Scientific News

[نازخاتون]

Iran Mass Produces MS Drug Ziferon

Iranians have inaugurated the production line of interferon beta 1, generically known as Ziferon, an effective drug in treating patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
During the ceremony on Saturday, Iranian Minister of Health Marzieh Vahid-Dastgerdi noted that mass production of the drug makes the country independent of importing such medications, Presstv reported
“The Iran-made drug is as effective as the foreign ones and can prevent the transfer of more than USD 30 billion foreign currencies from the country,” Vahid-Dastgerdi added
She went on to say that the drug is safe, stressing that physicians should be encouraged to prescribe the Iranian version of the drug for their patients.
Ziferon, mainly injected subcutaneously, has antiviral and immunomodulating properties. The drug is mainly used in the management of multiple sclerosis; its mode of action, however, remains unclear.
The Center for Pharmaceutical Products have already produced five biotechnological drugs, making Ziferon the sixth medication produced by the company.
Dr. Mohammad Reza Fazeli, the dean of the company, announced that the company will produce ten more drugs in the coming two years.
More than 650,000 interferon beta 1 are annually imported to the country. Resigene (interferon beta 1a) and Cinnovex are other Iran-made MS drug which have entered the market in the past few years.

[نازخاتون]

World’s Largest Spider Web Discovered

Scientists discovered a new species of spider living in Madagascar who spun the world’s longest .web ever recorded, spanning 25 meters.
According to Newsfeed.time, Darwin’s bark spider, a species new to science also weaves the largest orb web from the most durable biomaterial yet known, according to scientists. The spider interlaced its enormous web over a vast flowing river, stretching from bank to bank. Scientists have estimated that the huge mesh caught over 30 prey insects hovering above the water, at any .one time.
“The Darwin’s bark spider build their web with the orb suspended directly above a river or the water body of a lake, a habitat that no other spider can use,” says Professor Ingi Agnarsson, the director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan who made the .discovery with colleagues.
The silk produced from the web of the Darwin’s bark spider is understood to be 100 percent more resilient than any other known silk, making it the toughest biological material ever discovered, according the researchers. “The material is often used in bulletproof vests,” they said.
Scientists believe the web maze they discovered was not the work of one large Darwin’s bark spider. Rather, it was the group effort of millions of smaller ones who enthusiastically ended up .covering a space the size of two football fields.

[نازخاتون]

Scientists Develop Genetically Modified Rice

Australian scientists have claimed that they have genetically modified rice to improve its tolerance to salt, leading to an increase in its production in areas affected by salinity.
And work is already underway to transfer the technology to wheat and barley, other staple foods for billions of people around the world, Timesofindia said.
The scientists from the University of Adelaide worked in collaboration with colleagues based in Cairo, Copenhagen and Melbourne. The team used a new technique to trap salt in the root of the rice plant, reducing the amount building up in the shoots and increasing its tolerance to salinity.
“The breakthrough offered the chance to increase global rice production, especially in areas where salinity was an issue,” Research Associate Darren Plett said, adding “rice is often grown on land that is prone to high levels of salinity.”
“Lands that accumulate salt have lower crop yields, which can threaten food supply. This has made salinity tolerance an increasingly important factor in the efforts to secure global food production,” he said.
Plett said that the research team modified a gene to increase the number of salt-transporting proteins in specific cells in the roots of the rice plant.
The modification resulted in salt being trapped in the root, where it is less harmful to the plant and prevented it travelling to the shoot where it does the most damage.
“Our results provide a new approach for genetic modification to increase the tolerance of crops to the toxic sodium ion, which is a major environmental stress,” Plett said. “Successful genetic engineering efforts using this technology should assist in global food production.”

[نازخاتون]

Iran, First at Laser Dentistry In Region

Vice-President of the Iranian Medical Laser Association Reza Fekr-Azad said on Sunday that the Islamic Republic of Iran holds the first place in gaining knowledge about the laser dentistry in the Middle-East region.
Talking to IRNA, Fekr-Azad said Iran has no regional rival in this arena and the country is capable of having contest with the US and Europe.
The country is determined to take giant steps to broaden that knowledge in the near future, Fekr-Azad noted.

[نازخاتون]

Disease-Detecting Bees

Bees have a pretty good sense of smell. So good in fact that Susana Soares has been studying practical applications for this extraordinary skill. One of them involves this weird glass apparatus.
Just by breathing into one of Susana’s blown glass thingies, bees can detect medical conditions like lung and skin cancer, tuberculosis and even pregnancy, Dvice wrote.
Since our honey-making friends learn quickly and travel long distances with ease, they might someday be called upon to sniff out bombs and landmines, too.

[نازخاتون]

Welcome to New Anti-CholesterolCheese

It is made in Italy and iscalled CLADIS the new anti-cholesterol cheese. A cheese with the same flavor asthe original and rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a polyunsaturated fattyacid that helps protect the body from cardiovascular disease.


According to Mediterraneanbook, the cheese was developed by the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Pisa, andits protective effect will be tested on 100 patients, all women “over 60” withmetabolic syndrome.


The super-cheese was made withmilk of sheep who eat a special linseed extruded feed--a natural source ofprecursors of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).


Such patients could get a doublebenefit: prevention of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.


Linoleic acid, a polyunsaturatedfatty acid of the same family of omega 3, helps protect against cardiovasculardisease, as it would be beneficial on balance the level of good cholesterol (HDL) in blood.

[نازخاتون]

Intuitive Traffic Lights

A system of self-organizingtraffic lights could reduce congestion, according to European researchers. Thekey is allowing lights to switch from green to red in a decentralized, chaoticway, instead of following a regular programmed pattern.


Though you might curse them atevery red light, city planners do try to synchronize traffic signals to improveflow, even relying on supercomputers to design the optimal patterns. Lights staygreen longer during peak traffic hours, and computer models help prioritizepublic transit. But variables like pedestrians in crosswalks, large crowds andvehicle wrecks can throw a carefully designed system out of whack, leading toannoying and pollution-causing traffic jams, Popsci wrote.


Stefan Lämmer, a professor atDresden University of Technology in Germany, and Dirk Helbing, a professor inZurich, Switzerland, who works with the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, say aself-organizing system would work better.


They started by modeling trafficas if it were a fluid, comparing intersections to a network of pipes. Then theygave each traffic signal a sensor that provides information about traffic at agiven moment. Computer chips in the lights calculate the expected flow ofvehicles, and determine how long the lights should stay green.


But this “jungle principle” ofevery light for itself does not result in harmony, the researchers said. If eachtraffic light responds to its immediate demands, then all the lights will justreact to the traffic coming from nearby intersections, which defeats the purposeof a smart network.


The solution is a decentralizedapproach that lets the traffic lights work together by figuring out how changesat each individual intersection would affect the entire system. Instead of beingstymied by natural fluctuations in traffic, the system takes advantage of them, using random gaps to help improve traffic flow. Traffic lights could requestgreen time only when there is a definite demand for them, the researchers write. This acyclic approach could eliminate the particularly annoying problem ofsitting at a red light while there’s no traffic.


Lämmer and Helbing tested theiralgorithms in a computer-simulated version of the city center of Dresden, andfound delay times could be reduced from 10 to 30 percent. Their paper doesn’tmention road rage, but if the system works, it’s safe to assume reductionsthere, too.

[S h a D o w]

Neem For Skin Care

Neem is an ayurvedic medicine used for hair and skin care. The benefits of neem on skin was utilized years ago when the leaves were mixed in hot water to take bath. Neem either its bark or leaves are healthy for the skin and hair. Neem is known as a traditional blood purifier agent.
Neem is consumed as well as applied to get a flawless complexion and a healthy skin by keeping skin diseases away. Neem is used as skin care ingredient in lotions, ointments, skin and facial powders or creams. Neem is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, non-allergic, anti-viral and blood purifier.

Following are neem benefits for skin care:

1.washing face with neem extracts provides relief from redness and itching skin, lightens scars and pigmentation.

2.Neem paste if applied on face cures acne. It also soothes and moisturizes dry or cracked skin.

3.Neem as skin care medicine cures fungal or bacterial skin infections.

4.Neem is useful for both dry and oily skin. It is believed that neem is the most effective skin cleanser.

5.Neem oil cures diseases like chicken pox, scabies and measles. Neem oil is used as a tonic to stop itching and sores.

6.Skin rashes and marks can be cured by applying neem paste or oil.

7.Pimple prone skin has found out the benefits of neem on skin by ts appliance. Neem not only clears the skin from pimples but also removes dark spots of the pimples.

So, use neem for skin care and look beautiful!

[نارون1]

Scientists Report Link Between Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

UCLA life scientists and their colleagues have provided the first evidence of a causal link between traumatic brain injury and an increased susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Their new study, published in the in the journal Biological Psychology, also suggests that people who suffer even a mild traumatic brain injury are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder and should take precautions to avoid stressful situations for at least some period of time.

The motivation behind the study, which was conducted in rats, was the observed correlation of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, and PTSD, particularly in military veterans returning from service overseas, said Michael Fanselow, a UCLA professor of psychology and the senior author of the study.

The reasons for this correlation are unknown. It could be simply that the events that cause brain injury are also very frightening and that the link between TBI and PTSD could be merely incidental.

Fanselow and his colleagues, however, hypothesized that the two "could be linked in a more mechanistic way."


Using procedures to separate the physical and emotional traumas, the scientists trained the rats using "fear conditioning" techniques two days after they experienced a concussive brain trauma - ensuring the brain injury and the experience of fear occurred on different days.

"We found that the rats with the earlier TBI acquired more fear than control rats (without TBI)," said Fanselow, a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute.

"Something about the brain injury rendered them more susceptible to acquiring an inappropriately strong fear. It was as if the injury primed the brain for learning to be afraid."


To learn why this occurred, the researchers analyzed a small piece of brain tissue, the amygdala, which is the brain's critical hub for fear learning.


"We found that there are significantly more receptors for excitatory neurotransmitters that promote learning," said Maxine Reger, a UCLA graduate student of psychology in Fanselow's laboratory and the lead author of the study.

"This finding suggests that brain injury leaves the amygdala in a more excitable state that readies it for acquiring potent fear," Fanselow said.


The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense and the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center.

Co-authors of the study were David Hovda, a professor of neurosurgery and of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center; Andrew Poulos, a postdoctoral fellow in Fanselow's laboratory; Floyd Buen, a former graduate student in Hovda's laboratory; and Christopher Giza, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Geffen School of Medicine.


The research was a collaboration between Fanselow's laboratory, which studies neural mechanisms of anxiety disorders, and Hovda's laboratory, which investigates brain injury.


"One of UCLA's great strengths is the spirit of collaboration that allows scientists from very different departments to combine their very different expertises to answer important but difficult questions," Fanselow said.

[نارون1]

Female teachers transmit math anxiety to female students

Girls often believe themselves to be bad at math, in accordance with gender stereotyping, and often experience high levels of anxiety about the subject. That anxiety appears to be driven by social influences, and may be vanishing in early education. Still, identifying its causes could help eliminate it at later stages of education, and prevent it from making a reappearance in young girls.

A new study suggests that elementary school may be a breeding ground for this anxiety. The study found that when elementary school teachers, who are primarily female, displayed a high level of anxiety about math, that skittishness was transmitted to their female students.

Those students who spent a year with a math-phobic teacher displayed lower math achievement and an increased belief in stereotypes about female mathematical ability.

As the authors note, anxiety about doing math, particularly in a public forum such as calculating the tip for a restaurant check, has long been known to be an impediment to math performance, independent of quantitative skill.

Elementary education majors have been found to be particularly afraid of math—more so than any other college major—but often have little chance to overcome this fear because the math requirements of their programs are usually minimal.

While their education may be lacking somewhat in math, that doesn't mean they'll never have to deal with it again, which turns out to be problematic, as the authors find that teachers' anxieties about math, even at elementary level, turn out to have consequences for students.

The study in question assessed the math anxiety of 17 first- and second-grade female teachers from a large urban midwestern school district, as well as the math achievement of their students (52 boys and 65 girls).

Students' ideas about gender and academic stereotypes were accounted for, including their thoughts on the common belief that girls are good at reading, while boys are good at math.

The students and teachers were tested for the first three months of the school year, and then again during the last two months. During the first three months of school, there was no relation between the teachers' anxiety and the students' achievements or perception of stereotypes. There was also no discrepancy between the math performance of boys and girls. By the last two months of the school year, however, this changed.

Teachers with high math anxiety were shown to have a significant effect on the math achievement and stereotypes of their female students. Girls with anxious teachers scored lower on math achievement tests at the end of the year than girls with more confident teachers—the more anxious the teacher, the more likely girls were to confirm the stereotype that girls have less math ability when they took the year-end tests.

Girls who agreed with the stereotype all had lower math achievement scores than girls who did not agree, as well as lower scores than boys in general, who remained immune to their teachers' influence.

The researchers speculate that the influence of female teachers on their students results from the tendency of children to emulate adults of the same gender.

Seeing a math-anxious woman encouraged female students to buy into the stereotype that girls were unskilled at math, thereby allowing themselves to give up on the subject. Meanwhile, boys remained unaware of the influence, suggesting that the problem was not just poor teaching skills, since the boys' math achievement would have suffered were that the case.

The study was somewhat limited in scope, as it didn't look at the effects of all possible gender combinations of teachers and students. There may be, for example, a positive and encouraging relationship between male elementary school teachers and their male students, but the low population of male elementary school teachers (less than 10 percent) makes this hard to study.

Females are also more socially conscious than males, so male students' abilities may be more resilient in the face of a math-anxious male teacher.

The fact that over 90 percent of elementary school teachers are female, combined with the high level of math anxiety that many of them transfer to their students, doesn't bode well for girls' future in math.

The study's authors acknowledge that the effect was not staggering, and there's plenty of room for influence by other female role models in the students' lives, such as mothers or siblings. Still, the work suggests that when it comes to math, elementary school teachers need, at the very least, to put on a much braver face before they do a math problem on the chalk board.



By Casey Johnston