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Monday, March 18, 2013
Vitamin D replacement improves muscle efficiency
Mar. 18, 2013 ? New research shows for the first time a link between vitamin D levels and muscle efficiency. Vitamin D supplementation may also be effective in improving skeletal muscle function. This study is presented today at the Society for Endocrinology annual conference in Harrogate, UK. The findings may explain the physical fatigue commonly experienced by patients with vitamin D deficiency, with broad implications for a large section of society.
Vitamin D is a hormone produced in the skin using energy from sunlight, and to a lesser extent derived from dietary sources. Vitamin D deficiency is a significant public health problem as diagnosed cases are on the rise and the hormone is essential for good bone health. Alongside poor bone health, muscle fatigue is a common symptom in vitamin D deficient patients. This fatigue could be due to a problem in the mitochondria: the 'power stations' within each cell of the body. Mitochondria use glucose and oxygen to make energy in a form that can be used to run the cell (an energy-rich molecule called ATP). Muscle cells need large amounts of ATP for movement and they use phosphocreatine as a ready and available energy source to make ATP. The mitochondria also replenish this phosphocreatine store after muscle contraction. Measurement of the time taken to replenish the phosphocreatine store is a measure of mitochondrial efficiency: better mitochondrial function is associated with shorter phosphocreatine recovery times.
Researchers from Newcastle University, led by Dr Akash Sinha who also works within the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, investigated phosphocreatine recovery times in patients with vitamin D deficiency. They employed a non-invasive magnetic resonance scan to measure phosphocreatine dynamics in response to exercise in the calf muscles of 12 patients with severe vitamin D deficiency before and after treatment with vitamin D. This is the first time a study of this kind has been conducted.
The team found that phosphocreatine recovery significantly improved after the patients took a fixed dose of oral vitamin D for 10-12 weeks (average phosphocreatine recovery half time decreased from 34.4sec to 27.8sec, p<0.001). All patients reported an improvement in symptoms of fatigue following supplementation. In a parallel study, the group demonstrated that low Vitamin D levels were associated with reduced mitochondrial function (r=-0.41, p=0.009).
The research shows for the first time that vitamin D levels are correlated with muscle efficiency, and that muscle aerobic metabolism improves with Vitamin D supplementation. Whilst this is a small study, it establishes clear proof of principle and (for the first time) a link between vitamin D and mitochondria in man. The mechanisms underpinning this effect are an avenue for future research by the group, who also aim to establish whether vitamin D supplementation could alleviate frailty in the elderly or improve the exercise capacity of athletes.
Study leader Dr Akash Sinha, Clinical Research Fellow at Newcastle University and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: "This is the first time a link has been shown between vitamin D status and muscle aerobic function. To do so we used a non-invasive scan to get a unique biochemical perspective on muscle mitochondrial metabolism during exercise: a window into what is really going on in the muscle as it works
"Patients with vitamin D deficiency often experience symptoms of muscle fatigue. Our findings in a small group of patients with very low vitamin D levels show that muscle efficiency significantly improves when vitamin D status is improved.''
"We'll need further research in more patients to work out how this is happening and whether non-deficient patients can benefit from this too."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Society for Endocrinology.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Akash Sinha, Kieren Hollingsworth, Steve Ball, Tim Cheetham. Improving the vitamin D status of vitamin D deficient adults is associated with improved mitochondrial oxidative function in skeletal muscle. Endocrine Abstracts, 2013; : 1 DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.31.OC1.6
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/csX0tghvNSM/130317221446.htm
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Sunday, March 17, 2013
13-page suicide note left by mother who jumped with baby
13-page suicide note tells of a mother who thought she was 'evil.'? She wrote the 13-page note then jumped from her 8th floor condo with her 10-month old baby. The baby survived. An Ohio hospital looks at suicide notes to prevent more suicides.
Cynthia Wachenheim was depressed. She was taking anti-depressant medication. She thought she was a bad mother because her baby boy, 10-month old Keston, had taken two falls.
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She was convinced that she had permanently injured her baby, but doctors who examined him disagreed.
In a 13-page suicide note, according a police source quoted by the New York Daily News, she refers to postpartum depression. ?She thinks she?s a failing mother. On the last page, she refers to postpartum depression. She was supposed to see a therapist, but she blew him off."
In the suicide note, Mrs. Wachenheim explains to her husband that she knows that by taking her own life and her child's life, by jumping out the window of their 8th floor condo, she will be seen as "evil."
Wachenheim, a legal researcher on child-care leave from her $122,000 a year job at the Manhattan State Supreme Court system, died March 13 in the fall. But her body cushioned the fall for Keston. He survived with only a bruise on his cheek.
The New York Times writes that "Ms. Wachenheim?s leap was a jarring twist in the life of a highly educated, socially conscious woman who had been active in a women?s group in her synagogue, B?nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, and, according to her college class notes, had been a coordinator for a Harlem tutoring program."
Her sad demise also raises real questions about awareness of postpartum depression and suicide.
The New York State Health Department says that while as many as 20 percent of new mothers may suffer from postpartum depression, it's rare for new moms? - perhaps 1 or 2 for every 1,000 - to be diagnosed with "postpartum psychosis," which may cause suicidal or homicidal thoughts. The NYHD says that the disorder has a 5 percent suicide rate and a 4 percent infanticide rate.
"If the condition is interfering in any way with the woman's ability to do what she needs to do, it might be serious. Do not be afraid to ask if the woman has had suicidal ideation or is obsessed with thoughts of harming herself or her baby. A gentle way to ask this is "some women have thoughts of harming themselves or their baby. Does this happen to you?"
Recognizing suicidal thoughts is one of the primary goals of research into suicide notes being conducted by an Ohio hospital.
The Cincinnati Children?s Hospital Medical Center has collected more than 1,300 suicide notes.
John Pestian, the hospital's director of computational medicine, is working with a team using computer algorithms to analyze the language in each note, look for key phrases and patterns, in order to create a tool that can help mental health workers recognize those considering suicide and prevent it, according to Cincinnati.com.
In a recent clinical trial at Children?s, Pestian?s team tested the algorithm by asking a series of questions to 30 young people with suicidal tendencies and 30 in a control group. ?We wanted to know if the computer could tell, by listening to recordings of what they said, which ones are suicidal, and which ones aren?t,? Pestian said.
The computer was 93 percent accurate ? identifying those with suicidal tendencies over the control group ? while humans were right slightly more than 50 percent of the time with the same groups.
While the tragic case of Cynthia Wachenheim points up the need for more research and greater awareness, there are many other statistics that also highlight the scope of the problem.
Every 14 minutes in the United States, someone dies by suicide.
"Despite several years of trying to prevent a rise in the number of military suicides, the Pentagon reported last week that, for the first time in a generation, more active-duty soldiers killed themselves last year than were killed in a war zone," according to The Christian Science Monitor on Feb. 5, 2013. "The Army also saw a record in the number of confirmed or suspected suicides ? 349 ? among both active and nonactive military personnel. This was a 16 percent increase over 2011 despite the end of a US role in Iraq and a decline of troops in Afghanistan."
And during the US recession from 2008 to 2010, the U.S. suicide rate rose four times faster than in the eight years before the economic downturn, according to a study in the British medical journal the Lancet.
Not too surprisingly, John Pestian, the Ohio researcher, says "loss of hope" is the common denominator in suicide notes. The next step in his research is a larger scale experiment. Then, creation of a computer program that can be used in clinical settings, which is about two years away, he says.
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Saturday, March 16, 2013
A youthful 'star wreck': Youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy
Mar. 15, 2013 ? While performing an extensive X-ray survey of our galaxy's central regions, NASA's Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star. Designated G306.3-0.9 after the coordinates of its sky position, the new object ranks among the youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy.
"Astronomers have previously cataloged more than 300 supernova remnants in the galaxy," said lead scientist Mark Reynolds, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Our analysis indicates that G306.3-0.9 is likely less than 2,500 years old, making it one of the 20 youngest remnants identified."
Astronomers estimate that a supernova explosion occurs once or twice a century in the Milky Way. The expanding blast wave and hot stellar debris slowly dissipate over hundreds of thousands of years, eventually mixing with and becoming indistinguishable from interstellar gas.
Like fresh evidence at a crime scene, young supernova remnants give astronomers the best opportunity for understanding the nature of the original star and the details of its demise.
Supernova remnants emit energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to gamma rays, and important clues can be found in each energy band. X-ray observations figure prominently in revealing the motion of the expanding debris, its chemical content, and its interaction with the interstellar environment, but supernova remnants fade out in X-ray light after 10,000 years. Indeed, only half of those known in the Milky Way galaxy have been detected in X-rays at all.
Reynolds leads the Swift Galactic Plane Survey, a project to image a two-degree-wide strip along the Milky Way's central plane at X-ray and ultraviolet energies at the same time. Imaging began in 2011 and is expected to complete this summer.
"The Swift survey leverages infrared imaging previously compiled by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and extends it into higher energies," said team member Michael Siegel, a research associate at the Swift Mission Operations Center (MOC) in State College, Pa., which is operated by Penn State University. "The infrared and X-ray surveys complement each other because light at these energies penetrates dust clouds in the galactic plane, while the ultraviolet is largely extinguished."
On Feb. 22, 2011, Swift imaged a survey field near the southern border of the constellation Centaurus. Although nothing unusual appeared in the ultraviolet exposure, the X-ray image revealed an extended, semi-circular source reminiscent of a supernova remnant. A search of archival data revealed counterparts in Spitzer infrared imagery and in radio data from the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope in Australia.
To further investigate the object, the team followed up with an 83-minute exposure using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and additional radio observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), located near the town of Narrabri in New South Wales.
"The fantastic sensitivity of ATCA has enabled us to image what, at radio wavelengths, turns out to be the dimmest remnant we have ever seen in our galaxy," said team member Cleo Loi, an undergraduate student at the University of Sydney who led the analysis of the radio observations.
A paper describing the team's findings will appear in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal and was published online on Friday.
Using an estimated distance of 26,000 light-years for G306.3-0.9, the scientists determined that the explosion's shock wave is racing through space at about 1.5 million mph (2.4 million km/h). The Chandra observations reveal the presence of iron, neon, silicon and sulfur at temperatures exceeding 50 million degrees F (28 million C), a reminder not only of the energies involved but of the role supernovae play in seeding the galaxy with heavy elements produced in the hearts of massive stars.
"We don't yet have enough information to determine what type of supernova this was and therefore what type of star exploded, but we've planned a further Chandra observation to improve the picture," said coauthor Jamie Kennea, also a researcher at the Swift MOC. "We see no compelling evidence that the explosion formed a neutron star, and this is something we hope can be determined one way or the other by future work."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
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Samsung's Galaxy S 4 gets torn asunder, reveals its innards
Now that we've officially seen the Galaxy S 4 unveiled in a Broadway-like production, why not take a look inside it? Chinese outlet IT168, which gave us a peek at the flagship earlier today, couldn't resist tearing one open just before the handset's official reveal. What went under the screwdriver in this instance was a 3G-only China Unicom version of the GS4 packing dual SIM slots and the expected Exynos 5 Octa CPU, 2GB of RAM, 13 megapixel camera and 2,600mAH battery. Hit the neighboring source link for the entire set of glamour shots of the disassembled smartphone.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Via: M.I.C. Gadget
Source: IT168
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/1yQDg2dnUOE/
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Church urges 6-week break from social media
Social media 
11 hours ago
Rosa Golijan / NBC News
With that annual period of self-denial leading up to Easter, many try to decide what to surrender. The Russian Orthodox Church ? which observes Easter about a month after Catholic and Protestant churches do this year ? has a suggestion: Give up Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all the social networks which offer a barrage of information each and every second.
"I don't mean just people who use depraved, entertaining, stupid and empty information," church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin explained to the Guardian. "Even useful information, that relates to our work and well-meaning interests, clogs the brain and soul too much."
Instead of using social media, Chaplin explains, you should give yourself "several hours or 15 minutes of time during Lent to not read curses on social networks, but serious texts, serious art, prayer, unhurried conversation with close ones."
"This is a unique chance to change your life," Chaplin adds.
This isn't the only opportunity we've been given for a spiritual reboot of our tech-obsessed lives of late. In early March, some celebrated the fourth annual National Day of Unplugging, a holiday dreamed up by the artists behind Sabbath Manifesto, a creative project revolving around the search for "a modern way to observe a weekly day of rest."
The holiday lasted from sundown on the first Friday in March until sundown on the following day. It came with a list of principles borrowing from the biblical Sabbath tradition to encourage folks to recharge their metaphorical batteries.
Considering that there are studies suggesting that Facebook can leave us feeling miserable and that various other uses of technology can increase stress ? constantly looking at your email might be making you antsy ? it's no surprise that there are so many movements are urging us to take a break from social media and tech in general.
The only problem is that some of us are far too attached to our gadgets.
"I can't remember the last time I turned my phone off in a situation not involving a software update or a flight," I mused in a Google+ post on Friday afternoon.
"These things have an 'off' switch?" someone replied.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her onTwitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
Source: http://www.today.com/tech/church-urges-6-week-break-social-media-could-you-handle-1C8897122
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Eel mystery deepens as sharks chow down
USGS
Populations of the American eel have massively declined in recent years.
By Douglas Main
LiveScience
Nobody knows exactly how American eels make it to the Sargasso Sea, a mysterious expanse of flotsam-ridden waters in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the animals breed.
But a recent study to chart the migration of these enigmatic eels only deepened the mystery, when six of the eight eels tracked with satellite tags were eaten by sharks.
Soon after the eels were tagged in Gulf of St. Lawrence, all eight devices were found floating on the surface of the water suggesting the animals had met an untimely end. The tags, which record depth and temperature, revealed that before surfacing the devices had suddenly entered an environment much warmer than the gulf's frigid waters.
Further analysis found that these conditions could be encountered only one way: inside the body of a porbeagle shark, according to a release from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where some of the study authors work.
The study, detailed in the online journal PLOS ONE, suggests that efforts to conserve eels, whose populations have massively declined in recent decades, could be confounded by predation by porbeagle sharks. These sharks were one of the species that were themselves voted to be protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) earlier this week. ?
"Both species are in trouble, and measures to conserve one may well be at odds with efforts to protect the other," said Julian Dodson, a researcher a Laval University in Quebec City and study author, in the statement. "What we really need now are studies to quantify just how important eels are in the diets of sharks and just what impact shark predation has on eel abundance."
Eels breed in the Sargasso Sea but return to freshwater streams as adults, making them vulnerable to pollution, urban development and the construction of dams.
"We could hope that there will be increased pressure to protect eels in fresh water, particularly during downstream migration through power dams," said study author M?lanie Beguer-Pon, also a Laval researcher, in the statement. "We can't do anything about shark predation, but we can limit mortality in turbines."
An additional 113 adult eelswere fitted with simpler acoustic tags, which can be detected by receivers moored in the ocean. The study found that only four of these eels made it out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence into the Atlantic Ocean, according to the release. Many of these eels were also likely eaten by porbeagle sharks, the statement said.
Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or ?Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/14/17313968-eel-mystery-deepens-as-sharks-chow-down?lite
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