Earth`s magnetic field has changed little during 2 billion years, lending support to the 'Snowball Earth' hypothesis. (Google Photo)

A US study finds Earth`s magnetic field has changed little during 2 billion years, lending support to the ’Snowball Earth’ hypothesis, UPI wrote.
The finding by David Evans of Yale University and colleagues was previously assumed, rather than tested.
The Earth`s magnetic field leaves a tell-tale signature in certain rocks, which can be used to infer information about the latitude at which they formed, Evans said. But if the early Earth`s magnetic field was markedly different to today`s axial dipolar field, some of those interpretations could be off the mark.
Evans compiled a global database of evaporite rocks dating to 2 billion years. He found the rocks` magnetic properties suggest that, as now, the Earth`s magnetic field was predominantly an axial dipole on average, suggesting the Neoproterozoic ’Snowball Earth’ was probably shrouded in ice.

Ozone discectomy is the injection of ozone inside the affected intervertebral disc. (Yahoo Photo)

People suffering from spinal injuries like low back pain and disc disorder now have a reason to smile as injections of ozone gas could bring better results than conventional surgery.
According to NewKerala, Ozonucleolysis, as the treatment is medically known, has started gaining ground in western countries, according to senior doctors who are in India for a conference on the subject.
“Ozonucleolysis or ozone discectomy for curing spinal injury is a better option than surgery. This new form of treatment is less painful as well as cost effective,“ Vijay Sheel Kumar, president of the World Federation of Ozone Therapy (WFOT), told IANS.
Over 40 dignitaries from countries like Spain, Italy and Germany are here to train doctors and share the finer nuances of the treatment,“ Kumar said.
“In case of surgery, the chance of recurrence of pain is nearly 15 percent as against less than three percent in ozone treatment. In the new treatment, patients don’t have to stay in the hospital for a week. Only six sittings of one hour each spread over three weeks can cure the problem,“ said Kumar.
Ozonucleolysis has emerged as an affordable, least invasive approach and costs two-thirds the price of a conventional surgery.
Ozone discectomy is the injection of ozone inside the affected intervertebral disc. When injected, Ozone (O3) breaks down into O2 and O (single oxygen) and rapidly dissolves in the water in the disc.
As per the new technique, ozone is injected in the spine with 22G needle under the fluoroscopic guidance, with 4ml of a mixture of ozone and oxygen at a concentration of 30 micrograms per milliliter.
It causes shrinkage of the disc, thus reducing its volume and lessening pressure on the nerves. The treatment relieves pain substantially and, after two sittings, people “can go back to work under medical guidance“, Kumar explained.
Said Jose B. Noci, a senior ozone therapist of Spain: “Apart from a large number of people in Italy and Germany, nearly 4,000 patients are availing themselves of ozone treatment in Spain every year.“
He added: “Since the number of affected people is much more in India than the above countries, both the patients and doctors can benefit from the new technique. While the patient can benefit from the low cost, a large pool of doctors can adopt the new expertise.“
Citing a study conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Health, Kumar said that around 63 percent of bidi makers suffer from recurring back pain.
In the US, back pain affects nearly 60 percent of the population, with nearly 500,000 back injuries being reported every year. While Sweden spends nearly $775 million per year due to low back disorder, the problem costs the US over $50 billion.
“The rapid industrialization and growth in the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector, where people spend maximum of their day’s time in a chair, will make spinal injury a major health concern for India,“ said Kumar, a neurological surgeon with over 30 years of expertise.

The artificial pancreas is made up of the sensor, a computer program that calculates how much insulin is needed to keep blood sugar in check, and an insulin pump. (BBC Photo)

Children in the UK with type 1 diabetes are being recruited to test an artificial pancreas.
The device could allow users to more tightly control their blood glucose levels without the need for repeated jabs to test blood and give insulin, BBC reported.
It could give people with diabetes more flexible lifestyles and defend them better from complications.
The computerized glucose sensor will be tested in a trial run by Cambridge University scientists from January.
The artificial pancreas is made up of the sensor, a computer program that calculates how much insulin is needed to keep blood sugar in check, and an insulin pump.
The purpose of the trial, run by Dr Roman Hovorka and backed by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, is to perfect the computer algorithm so the glucose sensor can “talk“ to the insulin pump effectively and mimic the work of a normal pancreas.
Dr Hovorka hopes that after a series of clinical trials over the next two years the device could be used by children in their own homes.
He said it could be four to seven years before it is available commercially.
Many diabetics already use an insulin pump--a small device worn outside the body that pumps insulin into the body through a thin tube under the skin--to remove the need for a daily series of injections.
But they still have to test their blood many times each day to measure their blood glucose.
These finger prick tests only give a snap shot of blood glucose.
In comparison, continuous glucose sensors, the size of a credit card and worn on the skin, read glucose levels on a minute-by-minute basis using a small sensor that is inserted under the skin.
Achieving good blood glucose control dramatically lowers the risk of serious complications such as blindness, stroke and premature death.
Studies have found that even patients who aggressively manage their disease--measuring their blood glucose an average of nine times a day--spent less than 30% of the day in normal range. The rest of the time, their blood sugar levels were either too high or too low.
Trials show patients using continuous glucose sensors spend 26% more time in normal glucose range, and have statistically significant improvements in a measure of longer-term blood glucose control, called HbA1c.
JDRF chief executive Karen Addington said: “Achieving good blood glucose control dramatically lowers the risk of serious complications, by as much as 75% for some problems.
“Once perfected and made available, the artificial pancreas will bring a huge sense of relief to children with type 1 diabetes for whom multiple daily insulin injections and finger prick blood tests are such a tremendous physical and emotional burden.“
Cathy Moulton of Diabetes UK said the concept was a very exciting one.

Stimulating the brain with gentle electric currents during sleep boosts memory, German scientists said.
When they applied several currents that mimic natural slow oscillating brain waves in sleep they enhanced the memory of medical students who had done a word-learning task.
“It leads to improved memory retention,“ said Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Luebeck.
The scientists believe brain stimulation could help people with memory problems and Alzheimer’s disease.
“This is an alternative way to intensify or to improve sleep and its memory function,“ Born told Reuters.
He and his team asked the students to learn a list of paired words in a standard memory test before they fell asleep. The researchers stimulated their brain while they slept. After they woke up, the students had to recall the words they had memorized.
If the currents were applied to the scalp during deep sleep, the first few hours of nocturnal sleep, the students recalled a greater number of words than if they had been given a sham brain stimulation.
“This is proof that this slow oscillation has a real function during sleep--to build and consolidate memory,“ said Born.
“It is an eight percent increase overall. This is a striking increase,“ he added.
The students did not feel any sensation from the currents to the frontal cortex of the brain or any adverse side effects. The currents forced the brain more into the deep slow-wave sleep to improve the memory function, according to the scientists.
Memory function in the medical students was already very good before they received the brain stimulation but the currents managed to improve it.
“There is growing evidence that you can very effectively manipulate brain function by different types of electrical simulation,“ Born said.
He believes the natural slow oscillations and those induced by the electrical currents affect the hippocampus area of the brain which plays a part in memory.
“The slow oscillations during slow-wave sleep trigger a kind of replay of these memories in the hippocampus,“ he added.
The hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain that is damaged in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative illness that robs people of their memory and cognitive ability.

The medicine being researched will be useful for other viruses as well as SARS. (Google Photo)

Scientists from Europe and China have completed a gene analysis of eight different strains of the SARS virus protein and defined the 3-D protein structure of each, EnglishPeople reported.
The scientists also found naturally occurring SARS inhibitors present in Chinese herbal medicines and some fruits such as the Chinese gooseberry.
Rolf Hilgenfeld, a professor from the University of Lubeck in Germany said that the scientists have also screened out 24 kinds of anti-viral active compounds. The medicine being researched will be useful for other viruses as well as SARS.

German researchers have conducted the first experimental demonstration of magnetic refrigeration of a gas, Monstersandcritics.com said.
Magnetic refrigeration has been used since the 1930s to cool solid samples and now Marco Fattori and colleagues at the University of Stuttgart present evidence suggesting the method might also be used to produce gases close to absolute zero temperature. Magnetic refrigeration, also known as adiabatic demagnetization cooling, works by exposing suitable materials to a changing magnetic field. The process converts kinetic energy into magnetic energy, leading to a drop in temperature.
In solids that typically involves lattice vibrations. In a gas, however, the coupling between the spin of the constituent particles--responsible for magnetism--and their motion is generally too weak to allow cooling to occur.
In their study the authors showed that in a gas made of chromium-52 atoms, a coupling exists that is strong enough to allow efficient magnetic refrigeration.
The researchers propose a broader class of gases might be amenable to adiabatic demagnetization cooling, and expect that the method could become a useful way to reach temperatures near absolute zero in gases, providing a rich assortment of phenomena for physicists to explore.