Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

7 benefits of walking and how it can improve your health – Insider – INSIDER

Walking is a form of exercise that can significantly improve your physical and mental health. Not only can it extend your life and prevent disease, but it can also boost your energy and mood.

In addition, studies show that if you walk regularly and quickly enough, it could be the only aerobic exercise you need to keep your heart and lungs healthy.

It's also accessible, easy, and free. So if you're one of the 47% of adults in the US who don't meet the CDC's Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic activity, then walking is a habit worth pursuing and keeping.

Here's seven research-backed health benefits of walking, as well as how fast, long, and regularly you should walk to reap them.

Walking increases your heart rate, causing you to expend energy and burn calories just like other forms of physical activity such as running, swimming, or cycling. How many calories you burn depends on how fast you walk, for how long, the terrain, and your weight.

A 2020 study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research found that participants burned an average of 89 calories walking 1,600 meters (about 1 mile). That was only around 20% less than the 113 calories other participants burned running the same distance.

And across the results of nine different walking studies in this 2008 review published in the Annals of Family Medicine, participants lost an average of 0.05 kilograms (0.1 pounds) per week as a result of increasing their step count by between 1,827 and 4,556 steps per day. Overall, that translated to a weight loss of about 5 pounds a year on average across all studies.

The American College of Sports Medicine offers recommendations for how much time people who are overweight or obese should dedicate to physical activity each week to prevent and promote weight loss. It goes as follows:

It's important to note that, if you consume more calories than you burn every day, no amount of walking or any other physical activity will help you lose weight.

Walking increases blood flow around the body so that more blood containing oxygen and nutrients for fuel can reach the large muscles in the legs as well as the brain. This is what makes you feel energized, according to Pete McCall CSCS, exercise physiologist, personal trainer, and author.

In addition, walking and other types of physical exercise have been shown to increase the amount of a type of protein found in the brain, called brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF may be responsible for how well you can think, learn, and memorize amongst other functions in the brain.

"There is a correlation between a brisk walk and elevated levels of BDNF, which can help improve overall cognition, or thought processing," says McCall.

A 2008 study published in the Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic journal found that previously sedentary adults reported feeling more energetic and less fatigued after just 20 minutes of low to moderate aerobic exercise including walking for three days a week over a six week period.

And this 2017 study conducted on sleep deprived women aged 18 to 23, published in the journal of Physiology & Behavior, found that walking up and down the stairs for just 10 minutes at a low to moderate intensity was more energizing than consuming 50mg of caffeine, or about half a cup of coffee.

Walking briskly and regularly can also help protect you from getting a cold, the flu, or other immune-related illnesses.

That's because physical exercise like walking increases the amount of white blood cells circulating in your blood. These cells fight infection and other diseases as part of the body's immune system.

A 2013 study of 800 young adults over six years published in the World Journal of Experimental Medicine showed that white blood cell count increased significantly after just five minutes of exercise.

And this 2005 study published the American College of Sports Medicine's flagship journal measured the white blood cell count of 15 adults immediately after a 30 minute walk as well as after sitting down for the same amount of time. It also found a significant increase in white blood cells.

Walking has also been linked to a lower number of sick days taken. A 2011 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine tracked 1000 adults during flu season. Those who walked at a moderate pace for 30 to 45 minutes a day had 43% fewer sick days and fewer upper respiratory tract infections overall.

Their symptoms were also less severe if they did get sick. That was compared to adults in the study who were sedentary.

Walking can also help relieve pain from stiffness in your body by warming up your muscles, making it easier to move, according to McCall.

"The motion can elevate tissue temperature making it easier for muscles to lengthen and shorten as temperature increases, muscles move more easily," says McCall.

In addition, walking can increase levels of certain types of chemicals in your brain known scientifically as neurotransmitters which help your nervous system work effectively. This can include a type of neurotransmitter that reduces pain.

"The first few minutes of walking might be uncomfortable but after five to seven minutes the body warms up, blood is flowing, and neurotransmitter production increases helping reduce pain," says McCall.

For this reason, walking is often recommended to alleviate pain and reduce disability in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions that is, pain that affects the bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves such as lower back pain.

There is also evidence of patients who are hospitalized with chronic musculoskeletal pain in the spine or limbs reporting less pain the more they walked.

Walking has been found to reduce your risk of cardiovascular events that's any incident which causes damage to your heart, such as a heart attack by 31%.

This was evident even at a moderate pace of about 2 miles per hour and at distances of just over one mile a day for five days a week, or 5.5 miles per week.

But the longer and faster you walk, the greater the benefits and protection of your heart. A 2017 study of more than 50,000 adults in the UK, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that people who walked at an average or quick pace between five and 10 hours a week were about 24% less likely to die from heart disease compared to slow walkers.

Aerobic exercise including walking can help you feel more relaxed, reduce stress, and fight depression.

The reason aerobic workouts lift our spirits seems related to their ability to reduce levels of natural stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, according to this 2015 study in the Journal of Physical Therapy Science.

Just a 30-minute walk is enough to lift the mood of someone suffering from major depressive disorder, according to a 2005 study published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

And a 2019 study published in the official journal of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) found that three hours of exercise a week, no matter the type of activity, decreased the risk of depression in people who had already experienced feeling depressed.

Walking has also been linked to a decreased risk of mortality, or a longer life expectancy. And the longer and faster you walk, the more it increases your life expectancy.

This 2011 study published by the British Medical Association followed 27,738 participants aged 40 to 79years for a 13 year period and found that participants who walked for more than one hour a day had a longer life expectancy than participants who walked for less than one hour a day.

Following 50,225 walkers over 14 years, another 2018 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at the association of walking at a faster pace with factors like overall causes of death, cardiovascular disease, and death from cancer.

The researchers found that the quicker you walk, the lower your risk of overall death. For example, walking at an average pace resulted in a 20% reduced risk of overall death when compared to walking at a slow pace. And walking at a brisk or fast pace at least 4 miles per hour reduced the risk by 24% compared to walking at a slow pace.

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7 benefits of walking and how it can improve your health - Insider - INSIDER

Physiology

Scientists and economists from Honoris United Universities in global selection for Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings – Rising Sun Overport

Honoris United Universities, the first and largest pan-African network of private higher education institutions, announced that five science and three economics students from across the network have been selected among 1,034 young scientists and economists from over 100 countries to participate in the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and the seventh Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences in 2021.

The meetings, which will bring together young scientists and economists alongside Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, as well as economic sciences from across the world, form part of a partnership established between Honoris United Universities and Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, last year, to increase participation and research in the natural sciences and in economics across Africa.

The selected Honoris scientists and economists successfully completed a multi-stage selection process, which involved 144 academic partners of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and German universities in the field of economics- including the Wirtschafts und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakulttentag (WISOFT- Association of Economics and Social Sciences Faculties).

The successful students were selected from leading African universities within the Honoris network including Universit Mundiapolis in Morocco, Universit Centrale in Tunisia, and Regent Business School in South Africa.

CEO of Honoris United Universities, Luis Lopez, said, As an academic partner to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, we are extremely proud to support and promote the development of world-class African talent as evidenced by our exemplary students, selected to participate in this extremely competitive and prestigious event. They are a testament to the learning being undertaken in our institutions and to the faculty members focused on student success and institutional research. This is a superb opportunity for our students to represent research in economics and in natural sciences from Africa as part of a landmark global event.

ALSO READ: Care e-book to help youth cope with Covid-19 Lockdown

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the onsite interdisciplinary 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and the Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, originally planned for 2020, are postponed to 2021. The 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting will now take place from June 27 to July 2, 2021 and seventh Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will take place from August 24 to 28, 2021.

For 2020, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings will be introducing two exciting online forums, bringing together some 40 Nobel Laureates, Lindau alumni and the selected young scientists and economists from across the world to exchange knowledge, ideas and questions via a series of interactive and high level activities.

This will include the Online Sciathon 2020 (June 19 to June), a 48-hour hackathon-style event involving Lindau alumni and the young scientists and economists on topics relating to global, sustainable and cooperative open science, climate change and capitalism after COVID-19.

The Sciathon will be followed by the Online Science Days 2020 (June 28 to July 1) for Nobel Laureates, Lindau alumni and the young scientists and economists invited for 2021. They will participate in debates, conversations, talks and next gen science sessions with each comprising live Q&A sessions.

Invited guests as well as media representatives will be able to follow the whole programme online and interested parties may register for access, including future young scientists or economists, prospective academic partners or benefactors.

Since its foundation in 1951, around 400 Nobel Laureates have attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, held each year as a forum for scientists of different generations, cultures and disciplines to convene and exchange knowledge, ideas and experiences.

The theme is alternated each year and is based on the three natural science Nobel Prize disciplines- physics, chemistry and physiology and medicine. An interdisciplinary meeting based around all three natural sciences is held every five years and a Lindau Meeting on economic sciences is held every three years.

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Scientists and economists from Honoris United Universities in global selection for Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings - Rising Sun Overport

Physiology

What Does Virtual Learning Mean For The Future Of Higher Education? – Forbes

Michael P. Toothman, 15 years in higher education.

As an educator for U.C. Riverside, Michael P. Toothman, PMP, has worked in higher education for the past 15 years.

In that time, he's developed more than 4,000 project managers from 1,000 companies, and 40 countries and led global collaborations for multi-cultural teams andwon awardsin the process.

But for Toothman, and for the rest of the States, his world has turned on a dime in the advent of COVID.

As U.C. Riverside had already begun moving several courses online, the transition was somewhat underway before California, and national mandates in mid-March required all education to jump online and most communities to shelter in place.

Toothman seemingly dodged a bullet in March when one of his students, who'd just returned from China, abruptly cancelled a brunch appointment last minute as she was not feeling well.

Sure enough, she was diagnosed with COVID, and immediately hospitalized, and fortunately has survived.Regardless of the pandemic, Toothman sees the future of higher education and professional training believes education is forever changedespecially at the college level. He also states many schools are running a hybrid teaching model in the fall, and many universities are moving entirely online.

As a former Air Force Staff Sergeant, Toothman knows he's at a higher risk. Already isolated, he put his time toward working on an in-depth experiment regarding how to make online education work well.

As we might have anticipated, the first iteration of online-only education was not good.

Toothman said, "I experienced some level of student dissatisfaction, at first, as many students were expecting the dynamic interaction of a live course. Additionally, some had poor experiences with online courses in the past and this drove their inherent dislike for online learning. It was vital that I set the tone early. To keep students engaged, an instructor must be visible and active, and exhibit care, empathy, and trust for students.

My students were joining my online class discussions from all over the world; many balancing the competing demands of newly remote positions, homeschooling, and self-care. So, it was vital that I create a learning environment which added real value to their lives.

Toothman realized he had two choices to make when it comes to teaching today.

Here's what he stated:

With time on his hands, he's chosen the latter.

Knowing it would be most difficult to replace the energy of the live interactions with instructors and other students, Toothman turned his attention to what an online platform could provide that other mediums can't. He realized the medium allows room for students to shape their own adventures in ways that a live and static lesson plan can't provide.

For example, in teaching courses on Project Management, Toothman can build in video resources on the aspects that might interest students mostsuch as Future Proof Technologies, Soft Skills, or Critical Thinking. If students are most interested in A.I., robotics, and data science, they can build a pathway to lead them to additional resources in those channelssimilar to a choose your own adventure scenario. He is currently working on integrating Flipboard magazines to dynamically curate course content.

All participants complete the same core work to meet and demonstrate the required capabilities. Still, the full shape and extent of the adventure can be their own to decide, with the addition of vibrant and visual supplements that can capture and hold their attention.

Likewise, Toothman has learned and maximized the ways to replicate the robustness of face to face discussions online through tools like Zoom, although it has made for a certain amount of personal sacrifice.

Toothman said, "Imagine that 20% of your enrollment is outside of the United States. They didn't plan to attend remotely; they enrolled to attend live, but due to the pandemic restrictions, the university has sent many students back home."

He has also made the intrepid choice to hold live Zoom sessions for for international students. He knows that most instructors will not do this, and it may not be a workable solution forever. Still, as the world adjusts, it is vital to ensure first and foremost that students are met with the most exceptional experience possible as they navigate the move to learning online.

You can learn more from Toothman in a recent T.V. interview with C.G.T.N.here.

STEAM artist

An organization led by a scientist in visualization and simulation, Bryan Brandenburg has similarly made a pivot in prioritization of the physiology visualization platform he's brought forward in his newest company,Zenerchi L.L.C.

Brandenburg's visuals from previous organizations D.A.S. 3D and Zygote Media Group, continue to populate medical journals and press.

His new company, Zenerchi L.L.C., is taking the technology further through integration with V.R. and A.I. to create visualizations so distinct participants can view the human heart or lungs with detail that can take them down to the level of atoms and quarks.

The technology touches sectors including health, wellness, medical education, and, interestingly, edutainment with the ability to transition museum and event realms into full immersion experiences.

Online learning about the medical field.

This strategy can make those avenues of education self-funded while also bringing in new streams of revenue.Listening to the younger populace has shown increasingly less interest in traditional museums.Additionally, the technology holds high appeal for online education.

Launched in 2019, Zenerchi L.L.C. has successfully achieved early funding, but in Q1 enacted a pivot of its priorities in the realm of COVID.

They went with online education as their first commercially available product. This choice was partly due to the need to provide deep visualization and a more profound education on the pandemic issue.

To that end, the company partnered with Carrus, a leading provider of online healthcare training and professional development, to take online medical education to a higher level with new online courses that use the Zenerchi physiology simulation and visualization platform.

"We wanted to make this technology available at the highest level and to the largest audience possible," Brandenburg said, as to the decision to approach online learning first.

Zenerchi will shortly release a library of stock images and AR/VR simulations of human physiology under the trade name S.T.E.A.M. for use by educators and developers. This format ensures readers get what they need on the fly and to surmount the barriers of storage and internet bandwidth.These will be vital steps in the future of learning.

The shift to virtual learning has significant implications for the future of education.

Arecent articleby researchersVijay GovindarajanandAnup Srivastavafor Harvard Business Review underscores the experiences of Toothman and Brandenburg.

Their current experiments indicate the traditional model of a four-year face-to-face college education can no longer rest on its laurels.

A variety of factors, most notably, the continuously increasing cost of tuition, already makes higher education out of reach for most students and families. It makes the post-secondary education market ripe for change.

Day by day, we see further evidence that the pandemic crisis may force this change in higher education.

The ways we respond and react to the need for better methods of virtual learning will have a significant impact on whether and how online education develops as an opportunity for the future.

It may change the impact of education on our economy at large, and its viability and availability to a broader set of participants. Likewise, the time and geographic flexibility of online learning may serve to make it available to a more comprehensive set of participants.

As Govindarajan and Srivastava note, some politicians are pressing or have promised the concept of a free college education but what if the newest developments prove that a college education doesn't have to bankrupt a person? The implications are tremendous for all.

Govindarajan and Srivastava suggested, "After the crisis subsides, is it best for all students to return to the classroom, and continue the status quo, or will we have found a better alternative?"

Toothman is excited to continue his quest to forge forward in all of these developments.In the interim, he continues to teach his courses.

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What Does Virtual Learning Mean For The Future Of Higher Education? - Forbes

Physiology

Letter To The Editor: Love Overcomes Hate – Los Alamos Daily Post

By BEATRICE N. ODEZULU, MBALos Alamos

I am writing as an African American woman with four kids and a husband trying to process the tragic death of Mr. George Floyd. We have mourned and now are trying to heal.

My children are asking me questions which I do not have any answer to. However, a Scripture popped up in my heart, Love overcomes hate. Love your neighbor means treat them the way you would want to be treated.

The community has a huge role to play in creating an environment where love prevails. When you see a person, see them as a human being first. We all bleed, hurt, and want good things in life. The color of my skin does not take away my humanity. It is deep ignorance to think that the quantity of melanin (pigment that determines skin tone) that someone has, makes them less human. When donating blood or signing up to be an organ donor, nobody cares what your skin color is. Yet, skin color has resulted in untold hardship for thousands.

Some may not understand the term white privilege because they have never been on the other side of the fence. It means the hurdles and glass ceilings you dont have to constantly deal with in the ordinary course of living, because you have the right skin color. If you have not been followed around while shopping, you are enjoying that privilege. [Thats the reason I dont like shopping. My husband does all the shopping].

In 2012, I went with my then 7-year-old girl to our beloved CB Fox to shop. A clerk kept following us so that my daughter innocently asked why the woman was following us. I told her she wanted to make sure we were not having any problems. My daughter pointed out that she was not following other shoppers and then I had to tell her the bitter truth: There are things people will do to you and not to others, just because of your skin color.

People that act that way will not consider themselves racists. It is just ingrained in our society and people do it without giving thought to why they are doing it.

The African American male suffers the consequences of racial profiling in a proportion that is heart-breaking. Even with education and civility, it does not erase how they are being viewed and treated. My husband has a Ph.D. in Physiology and Anatomy, yet he cannot get a job to provide for his family. His job as a professor in Northern New Mexico College was terminated 6 years ago because of racial injustice. His students protested because they loved him, and he was a wonderful teacher that made the most difficult course easy to understand.

Peaceful protest of racial injustice is one way to overcome this evil. I was touched when I saw the variety of people protesting: white, black, yellow, red, young, old etc. It shows there is hope for humanity. Love is the way to extend it to our homes. What and how we talk, at our dinner tables, about other people different from us matter. Choose the love way. Explain to your family that even if people are different from you, they are humans and have the same basic needs you have.

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Letter To The Editor: Love Overcomes Hate - Los Alamos Daily Post

Physiology

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awards $1.49 million to Stanford researchers | The – Stanford University News

by Stanford Medicine on June 13, 2020 1:30 pm

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has awarded $1.49 million to research projects involving Stanford Medicine scientists who will investigate emerging ideas about the role of inflammationin disease. The grants will be awarded over a two-year period.

Ami Bhatt is one of the researchers on the Analyzing how inflammation affects the aging brain project that will be receiving funds from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (Courtesy Stanford Medicine)

CZI is a philanthropic organization established byFacebookfounder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2015.

Following are short descriptions of the projects, their funding amounts and the names of their investigators (lead investigators are listed first):

Analyzing how inflammation affects the aging brain ($525,000): ANNE BRUNET, professor of genetics; AMI BHATT, assistant professor of genetics and of hematology; CHRIS GARCIA, professor of structural biology and of molecular and cellular physiology.

Imaging gut immune cells and microbes to understand health and disease($300,000): LUCY ERIN OBRIEN, assistant professor of molecular and cellular and biology; KC HUANG, professor of bioengineering and of microbiology and immunology.

Studying vascular disease in black and Hispanic patients ($525,000): JOSEPH WU, professor of cardiovascular medicine and director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute; ELSIE GYANG ROSS, assistant professor of vascular surgery and of biomedical informatics research; and PHILIP TSAO, professor of cardiovascular medicine.

Understanding how stress and social disparity affect preterm birth ($140,000): Jingjing Li, assistant professor of neurology (UCSF); GARY SHAW, professor of pediatrics; and DAVID K. STEVENSON, professor of pediatrics.

Read this article and more on the Stanford Medicine website.

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Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awards $1.49 million to Stanford researchers | The - Stanford University News

Physiology

A Homeopathic Defence Against COVID-19 Is No Defence at All – The Wire

Arsenicum album 30C (Aa30C) is a homeopathic drug that Indias Ministry of AYUSH prescribed through an advisory on March 6, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In section i. Preventive and prophylactic and sub-section Homoeopathy, the ministry advised the recommended dose thus: Arsenicum album 30, daily once in empty stomach for three days.

To make the drug, a mother tincture of the medicine is first made by dissolving by arsenic trioxide in a mixture of glycerine, alcohol and water or sometimes by heating arsenic with water. One millilitre of this tincture is diluted with 99 ml of water plus ethyl alcohol, and given a few machine-operated, moderate, equal and successive jerks, called succussions. This leads to a 100-fold dilution. The process is repeated 30-times to produce the final product, of 30C potency. A few drops of this, loaded on sugar pills, is administered to an individual. Apparently, each dilution plus succussion step makes the formulation more potent, and the process is called potentisation.

Starting with a mother tincture that has 200 grams of arsenic trioxide in 1 litre of liquid, the 30C potency medicine has one molecule of the active material present in a volume equivalent to that of 1 million Suns. In terms of the active material, an individual is consuming zero molecules.

However, this should not surprise us. Homeopathy was first proposed in Germany by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) as an alternate medicinal strategy, more than 200 years ago. This was a time when the chemistry to show the above effect was not known (now it is in school textbooks). This was also an era where orthodox medicine was crude, often involving blood-letting. Compared to this, homeopathy seemed safe and humane. But today, when science has since made numerous strides, it is problematic that homeopathic principles still evade the rigours of scientific questioning.

From nothingness to water memory

Homeopathy takes recourse in the notion that water, when it comes in contact with the active material, develops molecular memory. In the absence of this active material in the final formulation, it is this memory-laden water that triggers an immune response in the human body. Note that the active material arsenic, in this case is chosen based on the homeopathic law of similars, i.e. a substance that induces the symptoms of a disease.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence of water having any kind of memory. Even the journal Nature was touched by this controversy. It should also strike us that if water remembered what it touched, it would have lots of memories of anything it touched.

Any scientific response to such lack of evidence should be rigorous experimentation to demonstrate effects, or the lack of it. However, the actual response to any critique of homeopathy has often been that science does not know everything yet.

The quest to explain how homeopathy works has also led to hypotheses that suggest the active material somehow survives in even the most dilute homeopathic medicines. Here, the original active material finds its way into the final drug via interaction of the drug and bubbles formed during succussions. However, the methods used in the study are not standard for potentisation. The physics of bubbles catching the active material is unclear, and control experiments like checking for contaminants were not performed.

More importantly, even if traces of active material are present, how do they trigger physiology to act against an external agent (like the novel coronavirus)? We dont know. For a chemical to be accepted as a drug, it takes years of experimentation, involving laboratory experiments, animal trials and human trials over multiple phases. But proponents of homeopathy have claimed that it cannot be subjected to such trials because it provides highly individualised doses. However, the mass distribution of Aa30C is anything but individualised.

Most popular narratives on homeopathy consist of anecdotes and scientific-sounding terms like vital force or biphasic actions. Hahnemann himself explained that homeopathy worked through a dematerialised spiritual force.

We also hear things like a thousand people were given this medicine and then 95% did not get the disease, so it works. This is not what a trial is and these experiments are worthless unless compared with 1,000 people who are given placebos (i.e. blank doses).

The fact that homeopathy thrives is not proof of its efficacy just like the existence of tarot readers and astrologers does not prove that these practices have any scientific basis.

Homeopathy puts on an aura of respectability thanks to scientific journals from major publishers that cater to it.

Many reputed institutions have looked at the available literature and their conclusions are unequivocal. The US National Institutes of Health say, Theres little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific health condition. The UKs National Health Services (NHS) state, Theres been extensive investigation of the effectiveness of homeopathy. Theres no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition.

A report prepared by a committee appointed by the UK parliament in 2010 called the British governments position on homeopathy confused and recommended that the government stop funding homeopathy on the NHS. The report argued that homeopathy undermines the relationship between NHS doctors and their patients, reduces real patient choice and puts patients health at risk. Since 2017, the NHS has severely restricted access to homeopathy.

After an extensive literature survey, Australias National Health and Medical Research Council concluded in 2015 that there was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health conditions considered: no good-quality, well-designed studies with enough participants for a meaningful result reported either that homeopathy caused greater health improvements than placebo, or caused health improvements equal to those of another treatment.

Also read: Will COVID-19 Change AYUSH Research in India for the Better?

A false shield

A much-quoted statement by the WHO sometimes distorted during the Ebola outbreak in 2014 said, In the particular context of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it is ethically acceptable to offer unproven interventions that have shown promising results in the laboratory and in animal models but have not yet been evaluated for safety and efficacy in humans as potential treatment or prevention (emphasis added). However, the words in bold are often omitted in public statements, such as in the AYUSH ministry advisory.

All the hype and publicity surrounding Aa30C have set the stage for people to desperately chase what they think is a wonder drug. Clarifications of the type issued by the AYUSH ministry, stating that their recommendation is only in the general context or that it is only for add-on preventive care, is like water off a ducks back. Panic-buying of Aa30C has already been reported. News of random, untracked distributions by various agencies and buyers flocking to pharmacies to buy the concoction at inflated prices continue to pour in.

The problem is significant because people are likely to believe that by imbibing this medicine, they have just acquired a shield against the COVID-19. A corporator in Mumbai mentioned that some people, when questioned about their being out during a lockdown, said that they had taken Arsenicum album. They believed that they would now be immune to the disease.

Anurag Mehra, Supreet Saini and Mahesh Tirumkudulu teach in IIT Bombay.

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A Homeopathic Defence Against COVID-19 Is No Defence at All - The Wire

Physiology

Monsoon meals: Heres how to stay healthy with right foods for the season – YourStory

You might love the rains or hate the rainy season. Either way, the monsoon brings with it some dramatic changes to your physiology. If you know how to tweak your diet and lifestyle to cope with these external changes in the season, you can do a lot to support your body.

What matters is understanding the changes and learning to go with them. You need to remember that you always have to eat differently and live differently whenever the seasons change, in order for your body to move harmoniously through them.

The biggest impact to your body during the monsoon is that your digestion will not be the same. This thought needs to be at the root of all change.

This means that you need to change what you eat, so that you eat food that is easier to digest, both in terms of the food itself and in the method of preparation. You don't need to add any superfoods. I believe that superfoods only become superfoods when they are used in the right manner at the right time.

Begin your day with hot beverages and a warm breakfast during the monsoon

Now that you know these two things that you have to keep in mind about the monsoons, I want to actually explain how you can apply this to your diet and lifestyle.

Exercise is very important during the monsoon

Poha is both delicious and healthy for the rainy season

A good digestive tea can boost your immunity during the monsoon

Boil some ginger, a tablespoon each of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds and fenugreek seeds in two cups of water. Reduce the quantity to one cup. Strain and consume with your meal.

This is a simple tea which makes a world of difference to your digestion in the monsoon. Since your digestion is at the root of immunity, improving your digestion is the best way to support your health and prevent an infection this monsoon!

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Monsoon meals: Heres how to stay healthy with right foods for the season - YourStory

Physiology

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 13) – Singularity Hub

GOVERNANCE

A Bill in Congress Would Limit Uses of Facial RecognitionTom Simonite | WiredAmazon, Microsoft, and IBM say they want federal rules around the technology. A police reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives Monday by prominent Democrats in response to weeks of protest over racist policing practices would do just that. But some privacy advocates say its restrictions arent tight enough and could legitimize the way police use facial recognition today.

The US Can Get to 90% Clean Electricity in Just 15 YearsAdele Peters | Fast Companythe cost of wind, solar, and battery storage has fallen so quickly that in just 15 years, the US could feasibly run on 90% clean electricity, with no increase in electric bills. And adding new renewable infrastructure could create more than half a million new jobs each year. By 2045, the entire electric grid could run on renewables.

OpenAIs GPT-3 Algorithm Is Here, and Its Freakishly Good at Sounding HumanLuke Dormehl | Digital TrendsThe famous Turing Test, one of the seminal debates that kick-started the field, is a natural language processing problem: Can you build an AI that can convincingly pass itself off as a person? OpenAIs latest work certainly advances this goal. Now what remains to be seen is what applications researchers will find for it.

Hanifas Virtual 3D Fashion Show Is Haunting, Beautiful, and Brilliantly ExecutedElizabeth Segran | Fast CompanyIn May, [Anifa Mvuemba, founder of fashion label Hanifa,] held a virtual fashion show, streamed over Instagram Live, in which each garment appeared in 3D against a black backdrop, as if worn by invisible models strutting across a catwalk, the garment hugging every curve. Tens of thousands of Hanifas quarter of a million followers tuned in.

Ground-Penetrating Radar Reveals Entire Ancient Roman CityGeorge Dvorsky | GizmodoThe researchers were able to document the locations of buildings, monuments, passageways, and even water pipesall without having to pick up a single hand trowel. In addition to documenting these previously unknown architectural features, the scientists were able to chronicle changes to the city over time and discern unique elements not seen elsewhere in ancient Rome.

With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save WildlifeJim Robbins | The New York TimesUsing tiny sensors and equipment aboard the space station, a project called ICARUS seeks to revolutionize animal tracking. The system will relay a much wider range of data than previous tracking technologies, logging not just an animals location but also its physiology and environment.

A Plan to Turn the Atmosphere Into One, Enormous SensorStaff | The EconomistOne of AtmoSenses first goals will be to locate and study phenomena at or close to Earths surfacestorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mining operations and mountain waves, which are winds associated with mountain ranges. The aim is to see if atmospheric sensing can outperform existing methods: seismographs for earthquakes, Doppler weather radar for storms and so on.

Image credit: James Henry /Pixabay

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 13) - Singularity Hub

Physiology

Painstakingly handwritten chart preserves complicated feat of breaking the DNA code – Alton Telegraph

Erin Blakemore, The Washington Post

A compilation of data contributing to the genetic code.

A compilation of data contributing to the genetic code.

Photo: National Library Of Medicine/National Institutes Of Health Handout Photo

A compilation of data contributing to the genetic code.

A compilation of data contributing to the genetic code.

Painstakingly handwritten chart preserves complicated feat of breaking the DNA code

When scientists discovered DNA and its double-helix form, they had finally identified the molecules that contain every human's unique genetic code.

But determining how those instructions were interpreted by cells was a beast of a challenge. Scientists had to figure out how a double helix of just four building blocks could be translated into proteins, the molecules that are the basis of living tissues - and they had to do so without the help of computer spreadsheets.

A painstakingly handwritten chart preserved by the U.S. National Library of Medicine shows how complicated the feat was.

It was filled in by biochemist Marshall W. Nirenberg and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health. During the 1960s, they raced with other researchers to figure the universal code shared by every living organism's cells.

Proteins consist of linked chains of amino acids, and they are made in two stages. First, the information in a molecule of DNA is transcribed into a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule that consists of codons. Each codon consists of a three-unit combination of RNA nucleotides U, C, A and G. Cells then use the mRNA's codons as instructions to create chains of amino acids that, taken together, equal proteins. The codons - 64 in all - also tell the cells when to start or stop amino acid chains.

In 1961, Nirenberg and his colleague, J. Heinrich Matthaei, proved that the combination UUU was decoded as the amino acid phenylalanine. Over the next five years, the team conducted more experiments to figure out which codons created which amino.

As they went along, their working chart - made of multiple pieces of taped-together paper - gained a vast collection of letter combinations, stars and circles. Nirenberg shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on the code, a discovery that is known as one of the most significant in the history of science.

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Curious about the chart and its scientific importance? Visit bit.ly/DNAchart to see a website devoted to the chart and its legacy.

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Painstakingly handwritten chart preserves complicated feat of breaking the DNA code - Alton Telegraph

Physiology

The Mysterious World Of Viruses And Why You Can’t Escape Them – Outlook India

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was a giant of twentieth century science. His discoveries on Vitamin C, the Krebs cycle and how our muscles function are part of textbooks of biochemistry. He once wrote how, in his search for a picture of life, the torch-light slipped over the very edge of being: I started with anatomy, then shifted to function, to physiology, and studied rabbits. But then I found rabbits too complicated and shifted to bacteriology...later I found bacteria too complicated and shifted to molecules and began to study chemistry.... I ended with electrons which have no life at allmolecules have no lifeso life ran out between my fingers actually while I was studying it, trying to find it...

Szent-Gyorgyi was not alone in this. The boundary that separates the non-living from the livingthat mysterious cuspis a real one, but trying to put that knife-edge under a microscope can actually impede understanding life on this blue planet. Take the most abundant biological entities of natureviruses. The sheer number and diversity of viruses easily dwarfs humans, our crops and domesticated cattle, the billions of insects teeming in the tropical forests, even the microscopic organisms abundant in any river. A litre of seawater may contain a hundred billion viruses of few thousand different kinds! They occur in millions in the lungs and intestines of healthy people. They are present deep below the Antarctic surface, in the subterranean caves of Mexico, on the scorched sand dunes of African deserts, and in almost every living species scientists have studied. They control the growth of bacterial populations, play vital roles in the mega geochemical cycles that make up our environment and can, of course, evolvejumping from one host species to another, as we now are only too keenly aware. Its no wonder that Carl Zimmer referred to the Earth as a planet of viruses. The present global crisis brought on by Covid-19directly linked to rampant deforestation and illegal animal tradeis a result of our unbridled and greedy misadventures into virosphere.

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Yet, viruses are not exactly alive in the sense cellular organisms are. The latter are made up of one or many cells. Indeed, many of them, like ourselves, form large, organised cellular associationsa body. The bodies move, eat, fight, take in resources to build their cells and, in time, mate with other bodies to make more cellular entities like themselvesthe next generation. The instructions for doing all this is encoded in a long chain-like polymer(s), called DNA, present within the cells. The DNA is a manual, a blueprint; different links in the chaingenescarry the information for making different proteins. Following those commands embedded in the DNA, the rest of the cell makes proteins. In turn, the proteins (like insulin, antibodies, enzymes and collagen) join hands to do all the physiological work, finally leading to reproduction and thus ensuring that there are more copies of that body and the DNA within. Its teamwork between the cells DNA and protein-making apparatus.

Viruses do the same but they have found a shortcut. They do carry DNA (or RNA, a related molecule), but, being so tiny, theres no space for the protein-making apparatus. Theres no need either: when a virus infects a cell, it hijacks the latters protein-producing factories, captures the depots of nutrients and commands the cell to make only multiple copies of viral proteins and viral DNA! Thus, although they carry only a part of the ingredients essential for life, viruses are intracellular parasites that evolve and flourish in the foggy zone that demarcates the living from the inanimate.

Also Read | Did The Lockdown Work? What Did It Do? Would Have Happened Without It?

How viruses evolved this hijack strategy is an enduring mystery. The fact that prehistoric viruses have not left fossils has not helped either. But today, theres a wealth of knowledge that take us to the very origins of life. Notably, even within present-day cells, some RNA molecules can store genetic information (like DNA does) as well as catalyse biochemical reactions (like proteins do). This is an indicator that at the very dawn of life, in the hot, anoxic oceans of the primordial world, simple chemicals formed bonds resulting in complex molecules and some of them, in turn, gained the chemical ability to make copies of themselves. It was certainly not an efficient process, more like a stenographer who makes mistakes while typing several copies of a document, so soon there were variants of the parent molecule that were competing with each other for better duplication. In time, small RNAs (or the more stable DNAs) might have joined to form larger chains of genes, and then a membrane of fats probably enclosed them to form a mobile, self-replicating unit. Alternatively, some proto-cells might have gained both DNA and protein-making machines, but then lost the latter and learnt to enslave neighbours who had both. Probably both mechanisms gave rise to the vast repertoire that makes up virosphere today. Evolution by natural selection had found its way.

What is certain is that its this ancient lineage that has made viruses so ubiquitous. Animals, plants and bacteriaall are hosts to viruses in this timeless struggle for existence. The most abundant of viruses are the bacteriophages, literally the bacteria-eaters. But, phages do not only devour bacteria. They constantly shuttle fragments of bacterial DNA from one cell to another, creating fresh combinations of genes and thus providing fodder for evolution. Science has put these phage-couriers to good use. During WWI, Felix dHerelle discovered that bacteriophages could be used to cure soldiers of dysentery. Popular in the 1930s, phage therapy lost to non-living antibiotics. However today, when antibiotic-resistant bacteria have significantly blunted our ability to stop infections, phage therapy is being studied with renewed enthusiasm. In addition, oncolytic viruses are being harnessed to selectively target and kill cancer cells. Thus, no more only parasites, viruses now answer to that proverban enemys enemy is a friend! The utility of viruses does not stop there. Rather, their perennial arms-race with bacterial cells is the source of what are called restriction enzymes and CRISPR-Cas, sets of bacterial proteins without which many of the applications of modern biotechnology would be impossible.

Also Read | Covid Sit-Rep: The Worst Is Yet to Come, But What Will 'The Worst' Look Like?

There are others who are less friendly, of coursefor example, the malignancy-inducing Papillomavirus and Hepatitis B viruses. But, humankinds association with viruses goes way beyond diseases and modern technology. Stunning as it may seem, the DNA in our chromosomes is peppered with sequences that once belonged to active viruses. Called Endogeneous Retroviruses, these relics of past encounters make up more than 8 per cent of our genomic spacea colossal number when you consider that our protein-encoding sequences take up hardly 1.5 per cent! None of them make active viruses any more, but some have been recruited into our cellular circuits. One noteworthy retrogene is Arc, which is essential for long-term memory storage in the human brain. Another is Syncytin. Originally from an endogeneous retrovirus, it has got harnessed to build up the placentaa unique mammalian organ without which none of us would have been born! These new findings, however, should not confound us. After all, the present is a fleeting snapshot on the evolutionary timescale and, like viruses, we are little more than carriers and mixers of genetic information. The restculture, history, societies, politicsare facets of human collective imagination.

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(Anirban Mitra is a teacher of molecular biology and biotechnology, based in Calcutta. Views expressed are personal.)

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The Mysterious World Of Viruses And Why You Can't Escape Them - Outlook India