How Farm Life can Prevent Allergies

Asthma is a a respiratory condition marked by spasms in the bronchi of the lungs, causing difficulty in breathing. It usually results from an allergic reaction or other forms of hypersensitivity.  This condition is increasing all around the world so much that it can almost be considered an epidemic.

The unlikely cure might be found in farm dust. Children how grew up on dairy farms had a much smaller chance of developing asthma than the average child who did not grow up on a dairy farm.

In order to verify this, researchers from Europe have performed experiments on mice and believe that the reason for this might be bits of bacteria that are found in farm dust. The bacteria cause an inflammation in the lungs of the mice which later protects them from asthma.

By taking mice and exposing them to the dust found around farms the mice were inhaling bacteria found in the dust which resulted in fewer mice having asthma over their lives. This experiment goes against common thinking which states that in order to be healthy we need to avoid bacteria and use antibiotics as often as possible. The study is based on 26 year old idea, that overuse of antiobiotics have removed essential bacteria which helped train our immune system so that it does not overreact to foreign substances.


Pulmonologist Bart Lambrecht and immunologist Hamida Hammad believe that parts of the bacteria are inhaled by small children where a small inflammation in the lungs prevent larger, more severe inflammations from happening in the future when the children are exposed to substances which might cause a life threatening allergic reaction.

To test their theory they collected these parts of bacteria called endotoxins and allowed young mice to inhale them. They found that in fact the mice which were exposed to the endotoxins had less asthma then the mice which were not exposed to the endotoxins. The team went ever further and looked at the genetics of those mice to find that a specific gene found in mice with no asthma called A20 might be responsible for reducing the inflammation in the air passage way.

Other scientists have found that drinking raw milk also reduced asthma in children living on dairy farms and warn against the farm dust being the only possible reason for reduce asthma.

Overall it is a new piece of the puzzle to help with this growing respiratory condition that so many children around the world are developing. So do not go just yet to a farm to breathe in the fresh air hoping to reduce your asthma, but at the same time take a little break from overusing antibacterial products everywhere in your home.

You can find the article here :

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-farm-life-can-prevent-allergies


 Discussion Questions:

1. In their research the scientists state that bacteria are not always bad and can in some cases be a way of training our immune system to work better for the long term.  Can you think of any other situations where in order to perform better, one must be exposed to a little bit of danger in order to prevent more serious problems?

2.  We live in a world where bacteria are our enemies, yet we have thousands of them living in our stomachs. In fact when we eat yogurt or cheese we are eating food that is made by bacteria. When babies initially start interacting with their environment they explore objects by putting them in their mouth. Is there a balance that can be reached between a home that his covered in bacterial killing produces versus a home that is covered in bacteria?

Plant ‘vampires’ lay in wait

Pulling the weeds out of our gardens each summer can be a painful, task. Watching the weeds return week after week is frustrating, and always leaves me wondering why the weeds grow so easily while my beautiful flowering plants struggle to survive!

Biological researcher David Nelson used genetics to explain how weeds can act like vampires (really!) use hormone signals given off by healthy plants to attach themselves to the host plant and suck out their energy and food. While most plants use photosynthesis to make their own food for energy and metabolism, these vampire weeds actually evolved to suck energy from other plants – just like other parasites.

Nelson’s research has shown how a specific group of plants (the Orobanchaceae family) have developed sensors over time, to detect hormone signals given off by other plans and stimulate growth in the parasite plant. Understanding how these plants grow and attach themselves to crops can be very important to our society. His research could lead to developing techniques to stop the growth of parasitic plants on food crops. Think of the impact this could have on the farming and agriculture industry. To stretch it even further, it made me think of how developments like this could help developing countries secure more reliable food sources. We already know that all living things change and develop over time according to their needs – and the environment they are in. Imagine the time it must have taken for these plants to develop such skills.

Of course, detecting and reaching to certain hormonal signals is not unique to plants – animals use these signals for all sorts of things, reproduction and self-defense to name a few.

Reading about Nelson’s research really made me think past the weeds in my garden, and into the depth of the living world! There is certainly a lot to learn about life at the cellular level.

You can read the article here:
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/plant-%E2%80%98vampires%E2%80%99-lay-wait  

Discussion Questions

1)  Nelson’s research showed how hormonal signals given off by certain living things can trigger growth – can you think of other organisms that rely on hormones to indicate a period of rapid growth? Why would we want to learn more about this?

2    2) Learning more about the DNA of plants and food crops can help us modify the growing environments. It is possible we could use this information to create genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food labs and build food sources do our liking. Do you think that genetically modified food is a safe and responsible way to go?   

                                                             Grandfather Paradox

 

In the past two months, physicist and professor Tim Ralph of the University of Queensland and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer led a team that experimentally simulated Deutsch's model of CTCs. This is the first time, testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory. A lot of their work circles around the "Grandfather Paradox" which is a hypothetical scenario in which a person travels back through time in a CTC also known as a Closed Time Curve back in time to murder their grandfather then preventing them from being born. This creates a paradox that is infinite unless there is an interjection that disrupts and solves or destroys the paradox timeline. 

    Deutsch's quantum solution to the Grandfather paradox goes something like if a girl were to go back in time using a CTC and then killing her grandfather. The girl has a probability of 50% of not traveling back and killing her Grandfather and the Grandfather has  50% chance of escaping her murderous attempt. Thus according to Deutsch, there are good enough probalistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox.

    In the new simulation developed by Ralph, they studied the interaction of two polarized photons within a quantum system is arguably equal to a singular photon traversing a CTC. They made it so the second photon acts as a past incarnation of the first. Because it is currently impossible to send a person into the past, they created a stunt double of the "person" and ran them through a time-loop simulator to see if the doppelganger emerged from the CTC appearing like the original one in that moment in the past. 

    By measuring the polarization state of the second  photon after emerging from the CTC and comparing it to the original first photon before entering the CTC they found that they were the same and got a successful experiment that helps to solidify his theory. Of course they are not sending actual objects or people into the past through CTCs but it is the closest thing to it at this time.

    

Question 1: Do you think that through following this experiment, that it would be possible to traverse a CTC and resolve a paradox?

Question 2: Do you think that CTCs exist and are usable?

Question 3: Do you think people will give up on travelling back and instead travel to the future?

Patrick Young

Laughing Matter: Finding the Roots of Humor in the Brain.

 

 Recently, a team of researchers scanned the brains of professional comedians to identify the brain activity involved in telling jokes. They found that compared to regular people, professional comedians had more brain activity in regions involved in producing humor.
In Los Angeles, they had many professional comedians but also amateurs that they could compare to. They then put the volunteers in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and showed them cartoon pictures with no captions. Each participant was then asked to write a humorous caption, a neutral caption that was not funny or no caption. The result? These scans showed differences in the pleasure centers of the brain, which are thought to be involved in appreciating humor. The normal people showed the most activity in these regions, the amateurs showed a little less, and the professionals showed the least amount. Although, professional comedians showed the most activity in regions of the brain's temporal lobe, which is where the scientists think jokes are made.
The scientists also had another group of people rate the funniness of the jokes, and found that funnier jokes were linked to more brain activity in the humor areas of the listeners. In other words, "you amplify the activity, you amplify the funniness," Amir said.
 http://www.livescience.com/48775-humor-brain-activity.html
1.) Why do YOU think that professional comedians have less activity in the part of the brain that makes you appreciate humor?
2.) Why do you think that  pleasure centers died away more quickly in the brains of the professional comedians than in the brains of the other participants?

Astronomers solve puzzle about bizarre object at center of our galaxy: Enormous black hole drove two binary stars to merge

     Astronomers saw a bizarre object in the center of the milky way and believed that it was a hydrogen gas cloud headed to our galaxy's huge black hole. The astronomers eventually realized that a hydrogen gas cloud would be torn apart by the black hole and would not still be there, so what could this object in the center of our milky way be?

     A team led by Andrea Ghez determined that the object that they had named G2 was most likely to be a pair of binary stars that merged together because of the black hole's powerful gravity. G2 continued its orbit around the black hole, controlled by the black hole's gravitational pull, and a hydrogen cloud would not have done this.

     Ghez and her colleagues went to Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory, which has the world's two largest optical telescopes. With these two telescopes they discovered that when two stars near the black hole merge together, it usually takes more than 1 MILLION YEARS before it settles down. They realized that some of the weird stars they have seen near the black hole before might be the end product of mergers that are much calmer now.

      G2 is now in a "spaghetti fication." This is a common phenomenon near black holes in which objects become longer. At the same time, the gas at G2's surface is being heated by stars around it, which makes an enormous cloud of gas and dust that covers most of the huge star.

      The researchers would not have figured this out without the two telescopes. The telescopes more clearly reveals the space around the enormously big black hole. This helped them understand what the massive star actually was.

       As you can see, the mysterious object in the sky is a pair of binary stars that have merged together. The black hole controlled its orbit with its powerful gravity. Ghez and the other astronomers would not have been able to figure the mystery out without the powerful telescopes, and they are starting to understand the physics of black holes in a way that has never been possible before.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141103192136.htm

Questions:

1. If you got to name the two binary stars that merged together, what would you name it, and why?

 2. If the two powerful telescopes were not made yet, how would it have effected the work of the astronomers?

The distracted teenage brain

Most teenagers have a reputation of not making smart decisions, and having a different way of thinking. Some researchers blame those bad decisions on the immaturity of a teenager’s prefrontal cortex. It is the part of the brain that makes decisions and plans (a way of thinking).

 

 A phycologist named Zackary Roper and his team worked with two groups: 13-16 year olds and 20-35 years old. Each person had to play a game. During the game, a computer had six circles on the screen, they were all different colours. The players had to find a red or green circle. These targets had a horizontal or vertical line inside. The other targets had lines at different angles. When a player found the right circle they had to press two keys on a keyboard. The keys they pressed meant they found the circle with the vertical or the horizontal line. When one of the players hit the right key, the screen would flash of how they got it correct.

 

For some players, green circles provided a large (10-cent) reward and red circles rewarded a small (2-cent) reward. For all of the players, the amounts were reversed. With red circles worth more. All other colors had no reward.

 

When the scientist asked the players about the value of red vs. green colors, both teens and adults didn’t know that a circles colour had any effect of how much they earned during the game.

 

 After the game was done, the scientists told the players that they had a new target. Each player had to report the orientation of the line inside the blue diamond. Again, groups of six symbols were on the screen. Only one was a diamond. The other five were still circles. In other trials there were no red and green circles.

 

The researchers checked how long it took for the players to find the diamond and record their answers. When no red or green circles were among the onscreen options, both adults and teens responded quickly. But when a red or green circle showed up, both groups took a bit longer. Adults, though, quickly stopped paying attention to the colored circles.

 

Teens reacted differently. They took longer to respond whenever a red or green circle showed up. Their response times never sped up. Their attention still was drawn to the previously valued circles, even though the shapes no longer brought any reward. The red and green circles were distracting teens from their objective. The game demonstrates that the attention of adolescents is especially drawn to rewarding information. Texting or using social media, trigger the brain’s reward system. Once the teenage brain has linked a behavior to that reward, it continues to seek the reward again and again.

 

This shows that teenagers have a different way of thinking, how will you think it will affect teenagers in life by thinking that way?

What is another reason why teenagers think this way?

Why do adults have a different way of thinking?

India kitchen

Meet a woman who trains robots for a living

Andrea Thomaz worked on a new invention. Can you imagine a robot, who can do cooking or cleaning your house? Andrea Thomaz think that robot will soon learn how to do what we want to do.

She explained that we have to teach the robot, example, how to cook, so how to grab the bowl or how to put sauce on the food. After you show to the robot how to do it, the robot will try to do the same thing or it will ask questions about how it should grab it or how it should hold the plate.

She said that with a little bit of practice, the robot will have a good built of a better model. Mrs. Thomaz said that people want to see the robot doing their chores that they don’t want to do. People wants to see robots doing everything, so they can have more free time.

For a lot of people in the community of human-robot interaction, that is the target—getting robots to a low enough price point that somebody could purchase one to be in their home and do something useful. We’re definitely not there yet, but we’re going to get there. The part of Robot & Frank that matches the vision she has for her lab is that the robot is adaptable.

Soon, human will be able to communicate with robots and soon, it will have to be some part of the end-user interaction.

Questions:

1.    Are robots will be a new treat for the population?

2.    Is it absolutely good for the habitants to have robots, doing their chores and the food? Are we going to be lazier if robots are doing everything? 

By Kim Botton

Surprises lurk inside a Saturn moon

Researchers could find how Mimas, the smallest of Saturn's moons diverse entourage of icy satellites formed because there is a surface sea or a roughly-shaped core might lie in it.

Like in all the moons they turn around in its own axis and facing its planet, but this astronomer Radwan Tajeddine from the Cornell University, noticed that his turn its further than the other moons. The researchers suggest in the Oct. 17 Science that the large twists must be caused by an unusual distribution of mass inside Mimas, which is just under 400 kilometers across.

Tajeddine and colleagues think the most likely culprit is an elongated core, a possible remnant from the moon’s formation.  An underground ocean is also possible, such as the one inside another Saturnian moon.

A few flybys with Cassini, the spacecraft that took the pictures, could let scientists map the moon’s gravity and unearth what Mimas is hiding.

Question1.- What do you think would happen if researchers could understand how Saturn’s diverse entourage of icy satellites formed?

 

Question2.- Why would an ocean affect this moon?

Yellowstone National Park, how the wolves changed rivers

How wolves changed Yellowstone National Park

In 1995, wolves where reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. They had been absent for 70 years. The elk and deer population was big since no other animals where there to cut it down. The deer ate all the grass in the valleys and gorges so no grass or flowers lived there.

When the wolves arrived, they didn’t just kill some deer, the deer moved away from those valleys which lead to the growth of grass and flowers. The trees became taller which brang in plenty of different species of birds. Beavers came in to live there since they ate the trees. They created dams  and niches which allowed other species such as muskrates and otters to live in. The wolves killed the coyotes so the number of rabits and mice went up, which gave life to more hawks and eagles.

The wolves didn’t just change the Yellowstone National Parks ecosystem but also its physical appearence; the wolves changed the rivers. More trees started to grow close to the river banks, reinforcing the banks. The banks stopped collapsing so the river was healthier and wider.

The wolves kept the Yellowstone National Park alive by changing the ecosystem and its physical appearance.

Questions:

1.     Do you know another animal that changed the ecosystem or physical appearance of an area?

2.     How do you think the wolves kept the park alive in a way?

Site of the article:

http://www.geekexchange.com/see-how-wolves-can-change-an-entire-ecosystem-102645.html