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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Is 30 minutes of physical activity enough? | Dr. Marc Tinsley - Health ...

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans say that adults need 30 minutes of physical activity a day. Seriously? You can?t stay healthy by being active 2% of the day.

You can?t even get out of shape in 30 minutes per day. There?s no way that you can get in shape in only 30 minutes per day.

Image courtesy of photostock/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Healthy people have ants in their pants. Humans are designed to move and move often.

We?re finding out that active couch potatoes?(people who are active enough to meet the PA Guidelines but sedentary much of the rest of the day) have just as much risk of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes as regular couch potatoes.

We need to be active every day, throughout the day.

When you cook sauce or gravy, you can?t stir the pot for 2% of the cooking time and then stop. You have to stir the pot throughout the process.

So if you want to stay healthy, stir the pot and keep moving throughout the day, every day.

Source: http://drmarctinsley.com/is-30-minutes-of-physical-activity-enough/

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Email, voicemail, text: no response. What gives?

AP file

"We connect more but communicate less, in many ways" now despite all our gadgets, says Janet Sternberg, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

By Martha Irvine, Associated Press

Technology is supposed to make us easier to reach, and often does. But the same modes of communication that have hooked us on the instant reply also can leave us feeling forgotten.

We send an email, a text or an instant chat message. We wait ? and nothing happens. Or we make a phone call. Leave a voicemail message. Wait. Again, nothing.

We tend to assume it's a snub, and sometimes it is.

Erica Swallow, a 26-year-old New Yorker, says she's heard a former boyfriend brag about how many text messages he never reads. "Who does that?" she asks, exasperatedly.

These days, though, no response can mean a lot of things. Maybe some people don't see messages because they prefer email and you like Twitter. Maybe we're just plain overwhelmed, and can't keep up with the constant barrage of communication.

Whatever the reason, it's causing a lot of frustration. A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 39 percent of cellphone owners say people they know complain because they don't respond promptly to phone calls or text messages. A third of cell owners also have been told they don't check their phones frequently enough.

It happens in love. It happens in business.

"Tell me to go to hell, but just tell me something! I'm getting lonely over here." That's what Cherie Kerr, a public relations executive in Santa Ana, Calif., jokes she's considered putting after her email signature.

It happens in families.

Last year, Terri Barr, a woman on Long Island, N.Y., with grown children, sent her son a birthday present ? a $350 gift certificate for "a wonderful kayaking trip for six, lunch, wine, equipment," she says.

She sent him an email with the details, but he didn't respond. She says she then telephoned and texted him to tell him it was a present. He eventually sent a one-line email, she says, telling her he was too swamped to open her email gift right then.

Instant communication "can be wonderful ? but also terrible," says Barr, who shared the story more as a lament of modern communication than a reprimand of her son, whose busy work life, she acknowledged, often takes him overseas.

So this year, she sent him a birthday gift by snail-mail in a box. "He actually opened it," she says, and they've been talking more frequently since then.

Connecting more, communicating less
Many other people, though, sit waiting for responses that never come.

"That's where the frustration lies ? it's in the ambiguity," says Susannah Stern, a professor of communication studies at San Diego State University.

Though we often assume the worst, experts say we shouldn't.

Frequently, they say, people simply ? and unknowingly ? choose the wrong way to contact someone.

There are times in life when you need a little help, not from your spouse or an expert, but from your friends. TODAY's Willie Geist and his best bud of almost 20 years, Megan Colarossi, share a little friendly advice on everything from relationship issues to parenting challenges.

"I admit to having often been lax with checking my work number voicemail, which has led to me not responding to people waiting for my reply," says Janet Sternberg, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

She's also had technical glitches. For instance: thinking she'd sent a text message to someone overseas and then, when he didn't respond, realizing she had his international number programmed incorrectly in her phone.

"The sheer management of all these devices and channels is exhausting and sometimes daunting, leaving less and less time for actual communication," Sternberg says. "We connect more but communicate less, in many ways."

That's why many people say they have no choice but to prioritize ? and to respond only to the most urgent messages.

That describes Mahrinah von Schlegel, who's working to launch a Chicago-based "incubator" that will offer shared office space and other resources for fledgling tech entrepreneurs.

"People get angry when not answered and send multiple messages," says von Schlegel, the 30-year-old managing director of the firm, known as Cibola. She says missed communication has caused her to lose some business deals. Often, it's when people try to contact her by Facebook or direct message on Twitter and she doesn't see the messages for days. Email, she says, is her preferred mode of communication.

But even then, she says, there are only so many hours in the day: "I still need time to eat and sleep and shower."

As she sees it, getting no response ? even when she's the one unsuccessfully trying to contact someone ? is just part of life in a high-tech world. A lot of young people say that, so they've become accustomed to having to try again, or try a different mode of communication if something is truly urgent.

"I think there's this understanding because we've grown up being bombarded by communication," says Mike Gnitecki, a 28-year-old special education teacher in Longview, Texas.

So he's willing to try "multiple points of contact" when trying to reach his students' parents ? because, if he wants a response, "that's just how it is."

Mass texting
David Gillman, a 25-year-old Chicagoan, also opts for brevity and efficiency by sending mass texts to several friends at once to save time.

He only expects those who have time or inclination to respond, and doesn't take it personally if they don't.

It gets trickier, he says, with people from older generations, including his parents, because they like to leave him voicemails, which he doesn't like to take time to check.

"I need to get better about that," he concedes.

Those types of missed communications ? and a lack of response ? can cause "turbulence" in a relationship, says Dan Faltesek, an assistant professor of social media at Oregon State University. But, he adds, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"It can be a little awkward, but you should talk to people about how you like to talk," Faltesek says. "Everyone will be happier when they say what the rules are."

And it'll go even more smoothly, he says, when people are willing to step outside their own favorite mode of communication to those preferred by the person they're contacting.

"Use the reverse golden rule," Faltesek advises. "Treat others the way THEY like to be treated."

An example: Gnitecki, the teacher in Texas, is considering sending a survey home to ask parents how they'd like to be contacted.

Tech and communication experts agree that choosing a primary means of communication, and letting it be known, is one way to improve communication.

Rebecca Otis, content and social media manager at Digital Third Coast, an Internet marketing firm in Chicago, also recommends getting rid of email and social media accounts you don't check regularly. And text messaging, she says, should be reserved for communication that requires a more urgent reply.

Finding ways to prioritize, and receive, the most important messages also helps.

San Francisco-based AwayFind Inc. is among companies that have developed applications that help filter email ? in this instance, alerting users to important emails on their mobile devices.

In the end, we can't possibly respond to everything, says Jared Goralnick, the company's founder and CEO, who's also part of a nonprofit group called the Information Overload Research Group, which looks for ways to deal with out-of-control communication.

As he sees it, it's good to be responsive, "but not to set an expectation that you'll be available for everything."

"That's just not sustainable," he says.

In other words, if we're going to keep our sanity, we'll sometimes have to accept the no response.

More from Digital Life:

Source: http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2013/02/26/17106226-email-voicemail-text-no-response-what-gives?lite

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Organized Living: How One Woman Keeps Her Home Clutter-Free

By Reshma Memon Yaqub

My childhood home -- a four-bedroom colonial in a Washington, D.C., suburb -- had an exquisite exterior. But inside there was too much furniture crowding every room; too many Sears receipts spilling from end tables with too many drawers; too many televisions, with their confusing array of remotes, making too much noise; too many boxes of yellow cake mix aging in the overstuffed pantry; too many shoes and coats crammed into the hall closet, making it impossible to find the ones I needed in a hurry. Don't get me wrong: Ours was never one of those unsanitary houses you see on hoarding shows. It was just uncomfortably full, like a belly straining against a belt while its owner made room for one more pie and seven more mini-muffins.

The problem was my mother, who had trouble parting with anything she thought someone she loved might someday need from her (in other words, anything). My father vacillated between resister and accomplice. In my more enlightened moments, I imagine that if I had grown up as they did, in a poor village in Pakistan, I, too, might have held on a little too tightly once fortune finally favored me. But as a child, I felt as though I were drowning. I remember coming home from school to find things in my closet -- wrapping paper, extra blankets -- that didn't belong there. In protest, I'd toss these intruders into the hall. Then as now, clutter had a physical effect on me. The sight of knickknacks caused my left shoulder to rise and fall, tic-like, as if trying to shake something off.

Since leaving home for college, I've been making up for lost space. The home I currently share with my two sons looks from the outside like the one I grew up in -- gorgeous redbrick, huge yard -- but inside, there are no walk-in closets. No kitchen pantry. And gloriously, no garage. There are no coffee tables, because with them comes coffee-table clutter. No televisions, because their sidekicks are remote controls and piles of DVDs. If a decorator walked through my home, she'd recommend an ottoman here and there, a decorative accessory for the hallway, or end tables to cradle the telephones that sit on the hardwood floor in front of the jacks. She'd suggest art for my untouched walls. She might wonder why there's no dining table in the dining room.

It's not that I dislike decorations; I truly admire beautifully appointed homes. My laundry room holds tightly taped boxes full of mementos from my travels. I just can't figure out how to put them up without turning into a woman who has animal statues flanking her front door. I fear that if I start, my DNA strands -- with their broken C gene -- might eventually strangle me, leaving me writhing in a pile of throw pillows. Surely children of alcoholics are just as careful about taking that first drink.

Though my home is empty of the extraneous, it never feels empty enough. I frequently walk around with a cardboard box hunting for donation targets. For me, decluttering is an itch that pleads, then demands, to be scratched. If something's not being used this very moment, or on the cusp of being used, it's out. There's no ill-fitting clothing in my home, save the two onesies I held on to from my sons' baby days -- and one small box of prepregnancy pants that keep me jogging. I purge my closet seasonally, tossing anything that isn't earning its keep. What have you done for me lately, red sweater?

When they've sat unused too long, mocking me, I've evicted my hair dryer, curling iron, patio furniture, any coffee mug with words on it, and my broiler pan. I understand that most ovens come with a broiler pan. What I don't understand is, why? Why don't we get a choice in the matter? I have no baking pans, either. In an emergency, tinfoil is quite foldable and durable.

I adore items with multiple uses, especially paper towels. In my house, these magic little squares moonlight as dinner napkins, place mats, sponges, dishrags, sometimes toilet paper, and, occasionally, ambitiously, maxipads. But even paper towels I cannot stand to stock up on. Since I discovered Amazon's Subscribe & Save service, they arrive on my doorstep monthly, in a perfectly synchronized dance of use and replacement.

One thing I've been unable to get rid of is the outdoor garbage can that my home's previous residents left behind. Do you know how hard it is to throw away a trash can? I've tried cute notes with smiley faces; I've stuck the can inside my own, but the garbage collectors refuse to take the thing. It grates on me daily to see that green monstrosity leaning against my house. Sometimes I force myself to use it, to justify its existence.

To me, making do with less -- almost to the point of deprivation -- feels like a slightly demented badge of honor, a silent scream that says, Look, Mom, no extras! But more often than I'd like to admit, it turns out that I actually do need an item that I've given away, and I'm forced to repurchase it. Two years ago, I donated my treadmill because I joined a gym. A year later, I quit the gym because I wasn't spending enough time there -- and paid $1,400 for a new treadmill. Two springs ago, I donated my space heaters to my children's school, because... well, it wasn't cold anymore. As it turned out, the frost returned the following winter, and I had to shell out $70 apiece for four new heaters. I once donated a Pakistani cookbook to Goodwill because I had the distressing feeling there might be another one somewhere in my house. I realized later that I'd written some family recipes on the back, so I had to repurchase my own book.

My greatest decluttering challenges are Zain, 11, and Zach, 8, who adore useless stuff just as much as I abhor it. On some days, I fantasize about tossing all their toys and books and papers, the daily avalanche that flows from their backpacks. It's a pipe dream I know I will regret entertaining once they are grown.

And grow they will, into men who will tell their balanced, bewildered wives that their mom never let them bring home stuffed animals or pogo sticks or water guns from their grandparents' house. They'll recount that they owned one pair of sneakers at a time, plus dress shoes for holidays, because I didn't want the hall closet cluttered. That their desire to display LEGO creations and chess trophies buttressed against my obsessive resistance to blemished surfaces. "I can't stand so much stuff everywhere," I recently blurted, surveying the four books and magic wand strewn atop Zach's nightstand. "Stand it, Mom," he replied, not unkindly.

Zain, meanwhile, defiantly displays a framed photo of his fourth-grade "Wizard of Oz" cast party on his desk. I once hid it in the laundry room, hoping he would forget about it. A year later, I felt guilty enough to return it to him. Now he is lobbying to put up a Harry Potter poster. I have engineered a compromise: He can put up whatever he wants, but on the inside of his closet doors.

Occasionally, I worry that I'm depriving my sons of the same sense of control over their environment that I longed for as a child. I cringe at the thought that they might not want to come home for spring break to a house with no television to watch the hockey game on, and no coffee table to prop their feet on while they watch it.

My former husband, who recycled himself two years ago, never shared my fear of clutter but kindly kept his collection of African masks at the office. The first thing I noticed about his new digs was the decorative table that existed solely to display photos of our boys: dozens of pictures of their fully frame-worthy faces. He also had flat-screen TVs. For a moment, I admired his ability to balance his own aesthetics with the needs of others. I doubted that, with his full larders and healthy attitude, he'd ever have trouble drawing anyone into his home to lean against a throw pillow and watch the game.

Then I retreated to my own gloriously uncluttered home, whose clarity rises up to embrace me as I enter the front door. I picked up a stray sneaker and admired a drawing poking out from a backpack. Eventually I sat, with a mug of coffee that had no words on it, on a couch with just enough pillows to make a decent nest. I thought about how lucky I am to live in this perfect, unencumbered space with my two perfect, if cluttery, children. I thought about how everything in this house is here because of a carefully considered decision. Myself included. Ironically, I've lived for the past two years in my parents' real estate clutter, an extra home in a great school district they purchased when I was 3 and held on to for the absurd reason that someday, someone they loved might need it.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/organized-living-clutter-free-declutter_n_2736222.html

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Where did that Russian meteor come from? Astronomers determine origins.

Relying on the many publicly available videos of the meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains earlier this month, a pair of Colombian astronomers say that they have calculated the space rock's orbit.

By Nancy Atkinson,?Universe Today / February 27, 2013

This dashcam video frame grab shows a meteor streaking across the sky of Russia?s Ural Mountains earlier this month.

Nasha gazeta/www.ng.kz/AP/File

Enlarge

Just a week after a huge fireball streaked across the skies of the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, astronomers published?a paper?that reconstructs the orbit and determines the origins of the space rock that exploded about 14-20 km (8-12.5 miles) above Earth?s surface, producing a shockwave that damaged buildings and broke windows.

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Researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia used a resource not always available in meteorite falls: the numerous dashboard and security cameras that captured the huge fireball. Using the trajectories shown in videos posted on YouTube, the researchers were able to calculate the trajectory of the meteorite as it fell to Earth and use it to reconstruct the orbit in space of the meteoroid before its violent encounter with our planet.

The results are preliminary, Zuluaga told Universe Today, and they are already working on getting more precise results. ?We are working hard to produce an updated and more precise reconstruction of the orbit using different pieces of evidence,? he said via email.

But through their calculations, Zuluaga and Ferrin determined the rock originated from the Apollo class of asteroids.
?
Using triangulation, the researchers used two videos specifically: one from a camera located in the Revolutionary Square in Chelyabinsk and one video recorded in the a nearby city of Korkino, along with the location of a hole in the ice in Lake Chebarkul, 70km west of Chelyabinsk. The hole is thought to have come from the meteorite that fell on February 15.

Zuluaga and Ferrin were inspired to use the videos by Stefen Geens, who writes the?Ogle Earth blog?and who pointed out that the numerous dashcam and security videos may have gathered data about the trajectory and speed of the meteorite. He used this data and Google Earth to reconstruct the path of the rock as it entered the atmosphere and showed that it matched an image of the trajectory taken by the geostationary Meteosat-9 weather satellite.

But due to variations in time and date stamps on several of the videos ? some which differed by several minutes ? they decided to choose two videos from different locations that seemed to be the most reliable.

From triangulation, they were able to determine height, speed and position of the meteorite as it fell to Earth.

This video is a virtual exploration of the preliminary orbit computed by Zuluaga & Ferrin

This is a virtual exploration of th epreliminary orbit computed by Zuluaga & Ferrin (2013). Scientific details can be found at arxiv:1302.5377

But figuring out the meteroid?s orbit around the Sun was more difficult as well as less precise. They needed six critical parameters, all which they had to estimate from the data using Monte Carlo methods to ?calculate the most probable orbital parameters and their dispersion,? they wrote in their paper. Most of the parameters are related to the ?brightening point? ? where the meteorite becomes bright enough to cast a noticeable shadow in the videos. This helped determine the meteorite?s height, elevation and azimuth at the brightening point as well as the longitude, latitude on the Earth?s surface below and also the velocity of the rock.

?According to our estimations, the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere,? the team wrote. ?The velocity of the body predicted by our analysis was between 13 and 19 km/s (relative to the Earth) which encloses the preferred figure of 18 km/s assumed by other researchers.?

They then used software developed by the US Naval Observatory called NOVAS, the Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry to calculate the likely orbit. They concluded that the Chelyabinsk meteorite is from the Apollo asteroids, a well-known class of rocks that cross Earth?s orbit.

According to?The Technology Review blog, astronomers have seen over 240 Apollo asteroids that are larger than 1 km but believe there must be more than 2,000 others that size.

However, astronomers also estimate there might be about 80 million out there that are about same size as the one that fell over Chelyabinsk: about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, with a weight of 7,000 metric tons.

In their ongoing calculations, the research team has decided to make future calculations not using Lake Chebarkul as one of their triangulation points.

?We are acquainted with the skepticism that the holes in the icesheet of the lake have been produced artificially,? Zuluaga told Universe Today via email. ?However I have also read some reports indicating that pieces of the meteoroid have been found in the area. So, we are working hard to produce an updated and more precise reconstruction of the orbit using different pieces of evidence.?

Many have asked why this space rock was not detected before, and Zuluaga said determining why it was missed is one of the goals of their efforts.

?Regretfully knowing the family at which the asteroid belongs is not enough,? he said. ?The question can only be answered having a very precise orbit we can integrate backwards at least 50 years. Once you have an orbit, that orbit can predict the precise position of the body in the sky and then we can look for archive images and see if the asteroid was overlooked. This is our next move!?

Read the team?s paper here.

Read more about the Apollo class of asteroids?here.

Nancy Atkinson is Universe Today's Senior Editor. She also is the host of the?NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast?and works with the?Astronomy Cast?and?365 Days of Astronomy?podcasts. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

Connect with Nancy on?Facebook?|?Twitter?|?Google +?|?Website

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/hEmi3PgomX8/Where-did-that-Russian-meteor-come-from-Astronomers-determine-origins

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Linking insulin to learning

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Though it's most often associated with disorders like diabetes, Harvard researchers have shown how the signaling pathway of insulin and insulin-like peptides plays another critical role in the body ? helping to regulate learning and memory.

In addition to showing that the insulin-like peptides play a critical role in regulating the activity of neurons involved in learning and memory, a team of researchers led by Yun Zhang, Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, show that the interaction between the molecules can fine-tune how, or even if, learning takes place. Their work is described in a February 6 paper in Neuron.

"People think of insulin and diabetes, but many metabolic syndromes are associated with some types of cognitive defects and behavioral disorders, like depression or dementia," Zhang said. "That suggests that insulin and insulin-like peptides may play an important role in neural function, but it's been very difficult to nail down the underlying mechanism, because these peptides do not have to function through synapses that connect different neurons in the brain"

To get at that mechanism, Zhang and colleagues turned to an organism whose genome and nervous system are well described and highly accessible by genetics ? C. elegans.

Using genetic tools, researchers altered the small, transparent worms by removing their ability to create individual insulin-like compounds. These new "mutant" worms were then tested to see whether they would learn to avoid eating a particular type of bacteria that is known to infect the worms. Tests showed that while some worms did learn to steer clear of the bacteria, others didn't ? suggesting that removing a specific insulin-like compound halted the worms' ability to learn.

Researchers were surprised to find, however, that it wasn't just removing the molecules that could make the animals lose the ability to learn ? some peptide was found to inhibit learning.

"We hadn't predicted that we would find both positive and negative regulators from these peptides," Zhang said. "Why does the animal need this bidirectional regulation of learning? One possibility is that learning depends on context. There are certain things you want to learn ? for example, the worms in these experiments wanted to learn that they shouldn't eat this type of infectious bacteria. That's a positive regulation of the learning. But if they needed to eat, even if it is a bad food, to survive, they would need a way to suppress this type of learning."

Even more surprising for Zhang and her colleagues was evidence that the various insulin-like molecules could regulate each other.

"Many animals, including the humans, have multiple insulin-like molecules and it appears that these molecules can act like a network," she said. "Each of them may play a slightly different role in the nervous system, and they function together to coordinate the signaling related to learning and memory. By changing the way the molecules interact, the brain can fine tune learning in a host of different ways."

Going forward, Zhang said she hopes to characterize more of the insulin-like peptides as a way of better understanding how the various molecules interact, and how they act on the neural circuits for learning and memory.

Understanding how such pathways work could one day help in the development of treatment for a host of cognitive disorders, including dementia.

"The signaling pathways for insulin and insulin-like peptides are highly conserved in mammals, including the humans," Zhang said. "There is even some preliminary evidence that insulin treatment, in some cases, can improve cognitive function. That's one reason we believe that if we understand this mechanism, it will help us better understand how insulin pathways are working in the human brain."

###

Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu

Thanks to Harvard University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127040/Linking_insulin_to_learning

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China tensions with Japan sell fireworks?

Some manufacturers of New Year fireworks are profiting from strong anti-Japanese sentiment related to territorial disputes. Just check out the names of certain pyrotechnics for sale on Beijing streets.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / February 6, 2013

A vendor walks out from a room where boxes of firecrackers with the words 'Tokyo Big Explosion' are stored in Beijing, Wednesday. The vendor said Chinese authorities have asked that the fireworks not be sold due to its name on the package. China and Japan are in a tense dispute over East China Sea islands that have inflamed anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese.

Andy Wong/AP

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Nothing defines Chinese New Year like fireworks. On the stroke of midnight, Beijing erupts in a riotous, deafening barrage of explosions that out-bangs any war zone.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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Suicide bomber attacks Afghan army bus; 7 wounded

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A man wearing a black overcoat and carrying an umbrella as a shelter against the heavy snow crossed a street in the Afghan capital early Wednesday morning toward an idling bus filled with Afghan soldiers, where he laid down and wiggled underneath. Then he exploded, engulfing the undercarriage of the bus in flames.

The suicide bomber killed himself and wounded at least seven people ? six soldiers and one civilian, the Kabul police chief's office said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to The Associated Press.

Though no deaths were reported, the attack ? the second attempted strike in the capital this week ? was a reminder of the Taliban insurgency's ability to hit the Afghan government even with about 100,000 international troops helping secure the country.

The Afghan government uses buses to ferry soldiers, police and office workers into the center of the city for work every day. These vehicles, which run regular routes, have been a common target for insurgents.

A handful of soldiers were about to board the bus when the attacker slid underneath and detonated his vest, said Ahmad Shakib, who saw the attack unfold as he waited across the street.

Shakib said the attacker did not rush but moved purposefully across the snowy street. Shakib thought when the man started to push himself under the bus that maybe he was a driver's assistant trying to fix something.

"I thought to myself, 'What is this crazy man doing?' And then there was a blast and flames,'" Shakib said.

"It was a very loud explosion. I still cannot really hear," he added.

The owner of a bakery nearby said that six people who were waiting outside his shop to buy bread were also wounded. The windows of Mirza Khan's bakery also shattered.

The attack comes three days after a would-be car bomber was shot dead by police in downtown Kabul. That assailant was driving a vehicle packed with explosives and officials said he appeared to be targeting an intelligence agency office nearby.

____

Associated Press writer Heidi Vogt contributed to this report from Kabul.

Associated Press

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'Fat worms' inch scientists toward better biofuel production

Feb. 26, 2013 ? Fat worms confirm that researchers from Michigan State University have successfully engineered a plant with oily leaves ?- a feat that could enhance biofuel production as well as lead to improved animal feeds.

The results, published in the current issue of The Plant Cell, the journal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, show that researchers could use an algae gene involved in oil production to engineer a plant that stores lipids or vegetable oil in its leaves -- an uncommon occurrence for most plants.

Traditional biofuel research has focused on improving the oil content of seeds. One reason for this focus is because oil production in seeds occurs naturally. Little research, however, has been done to examine the oil production of leaves and stems, as plants don't typically store lipids in these tissues.

Christoph Benning, MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, led a collaborative effort with colleagues from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. The team's efforts resulted in a significant early step toward producing better plants for biofuels.

"Many researchers are trying to enhance plants' energy density, and this is another way of approaching it," Benning said. "It's a proof-of-concept that could be used to boost plants' oil production for biofuel use as well as improve the nutrition levels of animal feed."

Benning and his colleagues began by identifying five genes from one-celled green algae. From the five, they identified one that, when inserted into Arabidopsis thaliana, successfully boosted oil levels in the plant's leaf tissue.

To confirm that the improved plants were more nutritious and contained more energy, the research team fed them to caterpillar larvae. The larvae that were fed oily leaves from the enhanced plants gained more weight than worms that ate regular leaves.

For the next phase of the research, Benning and his colleagues will work to enhance oil production in grasses and algae that have economic value. The benefits of this research are worth pursuing, Benning said.

"If oil can be extracted from leaves, stems and seeds, the potential energy capacity of plants may double," he said. "Further, if algae can be engineered to continuously produce high levels of oil, rather than only when they are under stress, they can become a viable alternative to traditional agricultural crops."

Moreover, algae can be grown on poor agricultural land -- a big plus in the food vs. fuel debate, he added.

"These basic research findings are significant in advancing the engineering of oil-producing plants," said Kenneth Keegstra, GLBRC scientific director and MSU University Distinguished Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. "They will help write a new chapter on the development of production schemes that will enhance the quantity, quality and profitability of both traditional and nontraditional crops."

Additional MSU researchers and GLBRC members contributing to the study include Gregg Howe, biochemistry and molecular biology professor; John Olhrogge, University Distinguished Professor of plant biology; and Gavin Reid, biochemistry and molecular biology associate professor.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/biochemistry/~3/7qx4zmfYlHI/130226092126.htm

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Misdiagnoses in doctor's office can do harm: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Missed or wrong diagnoses in primary care may put thousands of patients at risk of complications each year, a new study suggests.

Although mistakes during surgery and in medication prescribing have been at the center of patient safety efforts, researchers said less attention has been paid to missed diagnoses in the doctor's office.

Those errors may lead to more patient injuries and deaths than other mistakes, according to Dr. David Newman-Toker from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who co-wrote a commentary on the new study.

"We have every reason to believe that diagnostic errors are a major, major public health problem," Newman-Toker told Reuters Health.

"You're really talking about at least 150,000 people per year, deaths or disabilities that are resulting from this problem."

For the new study, researchers used electronic health records to track 190 diagnostic errors made during primary care visits at one of two healthcare facilities. In each of those cases, the misdiagnosed patient was hospitalized or turned up back at the office or emergency room within two weeks.

The study team found the type of missed diagnosis varied widely. Pneumonia, heart failure, kidney failure and cancer each accounted for between five and seven percent of conditions doctors initially diagnosed as something else.

Most diagnostic errors could have caused moderate or severe harm to the patient, the researchers determined. Of the 190 patients with diagnostic errors, 36 had serious, permanent damage and 27 died, according to findings published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

One of the difficulties in making an accurate diagnosis is certain common symptoms - such as stomach ache or shortness of breath - could be signs of a range of illnesses, both serious and not, researchers said.

"If you look at the types of chief complaints that these things occur with, they're fairly common chief complaints," said Dr. Hardeep Singh, who led the new study at the Houston VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence.

"If somebody would come in with mild shortness of breath and a little bit of cough, people would think you might have bronchitis, you might have phlegm? and lo and behold they would come back two days later with heart failure," he told Reuters Health.

Most of the missed diagnoses were traced back to the office visit and the doctor not getting an accurate patient history, doing a full exam or ordering the correct tests, Singh's team found.

Cutting down on those errors may require changes in doctor training, for example. One thing patients can do, the researchers agreed, is come to the office prepared to give their doctor all of the relevant information about the nature and timing of their symptoms.

"I do think it's important for a patient to question or observe the doctor," Newman-Toker said. "Ask pointed questions: ?What else could this be? What things are you most concerned about?'"

In addition, he told Reuters Health, patients should "not just assume that once the diagnosis has happened the first time, that everything is said and done and that it's all over. You just can't have blind obedience to the doctor's diagnosis."

For example, Newman-Toker said, if people develop new symptoms or their symptoms worsen, they shouldn't assume everything is fine because their doctor initially diagnosed something not serious.

Patients should understand there is some uncertainly involved in a diagnosis, Singh said, especially because symptoms and conditions can change over time.

"We need to get patients more engaged in the conversation with the providers," he said. "I think the main message is: how do we effectively (make diagnoses) together?"

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/MbBLbb JAMA Internal Medicine, online February 25, 2013.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/misdiagnoses-doctors-office-harm-study-211212956.html

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Study says too many Americans still drink too much

(Reuters) - On any given day in the United States, 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal guidelines recommend, according to a study that also found that 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged "heavy drinkers."

That means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women, according to the study that appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

"And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day," said lead author Patricia Guenther, a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

"But the fact remains that it is a significant public health problem that many people do drink to excess."

Guenther said that members of the committee that drafted the current USDA guidelines on alcohol consumption wanted to know how many adults exceeded the limits.

She and her colleagues collected data from a nationally representative survey on health and nutrition, which included about 5,400 adults over age 21. Among other things, each was asked how much alcohol they drank the previous day.

The researchers found that 64 percent of men and 79 percent of women said they drank no alcohol at all that day, and another 18 percent of men and 10 percent of women drank within the recommended amounts.

Nine percent of men said they had three to four drinks the day before and 8 percent of women said they drank two to three alcoholic beverages, the researchers said.

The heaviest drinkers of all were the 8 percent of men who had five or more drinks, and 3 percent of women who had four or more.

"Overall the study confirms that rates of unhealthy alcohol use in the U.S. are significant," said Jennifer Mertens, a research medical scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, who was not part of the study.

Regularly drinking more than recommended levels is "linked to increased alcohol-related problems," Mertens wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

"Binge drinking (more than four drinks on any one day for men and more than three on any one day for women and older adults) even one time can increase the risk of injury from falls, motor vehicle accidents and other accidents," she added.

Among men, the 31-to-30-year-old age group had the most heavy drinkers, at 22 percent. Ammonal women, the heaviest drinkers - 12 percent - were between 51 and 70 years old.

Guenther said that's important to note because it highlights that heavy drinking is not just part of life among the college set.

"People need to be aware that there are people of all ages who drink to excess," she told Reuters Health, adding that the new study is also important because it may help people recognize whether they themselves are drinking more than recommended.

"There are people who don't realize that they are drinking more than what's beneficial to their health," she said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/X1NVtW

(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/study-says-too-many-americans-still-drink-too-000116086.html

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8 videos of DIY home improvement fails - Mother Nature Network

Winter is upon us and you know what that means ? it's DIY season. The frigid temperatures mean less venturing outside and more activities inside the house. Fresh New Year's resolutions have people surveying their homes, looking for something that needs fixing. Hardware store sales will be another lure, drawing in optimistic Mr. and Ms. Fix-Its like shoppers to a Walmart on Black Friday.

Another common theme for DIYers is YouTube. DIYers everywhere like to film themselves fixing up parts of their home or creating cool gadgets. Many are successful, teaching others what DIY done right looks like. But these are?not their stories. In the following videos, you'll see the faces of DIY home improvement gone wrong.

Changing lightbulbs

The simple lightbulb change is something most of us learned in Household Chores 101. It's a straightforward procedure: Get something to stand on, unscrew the old bulb, and screw in the new one. Just make sure you've got something sturdy to stand on.

Repositioning furniture

When you're fixing or moving heavy objects, always ask for help. You're not Superman, and good friends will usually be glad to lend a hand. Otherwise you could break the stuff you're moving ? and possibly yourself.

Using power tools

Didn't Dad teach you to be careful with power tools when you were a kid? (Apparently having long hair and using these tools don't mix.)

Mowing the lawn

Popping on your headphones and cutting the grass is a zen way to DIY. But first, make sure you understand the power of your lawnmower or you just might catch an unexpected ride.

Repairing a roof

When you do a DIY project, sometimes there are red flags. When the roof you're repairing creaks louder than a rusty gate is one such flag.?

Moving unwanted furniture out of your house

One rule of thumb when you're moving furniture out of your house: safe is better than easy. And make sure your helpers know what they're doing, or you could end up spending more money than you'd get for that furniture.

Doing 'renovation' work

What was this guy thinking? A simple understanding of physics and remembering to keep a safe distance away from potential disaster could have averted this crisis.

Chopping down a tree

It seems easy enough ? take a chainsaw and start carving into a tree to chop it down, right? There's two things this amateur lumberjack forgot, though: a tree topples the way it leans and the bigger something is, the harder it falls.

Related DIY posts on MNN:

Source: http://www.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/stories/8-videos-of-diy-home-improvement-fails

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Nokia 105 and 301 candybar phones announced at MWC, offer simplicity on the cheap

Think Nokia's all about Lumias these days? While the Windows Phone brand is still the company's primary point of focus, it doesn't mean Nokia isn't still cranking out millions of basic phones for emerging markets around the globe. With that in mind, the Finnish phone giant has outed two such handsets at its event at Mobile World Congress. Sure, they aren't much to look at, but Nokia feels it's still an important element of its strategy to dominate the lower-end market segment.

The first cellular telephone unveiled at this morning's event is the Nokia 105, which is about as simple as they come these days. Once it arrives on the market this quarter, you'll be able to grab one for €15 ($20) in either cyan or black. It contains such features as a flashlight and FM radio, and the noteworthy bullet point is its month-long battery life (standby time). The second half of the pair is the 301 (pictured above), which is a bit more fancy at €65 ($85). It will come with a 3.2MP camera with panorama mode, sequential shots and a clever little self-portrait mode that audibly prepares you for your next glamour selfie. Additionally, the 301 lets you take advantage of Mail for exchange, Nokia Xpress internet (which compresses data down by about 90 percent) and HSPA connectivity with video sharing. Dual and single-SIM options will be available in Q2 of this year.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Nokia

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/nokia-105-301-candybars/

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Nonprofit Helps Chassis Maker Build Business | RV Business

It?s one thing to build a chassis. But it?s quite another to build a chassis manufacturing company.

According to a report in the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal, entrepreneur wannabe Robert Frost knew how to do the former, but he wanted to do the latter. So Frost turned to business experts, including Elevate Ventures Inc., for advice.

The result: Kendallville-based Wolfpack Chassis LLC is launching a production line to manufacture chassis, the supporting frames for recreational vehicles and manufactured homes.

Frost, Wolfpack?s president and CEO, said the company might never have gotten off the ground without guidance ? and greenbacks ? from Elevate Ventures, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit.

?As a startup business, there are a lot of distractions that can cause you to lose sight of your target,? Frost said. ?But our partnership with Elevate has allowed us to stay focused on doing what we do best, which is building quality chassis and adding value for customers.?

Created in 2011, Elevate Ventures manages $80 million for the state, including more than $34 million in federal funds received under the State Small Business Credit Initiative.

To read the entire article click here.

Source: http://www.rvbusiness.com/2013/02/nonprofit-helps-frame-maker-build-business/

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2nd blizzard in less than week slams Plains region

In this photo provided Jeff Powers blowing snow creates whiteout conditions Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 near Ingalls, Kan. Blizzard conditions slammed parts of the central Plains Monday, forcing the closure of highways in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles and sending public works crews scrambling for salt and sand anew just days after a massive storm blanketed the region with snow. (AP Photo/Courtesy Jeff Powers)

A winter storm moves across the center of the nation, bringing more snow to the Plains, Midwest, and Mid-Mississippi River Valley. The southern side of this system allows for showers and thunderstorms to persist for the Southeast.

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) ? National Weather Service officials in Kansas and Oklahoma issued blizzard warnings and watches through late Monday as the storm packing snow and high winds tracked eastward across West Texas toward Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Forecasters warned of possible tornadoes in the southeast.

Snow covered Amarillo, Texas, where forecasters said up to 18 inches could fall, accompanied by wind gusts up to 65 mph. Paul Braun, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transport, said whiteout conditions and drifting snow had made all roads in the Texas Panhandle impassable. Authorities closed Interstate 40 from Amarillo to the Oklahoma state line and Interstate 27 from Lubbock to 60 miles beyond Amarillo.

"It's just a good day to stay home," Braun said. "This is one of the worst ones we've had for a while."

The weather service issued a blizzard warning for the Oklahoma Panhandle and counties along the Kansas border, warning that travel in the area would be "very dangerous" until Tuesday morning with near zero visibility and drifting snow.

Texas officials called in the National Guard to respond to emergency calls and help stranded motorists after Department of Public Safety troopers found roads impassable.

Billy Brown, a farmer in the town of Panhandle about 30 miles northeast of Amarillo, said the snow was coming down so hard that he could only see for about 100 feet and that it was forming drifts up to 3 feet deep. The whiteout forced all vehicles from the roads ? even the snow plows, he said.

"You can't see anything," Brown said. "I've got some farm equipment out there I can't see at all ? plows and tractors."

But he said the snow would bring some relief to the drought-stricken region. Wheat stubble still in the ground after the last harvest will act as a conduit for the snow, which will seep into the soil and provide much-needed moisture when he plants cotton and grain sorghum in the coming months.

"We have been super dry," Brown said. "This is just a good old fashioned blizzard. We were overdue for one."

In Lubbock early Monday winds whipped fallen snow off roof tops and the ground, adding to visibility woes. Streets were snow-packed and icy.

In Oklahoma, forecasters said up to 16 inches of snow could accumulate in some areas, with wind gusts reaching up to 55 mph. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed all highways in the state's Panhandle, citing slick roads and limited visibility. Trooper Betsy Randolph said the patrol advised its non-essential personnel to stay home until Wednesday.

About a dozen flights were canceled at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. The Chicago Department of Aviation reported normal operations at Midway and O'Hare ? the bellwether air hub of the Midwest.

Blowing snow took Donna Lloyd by surprise in Guymon in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

"The wind is not usually like this," said Lloyd, who manages a Wes-T-Go convenience store. "Our front door keeps freezing shut."

Kerri Lewis, a convenience store manager in nearby Woodward, said she expected to be snowed in, especially as most of the roads out of town were already closed.

"You can't hardly see across the street," Lewis said. "I'm pretty much stuck."

Announcing a snow emergency in Woodward County, Emergency Management Director Matt Lehenbauer said almost two feet of snow was forecast for the area.

"Conditions are just treacherous right now," he said. "It's even dangerous for road-clearing crews to be out."

Several motorists had reported being stranded, but so far there hadn't been serious accidents, he added.

In Wichita, Kan., officials said they had barely recovered from last week's storm that dumped up to 18 inches of snow.

Joe Pajor, deputy director of public works in Wichita, told The Wichita Eagle that sand and salt supplies were low and that the city's strategy might just be to plow snow into the center of arterial streets and cut traffic to one lane in each direction. He said the city wouldn't begin to use its limited sand and salt supply until the snow stopped falling and plowing was under way.

Steve Corfidi, meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said the storm also will affect southern states and could spawn tornadoes Tuesday in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Georgia.

By Monday morning, several inches of snow had fallen on much of West Texas and the Texas Panhandle, where forecasters predicted more than a foot could fall. The incoming storm sent Amarillo residents running out for last-minute supplies. Mario Delgado, 57, needed milk.

"I got all the good stuff like soup and peanut butter the other day," Delgado told the Amarillo Globe-News. "We're used to it here."

He added: "As long as you got plenty of clothes and the right kind of shoes, you'll be alright."

___

Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant in Dallas, Jill Zeman Bleed in Little Rock, Ark., Dan Holtmeyer in Oklahoma City and Carla K. Johnson in Chicago contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-25-US-Winter-Storm/id-0c189977d6b04933b93ae78082171cf8

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Little telescope to hunt big game: hard-to-see near-Earth asteroids

Canada's NEOSSat space telescope was launched Monday atop an Indian rocket. It will monitor two groups of asteroids whose proximity to the sun makes them hard to see from Earth.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / February 25, 2013

In this frame grab made from dashboard camera video shows the Chelyabinsk asteroid on Feb. 15, about 930 miles east of Moscow. Efforts to discover near-Earth asteroids received a potential boost Monday with the launch of Canada's NEOSSat space telescope.

AP Video/AP

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Efforts to discover near-Earth asteroids ? including those that are potentially hazardous ? received a potential boost Monday with the launch of the Canadian Space Agency's Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat).

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Housed in a spacecraft the size of a large suitcase, the space telescope physically is a munchkin among behemoths. Its light-gathering mirror is only about 6 inches across.

But from its orbit nearly 500 miles above Earth, NEOSSat will be able to view faint near-Earth asteroids in a region of space that is tough for terrestrial telescopes to tackle.

The $25 million NEOSSat mission is one of seven satellites the Indian Space Agency lofted Monday aboard a single rocket launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, some 50 miles north of Chennal, on India's east coast.

Ground stations have made contact with NEOSSat, "and the basics are green," says Alan Hildebrand, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Alberta and the project's lead scientist.

To date, astronomers say they have discovered between 90 and 95 percent of the approximately 1,000 near-Earth asteroids estimated to be larger than half a mile across.

In 2005, Congress instructed NASA to hunt for smaller asteroids ? setting a goal of finding 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids 500 feet wide and larger by 2020.

But as the Chelyabinsk asteroid demonstrated on Feb. 15, objects far smaller can inflict damage. At about 55 feet across, and with a mass estimated at 10,000 tons, the asteroid exploded high over the Ural mountains. The shock waves damaged an estimated 4,300 buildings and injured nearly 1,500 people.

With tens of millions of objects this size orbiting the sun, the recurrence rate for collisions with a Chelyabinsk-like object averages once every 100 years, according to Paul Chodas, with NASA's Near-Earth Objects Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/jVBeXVAp1AE/Little-telescope-to-hunt-big-game-hard-to-see-near-Earth-asteroids

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Monday, February 25, 2013

Viking's New Stadium Will Accommodate Baseball

The Minnesota Vikings' new football stadium will be designed to accommodate a baseball field.

The Vikings and the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority announced agreement Friday on a multi-use field configuration for the $975 million stadium.

The Minnesota Twins left the Metrodome for their own new ballpark at Target Field in 2010. But the Minnesota Gophers and other college and prep baseball teams want to play early-season games in the Vikings' new stadium.

Under the agreement, the new stadium will feature a 26-foot-high right field wall, retractable seats on the north sideline and removable dugouts.

Plans now call for the Metrodome to be torn down early next year and for the new stadium to be ready to open by July 1, 2016.

Source: http://greaterminnesota.kstp.com/news/news/186357-vikings-new-stadium-will-accommodate-baseball

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Nottingham technology in heart development breakthrough

Public release date: 25-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail |

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Contact: Emma Thorne
emma.thorne@nottingham.ac.uk
44-115-951-5793
University of Nottingham

Technology developed at The University of Nottingham has been used in a breakthrough study aimed at developing the first comprehensive model of a fully functioning fetal heart.

The abdominal fetal ECG device, designed originally by academics in the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and on commercial sale throughout the world since 2008 through the University spin-out company Monica Healthcare Ltd, has been used to observe living fetal hearts of babies in their mothers' wombs.

The collaborative study led by experts at The University of Leeds has discovered that the walls of the human heart are a disorganised jumble of tissue until relatively late in pregnancy with development much slower compared to other mammals.

Professor Barrie Hayes-Gill, Professor of Electronic Systems and Medical Devices at The University of Nottingham and joint founder and research director at Monica Healthcare said: "It's absolutely fantastic to see our device being used to detect fetal ECG morphology (i.e. ECG shape) in a non-invasive manner from the surface of the maternal abdomen. In this study the Monica device has been specifically deployed to observe the development of the fetal heart as it goes through gestation.

"It's an important development and we are delighted to see Nottingham technology playing such an integral part of the study. We expect that non-invasive morphological analysis during pregnancy and labour will become routine clinical practice in years to come as Monica continues to gain traction in the marketplace."

The fetal heart monitor is a portable, non-invasive device which attaches to the mother's abdomen and measures the electrical activity from the heart of the baby inside her womb. It is currently being used worldwide to monitor fetal heart rates during labour and delivery.

The device uses complex algorithms to correctly identify signals related to the fetal heart rate (FHR) using sensitive ECG-style electrodes. This method of using electrophysiological signals differs from current external monitoring devices that collect FHR and uterine activity data based on physical changes (e.g. change in reflected sound waves and changes on strain gauge) that may cause problems in data interpretation.

The monitor is simple to use, beltless, requires no wires to connect to the display or printer. There is also no need for the constant re-positioning of transducers, which is required with older technology and the mother is free to walk around if necessary.

As part of their study, which has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focus, the team from the University of Leeds used the device to administer a weekly fetal ECG recording from 18 weeks until just before delivery.

The data from this, alongside two different MRI scans from the hearts of dead fetuses, was incorporated into a 3D computerised model built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart.

Early results suggest that the human heart may develop on a different timeline from other mammals. While the tissue in the walls of a pig heart develops a highly organised structure at a relatively early stage of a fetus' development, their work suggests there is little organisation in the human heart's cells until 20 weeks into pregnancy. Despite this, the human heart has a regular heartbeat from about 22 days.

Developing an accurate, computerised simulation of the fetal heart is critical to understanding normal heart developments in the womb and, eventually, to opening new ways of detecting and dealing with some functional abnormalities early in pregnancy.

Dr Eleftheria Pervolaraki, lead researcher on the project at the University of Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "For a heart to be beating effectively, we thought you needed a smoothly changing orientation of the muscle cells through the walls of the heart chambers. Such an organisation is seen in the hearts of all healthy adult mammals.

"Fetal hearts in other mammals such as pigs, which we have been using as models, show such an organisation even early in gestation, with a smooth change in cell orientation going through the heart wall. But what we actually found is that such organisation was not detectable in the human fetus before 20 weeks," she said.

Professor Arun Holden, from The University of Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "The development of the fetal human heart is on a totally different timeline, a slower timeline, from the model that was being used before. This upsets our assumptions and raises new questions. Since the wall of the heart is structurally disorganised, we might expect to find arrhythmias, which are a bad sign in an adult. It may well be that in the early stages of development of the heart arrhythmias are not necessarily pathological and that there is no need to panic if we find them. Alternatively, we could find that the disorganisation in the tissue does not actually lead to arrhythmia."

A detailed computer model of the activity and architecture of the developing heart will help make sense of the limited information doctors can obtain about the fetus using non-invasive monitoring of a pregnant woman.

Professor Holden said: "It is different from dealing with an adult, where you can look at the geometry of an individual's heart using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or CT (Computerised Tomography) scans. You can't squirt x-rays at a fetus and we also currently tend to avoid MRI, so we need a model into which we can put the information we do have access to."

He added: "Effectively, at the moment, fetal ECGs are not really used. The textbooks descriptions of the development of the human heart are still founded on animal models and 19th century collections of abnormalities in museums. If you are trying to detect abnormal activity in fetal hearts, you are only talking about third trimester and postnatal care of premature babies. By looking at how the human heart actually develops in real life and creating a quantitative, descriptive model of its architecture and activity from the start of a pregnancy to birth, you are expanding electrocardiology into the fetus."

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Nottingham technology in heart development breakthrough Public release date: 25-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Emma Thorne
emma.thorne@nottingham.ac.uk
44-115-951-5793
University of Nottingham

Technology developed at The University of Nottingham has been used in a breakthrough study aimed at developing the first comprehensive model of a fully functioning fetal heart.

The abdominal fetal ECG device, designed originally by academics in the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and on commercial sale throughout the world since 2008 through the University spin-out company Monica Healthcare Ltd, has been used to observe living fetal hearts of babies in their mothers' wombs.

The collaborative study led by experts at The University of Leeds has discovered that the walls of the human heart are a disorganised jumble of tissue until relatively late in pregnancy with development much slower compared to other mammals.

Professor Barrie Hayes-Gill, Professor of Electronic Systems and Medical Devices at The University of Nottingham and joint founder and research director at Monica Healthcare said: "It's absolutely fantastic to see our device being used to detect fetal ECG morphology (i.e. ECG shape) in a non-invasive manner from the surface of the maternal abdomen. In this study the Monica device has been specifically deployed to observe the development of the fetal heart as it goes through gestation.

"It's an important development and we are delighted to see Nottingham technology playing such an integral part of the study. We expect that non-invasive morphological analysis during pregnancy and labour will become routine clinical practice in years to come as Monica continues to gain traction in the marketplace."

The fetal heart monitor is a portable, non-invasive device which attaches to the mother's abdomen and measures the electrical activity from the heart of the baby inside her womb. It is currently being used worldwide to monitor fetal heart rates during labour and delivery.

The device uses complex algorithms to correctly identify signals related to the fetal heart rate (FHR) using sensitive ECG-style electrodes. This method of using electrophysiological signals differs from current external monitoring devices that collect FHR and uterine activity data based on physical changes (e.g. change in reflected sound waves and changes on strain gauge) that may cause problems in data interpretation.

The monitor is simple to use, beltless, requires no wires to connect to the display or printer. There is also no need for the constant re-positioning of transducers, which is required with older technology and the mother is free to walk around if necessary.

As part of their study, which has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focus, the team from the University of Leeds used the device to administer a weekly fetal ECG recording from 18 weeks until just before delivery.

The data from this, alongside two different MRI scans from the hearts of dead fetuses, was incorporated into a 3D computerised model built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart.

Early results suggest that the human heart may develop on a different timeline from other mammals. While the tissue in the walls of a pig heart develops a highly organised structure at a relatively early stage of a fetus' development, their work suggests there is little organisation in the human heart's cells until 20 weeks into pregnancy. Despite this, the human heart has a regular heartbeat from about 22 days.

Developing an accurate, computerised simulation of the fetal heart is critical to understanding normal heart developments in the womb and, eventually, to opening new ways of detecting and dealing with some functional abnormalities early in pregnancy.

Dr Eleftheria Pervolaraki, lead researcher on the project at the University of Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "For a heart to be beating effectively, we thought you needed a smoothly changing orientation of the muscle cells through the walls of the heart chambers. Such an organisation is seen in the hearts of all healthy adult mammals.

"Fetal hearts in other mammals such as pigs, which we have been using as models, show such an organisation even early in gestation, with a smooth change in cell orientation going through the heart wall. But what we actually found is that such organisation was not detectable in the human fetus before 20 weeks," she said.

Professor Arun Holden, from The University of Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "The development of the fetal human heart is on a totally different timeline, a slower timeline, from the model that was being used before. This upsets our assumptions and raises new questions. Since the wall of the heart is structurally disorganised, we might expect to find arrhythmias, which are a bad sign in an adult. It may well be that in the early stages of development of the heart arrhythmias are not necessarily pathological and that there is no need to panic if we find them. Alternatively, we could find that the disorganisation in the tissue does not actually lead to arrhythmia."

A detailed computer model of the activity and architecture of the developing heart will help make sense of the limited information doctors can obtain about the fetus using non-invasive monitoring of a pregnant woman.

Professor Holden said: "It is different from dealing with an adult, where you can look at the geometry of an individual's heart using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or CT (Computerised Tomography) scans. You can't squirt x-rays at a fetus and we also currently tend to avoid MRI, so we need a model into which we can put the information we do have access to."

He added: "Effectively, at the moment, fetal ECGs are not really used. The textbooks descriptions of the development of the human heart are still founded on animal models and 19th century collections of abnormalities in museums. If you are trying to detect abnormal activity in fetal hearts, you are only talking about third trimester and postnatal care of premature babies. By looking at how the human heart actually develops in real life and creating a quantitative, descriptive model of its architecture and activity from the start of a pregnancy to birth, you are expanding electrocardiology into the fetus."

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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/uon-nti022513.php
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