science •

A Recent Study Has Shown that Green Tea Boosts Memory

April 11, 2014 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

The fact that green tea is good for your body isn’t news, but a new study reveals that green tea boosts memory and may even help with cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer and dementia.

Up until now we knew that green tea helps fight against cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but a research team, led by professor Christoph Beglinger and professor Stefan Borgwardt, both from the University Hospital of Basel in Switzerland, found evidence that green tea does more than that and can actually improve our brain’s cognitive functions, the working memory, in particular.

Green Tea Boosts Memory

The study was published recently in the Psychopharmacology journal and it details the promising finding that connects green tea to improved working memory and dementia. Past studies have shown that green tea will reduce the risk of stroke or help fight prostate cancer, but today we’ve got the evidence that it also helps our brain function better. These particular benefits of green tea have been suspected, but until now, scientist didn’t know green tea does our memory good.

Green tea boosts memory, by improving connectivity between the frontal cortex of the brain and the parietal cortex. The study was conducted on 12 young male volunteers; half of the men were given a beverage containing 27.6 grams of green tea extract while the other half was given a beverage without the green tea extract. Their brain activity was measured while the men performed working memory tasks.

The scientists found that the people who consumed the green tea beverage showed increased connectivity between the frontal cortex and the parietal lobule of the brain, which deals with the working memory.

The team also said that the findings may help with developing a treatment for dementia, a disorder that involves cognitive impairment.

Now that you know that green tea boosts memory are you going to drink more of it? What are your thoughts on this study? Have you noticed a difference on yourself after drinking green tea? Share your experience in the comment section below.

Aspirin Helps Women with Recent Pregnancy Loss Conceive

April 11, 2014 By Deborah Cobing Leave a Comment

We’ve always known that aspirin was a magic drug and that it can help us in various ways, such as improve colon cancer survival, as a new study suggests, but it appears that aspirin is really pulling its weight these days and it can actually help women with recent pregnancy loss conceive. That sounds a bit too good to be true, we know, but read on and see for yourself.

A recent study, published in the online general medical journal The Lancet, discovered that a daily dose of aspirin increases the chances of conceiving a child and delivering that child to term in women who have suffered a recent pregnancy loss.

Aspirin and Women with Recent Pregnancy Loss

Many doctors prescribe low dose aspirin to women with recent pregnancy loss and who want to conceive again, but up until now, there was no proof that this practice actually works. Now, a study lead by doctor Enrique Schisterman (chief of the Edipemiology Branch in Bethesda) carried out a comprehensive study (the largest of its kind) on 1,000 women with a history of miscarriage. He divided the women in two groups, a placebo and an aspirin group.

The aspirin group took folic acid and a low dose of aspirin (81 mg) every day and the placebo group took the same folic acid and a dummy pill. The folic acid is recommended to all women who plan to conceive, as it reduces the risk of giving birth to children with neural tube defects (which affect the spine and the brain).

The women were closely monitored for up to six menstrual cycles; during this time, the women were trying to get pregnant. The ones that got pregnant stopped taking the aspirin at around 35 weeks.

The results of the study were: 13% of the women who took the aspirin and got pregnant had another miscarriage, compared to 12% who took the placebo pills. 58% of the women who took the aspirin got pregnant and carried the child to term, compared to 53% of the women who took the placebo drug.

Those results aren’t amazing at all, as aspirin did almost nothing to reduce pregnancy losses. There’s a catch, though; after careful analysis of the data, the researchers discovered that women who experienced only one recent miscarriage had a higher rate of pregnancy and carrying the child to term while they were taking the aspirin. Here is where the statistics are amazing: 78% of the aspirin group and while 66% of the placebo group conceived, and 62% of the women who took aspirin went on to have live births, while only 53% of the women who took the placebo.

Why is aspirin so good? Because it increases the blood flow to the uterus; more studies are needed to decide if aspirin helps improve fertility.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you taking aspirin? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.

Zombie Cancer Cells – This Can’t Be Good News

April 9, 2014 By Troy Rubenson Leave a Comment

Recent studies have uncovered the way a virus or a cancer cell can change the cell metabolism of a healthy cell so that it can allow it to reproduce. Today, we’ve got more news concerning cancer cells and how they act within our body. It has always been a mystery how cancer cells manage to escape or even thrive during and after chemotherapy, but today we know of one way they manage to do that: they are zombie cancer cells.

We kid you not, a new study published in Cell Reports and presented at the AACT Conference 2014 (American Association for Cancer Research) has discovered that some cancer cells will eat parts of themselves during stressful times; which allows cancer cells to thrive and divide instead of dying when faced with treatment.

Zombie Cancer Cells

The University of Colorado Cancer Center discovered that some cancer cells, in times of hardship, will eat parts of themselves so that they keep from dying. The practice is not uncommon one in the world of cells – the cells are called autophagosomes and they remove dangerous or extra material and transport it to their lysosomes to become disposed of. When the material reaches the lysosomes, it gets consumed and turned into energy. In other words, some cancer cells are capable of rescuing themselves from death caused by treatment (chemotherapy in particular), thus being zombie cancer cells.

The process of autophagy, apparently, can control cell death, which is something that is completely new to the science world. Also, this new finding means that if we were to discover a way to inhibit autophagy, then we would manage to sensitize cancer cells to medication.

Up until now, scientists didn’t know much, if anything, about autophagy. It’s still a long way from being completely understood, but now we can grasp why cancer cells manage to survive even the most powerful treatment – it’s because of autophagy.

What are your thoughts on these zombie cancer cells? If you care to share, leave us a few words in the comment section below.

Cell Metabolism Discovery Gives New Hope at a Future without Common Colds and Cancer

April 3, 2014 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

We’ve always been told to eat more fruits and vegetables if we want to live a long and healthy life, but there are so many things that we don’t have control over, that sometimes we tend to feel overwhelmed. A new amazing cell metabolism discovery could give us that leverage over disease that could very well make us disease-free.

A cell is immensely complex structure; its metabolism decides when it hungry, when to reproduce and when it needs to die and be replaced by new cells. Now, when a virus invades a healthy cell, it changes the cell’s metabolism and reprograms it so that it does everything in its power to keep the virus alive and thriving. Up until now scientists didn’t understand how a virus can do that to the cell’s metabolism, but now, researchers from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have published a study in the journal Cell Metabolism which sheds light on this process.

Cell Metabolism Discovery

The researchers made this cell metabolism discovery that explains exactly how the virus manages to reprogram the cells they invade. Ming Tai, the lead scientist of this study, explained that they had discovered the way an adenovirus (a virus that causes the common cold) reprograms the cell it takes over: it makes it take on more glucose! Glucose is a very important nutrient for viruses and cells in general. Once the cells are able to take on more glucose, then the virus uses it to grow larger and create energy and thus, begin to replicate inside the cell walls.

This cell metabolism discovery is absolutely fascinating and it opens the door for so much more research and clinical trials. Drugs that can inhibit increased glucose uptake can be developed and the common cold or the flu would be a thing of the past. By analogy, because another discovery revealed that when healthy cells turn into cancer cells they act in a very similar matter as cells infected by a virus, so the same type of drugs can be used to stop the growth of cancer cells or tumors.

What are your thoughts on this cell metabolism discovery? Care to share?

New Study Says Autism Begins in the Womb

March 28, 2014 By Jack M. Robinson Leave a Comment

There have been new causes of autism discovered in the past few months, which are starting to shed some light in the darkness that surrounds one of the most peculiar and common child developmental disorders, autism. Right now, a new study proposes for the first time ever, that autism begins in the womb. This new finding could turn everything we knew about autism upside down.

Autism Begins in the Womb

Up until now, the origins of autism have been debated by scientists all over the world. What we know about autism is that it is linked to brain chemistry and abnormal brain biology. Genes seem to have a say in the development of autism, but some have also suspected that a gluten diet may contribute to autism and, also, even mercury poisoning and vaccines.

A study published in the PLoS computational Biology advocates that pollution could have a role in the development of autism, but no specific toxins were named. 100 million US health insurance claims have been studied and the conclusion was that for every 1% increase in genital births defects in a district, the rate of autism in that particular area increased by almost 300%.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed the brain tissue of young kids with autism and the findings were quite interesting. It was discovered that key genetic markers across many layers if brain cells were missing in the brains of autistic children and also that genetic flaws were occurring in focal patches of the brain tissue.

In short, in children suffering from autism, the process of creating six distinct layers with specific brain cells had been disrupted, thus causing the development of autism. The focal patches still need further studying, but their discovery is amazing, as the area where they occur is the size of a pencil eraser.

If you have anything to comment on this matter, please do so in the comment section below.

A New Study Revealed that Uterine Cancer Risks Decrease by 81% Following Bariatric Surgery

March 27, 2014 By James Faulkner Leave a Comment

A new study revealed that obesity increases the risk for ovarian cancer and now a new study supports the find. The study, which was published in the journal of Gynecologic Oncology (the April issue) has revealed that uterine cancer risks decrease by 81% following bariatric surgery, which is basically weight-loss surgery.

Want to Have Your Uterine Cancer Risks Decrease by 81%?

Uterine cancer is the number four cancer killer in women and we know the risk increases with age, but recent studies uncovered that obesity is linked to uterine cancer, aside from heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers discovered that the weight loss that follows bariatric surgery, which is used for morbidly obese patients when all other methods of weight loss have failed, significantly reduces the risk of cancer of the endometrium (uterus) in women.

If you are morbidly obese and nothing seems to work and you want to have your uterine cancer risks decrease by 81%, then maybe bariatric surgery is the solution for you.

The team that conducted the study (University of California-San Diego and the Moores Cancer Center) have revealed that almost two thirds of the adults in the United States are obese or overweight. The researchers analyzed the records of over 7 million patients in the Health System Consortium database and they identified around 100,000 patients who have had bariatric surgery and 44,000 who have had a uterine cancer diagnosis.

To put it blankly, a woman with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 has eight times a greater risk of developing endometrial cancer than that of a woman with a BMI of 25. Obviously, the more the BMI increases, the more likely the woman will develop uterine cancer, so as a natural conclusion, the weight loss as a result of bariatric surgery reduces a woman’s risk of developing uterine cancer.

How to qualify for bariatric surgery? Well, the patients must be severely obese, with a BMI of over 40. The surgery is no walk in the park, as it involves removing a large portion of the stomach or rerouting the small intestines to a smaller stomach pouch. Of course that lifestyle changes are vital for the success of the procedure.

Why does obesity cause uterine cancer? Basically it all has to do with estrogen. Extra adipose tissue (fat tissue) raises the estrogen levels which cause the formation of tumors. In the year 2010, 44,717 women in the United States were diagnosed with endometrial cancer and 8,402 died from it.

Cause of a Rare and Aggressive Ovarian Cancer Found

March 26, 2014 By Troy Rubenson Leave a Comment

In recent news we’ve learnt that obesity increases the risks for developing ovarian cancer, but we’re still miles away from finding out all the causes of ovarian cancer. This week a new study published in the Nature Genetics Journal and funded by a non-profit organization from Phoenix, Arizona, has revealed a new cause of a rare and aggressive ovarian cancer. This is spectacular news, so read on and find out about it!

The Cause of a Rare and Aggressive Ovarian Cancer has Finally Been Found

The cancer in question is known as a small cell carcinoma hypercalcemic type of the ovary (in short, SCCOHT) and it is a rare and very aggressive form of ovarian cancer. It appears mostly in young women and girls and it has a very high morbidity rate.

Scientists found that there is a very strong link between a mutation of a gene called SMARCA4 and women who develop SCCOHT. The president of the Phoenix non-profit organization and senior author of the study, Dr. Jeffrey Trent believes that the correlation between the development of SCCOHT and the mutations in the SMARCA4, which can mean that the horrible disease can start to be understood and thus cured.

This particular type of ovarian cancer strikes at around 24 years of age, but there have been cases of baby girls getting sick with SCCOHT as young as 14 months. The youngest girl with the disease that took part in the study was 9 years old.

The discovery of the cause of a rare and aggressive ovarian cancer was described as a landmark in the field and now that the cause of SCCOHT was discovered, the scientists hope to start the clinical trials as soon as possible, so that a cure can be found for this ruthless killer. The SMARCA4 gene was already known to be linked to other types of cancers of the brain, pancreas and lung.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Did you know of this aggressive type of ovarian cancer? Do you know someone who suffers from it?

Researchers Created the Contact Lens for Night Vision

March 12, 2014 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

A group of researchers from the University of Michigan has managed to create a prototype lens that could get very quickly in Army: contact lens with night vision. The secret lies in a very thin strip of grapheme, a lightweight and super-strong form of carbon, placed between layers of glass.

Zhaohui Zhong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university, said that the graphene reacts to photons, making dark images look brighter. Needless to say that the army has shown interest in this invention that could help military soldiers wear less equipment on duty.

Contact lenses for night vision, straight from the movies

Let’s explain a bit how do the contact lens work, so let’s have a look at the grapheme. It usually absorbs only about 2.3 percent of light that comes onto contact with it, so these numbers needed to be bigger in order to achieve night vision through contact lens. The researchers taught that by combining two layers of graphene with an insulator, they would be able to increase the signal. Basically, you have the graphene is bound in hexagons in repeating sequences. And they were right, as the contact lens with the two layers of grapheme and the insulator are able to detect the full infrared spectrum, as well as ultraviolet light. Keep in mind that this material is a million times thinner than a sheet of paper.

Another great achievement is that the researchers were able to make the grapheme work at room temperature, because at first this required the graphene to be cooled using temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius.

The discovery can be applied in many areas, not just in the Army. Since by wearing them, they expand our vision, we can easily state that they can take the place of infrared devices to identify gas leaks, aid doctors in finding blood vessels. Archeologists and historians would also benefit by being able to see sketches under layers of paint.