TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Stanley]

I see that the H5N1 virus is getting attention again. Can't find the article but there is some discussion about the dangers of attempting to modify the virus to render it less virulent.

[Tizer]

Gut Bacteria Regulate Happiness
(12 June 2012, Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, University College Cork, Ireland)

UCC scientists have shown that brain levels of serotonin, the ‘happy hormone’ are regulated by the amount of bacteria in the gut during early life. Their research is being published today in the leading international psychiatry journal, Molecular Psychiatry.

This research shows that normal adult brain function depends on the presence of gut microbes during development. Serotonin, the major chemical involved in the regulation of mood and emotion, is altered in times of stress, anxiety and depression and most clinically effective antidepressant drugs work by targeting this neurochemical.

Scientists at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in UCC used a germ-free mouse model to show that the absence of bacteria during early life significantly affected serotonin concentrations in the brain in adulthood. The research also highlighted that the influence is sex dependent, with more marked effects in male compared with female animals. Finally, when the scientists colonised the animals with bacteria prior to adulthood, they found that many of the central nervous system changes, especially those related to serotonin, could not be reversed indicating a permanent imprinting of the effects of absence of gut flora on brain function.

This builds on earlier work, from the Cork group and others, showing that a microbiome-gut-brain axis exists that is essential for maintaining normal health which can affect brain and behaviour. The research was carried out by Dr Gerard Clarke, Professor Fergus Shanahan, Professor Ted Dinan and Professor John F Cryan and colleagues at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in UCC.

“As a neuroscientist these findings are fascinating as they highlight the important role that gut bacteria play in the bidirectional communication between the gut and the brain, and opens up the intriguing opportunity of developing unique microbial-based strategies for treatment for brain disorders”, said Professor John F Cryan, senior author on the publication and Head of the Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience at UCC.

This research has multiple health implications as it shows that manipulations of the microbiota (e.g. by antibiotics, diet, or infection) can have profound knock-on effects on brain function. “We’re really excited by these findings” said lead author Dr Gerard Clarke. “Although we always believed that the microbiota was essential for our general health, our results also highlight how important our tiny friends are for our mental wellbeing.”

The research is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Clarke G, Grenham S, Scully P, Fitzgerald P, Moloney R, Shanahan F, Dinan TG & Cryan JF. `The Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis During Early-Life Regulates the Hippocampal Serotonergic System in a Sex-Dependent Manner'.

[Stanley]

This could be one of the factors that has led to my generation, born before antibiotics and awareness of bacteria have been described as 'the last healthy generation'.
On another matter, I have a question. What causes itching? I once heard it was due to increased circulation stimulating cells which reacted and caused the 'itching'. Does Mother Nature want us to scratch to help the process?

[Bodger]

Do we have an itch & scratch it or a scratch & itch it ?

[Tizer]

Here's a bit from New Scientist on itch/scratch...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -itch.html

[Stanley]

In other words they don't know but are looking for an answer.... Par for the course I suppose. I shall carry on scratching minor itches while looking for the cause.

[PanBiker]

I noticed that as well Stanley, did you also pick up on the disclamer where they state that scratching can lead to infection - you have been warned!

[Stanley]

Ian, think of the number of times your mother told you to stop scratching and picking scabs! Not exactly science-based but dead right!

[PanBiker]

Yes but it didn't stop you doing it. Something about scabbed knees, mines better than yours etc.. Shades of the old "Boils" topic surfacing here.

[Stanley]

Ah... Boils! I know I sound like Old Mort but you knew exactly where you were with boils and carbuncles!

[Stanley]

The watercress in Vally Gardens is thriving!

[Stanley]

Interesting report on World Service this morning about devices implanted in the body which take their power from glucose in the blood and need no batteries. This has been made possible by two things, getting the power requirement of the implants down to less than 100 milli amps and reduction in size of efficient power cells for converting the glucose to electrical energy.
Another report was on a technique for injecting oxygen direct into the bloodstream for use when the heart stops. It means there is a chance of preventing brain damage. Not perfected yet but they are almost ready for clinical trials.

I have a chemical question. I regularly clean my tea mug with hot water and bleach to get the tannin stains off it. Does the bleach remove the deposit of just bleach it white so it isn't visible?

[Bruff]

Good stuff from the great Dr Ben Goldacre on R4 yesterday tea time (Goldacre's book Bad Science, the website and Guardian column of the same, should be required reading for all). He was on about the use of randomised trials in public policy making. It doesn't take place often. The point was made that in medicine, folk would think you idiotic if you put an intervention to market without such trials.

Pride was one of the reasons put forward for it not happening. Politicians do have big ideas for policies based on their beliefs and frankly, evidence showing the worthlessness of these doesn't go down well. Course, in the early days of evidence-based medicine (or 'medicine', as it is known, there's no such thing as 'alternative medicine'), pride was similar factor. As Goldacre said, many medics just new their treatments worked as they were 'Professor of Surgery at St Mary's, don't you know'. In the same way that Mr Gove say, knows his policies on school meals will work, as he's 'Education Secretary, don't you know'.

More of the scientific method in policy-making please

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Richard, from your mouth to God's Ear! Classic case at the moment is the belief in 'sound money' which can only be achieved by austerity. This antediluvian economic theory has failed every time it has been applied but Tory DNA says it is obviously right so off we go again. All it needs is examination of the evidence of history. The failed attempts to make the theory work should be regarded as 'randomised trials' and the evidence acted on. Fat chance!

[Tizer]

I have a chemical question. I regularly clean my tea mug with hot water and bleach to get the tannin stains off it. Does the bleach remove the deposit or just bleach it white so it isn't visible?

It should do both. Tannins are very big polymer molecules and the bleach oxidises them with formation of smaller and colourless molecules which will dissolve in water or at least be easily washed away.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Tiz. Reaffirms my faith in a bit of good old bleach! When I was at Pendle Heritage it was noted that I very seldom caught the colds that regularly attacked the staff. I told them it might be because I bleached my tea mug out on a regular basis and had my own.

[Tizer]

Cleaning the mug would have been a good move - people often don't realise that colds and similar diseases are as much passed on through contact as by inhaling contaminated air from coughs and sneezes. Remember the old adage, `coughs and sneezes spread diseases'? Well it was true but wasn't the full story! I think the handles of supermarket trollies must now be one of the most effective ways of spreading colds and flu.

Bleach is a great cleaning agent (as long as you handle it carefully). As well as removing gunge, it sterilises too...and bacteria and viruses cannot become resistant to bleach any more than they could become resistant to concentrated sulphuric acid.

[Bruff]

Conference tomorrow, where the CERN scientists will update on the search for the Higgs Boson. Mutterings abound that there might be something of significance to report, given they have invited along members of the original team who proposed the particle's existence. It appears they will confirm their experiments show a '4 Sigma' significance for it's existence: that is, there is a 1 in 30,000 chance they are wrong. This ain't good enough as they will hope for a 5 Sigma event in time: that is 1 in 3,000,000 they are wrong (probability reduces exponentially).

I can't tell you how excited I am about this, nor the pride I feel in the work done at CERN by some of our planet's most brilliant minds.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Couldn't agree more Richard. You can't get much more fundamental than the God Particle and it could be the key to a lot of anomalies thrown up by the latest quantum research. Makes the antics of the Lords of the Universe in the City look pathetic. Nice to know that there are good things going on in the world and good dedicated people pursuing them. In the end they will be the unsung heroes. By the way, NASA are getting on nicely with Orion, the Mars rocket which is the replacement for the shuttle. Interesting that they have had to go back to the old concept of the capsule used on the earliest missions. Evidently the speed of re-entry will be over 20,000mph and a winged configuration couldn't stand it. Amazing! Then there's the effort going into Fusion.......

[Bruff]

You learn something everyday. 'Boson' is derived from Satyendra Nath Bose, and Indian physicist from Calcutta, who in 1924 realised the usual statistics to analyse thermal behaviour were not good enough, and he developed work on quantum statistics. He sent a paper to a British journal, who turned it down; undaunted he sent it to Einstein, who immediately recognised its significance and published it a German journal. Bose-Einstein statistics became a building block of quantum mechanics and it opened the way to a further particle that Einstein called the 'boson'. I'm surprised I didn't make the link.

Bose did not receive a Nobel Prize; indeed the only Indian scientist working in India to receive one is Sir C V Raman (others have had to become Americans). Raman's work on light led to the analytical tool Raman Spectroscopy, which uses the infra-red spectrum and differs from Infra Red Spectroscopy in that Raman uses scattered light with the traditional Infra Red using absorbed light.

I learned about Raman from one of this country's experts in the field. He noted that Raman Spectroscopy requires a serious aptitude for quantum mechanics and if we really wanted to get to grips with it, we should either lie down until the feeling wore off, or postpone interest until after finals when subject to degree, we could go and do a PhD with him. I chose to lie down.

One wonders what else will spring from CERN. We already have the World Wide Web and the PET scanners found in most hospitals. It does throw the shennanegins in the City into sharp relief. This work on the Higgs has cost about £7B, over a number of years and a mix of public/private money, spread across a number of countries. By my reckoning, that's about the size of a couple or so banks' bonus pots in any one year in recent times. We do live in a strange world.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I agree Richard. Just been listening to a piece on Today from scientists from CERN who are waiting for announcement in Westminster Hall. Evidently we could get some interesting news this morning.....

[Tizer]

Today's CERN press release...
CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson

Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN today as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV.

“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”

The results presented today are labelled preliminary. They are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses shown today is expected around the end of July. A more complete picture of today’s observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”

Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.

[CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Israel and Serbia are Associate Members in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.]

From this CERN page:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/pressrel ... 7.12E.html

[Tardis]

very exciting news this bosun stuff, but it'll take years for them to show their workings

[Stanley]

I watched the TV coverage of the announcement and was struck by the way Professor Higgs reacted, awe and amazement. Then an interview wuth that miracle Hawkins, nice to see he could smile when he 'said' it seemed as though he owed his mate in America $100. I don't understand it of course but it seems to me that it could have far-reaching effects on science, particularly Quantum physics. So big we can't appreciate it. We need Brian Cox to do a programme on it!

[PanBiker]

If we could solve our energy problems with enthusiasm we would only need Professor Cox. He is always enthusiastic but he was bordering on reaching critical mass last night, you could almost see the cogs going round with the possibilities offered by the announcement. A program now to explain it to the mortals please!