainly, the rise of these infectious pathogens coincides with the period when global temperatures started to significantly increase,” she says. “There are a lot of biologists working on studies trying to tease apart the relationship between climate and amphibian health and how that might translate to some of these global disease problems.”

It is important to study frogs because of the roles they play, Savage says. They help control diseases by eating insects that can infect humans and also are an essential part of the food chain.

“If we lost them, there would be this major energetic crisis where we wouldn’t have a food source for many other animals that depend on them to survive,” Savage says.

In the study, researchers collected tail clippings from tadpoles in 17 randomly selected ponds in Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland over the course of two years. Tail clipping is a minimally invasive and nonlethal method for tissue collection. The clippings were used to analyze and determine the presence and severity of Ranavirus in the tadpoles. The team also checked for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, which can help a tadpole’s immune system fight off disease.

They found Ranavirus infection in 26 percent of the 381 tadpoles they sampled and that the presence of a particular combination of MHC genes was associated with decreased severity of the virus.

“There was evidence that this combination of immune genes was helping those individuals limit how bad the viral infection can get,” she says. “To our knowledge this is the first study that shows that this group of immune genes is actually important for Ranavirus susceptibility.”

The findings could have implications for frog species in Florida, as Ranavirus is a disease that threatens frogs in the state, including the American bullfrog, the southern leopard frog and the endangered Gopher frog.

“These immune genes aren’t completely different across different species,” she says. “We actually see a lot of the same variants shared at the level of the entire genus or even the whole family. So, some of the work we’ve done is showing that we’re finding the same genetic variants in wood frogs as in other frogs, including species in Florida.”

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Health24.com | Everything you should know before trying a plant-based diet

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Plant-based diets have been around forever, but the term is gaining serious traction in 2019. Between #plantbased sweet potato nachos piled with colourful veggies taking over Instagram and Beyoncé offering up free concert tickets to fans who adopt more plant-focused habits, there’s never been a more popular time to move toward plant-based eating.

Plant-based isn’t the same as vegan

Obviously, a plant-based diet means prioritising plant foods. But there’s plenty of nuance (and individual flexibility) when it comes to plant-based eating.

“A plant-based diet means eating primarily whole plant foods rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre, antioxidants, and healthy fats,” says Alexis Joseph, a registered dietitian, who writes the popular Hummusapien blog. In other words, the majority of your diet comes from minimally processed fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

Veganism is one form of a plant-based diet, but it isn’t the only one. While a vegan diet cuts out all animal products, a plant-based diet isn’t so restrictive. (On the flipside, not all vegan foods are inherently plant-based: an egg-free brownie may be vegan, but if it’s packed with processed ingredients, it’s not quite a plant-based treat.)

“I consider myself plant-based because most of the foods I eat are plant-based,” says Joseph. “That said, I also eat yogurt, cheese, eggs, and fish when I feel like it, and that’s okay!”

“Think about plant-based eating as a template that encourages more plant foods, instead of as a restrictive diet that makes things off-limits,” says Dr David Levitsky, professor of nutrition and psychology at Cornell University.

For many people, this can be a healthier approach. “I used to feel like a fraud when I craved foods that weren’t vegan, and looking back, that was disordered behaviour,” says Joseph. “I now honour my cravings and fuel myself accordingly, and that looks different every day.”

People choose to eat plant-based foods for a number of reasons

First of all, there are plenty of health benefits. “A plant-based diet is centred around vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and pulses,” says Amy Gorin, registered dietitian and owner of Amy Gorin Nutrition in the New York City area. Basically, all foods filled with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fibre.

Joseph echoes this sentiment. “Plant foods are packed with fibre and phytonutrients that support immunity, combat inflammation, and feed the healthy bacteria in your gut,” she says.

Swapping plant protein for animal protein has benefits, too. “Regularly consuming foods high in plant protein versus animal protein can help prevent and reverse a slew of chronic conditions, including diabetes and heart disease,” says Joseph, who adds that the nutrients in plants help support healthy cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.

Another major reason people choose a plant-based eating style? Cutting back on animal products has significant environmental benefits. ”Eating more plant foods reduces your carbon footprint since livestock production is responsible for a good portion of global greenhouse gas emissions,” says Joseph. Plus, “twenty servings of vegetables have fewer greenhouse emissions than one serving of meat, with beef and lamb having the highest emissions,” she says.

Others opt for a plant-based diet to help with weight loss, which could work for you if you keep your calories in check. Plant foods are high in filling fibre and low in calorie-dense saturated fats. But as Levitsky points out, the only way to lose weight is to consume fewer calories than you burn, often referred to as a calorie deficit.

Yes, it’s possible to get enough nutrients from plants

One common criticism of primarily plant-based diets is that it’s tough to get adequate nutrients – especially protein and omega-3s. Well, it’s totally doable. “You may just need to think outside of the box at times,” says Gorin.

To maximise your protein, she recommends adding nutritional yeast to pasta in place of grated cheese, blending white beans or chickpeas into smoothies, and eating nuts and nut butters on their own or in various sweet and savoury recipes. A wide scope is important here since plants contain incomplete proteins (while animal products contain complete proteins). Eating plant-based protein from several different sources will help ensure you’re getting all the amino acids you need to support healthy body functions.

Joseph says not to stress too much about getting enough protein, though. “It’s important to note that protein isn’t just found in meat,” she says.

“A whole food, plant based-diet that’s well balanced with beans, legumes, whole grains, fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds can easily provide your recommended daily allowance of nutrients like calcium and protein.”

Just be sure you’re eating plenty of these whole foods, as opposed to relying on processed foods for your calories.

Eat a wide mix

Another thing to keep in mind if you’re eating a plant-based diet? Iron. “Your body absorbs haeme iron, the type of iron found in animal products, more easily than it does plant-based iron like the iron found in spinach and tomato,” says Gorin. To aid the absorption of plant-based iron, she suggests pairing it with a source of vitamin C. Example: “Squeeze some lemon juice onto a green spinach salad.”

Eating a wide mix of plant-based foods is another simple way to help make sure you’re getting the nutrients you need. “Deficiencies rarely occur when you eat a variety of plants,” says Levitsky.

Gorin adds that taking supplements can be helpful on a plant-based diet.

“You may want to consider a vitamin B12 supplement since many sources of this vitamin are animal-based. You may also want to consider an EPA/DHA omega-3 supplement. These omega-3s would typically come from fatty fish, but vegan algae-based supplements exist. I take these myself!”

But a plant-based diet isn’t always a healthy choice

Plant-based eating is a safe and healthy choice for the majority of people, but you should always talk with your doctor or registered dietitian before making big changes to your diet.

In Joseph’s experience, she notes that “anyone with a history of eating disorder or disordered eating shouldn’t follow a diet that eliminates food groups, as a plant-based diet in the wrong hands can be abused as another restriction diet”.

If you fall into this category, you can experiment with plant-based recipes, but should probably steer clear of any strict food rules, restrictions, or labels on your eating habits.

If you’re new to plant-based eating, take things one step at a time

“I always recommend starting small,” says Joseph. “Overturning your entire diet in a day is overwhelming and lessens the likelihood of you sticking with it. Instead of jumping to extremes, pick two small changes to implement each week.” She suggests swapping cow’s milk for an unsweetened dairy-free milk as a first step.

And, remember that a plant-based diet doesn’t mean you can never eat animal products. “Think about how you can enhance your diet without focusing so much on taking things away,” says Joseph. “Research suggests that following a flexitarian diet (increasing plant-based foods and reducing but not eliminating animal foods) yields similar health benefits like reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes.”

The Meatless Monday campaign is popular for a reason. Cutting out meat (and all animal products, if you choose) is relatively easy for one day of the week. According to Joseph, this alone can have a profound impact on the environment – and on your overall health.

Bottom line: Think of plant-based eating as a template that encourages more whole plant foods, instead of as a restrictive diet that makes things off limits.

^{This article was originally published on}^{www.womenshealthmag,com}

^{Image credit: iStock}

Tidal tails: The beginning of the end of an open star cluster

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

In the course of their life, open star clusters continuously lose stars to their surroundings. The resulting swath of tidal tails provides a glimpse into the evolution and dissolution of a star cluster. Thus far only tidal tails of massive globular clusters and dwarf galaxies have been discovered in the Milky Way system. In open clusters, this phenomenon existed only in theory. Researchers at Heidelberg University have now finally verified the existence of such a tidal tail in the star cluster closest to the Sun, the Hyades. An analysis of measurements from the Gaia satellite led to the discovery.

Open star clusters are collections of approximately 100 to a few thousand stars that emerge almost simultaneously from a collapsing gas cloud and move through space at about the same speed. Owing to a number of influences, however, they do begin to disperse after a few hundred million years. Among the factors working against the gravitationally bound stars is the tidal force of a galaxy, which pulls the stars out of the cluster. Tidal tails then form during the movement of the star cluster through the Milky Way. It is the beginning of the end of an open star cluster.

Together with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, scientists from the Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University (ZAH) have detected this phenomenon for the first time in the Hyades, one of the older and best-studied open star clusters in the Milky Way system. They studied the data published in April 2018 from the Gaia satellite, which has been systematically mapping the heavens for five years. Rather than taking direct photographs, Gaia measures the stars’ motion and position.

From this data, the Heidelberg astronomers identified two tidal tails of the Hyades with a total of approximately 500 stars extending up to 650 light-years from the cluster. Dr Siegfried Röser of the Königstuhl State Observatory of the ZAH explains that one of the tails precedes the open star cluster and the other follows it. “Our discovery shows that it is possible to trace the trajectories of individual stars of the Milky Way back to their point of origin in a star cluster,” states Dr Röser. The astronomer believes that this marks the beginning of many significant discoveries in galactic astronomy. Apart from the Heidelberg astronomers, a team of researchers from Vienna also discovered the tidal tails of the Hyades.

The research was conducted under the auspices of The Milky Way System Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 881) at Heidelberg University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation.

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Bioengineers create ultrasmall, light-activated electrode for neural stimulation

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Neural stimulation is a developing technology that has beneficial therapeutic effects in neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. While many advancements have been made, the implanted devices deteriorate over time and cause scarring in neural tissue. In a recently published paper, the University of Pittsburgh’s Takashi D. Y. Kozai detailed a less invasive method of stimulation that would use an untethered ultrasmall electrode activated by light, a technique that may mitigate damage done by current methods.

“Typically with neural stimulation, in order to maintain the connection between mind and machine, there is a transcutaneous cable from the implanted electrode inside of the brain to a controller outside of the body,” said Kozai, an assistant professor of bioengineering in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. “Movement of the brain or this tether leads to inflammation, scarring, and other negative side effects. We hope to reduce some of the damage by replacing this large cable with long wavelength light and an ultrasmall, untethered electrode.”

Kaylene Stocking, a senior bioengineering and computer engineering student, was first author on the paper titled, “Intracortical neural stimulation with untethered, ultrasmall carbon fiber electrodes mediated by the photoelectric effect.” She works with Kozai’s group — the Bionic Lab — to investigate how researchers can improve the longevity of neural implant technology. This work was done in collaboration with Alberto Vasquez, research associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at Pitt.

The photoelectric effect is when a particle of light, or a photon, hits an object and causes a local change in the electrical potential. Kozai’s group discovered its advantages while performing other imaging research. Based on Einstein’s 1905 publication on this effect, they expected to see electrical photocurrents only at ultraviolet wavelengths (high energy photons), but they experienced something different.

“When the photoelectric effect contaminated our electrophysiological recording while imaging with a near-infrared laser (low energy photons), we were a little surprised,” explained Kozai. “It turned out that the original equation had to be modified in order to explain this outcome. We tried numerous strategies to eliminate this photoelectric artifact but were unsuccessful in each attempt, so we turned the ‘bug’ into a ‘feature.'”

“Our group decided to use this feature of the photoelectric effect to our advantage in neural stimulation,” said Stocking. “We used the change in electrical potential with a near-infrared laser to activate an untethered electrode in the brain.”

The lab created a carbon fiber implant that is 7-8 microns in diameter, or roughly the size of a neuron (17-27 microns), and Stocking simulated their method on a phantom brain using a two-photon microscope. She measured the properties and analyzed the effects to see if the electrical potential from the photoelectric effect stimulated the cells in a way similar to traditional neural stimulation.

“We discovered that photostimulation is effective,” said Stocking. “Temperature increases were not significant, which lowers the chance of heat damage, and activated cells were closer to the electrode than in electrical stimulation under similar conditions, which indicates increased spatial precision.”

“What we didn’t expect to see was that this photoelectric method of stimulation allows us to stimulate a different and more discrete population of neurons than could be achieved with electrical stimulation.” said Kozai, “This gives researchers another tool in their toolbox to explore neural circuits in the nervous system.

“We’ve had numerous critics who did not have faith in the mathematical modifications that were made to Einstein’s original photoelectric equation, but we believed in the approach and even filed a patent application” (patent pending:US20170326381A1), said Kozai. “This is a testament to Kaylene’s hard work and diligence to take a theory and turn it into a well-controlled validation of the technology.”

Kozai’s group is currently looking further into other opportunities to advance this technology, including reaching deeper tissue and wireless drug delivery.

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A nearby river of stars

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Astronomy & Astrophysics publishes the work of researchers from the University of Vienna, who have found a river of stars, a stellar stream in astronomical parlance, covering most of the southern sky. The stream is relatively nearby and contains at least 4000 stars that have been moving together in space since they formed, about 1 billion years ago. Due to its proximity to Earth, this stream is a perfect workbench on which to test the disruption of clusters, measure the gravitational field of the Milky Way, and learn about coeval extrasolar planet populations with upcoming planet-finding missions. For their search, the authors used data from the ESA Gaia satellite.

Our own host galaxy, the Milky Way, is home to star clusters of variable sizes and ages. We find many baby clusters within molecular clouds, fewer middle-age and old age clusters in the Galactic disk, and even fewer massive, old globular clusters in the halo. These clusters, regardless of their origin and age, are all subject to tidal forces along their orbits in the Galaxy. Given enough time, the Milky Way gravitational forces relentlessly pull them apart, dispersing their stars into the collection of stars we know as the Milky Way.

“Most star clusters in the Galactic disk disperse rapidly after their birth as they do not contain enough stars to create a deep gravitational potential well, or in other words, they do not have enough glue to keep them together. Even in the immediate solar neighborhood, there are, however, a few clusters with sufficient stellar mass to remain bound for several hundred million years. So, in principle, similar, large, stream-like remnants of clusters or associations should also be part of the Milky Way disk.” says Stefan Meingast, lead author of the paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Thanks to the precision of the Gaia measurements, the authors could measure the 3D motion of stars in space. When carefully looking at the distribution of nearby stars moving together, one particular group of stars, as yet unknown and unstudied, immediately caught the eye of the researchers. It was a group of stars that showed precisely the expected characteristics of a cluster of stars born together but being pulled apart by the gravitational field of the Milky Way.

“Identifying nearby disk streams is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Astronomers have been looking at, and through, this new stream for a long time, as it covers most of the night sky, but only now realize it is there, and it is huge, and shockingly close to the Sun” says João Alves, second author of the paper. “Finding things close to home is very useful, it means they are not too faint nor too blurred for further detailed exploration, as astronomers dream.”

Due to sensitivity limitations of the Gaia observations, their selection only contained about 200 sources. An extrapolation beyond these limits suggests the stream should have at least 4000 stars, thereby making the structure more massive than most know clusters in the immediate solar neighborhood. The authors also determined the stream’s age to be around one billion years. As such, it already has completed four full orbits around the Galaxy, enough time to develop the stream-like structure as a consequence of gravitational interaction with the Milky Way disk.

“As soon as we investigated this particular group of stars in more detail, we knew that we had found what we were looking for: A coeval, stream-like structure, stretching for hundreds of parsecs across a third of the entire sky.” Says Verena Fürnkranz, co-author and Masters student at the University of Vienna. “It was so thrilling to be part of a new discovery” she adds.

This newly discovered nearby system can be used as a valuable gravity probe to measure the mass of the Galaxy. With follow-up work, this stream can tell us how galaxies get their stars, test the gravitational field of the Milky Way, and, because of its proximity, become a wonderful target for planet-finding missions. The authors hope to unravel even more such structures in the future with the help of the rich Gaia database.

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From vibrations alone, acacia ants can tell nibbles from the wind

Posted on 15/02/2019 by Boris Clair

Acacia trees are a prominent feature of the East African savannah. They’re also a classic example of the long-standing and complex relationships between plants and insects, in this case acacia ants. The acacias provide food in the form of nectar and accommodation in hollow thorns for the ants. In return, the ants defend the acacias against nibbling elephants, giraffes, or other animals that would eat them.

Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on February 14 find that the ants are tipped off to the presence of herbivores by vibrations that run throughout the trees when an animal gets too close or begins to chew. As a result, the insects begin patrolling the acacia’s branches more actively. Remarkably, the researchers show, the ants don’t react when the trees’ movements are caused only by the wind.

“The vibrations that occur when a mammal plucks a leaf are so powerful that they spread across the whole tree and are perceived by the ants,” says Felix Hager of Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. “As a result, the ants are alerted within a fraction of a second and promptly orient toward the attacker.”

Hager and study co-author Kathrin Krausa began to suspect that vibrations were important while working in the Kenyan savannah. “We often inadvertently touched the acacia branches and backed off because of the very fast and disruptive attacks of ants that swarmed on us,” Krausa says. “It struck us that it was assumed that odors associated with plant damage alert the ants. As biotremologists studying vibrations, we felt that this is only half of the story.”

Hager and Krausa thought that vibrations might be a more immediate and reliable information source for the ants. To test this, the researchers first measured vibrations in acacia induced by the wind and a by browsing goat. Then, they devised a mechanical device calibrated so as to reproduce the movement associated with a chewing, four-legged mammal.

Their studies show that acacia ants respond to vibrations associated with a simulated herbivore, but not to the wind. They could respond to vibrations originating at some distance away. In almost every case, the ants also responded by heading toward the source of those vibrations. In other words, not only did they feel the vibrations, but they could tell based on them which way to go.

“If an ant detects vibrations due to an elephant nibbling at its tree, it needs to find the attacker as soon as possible and decide in which direction to go,” Krausa says. “We were impressed by the ants. Spread all over the tree, they made the right decision and walked toward the vibration source to fight back against the attacker almost every time.”

Hager says that this is just the beginning of studies to explore the vibration sense. “We’ve just started to understand this mode of communication,” he says. “There is a lot of work waiting for us!”

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Category Archives: Mind Building

Health24.com | More proof high-fibre diets help prevent cancers and heart disease

Health24.com | Train like a beast with the bodyweight system called Animal Flow

Try the Animal Flow workout

Short bursts of intense exercise ‘better for weight loss’

Graphene-based wearables for health monitoring, food inspection and night vision

Hope for fighting disease known as Ebola of frogs

Health24.com | Everything you should know before trying a plant-based diet

Plant-based isn’t the same as vegan

People choose to eat plant-based foods for a number of reasons

Yes, it’s possible to get enough nutrients from plants

But a plant-based diet isn’t always a healthy choice

If you’re new to plant-based eating, take things one step at a time

Tidal tails: The beginning of the end of an open star cluster

Bioengineers create ultrasmall, light-activated electrode for neural stimulation

A nearby river of stars

From vibrations alone, acacia ants can tell nibbles from the wind