Beyond Beat Saturday, August 27, 2011
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Prone to flu? Blame it on your genes London: Contracting flu every time even after taking all precautionary measures? Just blame it on your genes, scientists say. A study by on British volunteers found that some people are genetically predisposed to stave off the illness, while others are struck down year after year. However, the good news for the unlucky ones is that the discovery could form the basis of a universal treatment, the researchers said. Alfred Hero, the University of Michigan academic who led the research, said: “We looked at over 22,000 genes in 267 blood samples. No study of this magnitude has ever been done on human immune response”. “We can start to tease out the biological conditions that might make one more resistant to getting sick. We will be testing it on different strains of flu, and it may not just be flu, it may be the same for other viruses including the common cold,” Hero was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. For their study, the researchers inoculated 17 healthy people with the flu virus and monitored their progress for five days. Of the sample, nine became ill and the rest showed no symptoms at all. Using technology usually employed in satellite imaging, they examined the genes in the subjects’ blood samples every eight hours. Those who became sick developed an acute inflammation on certain genes 36 hours before the symptoms set in. This “genetic signature” was most marked in those who were suffering the worst, the researchers said. Meanwhile, those who remained fine were found to have activated a totally different genetic signature. The scientists interpreted this signature as an “anti-stress response” that showed their bodies were actively fighting off the virus. This discovery raises the possibility that experts could find a way to detect flu early, and take preventative action before the worst effects develop, the researchers said. “This is very important science, really Star Trek stuff. It has very big implications for many infectious diseases, not only flu,” said Professor Peter Openshaw of the Centre for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College in the UK. “It could help with flu pandemics and even allow us to detect lethal infections such as the ebola virus at a very early stage,” Professor Openshaw added. PTI
Stress turns hair grey
London: Stress can turn your hair grey, say scientists. They have found how stress hormone adrenaline causes damage that could lead to a variety of conditions – such as grey hair or the more serious cancer, the Daily Mail reported. The research is still at an early stage but it could one day lead to drugs that help counter some of the medical problems caused by one always being under pressure, it said. The new hope comes from US researchers who worked out how adrenaline wreaks havoc on the body. During brief but intense periods of stress, adrenaline is beneficial as it prepares the body to fight or flee. But when the stress goes on and on, it can start to take its toll on the DNA at the very core of our being, researchers said. To work out why, the researchers infused mice with adrenaline over several weeks to mimic the effects of being under long-term stress. Levels of a key anti-cancer protein called p53 fell. This protein, sometimes nicknamed ‘the guardian of the genome’, usually springs into action when DNA is damaged, allowing potentially cancerous cells to carry out repairs. DNA damage is also thought to impact on the cells that go on to produce the pigment in hair. “This could give us a plausible explanation of how chronic stress may lead to a variety of human conditions and disorders, which range from merely cosmetic, like greying hair, to life-threatening disorders like malignancies,” the Mail quoted lead researcher professor Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University, North Carolina, as saying. IANS
ne of the prominent artists of the pre-Independence era, who continued to dominate even after the country gained freedom, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar was an experimentalist who dawdled in different genres of art. Born in 1911 at Kattingeri in the Udupi district, Hebbar was an enormously gifted painter, whose works depicted hunger, destruction and war on one side, and landscapes and kathak poses on the other. Being a student of classical dance forms, he was influenced by the grace and beauty of these arts. A searing talent, he got national and international recognition. But over years, the painter had been forgotten. To revive interest in his works, the K K Hebbar Foundation, Mumbai, National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bangalore, JJ School of Art, Mumbai and Venkatappa Art Gallery, Bangalore, have put on show some of his works at NGMA Bangalore on his centenary. Hebbar’s daughters Rekha Rao and Rajani Prasanna have taken efforts to save his works, which are on display. Some of his paintings are also under the care and property of JJ School of Art and Venkatappa Art Gallery. The two sisters have put in efforts to curate and put up a show of 185 of his works at NGMA. Speaking on the Hebbar’s works, be it paintings or line drawings, Rekha Rao said, “As an artist, he enriched his artistic vocabulary by going around the country and the world. My father never ceased to experiment, be it surreal, representational or abstract paintingds or line drawing. They were directed by spontaneous emotional response to the life and times he lived in.” His spirit could be seen in a piece written for Art Quest magazine in 1974: “The merit of contemporary piece of art is assessed by its aesthetic quality and universal appeal, rather than chauvinistic or facile stylistic considerations. The conflict of the figurative or non-figurative does not worry me at all, different experiences demand different approaches.” Going through his paintings, you get to experience different mediums, styles and genres used by the great artist. The meandering lines show immediacy and the passing stream of experience felt by Hebbar. Lines groping around the curves and sharp thrusts breathe their own strange kind of life into his works. His ode to Indian classical music and dance, depicted through his line drawings and paintings should be taken note of. In a career spanning from 1939 to 1996, Hebbar chose oil, water, gauche, line drawing and lithograph as mediums. His paintings speak of nature, agricultural activity, womenfolk in villages, Indian epics like Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Bhagwad Gita, folkdance etc. Among his best works are: line drawings – Sillapathikaram, Grief of Dhasrath Maharaj; sketch – Jawaharlal Nehru, Shankar Dayal Sharma, Indira Gandhi; oil on canvas – Sunny South, Surgery, Birth of Poetry; water colour – Sahyadri range, Pahalgam; lithograph – Cactus, tempera – Go Seva II; pen and ink – Tulsi Das, Scene of Warsaw. Huchu Manasina Hathu Mukagalu and crayon – Devil Dance. The works that instantly captured the art lovers’ imagination are of line drawings done on Sillappadhikaram, one of the five epics of ancient Tamil literature. He narrated the whole facet of the epic through simple lines. Other line drawings were of Indian classical dance. Rekha Rao said, “He was fascinated by line drawings. When he chose to draw Kathak dancers, he studied the dancer form under Pandit Sundar Prasad. That is what helped my father infuse rhythm into drawings, followed by sight and limits. You can see in numerous line drawings how the flow has been maintained.” Works of Hebbar under the title – “An Artist’s Quest K K Hebbar – A Retrospective” is on at NGMA till October 30. You can visit the gallery any day, except Monday, from 10 am to 5 pm.
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He was one of the towering artists of the pre‑Independence era, who continued to dominate the art scene for years to come. One to experiment with various mediums and genres, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar had a passion for depicting classical forms of Indian dance and music. His retrospective is now on at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore, says L Raghunanda
Marsʼ soil more hospitable than thought: Scientists Washington: It has long been believed that Mars’ surface is too oxidised for life to survive. But, a new study has now claimed that the soil on the Red Planet may be less inhospitable than than previously thought. Scientists believe that the Martian surface is packed full of oxidising compounds, which could make it difficult for complex molecules like organic chemicals – the building blocks of life as we know it – to exist. But the new study, which
analysed data gathered by NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander, suggested that is actually not the case. “Although there may be some small amounts of oxidants in the soil, the bulk material is actually quite benign,” said lead study author Richard Quinn of NASA’s Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “It’s very similar to moderate soils that we find on Earth,” Quinn was quoted as saying by the Space.com.
NASA’s $420 million Phoenix lander, which touched down near the Martian north pole in late May 2008, had done a number of observations and interesting soil measurements using its onboard wet chemistry laboratory (WCL). One of those was the Mars dirt’s acidity, or pH, level. Quinn and his team studied the Phoenix data, focusing on measurements of Martian soils’ oxidation-reduction potential. Oxidation refers to the stripping away of electrons. It’s a destructive
process that can tear up complex molecules like DNA, which is why people need antioxidants as diet. Scientists had reason to think that Martian soil might be highly oxidising, Quinn said. In the mid1970s, NASA’s Viking landers mixed some organic compounds into Martian dirt, and the chemicals appeared to decompose. But the new results, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, paint a rosier picture of Red Planet soil as far as habitability is concerned.
“When you look at the composite of all the material in there, and you measure the overall reactivity of that soil in solution, it’s comparable to what you would find in terrestrial soils, Earth soils,” Quinn said. “So it’s not an extreme environment in that regard.” The results don’t prove that Martian life exists or ever has existed. However, they and other finding – including evidence from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that liquid water may have flowed just beneath the Martian surface in the last year or so – are making scientists more and more hopeful, Quinn said. “The evidence from the HiRISE team that there may be seasonal water flow at some locations, combined with this measurement that shows that when the soil is wetted it’s actually not harsh conditions – it’s very positive in terms of the potential for life to get a foothold,” he said. PTI