'Fitbits' to Keep Tabs on Body from Within

                Scientists are developing dust-sized wireless sensor implanted inside the body to track neural activity real-time, offering a potential new way to monitor or treat conditions including epilepsy and control next-generation prosthetics. The tiny devices have been demonstrated successfully in rats, and could be tested in people within two years. We can almost think of it as an internal, deep-tissue Fitbit, where you would be collecting a lot of data that today we think of as hard to access. Current technologies employ a range of wired electrodes attached to different parts of the body to monitor and treat conditions ranging from heart arrhythmia to epilepsy. The idea here is to make those technologies wireless. The new sensors, about the size of grain of sand, have no need for wires or batteries. They consist of components called piezoelectric crystals that convert ultrasound waves into electricity that powers tiny transistors in contact with nerve cells in the body. The transistors record neural activity and send the data outside the body to a receiver

Social Media Helps Recall Past Events

                Posting personal experiences on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter could make those events much easier to recall, the first study to look at social media’s effect on memory suggests. If people want to remember personal experiences, the best way is to put them online. Social media – blogs, FB, Twitter and other alike – provide and important outlet for us to recall memories, in the public space, and share with people. Researchers have long known that when people write about or share personal experiences, they tend to remember those events much better. Likewise, events posted online were more likely than those not posted to be remembered over time.

Science Behind Making Perfect Cars Decoded

                Researchers, including one of Indian origin, have decoded the science behind the perfect car and quantified how the aesthetic design of car models affects consumer preference. By combining data on design and sales, the researchers showed that while customers do not like cars look too different from the market average, they also do not want something that looks too similar. When buying a luxury car, it is more important that the car looks consistent with the brand, and less important that it looks like other cars in the market segment. Cars in the economy segment can gain in popularity by mimicking the aesthetics of their luxury counterparts.

'Ascent of Man' Image Should be the Other Way Around: Experts

                The idea that humans evolved from a knuckle-dragging ape, leaving chimpanzees in the Darwin dust, was crystallized in the famous ‘ascent of man’ image. But ongoing research on a 3.7 million year old fossilized skeleton of an early type of human could prove the orderly procession is actually the wrong way round. Speaking at the British Science Festival in Swansea, Professor Robin Crompton argued that humans, apes and chimpanzees all evolved from a common ancestor who walked upright and lived in the trees. So it was the chimps that changed their body shape to allow them to move at high speed on all four limbs, while humans carried on using two. And upright walking did not evolve after humans descended from the trees and started to move around on the open savannah, but millions of years before this. In fact, once seen as one of our defining characteristics, developed when early humans were still in the trees.

                As they were walking on their feet, they used their hands to steady themselves on nearby branches and gradually got the idea that sticks could have other uses. The ascent of man image had entered popular culture, but was wrong. Chimpanzees and humans are both descended from something more like living humans than living chimpanzees – however uncomfortable that may be to us. The ancient fossil of an Australopithecus hominid – the same genus as the famous Lucy – was found in South Africa in the 1990s, but was only dated last year. Whereas Lucy was just 1.1 metres tall, the South African fossil, nicknamed Little Foot, was about the same size as a modern western woman. According to Crompton, Lucy was a pygmy Australopithecus, much like there are pygmy Homo sapiens today.

Earth's Carbon Came From Smash-up With a Planet

                Most of the Earth’s life giving carbon may have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between our planer and embryonic planet similar to mercury, scientists found. Researchers studied how carbon based life developed on Earth, given that most of the planet’s carbon should have either boiled away in the planet’s earliest days or become locked in Earth’s core. The challenge is to explain the origin of the volatile elements like carbon that remain outside the core in the mantle portion of our planet.

Now, A Pill That Promises to Melt Away Leukaemia

                A new drug that ‘melts’ away cancer has been given fast track approval in the US. Developed in Australia, Venetoclax was developed to specifically target chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The drug showed a positive result in 80% of clinical trials, with one in five patients finishing the programme completely cancer-free. Venetoclax is administered orally every day via a pill. In the original trial, 116 participants increased their dosage from 20mg to 400mg over a five week period. It truly does lead to the disease melting away in 20% of people.

                Cells, when they are born, are destined to die, and cancer cells – particularly leukemia cells – delay that death by using a protein called BCL2 that stops the normal time of death. Venetoclax works by specifically blocking the action of that BCL2 and allows the cells to die in the way that they were destined to. It causes no side-effects. Despite the majority of trial patients experiencing some benefit from Venetoclax, others did have a negative result. The drug marks an advance in immunotherapy, a new area of research that assesses how the body’s own immune system can defeat cancer. As yet, it has been used most effectively in the treatment of melanoma. While Venetoclax has received approval from the European Union and the United States, the drug has not yet been made available in Australia.

Zika Can Spread Via Tears Too

                Eyes may be a reservoir for Zika virus, say scientists. Evidence of the virus in the eyes and tears of infected mice raises the possibility that the infection may spread through tears. Zika virus causes mild disease in most adults but can cause brain damage and death in fetuses. About a third of all babies infected in uterus with Zika show symptoms of eye diseases like inflammation of the optic nerve retinal damage or blindness after birth. In adults, Zika can cause conjunctivitis – redness and itchiness of the eyes – and in rare cases, a condition known as uveitis that can lead to permanent vision loss.

                Researchers study suggests that the eye could be a reservoir for Zika virus. They need to consider whether people with Zika have infectious virus in their eyes and how long it actually persists. To determine what effect Zika infection has on the eye, the researchers infected adult mice under the skin and found live virus in the eyes seven days later. The observations confirm that Zika is able to travel to the eye. It is not yet known whether the virus typically makes that trip by crossing the blood retina barrier that separates the eye from the bloodstream, travelling along the optic nerve that connects the brain and the eye, or some other route. Eye infection raises the possibility that people could acquire Zika infection through contact with tears from infected people.