1. health and fitness
2. disease

Russia, U.S. in constant contact after false
alarm at space station
Russian federal space agency Roscosmos and U.S. space agency NASA
are maintaining constant contact after a false alarm triggered an emergency situation at the
International Space Station (ISS), Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on
Wednesday.
A meeting was convened among ISS crew onboard, Roscosmos, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) to
keep abreast of the latest development at the space station, Xinhua reported.
An alarm at about 4 a.m. indicated a possible ammonia leak in the U.S.
part of the ISS, triggering evacuation of astronauts to the Russian section. The alarm later
turned out to be false.
The latest blog posted on official NASA website showed that the crew was
allowed by ISS mission management team to return to the U.S. segment. Earlier, NASA
said in a statement that the crew members “are safe and in good shape”.
Measurements of the cabin atmosphere confirmed there is no ammonia
indication in the segment, while flight controllers are continuing to analyse data to clarify
what triggered the alarm, according to NASA.
Roscosmos has confirmed that the Russian segment was safe from air
pollution, while a representative of the Mission Control in Russia‟s city of Korolyov
explained that there is enough room and supplies for all six crew members in the Russia
segment.
ISS crew currently consists of two Americans, one Italian and three
Russians.
Playing music benefits the brain
The Hudziak experiment proves that playing music is as much an exercise
to the brain as working out in a gym is to the body
More than a decade ago, there was great buzz in the press and media on
something that was tantalizingly referred to as “The Mozart Effect”. Some researchers
claimed that school students performed better in tests as they were listening to music by the
great European classical music composer Mozart. Compared to them, another set of
students (control group, same age, same background and so forth) who took the same tests,
but with no Mozart in the background, did less well. This news spread like wildfire and
parents began playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to their children with the hope of
elevating their performance, and hopefully IQ values as well.
Several questions were raised about this Mozart effect, both in the
professional and popular press. Is it reproducible (not always, low sample size)? Does
listening to music only calm the mind and focus it to the task on hand? Why Mozart, why
not Beethoven, Bach or Beatles? Why only western music, and not Carnatic, Hindustani,
Japanese or even soothing chants? Is the effect temporary or long-lasting? Do lullabies
make infants smarter, besides sleep-inducing?
Many of these questions were attempted to be answered by a variety of
experiments — amateur and professional — and the overall consensus appears to be that
music is good for you, but as far as the Mozart Effect goes, the jury is still out.
A more scientifically challenging question here is whether music makes
noticeable change in your cognitive abilities, and affect and alter the brain in perceptible
ways. Is listening to music as a passive recipient sufficient, or should one actively engage
in music — singing solo or in groups, playing an instrument, and improvising more
effectively? Note that in the latter case, you are actually exerting and exercising your brain.
In other words, listening to Mozart, or to play Mozart — which would be a better or true
“Mozart Effect”?
A few scientific groups have studied this issue, and one such recent paper
titled: “Can playing Tchaikovsky‟s “Nutcracker Suite” and other music improve kids‟
brains?” throws some light on the issue. The group chose not Mozart but the Russian
composer Pyotr Iliych Tchaikovsky (though that is not relevant here). The team, led by
Prof. James Hudziak at the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families, have
published their results on the relation between playing musical instruments and brain
development (see (in J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, Dec 2014.DOI:
10.1016/j.jaac-2014.06.015 show). In their study, they monitored the brains of 232 children
(age 6-18) who were practising and playing musical instruments (performing the
Tchaikovsky piece).
Collecting geomagnetic field data through
crowd-sourcing
Scientists at the National Geophysical Data Centre, Boulder, U.S., which
is an affiliate of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, have come
up with a novel way to crowd-source geomagnetic data for their project to map the world‟s
magnetic field.
App developed
They have developed an app called CrowdMag which is to be downloaded to your mobile
phone. Enabling “background reporting” on this app will cause the phone to transmit
vector magnetic data at regular intervals. Combining this data with that obtained from realtime solar wind data, the scientists will be able to create models of the Earth‟s magnetic
field.
“With satellite and airborne surveys you can achieve only a certain level of
resolution. For example, our best geomagnetic model (High-Definition GeoModelling —
HDGM) has a resolution of only about 28 kilometres. Citizen scientists, walking around
the signal/noise sources, can achieve much greater spatial resolution,” says Manoj Nair, a
scientist from NGDC, in an email.
Not only this, the contribution can also help the scientist to recognise and
remove the effects of local sources of magnetic field, such as transformers etc, which
cannot be identified in the satellite data.
But where is the need for a compass in the days of GPS and other
geospatial technologies?
One reason
One reason is that unlike a stationary device, the GPS does not provide a pointing
direction. Also, satellite signals can get jammed, or they may stall. A map of the Earth‟s
magnetic field can act as a referencing system.
The privacy issues are also outlined clearly. The data are collected
anonymously. Once the “send data” option is enabled in a phone, the phone transmits the
following information: Time of measurement; location; location accuracy; magnetic data
from the phone‟s magnetic sensor; the phone‟s model, which is needed because there could
be many different types of sensor.
The statistics
“From download statistics, we know that about 2,000 people are currently using it all over
the world, including India. Currently, the highest number of users is from France. Denver
metropolitan area has highest users for a city,” says Dr Nair.
“The app is freely available to all from Google playstore or from iTunes,
and it contributes data automatically,” he adds.
Mutations causing abnormal heart muscle
protein identified
An international team of researchers have sought to identify genetic
mutations that produce abnormal forms of a key heart muscle protein.
As a result of the mutations, the heart muscles weaken and produce a
condition known as „dilated cardiomyopathy.‟
The increased strain that is then put on the heart can lead to heart failure
where the organ is unable to pump the requisite quantities of blood.
Changes to titin, a protein that is part of the mechanism muscles use to
contract and relax, have been implicated as a cause for dilated cardiomyopathy.
Titin is the largest human protein and is produced by a gene whose genetic
information exists as 364 separate segments, known as exons. Variations in how the
genetic data from these exons are assembled mean that the protein can exist in a variety of
forms.
A 2012 study carried out in severe and familial cases of dilated
cardiomyopathy found that disruptive mutations in the gene, resulting in truncated titin
variants being produced, were the commonest genetic cause for the ailment.
Researchers who carried out that study have gone on to examine titin gene
sequences from over 5,200 individuals, with and without the condition, as well as
scrutinising 150 heart tissue samples collected from patients who underwent heart surgery.
The 2012 study had shown that one in 50 of apparently normal individuals
have a titin truncation, observed Stuart M. Cook of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in
Singapore and Imperial College in London, U.K., one of the senior authors of a paper
published today (January 15) in Science Translational Medicine.
The question
“The question is, why do these people have these truncations but not have
the disease,” he remarked at a press briefing.
The latest study indicated that disease-causing mutations typically
occurred in exons that are very highly used in the heart to produce titin, according to James
S. Ware from the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust & Imperial College
in U.K., another of the senior authors of the paper.
Mutations in the general population, on the other hand, tended to be in
exons often omitted in the heart. Moreover, the disease-causing variants were towards one
end of the titin gene.
It was found that patients with dilated cardiomyopathy due to titin
mutations had more severe disease, with more life-threatening heart rhythm problems and
ultimately poorer survival, he said during the press briefing. So such mutations may define
a group of patients who could benefit from a tailored therapeutic approach.