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New Spray Improves Plants’ Cold Tolerance
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The new spray, named Freeze-Pruf, is effective on a variety of plants, including palms, tropical houseplants, bananas, citrus plants and flowers.
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Studies indicate a spray co-developed by a University of Alabama scientist increases plants’ tolerance of cold temperatures by several degrees.
According to Physorg, the spray, which is not yet commercially available, can improve plants’ cold tolerance between 2.2 and 9.4 degrees Fahrenheit, depending upon the species, according to Dr. David Francko, a professor of botany who co-developed the spray and who serves as dean of The University of Alabama graduate school and assistant vice president for academic affairs.
Research results indicate the spray, which the developers have named Freeze-Pruf, is effective on a variety of plants, including palms, tropical houseplants, bananas, citrus plants and flowers. Commercial growers, including those growing edible bananas in south Alabama, would benefit from the longer growing season that a more cold tolerant plant would provide.
“It moves your temperature zone about 200 miles, so it’s highly significant,“ Francko said of the spray’s impact on banana plants. “For growers in the Mobile area, for example, treated plants would sustain the same damage that someone in Orlando would have who’s not treating their plants.“
Francko, who developed the spray along with Kenneth Wilson, Quinn Li and Alejandra Equiza, all from Miami (Ohio) University, envisions the spray also appealing to backyard gardeners looking to protect flowers from a late frost and nursery owners looking to cash in on an approved appearance for their high dollar ornamentals.
“Each ingredient has a different function, but when you put them all together you get an effect that is larger than any single component, alone,“ Francko said. “It’s non-toxic, it’s cheap, and the idea is to apply it once per season.“ Each of the ingredients in Freeze-Pruf is already used, for other reasons, in various foods or in food production.
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Can Tomatoes Help Cure Alzheimer’s?
The humble tomato could be a suitable carrier for an oral vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, according to HyunSoon Kim from the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) in Korea and colleagues from Digital Biotech Inc and the Department of Biological Science at Wonkwang University.
Although their research, just published online in Springer’s Journal of Biotechnology Letters, is still in the early stages, it is a promising first step towards finding an edible vaccine against the neurodegenerative disease, Physorg wrote.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia and it progresses over a long period of time. It is thought to be caused by the accumulation of human beta-amyloid, a toxic insoluble fibrous protein in the brain, which leads to the death of neurons.
Reducing the accumulation of beta-amyloid may inhibit the degeneration of the nervous system and therefore prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. One approach is to stimulate the immune system to reduce beta-amyloid in the brain.
Kim and colleagues’ aim was to develop a plant-derived vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, since beta-amyloid is toxic to animal cells. Tomatoes are an attractive candidate as a vaccine carrier because they can be eaten without heat treatment, which reduces the risk of destroying the immune stimulation potential of the foreign protein.
The researchers inserted the beta-amyloid gene into the tomato genome and measured the immune responses to the tomato-derived toxic protein in a group of 15-month-old mice.
They immunized the mice orally with the transgenic tomato plants once a week for three weeks, and also gave the mice a booster seven weeks after the first tomato feed. Blood analyses showed a strong immune response after the booster, with the production of antibodies to the human foreign protein.
The authors conclude: “Although we did not reveal a reduction of existing plaques in the brain of mice challenged with tomato-derived beta-amyloidÉthis study represents a unique approach in which transgenic plants expressing beta-amyloid protein are used to produce a vaccine.“
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Superfast Muscles Empower Songbird Tunes
Some songbirds can contract their vocal muscles with the fastest muscle movements yet described--about 100 times faster than humans can blink an eye, according to a new research.
According to LiveScience, the study found that two types of songbirds produce their tunes with superfast muscles, similar to those used by rattlesnakes, several fish and the ringdove (a type of pigeon).
“We discovered that the European starling (found throughout Eurasia and North America) and the zebra finch (found in Australia and Indonesia) control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described,“ said Coen Elemans, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral researcher in biology at the University of Utah.
Elemans, along with Franz Goller, a University of Utah biologist, Andrew Mead, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lawrence Rome, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, measured vocal muscle activity in freely singing birds and made laboratory measurements of isolated muscles.
They found the two bird species could contract and relax their vocal muscles in 3 to 4 milliseconds, or three-thousandths to four-thousandths of a second. For comparison, it takes the human eye 300 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds (three-tenths to four-tenths of a second) to blink.
The birds change the position and stiffness of their vocal folds to alter the volume and frequency of the songs they sing.
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Scientists Make Heart
From Stem Cells
American researchers claim that a previously identified gene can help build new cardiovascular systems from mouse embryonic stem cells.
According to a study published in the Stem Cell Journal, mouse embryonic stem cells exposed to the Mesp1 gene are locked to transform into different heart cells which thereafter move to the cardiac region to develop the organ, Presstv reported.
The study showed that the activation of Mesp1 is the first step in activating the system necessary for producing cardiovascular systems.
Findings revealed that the gene helps with the generation of mesoderm, an embryonic cell layer from which the heart, blood and other tissues develop. It also triggers the creation of a type of cell known as the heart’s precursor.
Washington University researchers believe their findings can pave the way for creating new tissue for the treatment of a wide range of diseases and injuries particularly for the repair of damaged hearts.
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Too Much Coffee
Dutch scientists have suggested that drinking too much coffee can lower chances of pregnancy in women with poor fertility.
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Smart Contact Lens Detects Glaucoma Pressure
A contact lens with a built-in pressure sensor that could help monitor conditions such as glaucoma has been made by researchers in the US.
The device is the result of a new technique that can embed conducting circuits in the organic polymer traditionally used to make contact lenses, NewScientist reported.
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is an elastic, transparent and gas-permeable organic polymer that can be cast-molded into a range of simple shapes. It is widely used in everything from contact lenses to breast implants.
However, the process of cast molding severely limits the kinds of structures that can be made with the material. Now, Hailin Cong and Tingrui Pan at the University of California, Davis, US, have come up with a simple method to produce PDMS components without the need for casting moulds. Their process can also make the material conduct electricity.
They added a chemical to a liquid PDMS solution which causes the mixture to set, or polymerize, when zapped with UV light. Cong and Pan then exposed the mixture to UV light through a mask containing a circuit pattern. Only the areas hit by the light polymerize and any remaining liquid can be washed away, leaving an imprint of the circuit.
Benefits of Music Under Study
Good music makes us sweat more, according to a study that shows how it taps into ancient brain circuits.
The team that made the finding believes such work could hone efforts to use music in medical treatment, since the work shows how it can influence the skin, heart and breathing, Telegraph said.
For the study, neuroscientists looked at the brain’s response to piano sonatas played either by a computer or a musician and found that only the professional pianist increased the moistness of the listener’s skin, suggesting that the music was tapping a core part of the brain that controls basic processes such as heart rate and breathing.
When combined with a brain scan study, the research also showed why musicians can make us weep, when computers do not.
While the computerized music generated an emotional response--particularly to unexpected chord changes--it was not as strong as listening to the same piece played by a professional pianist, which produced a bigger change in skin conductance, due to sweating and changes in the so called autonomic nervous system, which is controlled by the brain stem. These changes originate from core structures in the brain that process emotions, such as the amygdala, almond-shaped structures on either side.
Fossilized Feathers May Hold Trace of Color
The remains of pigments have been spotted in a fossilized bird feather. The work could point the way to determining the color of feathers on long-extinct creatures, from birds to dinosaurs.
Derek Briggs at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and his colleagues looked at a 100-million-year-old fossil found in Brazil that holds the pattern of a striped feather, Nature reported.
Under an electron microscope, Briggs saw what others before him had seen--tiny sausage-shaped structures just one or two micrometers long.
These were previously thought to be the remains of bacteria that had eaten away the feather.
But Briggs noticed that these shapes were visible only in the dark patches of the feather. “There is no reason why bacteria would colonize one part of a feather and not another,“ he says. Instead, he thinks the structures are the remains of pigment-containing organelles called melanosomes. These organelles contain carbon-based melanin--one of the most common pigments in colored feathers.
Briggs suggests that the melanin preserved in the dark areas of the fossil have maintained the shape of the melanosomes, even after the original structure has gone.
Herbal Remedy Reduces Obesity Risk
With unprecedented levels of obesity across the western world, and incidence of associated heart disease, cancer and diabetes rising, there is a major drive to find new treatments.
Scientists from Germany have recently discovered that extracts of a traditional herbal remedy derived from Tabebuia impetiginosa can act to delay the absorption of dietary fat in animal models, ScienceDaily wrote.
They believe that the extract could be incorporated into a food supplement which may not only reduce obesity, but also lessen the risk of development of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. Dr. Nils Roos from the Max Rubner Institute will present the results on July 7 at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Marseille.
Tabebuia impetiginosa, commonly known as Pink Ipe, is a deciduous tree, native to Central and South America, and is related to magnolias.
Dr. Roos and his team have shown that Tabebuia extract can reduce levels of triglycerides, a breakdown product of fat, in rats after they have been fed a fatty meal. “This result shows the extract may have a potential use in treating obesity,“ he observes.
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