'Sleeping pills could improve your memory'

WASHINGTON: Taking sleeping pills could help a person improve his memory, a controversial new study has claimed.

Researchers have confirmed the mechanism that enables the brain to consolidate memory and found that a commonly prescribed sleep aid enhances the process.

The discovery could lead to new sleep therapies that will improve memory for ageing adults and those with dementia, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

Earlier research found a correlation between sleep spindles - bursts of brain activity that last for a second or less during a specific stage of sleep - and consolidation of memories that depend on the hippocampus.

The hippocampus, part of the cerebral cortex, is important in the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory, and spatial navigation. The hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain damaged by Alzheimer's.

Sara C Mednick from the University of California Riverside and her team demonstrated, for the first time, the critical role that sleep spindles play in consolidating memory in the hippocampus, and they showed that pharmaceuticals could significantly improve that process, far more than sleep alone.

"We found that a very common sleep drug can be used to increase verbal memory," said Mednick, the lead author of the study.

"This is the first study to show you can manipulate sleep to improve memory. It suggests sleep drugs could be a powerful tool to tailor sleep to particular memory disorders," Mednick said in a statement.

A total of 49 men and women between the ages of 18 and 39 who were normal sleepers were given varying doses of zolpidem (Ambien) or sodium oxybate (Xyrem), and a placebo, allowing several days between doses to allow the pharmaceuticals to leave their bodies.

Researchers monitored their sleep, measured sleepiness and mood after napping, and used several tests to evaluate their memory.

They found that zolpidem significantly increased the density of sleep spindles and improved verbal memory consolidation.

"(P)harmacologically enhancing sleep spindles in healthy adults produces exceptional memory performance beyond that seen with sleep alone or sleep with the comparison drug (sodium oxybate)," the researchers said.

Individuals with Alzheimer's, dementia and schizophrenia also experience decreases in sleep spindles, according to the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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Cern physicists say they have found 'God particle'

GENEVA: Physicists said on Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson, a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is.

They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

Joe Incandela, who heads one of the two main teams at CERN that each involve several thousand scientists, said in a statement that "it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.''

The long-theorized subatomic particle would explain why matter has mass and has been considered a missing cornerstone of physics.

Last July, scientists with the world's largest atom-smasher announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like.

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ALMA arrives with discovery of monster starburst galaxies at the edge of time

NEW DELHI: ALMA has arrived with a bang! Scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an observatory located in one of the coldest, driest places on earth, have found a monster starburst galaxy with the brightness of 40 trillion Suns. It is located at an unimaginable distance - light seen by ALMA started from the galaxy some 12.7 billion years ago when the Universe was just a billion years old. Scientists found that it was giving birth to new stars at a mind boggling rate of 1000 every year. Our galaxy, the Milky Way gives birth to one star every year.

Actually ALMA found a whole zoo of galaxies, some 18 of them, all of them from the early turbulent period of the Universe when it was one to three billion years old. Usually, star formation from gigantic swirling clouds of dust does not take place at such a furious pace as in these ancient galaxies.

The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The international team of researchers first discovered these distant starburst galaxies with the National Science Foundation's 10-meter South Pole Telescope. Though dim in visible light, they were glowing brightly in millimeter wavelength light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that the new ALMA telescope was designed to explore.

Using only 16 of ALMA's eventual full complement of 66 antennas, the researchers were able to precisely determine the distance to 18 of these galaxies, revealing that they were among the most distant starburst galaxies ever detected. These results were surprising because very few similar galaxies had previously been discovered at similar distances, and it wasn't clear how galaxies that early in the history of the Universe could produce stars at such a prodigious rate.

The results, published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal, will help astronomers better understand when and how the earliest massive galaxies formed. The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe in massive, bright galaxies. These starburst galaxies converted vast reservoirs of gas and dust into new stars at a furious pace - many thousands of times faster than stately spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.

"The more distant the galaxy, the further back in time one is looking, so by measuring their distances we can piece together a timeline of how vigorously the Universe was making new stars at different stages of its 13.7 billion-year history," said Joaquin Vieira of Caltech who led the team and is lead author of the Nature paper, as reported in a statement by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US.

Intriguingly, emission from water molecules was detected in one of these record-breakers, making it the most distant detection of water in the Universe published to date.

"ALMA's sensitivity and wide wavelength range mean we could make our measurements in just a few minutes per galaxy - about one hundred times faster than before," said Axel Weiss of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, who led the work to measure the distances to the galaxies, the NRAO statement said. "Previously, a measurement like this would be a laborious process of combining data from both visible-light and radio telescopes."

ALMA was able to measure all this because of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant galaxy is distorted and magnified by the gravitational force of a nearer foreground galaxy. Analysis of this gravitational distortion reveals that some of the distant star-forming galaxies are as bright as 40 trillion Suns, and that gravitational lensing has magnified this light by up to 22 times.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, located in the Atacama desert where there is minimal interference from light and dust. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

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'Treatment of ovarian cancer flawed'

Most women with ovarian cancer receive inadequate care and miss out on treatments that could add a year or more to their lives, a new study has found.

The results highlight what many experts say is a neglected problem: Widespread, persistent flaws in the care of women with this disease, which kills 15,000 a year in the US. About 22,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, most of them discovered at an advanced stage and needing aggressive treatment. Worldwide, there are about 200,000 new cases a year.

"If we could make sure that women get to the people who are trained to take care of them, the impact would be much greater than any new chemotherapy drug or biological agent," said Dr Robert E Bristow, the director of gynecologic oncology at the University of California, Irvine, and lead author of the new study NYT News Service.

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Niacin doesn't boost good cholesterol

Popping a vitamin pill cannot stop heart problems. This is the finding of a four-long study aimed at evaluating the ability of a type of vitamin B-called Niacin-to increase the body's reserves of good cholesterol. The logic was that Niacin would reduce the bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol) and help boost the good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein or HDL). But a research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session last week said that the Heart Protection Study found Niacin is, in fact, harmful to patients.

Experts believe that high levels of LDL can trigger heart attacks and strokes. The Heart Protection was studying whether the 25,000-odd patients with heart problems could benefit with Niacin. Niacin in itself triggers flushing among patients. The study hence combined Niacin with larpiprant (an anti-flusing agent) for patients. Unexpectedly, it found significant cases of excessive bleeding and infections among patients who were given this combination drug as against the control group (which wasn't given the combo drug). Significantly higher numbers of patients receiving the study drug suffered serious known side-effects including new onset diabetes (9.1 vs. 7.3 %), diabetic complications (11.1 vs. 7.5 %), gastrointestinal problems such as indigestion and diarrhea (4.8 vs. 3.8 %), and skin issues including itching and rashes (0.7 vs. 0.4 %).

"We are disappointed that these results did not show benefits for our patients," said the study's lead author Jane Armitage, who is a professor at the University of Oxford. She told the meeting that "Still, finding out a drug is not helping people is just as important as finding that it has benefits—the net result is that people are healthier. Niacin has been used for many years in the belief that it would help patients and prevent heart attacks and stroke, but we now know that its adverse side effects outweigh the benefits when used with current treatments."

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Lack of sleep leads to binging, overweight

If you think five hours of sleep every night is enough, think again. A new research paper from the University of Colorado-Boulder says that people who sleep for five hours could put on more weight than people who sleep for nine hours at a stretch.

The researchers added that lack of sleep in itself couldn't lead to obesity. But a dangerous mix of lack of sleep, easy access to food and lack of exercises worked as a potent mixture. This is especially true in cities like Mumbai where people tend to spend hours on the work desk, sipping high-calorie drinks.

The study, which has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that sleeping just five hours a night over a workweek and having unlimited access to food caused the study's participants to gain nearly two pounds of weight.

Previous research papers had shown that lack of sleep can lead to weight gain, but the reasons for extra pounds were unclear. The new study the researchers show that, while staying awake longer requires more energy, the amount of food study participants ate more than offset the extra calories burned.

Those participants in the University of Colorado's study who slept for up to five hours a night burned 5% more energy than those who slept up to nine hours a night, but they consumed 6 % more calories. A press release from the university said that those getting less sleep also tended to eat smaller breakfasts but binged on after-dinner snacks. In fact, the calories consumed in evening snacks were larger than the calories that made up any individual meal.

"When people are sleep-deprive, our findings show they eat during their biological night-time when internal physiology is not designed to be taking in food," said the study's main investigator Kenneth Wright in a press release. He said it is time for weigh-loss programme to incorporate healthy sleep as an important aspect.

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Handsome men earn 22% more

LONDON: Good-looking male workers can earn 22% more than their plainer colleagues doing the same job, a new study has claimed.

However, good looks do not result in increased salaries for women, the study found.

Researchers also found that below-average looks or outright ugliness can reduce a man's earnings by 26% compared to an average-looking worker, The Sunday Times reported.

The 'good-looks' effect exists across the social spectrum and attractive men in all jobs, from male assembly line workers to highly-paid professional careers, can earn 22% more than their colleagues doing an identical role.

The research was conducted by Andrew Leigh, a former economics professor at the Australian National University, and Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne.

The largest exercise of its kind, it repeated a survey from 1984 to see if the beauty premium had changed. Leigh said that although he believed good-looking women may also be paid more, the study did not demonstrate this.

"Beauty can be a double-edged sword for women. Some people still believe good looks and intelligence are incompatible in women so a good-looking woman can't be that productive, but there's no dumb-blonde syndrome affecting men's pay," Leigh said.

The research showed people in the workplace were "lookist" and he hoped the findings would help employers overcome their prejudice, he added.

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Antibiotic resistance as bad as terror threat?

LONDON: Resistance to antibiotics is all set to get listed alongside catastrophic terrorist attacks, severe gas-rich volcanic eruptions, coastal flooding and pandemic influenza in UK's National Risk of Civil Emergencies.

England's chief medical officer professor Dame Sally Davies has called antibiotic resistance a "ticking time bomb" with the world facing an "apocalyptic scenario" where 7% of all hospital admissions are taking place due to drug-resistant infections.

She has warned that the global health system could slip back by 200 years unless the catastrophic threat of antibiotic resistance is successfully tackled.

UK's Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (the Act) describes a civil emergency as "an event which threatens serious damage to human welfare - loss of human life."

Professor Davies says globally, in another 20 years, people will die more often following even a minor surgery.

"A simple cut to your finger could leave you fighting for your life. Cases of E Coli and Klebsiella bacteria have increased by two-thirds in recent years. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland 99,000 cases of bloodstream infections were reported in 2011-12 . E Coli alone accounted for 36% of cases compared with just 1.6% due to MRSA. Around 5,000 patients a year die from such blood poisoning each year, half with an antibiotic-resistant organism," Davies said.

According to her, while a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, there have been no new antibiotics since 1987, leaving our armoury nearly empty as diseases become resistant to existing drugs.

Professor Davies said, "Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don't act now, routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection. That's why governments across the world, including the World Health Organization and G8, need to take this seriously" .

UK will also publish a fiveyear UK Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy shortly which will advocate the responsible use of antibiotics and strengthened surveillance.

Dame Sally urged the government to raise the issue during next month's G8 Summit in London.

Resistance to antibiotics is becoming a serious threat for India because of a popular habit to pop pills at will.

Even the WHO recently warned that the world is staring at a post-antibiotic era, when common infections will no longer have a cure.

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Tremors of mega Japan earthquake were also felt in space

WASHINGTON: The massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, 2011 was also felt in space by ESA's hyper-sensitive GOCE satellite.

The massive earthquake sent ripples of sound - called infrasound - upwards through the atmosphere.

These sound waves caused changes in air density that were detected by ESA's GOCE gravity satellite as it crossed the wavefront.

Earthquakes not only create seismic waves that travel through Earth's interior, but large quakes also cause the surface of the planet to vibrate like a drum. This produces sound waves that travel upwards through the atmosphere.

The size of these waves changes from centimetres at the surface to kilometres in the thin atmosphere at altitudes of 200-300 km.

Only low-frequency sound - infrasound - reaches these heights. It causes vertical movements that expand and contract the atmosphere by accelerating air particles.

Since it was launched in 2009, GOCE has been mapping Earth's gravity with unrivalled precision, orbiting at the lowest altitude of any observation satellite.

But at less than 270 km up, it has to cope with air drag as it cuts through the remnants of the atmosphere.

The cleverly designed satellite carries an innovative ion engine that instantly compensates for any drag by generating carefully calculated thrusts. These measurements are provided by very precise accelerometers.

While the measurements ensure that GOCE remains ultra-stable in its low orbit to collect ultra-precise measurements of Earth's gravity, atmospheric density and vertical winds along its path can be inferred from the thruster and accelerometer data.

Exploiting GOCE data to the maximum, scientists from the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, the French space agency CNES, the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, supported by ESA's Earth Observation Support to Science Element, have been studying past measurements.

When GOCE passed through these waves, its accelerometers sensed the vertical displacements of the surrounding atmosphere in a way similar to seismometers on the surface of Earth. Wave-like variations in air density were also observed.

Raphael Garcia from the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology said, "Seismologists are particularly excited by this discovery because they were virtually the only Earth scientists without a space-based instrument directly comparable to those deployed on the ground.

"With this new tool they can start to look up into space to understand what is going on under their feet," he said.

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Celebrity endorsement prompts children to eat junk food

MUMBAI: Celebrities can do wonders to a brand they endorse-even if it is an obesity-causing high fat sugar or salt food item. A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics shows that children like to eat food items endorsed by a celebrity. In fact, they love it so much that they will eat the endorsed product even if they saw the celebrity concerned on TV in a different role. Watching the celebrity acts as an instant recall button.

The study, which was done by the University of Liverpool, looked at the behavior of 181 children between 8 and 11 years of age after watching former England football captain Gary Linekar on TV.

The children, aged between 8 and 11 years old, watched a 20-minute cartoon programme that had three different adverts or general TV footage (Match of the Day featuring Gary Lineker as the main presenter). The adverts were for Walkers crisps (featuring Gary Lineker as a celebrity endorser), a different snack food or a toy product. After this, the children were offered two bowls of crisps to eat--one labelled 'Walkers' and one labelled 'Supermarket' although both bowls actually contained Walkers crisps. Children, who watched Linekar either as a TV presenter or in an advertisement, reached out more for Walkers crisps than children who had watched advertisements of the other products.

In a press release put out by the University of Liverpool, the study's main investigator Dr Emma Boyland said that th e study demonstrated, for the first time, that the influence of the celebrity extended even further than expected. It prompted the children to eat the endorsed product even when they saw the celebrity outside of any actual promotion for the brand,'' she said.

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