New Device Could Help Silence Tinnitus By Lightly Zapping The Brain

Tinnitus can be a desperately exasperating condition, but there could hope on the horizon for the millions of people currently suffering from the chronic ringing in their ears.

It comes in the form of an experimental device that uses precisely timed blasts of sound and electrical pulses to “reset” the responsible nerve activity in the brain. The remarkably research was recently published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of what causes chronic tinnitus for years. Despite appearing to be a “mechanical problem” with the ear, research has shown that it’s most likely to do with brain activity, especially among the fusiform cells that help us gauge where a sound is coming from and phase out background noise.

“The brain, and specifically the region of the brainstem called the dorsal cochlear nucleus, is the root of tinnitus," Susan Shore, a professor at the University of Michigan Medical School and leader of the research team, said in a statement. "When the main neurons in this region, called fusiform cells, become hyperactive and synchronize with one another, the phantom signal is transmitted to other centers where perception occurs."

"If we can stop these signals, we can stop tinnitus. That is what our approach attempts to do, and we're encouraged by these initial parallel results in animals and humans."

Magic Mushrooms Could Treat Depression Without The Emotional Numbing Caused By Traditional Antidepressants

Magic mushrooms could hold the key to alleviating symptoms of depression, particularly in those who have not benefited from more traditional treatments, new research finds.

Scientists from Imperial College London, UK, observed significant improvements in emotional responsiveness in a small group of patients with moderate to severe depression following two drug-enabled therapy sessions. The results were published in the journal Neuropharmacology last month.

It all comes down to a substance called psilocybin. This is the principal psychedelic component in shrooms, responsible for their mind-bending, mood-altering properties. 

During the study, 20 patients were given two therapy sessions one week apart, both involving psilocybin. The scientists took MRI scans of the volunteers before and after treatment to monitor the drug's effect on the amygdala, which is an almond-shaped area of the brain that helps us process emotional responses, stress, and fear. As they were being taken, patients were shown images of faces displaying one of three emotions – neutral, fear, and happiness. 

This study builds on an earlier experiment, which found that psilocybin can reduce blood flow in the amygdala, as well as symptoms of depression. At the time, researchers explained that the drug had produced an "after-glow" that effectively "reset" the brains of patients with depression.

The second MRI scans revealed heightened activity in the right amygdala in response to images of fearful and happy faces. Yet, it was the increased response to fearful faces compared to neutral faces that correlated with clinical improvements in symptoms one week after treatment. 

“Psilocybin-assisted therapy might mitigate depression by increasing emotional connection, this is unlike SSRI antidepressants which are criticized for creating in many people a general emotional blunting,” Leor Roseman, study author and PhD student at Imperial College London, told PsyPost.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (or SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed form of antidepressant. These work by increasing the brain's serotonin levels but can have the negative effect of emotional numbing.

Interestingly, psilocybin works by doing the complete opposite. Instead of suppressing emotional receptivity, it enhances it. 

“This suggests fundamental differences in these treatments’ therapeutic actions, with SSRIs mitigating negative emotions and psilocybin allowing patients to confront and work through them,” the study authors explained.

While there are several limitations to the study (extremely small group size, lack of control group, and limited time-frame being a few), the results are exciting.

One of the patients who had taken psilocybin said, “I felt so much lighter, like something had been released, it was an emotional purging, the weight and anxiety and depression had been lifted.”

Another commented, “I have felt a sense of acceptance; more acceptance of agony, boredom, loneliness. [A] willingness to try to accept the negative times – but also an appreciation of the wonderful times.”

Scientists Are Investigating Whether Or Not An Alien Probe Just Passed Us By

Sometimes in science, you have to chase the longshots and take a chance on something so unlikely it feels silly to invest in it, because the payoff would be so huge if it worked. This is why the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope will be spending time examining the first known interstellar visitor to the Solar System, just in case it is an alien spacecraft.

Back in late October, the PANSTARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii detected what was initially thought to be a comet, dubbed C/2017 U1. As the orbit was plotted it became clear that it could not have originated within the Solar System, and must instead have formed around another star. Further studies revealed no trace of a cometary coma, making it an asteroid.

Even then many people were reminded of the early stages of the classic novel Rendezvous With Rama. In the book, the speedy object turns out to be an alien spaceship, which the crew of the one suitably positioned human spacecraft gets to explore. We lack the technology for that just yet, but are applying what we have.

Further observations increased the parallels. Oumuamua, as the object is dubbed, is exceptionally elongated – indeed its 10-to-1 ratio of length to width is unprecedented for an asteroid – but would make sense for spacecraft designed to minimize friction with interstellar dust.

Still, the chances of this being an alien creation are, well, astronomical. Harvard's Professor Avi Loeb told IFLScience the orbit showed no signs of manoevering, as a spacecraft might. Nevertheless, just in case the biggest science story of the century is currently passing by, the Breakthrough Listen project has announced 10 hours of valuable time on a large radio telescope will be devoted to searching for signals at frequencies of 1-12 GigaHertz. Observations will start at 3pm ET on December 13 (8pm GMT). Loeb observation that, despite plenty of optical observations, only low-sensitivity measurements have been made with radio telescopes, inspired Breakthrough Listen' efforts.

Oumuamua is traveling so fast it's already twice the Earth-Sun distance away from us, which is making observations using telescopes that operate at visible wavelengths increasingly difficult. However, Andrew Siemion of Berkeley SETI Research Center noted it is still less than 2 percent of the distance to Voyager, and we can detect signals from there very well. So if there are any radio emissions in the right wavelengths, the Byrd telescope should pick them up.

Even in the likely event that no signs of alien activity are found, there is always the chance of some other scientifically valuable result. After all, it's agreed there is something unusual about this object beside its orbit, even if most aren't willing to sign on to theories like Oumuamua being a lump of dark matter. The more frequencies at which we study it, the more likely we are to find answers, such as the possibility the Byrd telescope will detect the presence of ice we have so far missed.

Snuggling Babies Can Have A Deep Effect On Their DNA

Every hug gives your body a small dose of oxytocin, the neurotransmitter associated with love, intimacy, and lots of other good stuff. Just in case you needed another excuse to snuggle up, a new study has shown how cuddling infants during their early years could have a deeply profound effect on their biology later in life.

Recent research from the University of British Columbia (UBC) shows that the amount of hugging a child receives as an infant can influence epigenetic changes in at least five areas of their DNA, including areas related to the immune system and metabolism. Infants who had experienced less close physical contact in their first weeks of life were also shown to have a molecular profile in their cells that was underdeveloped for their age.

Previous work has found a similar phenomenon in rodents, but this is the first study to investigate how humans could also be affected by close contact and affection in early life.

“In children, we think slower epigenetic aging could reflect less favorable developmental progress,” Michael Kobor, a professor at UBC's Department of Medical Genetics, said in a statement.

The study, recently published in the journal Development and Psychopathology, asked the parents of 94 babies to keep a diary of their infants’ behavior, as well as their touching and cuddling habits, for the first 5 weeks of postnatal care. Four to five years later, they then sampled the DNA of these same children.

They then looked out for the epigenetic process of DNA methylation. This process works a bit like a dimmer switch to control how active a gene is. Epigenetics – literally meaning "on top of" genetics – explains how the extent of methylation can be affected by environmental influences, especially in childhood.

According to their findings, there were consistent differences in the extent of methylation at five specific DNA sites between the kids who had experienced a high level of contact and those who had not. In particular, one of these sites is known to play a role in the immune system and another influences metabolism.

It’s still early days for this research, however, the scientists on the project hope to follow these subjects to further learn about how our early experience, particularly snuggling and cuddling, can deeply affect our biology and our lives.

“We plan to follow up on whether the ‘biological immaturity’ we saw in these children carries broad implications for their health, especially their psychological development,” said lead author Sarah Moore, a postdoctoral fellow. “If further research confirms this initial finding, it will underscore the importance of providing physical contact, especially for distressed infants.”

Bacteria Modified To Create The World's Smallest "Tape" Recorder

Researchers have developed what is being dubbed as a biological “tape” recorder. By engineering bacteria the team was able to make the organisms record certain environmental events in their DNA, even figuring out a way to make them “time-stamp” them, allowing scientists not only to work out what, but also when something occurred.

“Such bacteria, swallowed by a patient, might be able to record the changes they experience through the whole digestive tract, yielding an unprecedented view of previously inaccessible phenomena,” explained Columbia University Medical Center’s Harris Wang, a senior author of this latest work published in Science.

The development is based on hijacking the bacteria’s own immune system, specifically the CRISPR-Cas complex. This is the same system that has revolutionized genetic editing in the past decade, as it takes snippets of DNA from whichever virus the bacterium encounters, and precisely inserts them into its own genome in chronological order.

This means that if that bacterium, or the strain to which it belongs, was to come across the same virus at some point in the future, it effectively has a library that it can reference, and can tell the immune system how best to tackle it. While other teams have figured out how to co-opt this in order to insert desired genes into everything from yeast to humans, the group behind this latest research instead saw promise in its ability to work a bit like a memory.

“When you think about recording temporally changing signals with electronics, or an audio recording... that’s a very powerful technology, but we were thinking how can you scale this to living cells themselves?” said graduate student Ravi Sheth, a co-author of the paper.

The team was able to modify the little circles of DNA found in bacteria, called plasmids, to record the time and events. They edited one to make copies of itself when it detected certain outside stimuli, like particular metabolites produced by specific bacteria, while a separate plasmid marked the time by continually adding spacers into its genome. This means that when the bacterium has been exposed to the correct stimuli, the signal will disrupt the time-keeping spacer signal, and denote when this took place.

So far the experiments have shown that the modified bacteria can record at least three different external signals while keeping track of the time for days on end. The hope is that this can be further refined to work within the human body or even to record pollutants in the environment.

A Man Was Rushed To Hospital For Suspected Food Poisoning - Here's What They Found In His Stomach

A 35-year-old man was rushed to surgery after reporting severe abdominal pains. Doctors thought it was food poisoning, so imagine their surprise when they uncovered the real source of the patient's discomfort – 7 kilograms (15 pounds) of metal sitting in his stomach.

Dr Priyank Sharma, the lead surgeon on the case, told reporters he had never seen anything like it. 

In total, the doctors removed 263 coins, 100 nails, and dozens of razor blades from the patient, a driver called Maksud Khan from the Indian state Madhya Pradesh. He's admitted to swallowing the coins given to him by customers.

Although this has yet to be confirmed, it could be that Khan was suffering from an eating disorder called pica, a name derived from the Latin word for magpie.

People with pica have a compulsion to eat non-edible, non-nutritive items. It can involve anything that's not traditionally thought of as food, though common examples include dirt (geophagia) and ice chips (pagophagia). The disorder is most commonly found in children, pregnant women, and people with an intellectual disability. Researchers have also found a link between pica and iron deficiency. 

There is not yet a word to describe Khan's coin and nail cravings, but he's not the first to be hospitalized for ingesting metal. Monsieur Mangetout (Mr Eats All in English) was a French entertainer who impressed audiences by consuming large quantities of metal, glass, and rubber. During his lifetime, he's thought to have gorged on 9 tons of metal, including 18 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, seven televisions, and a Cessna light aircraft.

Of course, there are huge health risks that come with ingesting items that aren't designed to be eaten. It can cause constipation, blockages in the digestive tract, dental damage, and in some cases (say, those with a penchant for lead-based paint chips) poisoning. Hard and sharp objects (like nails and razors) can cause internal tearing.

Recently, rates of the disorder have increased – pica-related hospitalizations have risen by 93 percent between 1999 and 2009. However, what is classified as pica varies depending on social and cultural norms. Today, someone who eats clay would be diagnosed with geophagia, but in the fifties, you could buy a clay-filled lunch bag at an Alabama bus stop. People living in the southern states would send clay to friends and family who moved north, where the practice was less common.

Luckily for Khan, who started snacking on metal objects after entering a depression, there should be no lasting damage to his internal organs.

As one doctor put it: "The operation was done in the nick of the time as some of the nails lodged had pierced his stomach, caused bleeding and resulting in loss of haemoglobin."

Khan has also promised to kick the habit for good.

Gene-Editing Technique Used To Create Low-Gluten Bread Suitable For Celiacs

Spanish scientists from the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba have created a low-gluten strain of wheat, which could be good news for people with celiac disease. The team developed the cereal using a gene-editing technique called CRISPR and their hope is that one day soon it will be used to make low-gluten bread.

Gluten is an umbrella term covering more than 200 different proteins found in the seeds of wheat, rye, and barley crops. It's responsible for making bread rise and gives it a soft, elastic structure.

Certain conditions can cause an adverse reaction to gluten. The most prominent of these is celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder thought to affect roughly 1 percent of the population. Eating gluten triggers an immune response in celiac patients that damages the lining of the small intestine and causes symptoms such as bloating, diarrhea, and fatigue.

Often gluten-free bread lacks the texture and flavor of the real thing, which is where the new strain of wheat comes in.

The researchers developed the gene-edited crop using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. This, essentially, cuts and pastes small sections of DNA, allowing scientists to remove sections of the gene that triggers an autoimmune response in celiac patients. In one strain, the team was able to delete 35 of the 45 genes that code for α-gliadin, the component in gluten that is responsible for gluten intolerance.

As Sarah Sleet, chief executive of Coeliac UK, told The Independent, this particular strain of wheat might not reduce symptoms for all celiacs. This is because the exact protein component that causes a gluten intolerance differs between individuals.

“What we don’t know in terms of this work, where they have got rid of the most toxic protein epitopes, does that mean that the product is safe for everybody who has coeliac disease?” she said. “There is still some work to be done around that.”

It's not the first time CRISPR has been used in food production. From apples that stay fresher for longer to low-fat pigs that contain 24 percent less fat than your average porker, we can expect more and more genetically modified produce to hit the shelves. 

Almost Ten Percent Of Unexplained Anaphylaxis Due To The "Reverse Zombie" Tick

Some unfortunate people suffer from severe recurrent allergic reactions in which their airways close up and their blood pressure crashes to dangerous levels – and yet they are none the wiser to their cause. Well a new study published in the journal Allergy found that in the United States, up to almost 10 percent of these unexplained anaphylaxis cases may be down to tick-induced meat allergies.

This may sound like something from science fiction, but in recent years there's been a growing awareness to the reaction caused by a rare arachnid known officially as the lone star tick, but also as the “reverse zombie” tick. When some people are bitten by this little beastie, it can cause them to become allergic to red meat, and it might be more common than thought.

For the study, the team examined unexplained anaphylaxis in 70 patients and found that six of them tested positive for being allergic to galactose-a-1,3-galactose (alpha-gal). This is a sugar that is only found in non-primate mammals and is a prime indicator they've been bitten by the lone star tick. This means that up until now, their unexplained allergic reaction is due to red meat.

It is thought that when the ticks bite a human after having fed on another mammal, the sugar found in these wild animals' blood gets mixed in with the ticks’ saliva and injected into the body. As the immune system launches its attack against the tick, there is a crossover and the body not only produces antibodies against the arachnid, but also against the sugar alpha-gal.

This means that whenever the body then experiences the sugar again, such as after eating meat, the body launches another attack and causes the allergic reaction.

“We often think of ticks as carriers of infectious diseases, such as Lyme disease, but the research strongly suggests that bites from this particular species of tick can lead to this unusual allergy,” says co-author Melody C. Carter, staff clinician at NIAID’s Division of Intramural Research, in a statement. “The association is increasingly clear, but we still need to discover exactly how these two events are linked and why some people with similar exposure to tick bites seem to be more prone to developing alpha-gal allergy than others.”

They found that the six people suffering from the allergy did indeed have a history of being bitten by juvenile lone star ticks. The natural distribution of the ticks in the southwest of the United States, as well as New York, New Jersey, and New England, matches well with the reported cases of the allergy.

It's possible that the gap between eating the meat and the reaction, which is typically three hours, slows diagnoses of the allergy.

Getting Married Could Decrease Your Risk Of Getting Dementia

Being single shouldn’t come with any risks. You should be able to bask in it and be happy because, in reality, there’s more to life than being in a long-term relationship and sharing someone else's last name.

However, new research published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatryshows that being married might actually have a long-term health benefit, as those who decide to tie the knot face a lower risk of developing dementia.

The study was done by analyzing medical databases and talking to health experts. The researchers looked at how dementia risk is affected by being single or being widowed in comparison to being married. They looked at 15 studies involving a combined total of 812,047 participants from Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

The team found that people who have been single throughout life have a 42 percent higher risk of suffering from dementia than those who are married. Meanwhile, widowed people have a 20 percent higher risk. Interestingly, the risk for divorcees was found to be no higher than for married people.

“Spouses may help to encourage healthy habits, look out for their partner’s health and provide important social support," Dr Laura Phipps, from Alzheimer's Research UK, told The Guardian. "Research suggests that social interaction can help to build cognitive reserve – a mental resilience that allows people to function for longer with a disease like Alzheimer’s before showing symptoms."

This isn’t the first time a study has shown that having close relationships can decrease the risk of dementia. Just last month, it was reported in Journals of Gerontology that having close friends could also help protect you against the mental illness and that the quality of friendships is more important than the number of friends you have. 

And loneliness doesn't just increase your risk of dementia, it can make the condition harder to cope with for those diagnosed with it. Dr Doug Brown, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, told BBC News that loneliness is a big issue amongst sufferers of dementia.

"If people are not properly supported, dementia can be an incredibly isolating experience,” he said.

"It is essential people with dementia are supported to maintain meaningful social connections and continue living their life as they want."

Additionally, Dr Phipps told The Guardian that those who are married are often healthier and live longer lives. Nevertheless, she pointed out that marriage is obviously not the only way to stay healthy. “Staying physically, mentally, and socially active are all important aspects of a healthy lifestyle and these are things everyone, regardless of their marital status, can work towards,” she said. 

Breast Cancer Symptoms

 image source: SPL

There square measure usually no symptoms of carcinoma, however generally girls could discover a breast drawback on their own. Signs and symptoms to bear in mind of could include:
        a trouble-free lump within the breast
        Changes in breast size or form
        Swelling within the axillary cavity
        mamilla changes or discharge

Fast facts on breast cancer:

Here are some key points about breast cancer. More detail is in the main article.

• Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women.
• Symptoms include a lump or thickening of the breast, and changes to the skin or the nipple.
• Risk factors can be genetic, but some lifestyle factors, such as alcohol intake, make it more likely to happen.
• A range of treatments is available, including surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy.
• Many breast lumps are not cancerous, but any woman who is concerned about a lump or change should see a doctor.