New research suggests soluble corn fibre may boost calcium absorption

Innovative ingredient may offer one solution for helping adolescents to improve status of two nutrients currently lacking in their diets

Hoffman Estates, IL – Around the globe, fibre and calcium intakes are below the levels recommended by experts^1,2,3contributing to potential long-term public health implications^1,3,4. New research, published this month in theBritish Journal of Nutrition, shows soluble corn fibre (SCF) may not simply boost fibre intake when added to foods, but can also increase the amount of beneficial bacteria present in the gut, while enhancing calcium absorption in adolescents⁵. SCF is a prebiotic fibre that is well tolerated, and is easily incorporated into foods or beverages to boost fibre content. These latest results showing SCF can enhance calcium absorption are significant because during adolescence, a critical time for bone growth, dairy intake tends to decrease, resulting in inadequate calcium intake which is a vital mineral for building and maintaining strong bones.

Researchers studied the potential effect of SCF on calcium absorption and retention in adolescent children with a usual diet that was low in fibre. In a controlled dietary study, adolescent girls and boys who consumed 12g/day fibre from SCF absorbed significantly more calcium (a 12% increase versus a control) than when consuming no SCF. Additionally, the researchers found that when the adolescents consumed SCF, there was an increase in specific strains of beneficial gut bacteria, namely the phylum Bacteroidetes, and these increases were positively correlated with increases in calcium absorption. These results indicate that moderate daily intake of SCF may increase beneficial gut bacteria and also short-term calcium absorption in adolescents who are consuming less than recommended amounts of calcium.

'A decrease in milk consumption among adolescents has led to an increase in deficiency of calcium in the diet, leaving researchers with a particular interest in finding functional foods that can help increase calcium absorption,' stated Connie Weaver, PhD, of Purdue University and lead researcher of the study. 'Dietary factors that enhance bone density and bone mineral content have the potential to contribute to reduced risk of bone fracture later in life.'

If the adolescents in this study had continued to consume SCF, allowing for increased calcium absorption, the researchers estimated that this would lead to additional 41.4 mg/day retained calcium and if persistent over a year would account for an additional 15.1 g of calcium, or about 1.8% of total body calcium.

'On average, people aren't meeting their fibre or calcium intake goals with the foods they currently consume. Adding fibres with functional health benefits to already consumed foods is a realistic and simple way to help address this global public health concern among key age groups,' said Michael Harrison, PhD, Senior Vice President of New Product Development at Tate & Lyle. 'Tate & Lyle has consistently shown a commitment to investing in research that leads to the production of high quality ingredients that allow people to live well and improve their health.'

###

The soluble corn fibre used in the study was added to fruit snacks and provided by Tate & Lyle, a global provider of high-quality, specialty ingredients.

About Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle is a global provider of ingredients and solutions to the food, beverage and other industries, operating from over 30 locations worldwide.

Tate & Lyle operates through two global divisions, Speciality Food Ingredients and Bulk Ingredients, supported by our Innovation and Commercial Development Group. The Group's strategy is to become a leading global provider of Speciality Food Ingredients through a disciplined focus on growth, and by driving Bulk Ingredients for sustained cash generation to fuel this growth.

Speciality Food Ingredients consists of three platforms: Texturants, which includes speciality starches and stabilisers; Sweeteners, which comprises nutritive sweeteners and our range of no-calorie sweeteners including SPLENDA® Sucralose; and our Health and Wellness portfolio which includes speciality fibres and our salt-reduction offering. Additionally, our Food Systems business provides a wide variety of blended ingredient solutions.

Tate & Lyle Bulk Ingredients includes bulk sweeteners, industrial starches and fermentation products (primarily acidulants). Corn co-products from both divisions are primarily sold as animal feed.

Tate & Lyle is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol TATE.L. American Depositary Receipts trade under TATYY. In the year to 31 March 2014, Tate & Lyle sales totalled £3.1 billion. http://www.tateandlyle.com. SPLENDA® is a trademark of McNeil Nutritionals, LLC.

New research suggests soluble corn fibre may boost calcium absorption

8:42 AM calcium, diet, fiber rich food, food

How to install Android L on NEXUS 5 and NEXUS 7

Manual Installation Of Android L on NEXUS 5 and NEXUS 7

Last month Google previewed Android L at I/O, and immediately after, it released the operating system preview to the developers. You however don’t have to be a developer totry out Android L now, and all you need is aNexus 5 smartphone or a Nexus 7 tablet. Hit the break below to check out the step-by-step guide on how to install Android L on your Nexus devices now.

Before we start though, let us warn you that this is a beta version of the OS and has many bugs. Google too warns that this “Android preview system image is not a stable release, and may contain errors and defects that can result in damage to your computer systems, devices, and data.” Having said that if you are still feeling adventurous here are the steps.

Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and Fastboot tools

First off you will need to download and install these two tools, which essentially allow you to send commands to your device from your computer via USB. These tools are generally found in the Android SDK, but the SDK is a huge file and has many things you will not need.

Instead you can download this minimal tool that can be found on the XDA forum. This is a 2MB installer and has both the above mentioned tools. Install the tools in a folder you can easily access.

Android L image

The next step is to download the appropriate Android L image for your Nexus device. You can find the image for Nexus 5 here, and the Nexus 7 here. The image will be downloaded in a .tgz format, and you will need an extractor utility like WinRAR or 7-zip to extract the files from the archive. Extract the files to the same folder that contains the Android ADB and Fastboot tools.

Enable USB debugging

Now, on your smartphone/tablet, head over to the Settings menu and scroll down to About smartphone/tablet. Once inside, tap on the ‘Build number’ tab seven times to unhide the developer options. Press the back button once and you will see the Developer options tab now. Click on the tab and once inside, enable the USB debugging option.

Windows drivers

Once you have enabled USB debugging, Windows will again look for drivers when you connect your device to your computer. To ensure, it uses the latest drivers, install them from here. This step is necessary for your computer to recognize the Nexus device as a developer device.

Head over to Control Panel and click Devices and Printers to look for your device. The Nexus device should be listed there as an ‘Android Composite ADB interface’. If it is not recognized, update the drivers with the one you installed. Check your device as there will be a popup message asking, “Allow USB debugging?” Click on allow and your device is ready.

Fastboot mode

With your device still connected to the computer, power it off. You will need to put it in fastboot mode and there are two methods to choose from. The first method is to press the volume up, volume down and power buttons simultaneously. For the second method double-click on “py_cmd” in the folder you downloaded the tools to open the command prompt. Type ‘adb reboot-bootloader’ — without the quotation marks — to restart your device in fastboot mode.

Unlock Bootloader

By default your device should be in a lock state, which won’t allow you to install the Android L image. To unlock it, type the command ‘fastbook oem unlock’ (without quotations). The device will ask you to confirm if you want to unlock the bootloader, and using the volume rocker move the option to ‘Yes’ and press the power button to select the option.

This step will essentially erase your Nexus device and prep it for the new Android installation.

Installing Android L

Now that the device is prepped, in the command prompt simply type the flash-all command. This will start the process of installing Android L onto your Nexus smartphone or tablet.

How to install Android L on NEXUS 5 and NEXUS 7

7:00 AM ADB, Android debug bridge, Android L, Android L image, Fast boot, Installation, NEXUS, XDA forum

Production Of water from atmospheric air

Extracting Pure water From Atmospheric Humidity

Pure water, not only pure but usable surface water is going to be, or is a big threat to the existing living system on earth. That is the reason now we are spending considerable amount of time and money to find an alternate planet with water and other livable conditions. The scenario may different like, we can migrate to new space or we can transport water from there to our reservoirs. But my gut feeling is, we have spent more time to think, how we can reduce the use of water, how we can avoid wastage of water, and more importantly how we can produce water.



Production of water from air humidity

 

Production of water from atmospheric air

This is a very hot topic to discuss and a lot of research and investment is going on this topic. Even in hot and dry area, there is a lot of moisture available in air. And due to increasing in global warming, the moisture content in the air is going to more in future and surface and ground water availability will go down.

This idea will succeed only if the production cost is nominal and the technology is simple and affordable. In future our main target is developing a renewable source of water and fuel production.

There are mainly two process involve in water production from atmospheric air.

1.    Absorption of humidity from air

2.    Separation and condensation (desorption)

 

Absorption of water from atmospheric air

 


Absorption of atmospheric humidity

In order to make the absorption of the air humidity in the saline solution as efficient as possible, a large interface with the air and a long contact time are necessary. This is done by allowing the saline solution to flow slowly down sorption strings in tower-shaped, naturally ventilated plant modules and to absorb the water from the air. By means of a special design of the sorption strings an efficient mass transfer is achieved and the saline solution is diluted by the substantial absorption of water.

Desorption : distillation and condensation

The water has to be separated from the circulating saline solution (desorbed), and so a distillation process follows. The distillation is effected by means of gravity-assisted, multiple-stage vacuum evaporation. To do this, the saline solution, diluted with water, is subjected to a vacuum, which considerably reduces the evaporation temperatures. The advantage of this is that these temperatures can be achieved with simple solar thermal collectors or also with waste heat. Since the plant works with a negative pressure, it is also possible to use the thermal energy employed several times in various evaporation stages with different pressures. The water vapor produced in the distillation is condensed and can be used as high-quality drinking water.

A combined tower-construction for the sorption and desorption makes it possible to use the gravity of the process flows to create the required vacuum. Energy-intensive vacuum pumps are no longer needed.

This is an exaple of pracal application of the technology Biilsboard that produce water in Peru.

Production Of water from atmospheric air

3:25 PM Drinking water, water from humidity, Water production from air, water purification

Retina Grown In Lab from Human Stem Cells

Human Retina Developed From Genetically  Reprogrammed Human Stem Cells



Retina grown from human stem cells

In new findings listing John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore published the creation of immature retina in dish from human stem cells. It is believed to be sensitive to lights that mean the cultured retina is sensing the light. That simply means one day in future this development will helps us to restore our vision.

Retinal cells are a type of photoreceptor which respond to lights. This is the first step of converting light in to images. Simply this photoreceptive retinal cell can be compared with the CMOS sensor of your digital camera. The researchers developed a 3D compliment of human retinal tissue in their lab. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which are adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed back to their most primitive state. Such cells are capable of developing into most of the 200 cell types in the human body, the team explains, and for their latest study, they were able to turn them into retinal progenitor cells that form light-sensitive retinal tissue lining the back of the eye.

In the experiment, the cells growth resembles the fetus growth in stage and duration. When the cells growth period attained 28 week equivalent, the researchers tested the cell for its photo sensitivity to check whether these cells can sense and transform the light to visual signals. The team tested the retinas by putting an electrode into a single photoreceptor cell and sending a pulse of light to the cell. This reacted in a biochemical pattern similar to the behavior of photoreceptor in humans exposed to light.

It is true that a stem cell cannot grow completely into a retinal cell by their own , but this experiment show at least what they can do. We hope someday we can use this research to lighten the life of many.

 

 

Retina Grown In Lab from Human Stem Cells

3:56 PM

How to Add Schedule of FIFA 2014 to Your Calender

FIFA World cup Brazil Get Schedule In your Phone or any Device through Google Calender

 

 

The FIFA World Cup is only days away and, if you’re just as excited as we are, you’ll want to know when all of the matches kick-off.
So here’s a super-quick guide for adding all of the legendary tournament’s fixtures to your Google Calendar account:
1) Open up the web version and hit the arrow icon just next to the ‘Other Calendars’ option in the sidebar. Select ‘Add by URL’ and then paste the following URL into the dialog box:

https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/vdmtdcektajkqjk51vvda4ni4k%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic


2) Alternatively, you can head to this page and click the ‘+ Google Calendar’ button in the bottom right-hand corner. You’ll then be whisked across to your personal online calendar, where you can confirm the new additions.

3) Refresh the page and after a few minutes you should see the schedule appear across all of your devices. If you used the first option, the calendar should also update automatically as teams progress and get knocked out.

How to Add Schedule of FIFA 2014 to Your Calender

6:57 AM Brazil 2014, Calender, FIFA, FIFA 2014, Foot ball, Foot ball world cup, Google calendar, Schdule

Why there is a complementary strand?

This one of my ever lasting questions. May be I asked the same to many.. Or I may hear the answer several time. But still now I am not able to get a clarity on it. The question remains the same.. Why there is a complementary strand? Yes of cause I am talking about the DNA.
We are all having double stranded DNA compliment to each other.
Is it really true that only one strand of these DNA get expressed?
Of only. One strand why there is two? OK it is true that it can increase stability. Ya well ,it act as a proof reader to eliminate mismatches during replication. The stability of the structure and function. I really wonder is that the only function of the complimentary strand. What it actually complimenting.
Nearly 70 to 80% genome of guinea pig and human are. Same. Ho! then the so called 30% is responsible for the variation. Is that really means the 70% is some level of basic genetic constitution of all livings. Not may be but its really confusing... More than 30% really.
I need to learn a lot basics.

Why there is a complementary strand?

10:24 PM

Wearable electronic skin that can store,send and receive data

 Electronic Skin: Store ,send and receive data

 

Develop an artificial skin is one of the major challenge. And we are almost achieved the goal by nanotechnology. A wearable synthetic skin that can sense touch , temperature , movement and can response to it. Now we moved little bit ahead with a wearable skin which can store, send and receive data, Nature published the success in their latest edition .

 

The application of this technology is very vast. The initial target is to  use  this synthetic skin with data  to aid patients with movement disabilities. The new improved version of skin can store data, drug, it can receive diagnostic information and can release drug, monitor movement, temperature and send data. The so called 'electronic skin' is a 0.3 mm thick 4 cm long and 2 cm wide stretchable nanomaterial.

 

The trade-off for that memory milestone is that the device works only if it is connected to a power supply and data transmitter, both of which need to be made similarly compact and flexible before the prototype can be used routinely in patients. Although some commercially available components, such as lithium batteries and radio-frequency identification tags, can do this work, they are too rigid for the soft-as-skin brand of electronic device. Even though the data is transmitted  wirelessly, there should be a device that can read the data. The thought of using human body temperature or electric charge is also a thinkable approach to solve the energy requirement.

The electronic skin can also do things that conventional medical sensors cannot. When placed on the throat, for example, it senses spoken words well enough to control a simple computer game. The device might be used to help people with laryngeal diseases communicate, to monitor premature babies, or to enhance the control of prosthetics. Use the skin to induce muscle contractions in regions of the body that have degenerated.

 

More scientific reads :

http://www.nature.com/news/electronic-skin-equipped-with-memory-1.14952

http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanotechnology/electronic-skin-patch-could-treat-diseases-140401.htm

 

 

 

 

       

 

Wearable electronic skin that can store,send and receive data

12:18 PM artificial skin, electric skin, synthetic skin, wearable skin

Artificial Leaf. Will it be the Energy source of the future ?

Artificial Leaf: the new ways of producing energy

At the very beginning of the human race, concurring the energy source was the ultimate target. And still we are racing behind a renewable, affordable energy source. We already witnessed wars and fight for capturing energy sources and witnessed the rise of economical power of the world  from scratch  just becuse of having the natural energy resources.

The world is and will be highly worried about the avaialbility of the natural resources. The depresiation of the resources is really an unforgatable thoughts. But still we are not able to come up with a replaceble source for natural resources. One advantage of liquid fuel is propotrion of stored energy in it  and storage space required.  To use elctric current insted of liquid fuel to fly a flight, just imagine the amount for batteries required to store the power. So the real though is to come up with a real alternate energy source  which is to be efficient, cheap and robust. And it is the ultimate challenge for the existance of the entire humnity.

In recent publication of Nature, discused about a concept of Artificial leaf. This leaf is just not a leaf made of synthetic material, the artifical part is the functionality of the leaf. Yes we are trying to mimic the function of a leaf 'the photosysnthesis'. Ultimately the energy source we are looking for the solar energy.

The concept of artificial photosynthesis goes back to 1912, but the push to achieve it did not start until 1972, when Japanese researchers outlined what a device would need to take in sunlight and use it to split water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel2. Progress was slow. In 1998, Turner reported3 a complete system that showed a major advance — it stored 12% of the incoming solar energy as fuel, compared with 1% of energy stored as biomass in real leaves. But it cost more than 25 times too much to be competitive, and its performance dropped off after 20 hours of sunshine.

In the process, to create a system that is much cheaper than just splitting water with electricity from a solar panel. At the heart of JCAP's artificial-leaf design are two electrodes immersed in an aqueous solution. Typically, each electrode is made of a semiconductor material chosen to capture light energy from a particular part of the solar spectrum, and coated with a catalyst that will help to generate hydrogen or oxygen at useful speeds (see 'Splitting water'). Like many other artificial-photosynthesis devices, JCAP's system is divided by a membrane to keep the resulting gases apart and reduce the risk of an explosive reaction.

Once the water has been split, the hydrogen is harvested. It can be used as a fuel by itself — perhaps in hydrogen-powered cars.

Making any one of the artificial leaf's components work well is a challenge; combining all of them into a complete system is even harder. Much of the difficulty comes down to finding the right materials. Silicon, for instance, makes a good photocathode — the electrode that produces hydrogen gas — but is stable only when the solution around it is acidic. Unfortunately, the situation is reversed with photoanodes, which produce oxygen: the good ones are stable only when the solution is basic, not acidic. And the best catalyst for the oxygen-producing electrode, iridium, is both rare and expensive, which makes it unsuitable for commercial-scale devices.

Light industry

Another entrant in the artificial-photosynthesis field is the Japan Technological Research Association of Artificial Photosynthetic Chemical Process (ARPChem), a consortium of universities and companies that has government funding comparable to JCAP's grant — although over ten years rather than five — to develop a bag-based approach. Kazunari Domen, a chemist at the University of Tokyo and leader of ARPChem's water-splitting group, says that one of the companies in the consortium has been working on a membrane to separate the hydrogen and oxygen products.
Other projects are making photoabsorbers from organic molecules, rather than semiconductors. Some are building molecular assemblies inspired directly by the photosynthetic apparatus of plants. And in the past few years, a class of materials called perovskites has drawn the attention of the solar-photovoltaic community for its high energy-conversion efficiency; some researchers think that the materials also have potential in artificial photosynthesis.
Daniel Nocera, a chemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched Sun Catalytix to develop his work on a low-cost catalyst. But the company announced last year that it has put that research on hold to pursue a less challenging product with prospects of turning a profit for investors sooner. The decision underscores the challenges of bringing a commercially viable artificial-photosynthesis system to market.


 

Artificial Leaf. Will it be the Energy source of the future ?

9:47 PM Artificial leaf, energy, fuel, solar energy, splitting water

Phage Therapy -Drug resistant bacterial diseases

Phage Terapy gets revitalized

 

The century old virus treatment is on high interset on the increasing drug resistance bactereia. Reports says the rastic mutaion in bacterial genome againt the antibiotics and reserches are spending a lot of time and resource on developing new drugs each and every time to tackle the diseases.


Bacterio Phage

Now the thoughts of using the century old virus treatment- use of bacterio phages- phages are virus which infects on bacteria- to treat for bacterial diseases. bacteria — to treat infections. Phage therapy is still widely used in Russia, Georgia and Poland, but never took off elsewhere. Pages are viruses and peoples are afrid of viruses.

Now, faced with the looming spectre of antibiotic resistance, Western researchers and governments are giving phages a serious look. In March, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases listed phage therapy as one of seven prongs in its plan to combat antibiotic resistance. And at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting in Boston last month, Grégory Resch of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland presented plans for Phagoburn: the first large, multi-centre clinical trial of phage therapy for human infections, funded by the European Commission.

Previous lack of Western interest to clinicians’ preference for treating unknown infections with broad-spectrum antibiotics that kill many types of bacterium. Phages, by contrast, kill just one species or strain. But researchers now realize that they need more precise ways to target pathogenic bacteria, says microbiologist Michael Schmidt of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Along with the rising tide of strains resistant to last-resort antibiotics, there is growing appreciation that wiping out the human body’s beneficial microbes along with disease-causing ones can create a niche in which antibiotic-resistant bacteria can thrive. “Antibiotics are a big hammer,” Schmidt says. “You want a guided missile.”

Finding a phage for a bacterial target is relatively easy, Young says. Nature provides an almost inexhaustible supply: no two identical phages have ever been found. As a bacterium becomes resistant to one phage — by shedding the receptor on the cell surface that the virus uses to enter — the Eliava Institute researchers simply add more phages to the viral cocktails that patients receive. Kutateladze says that they update their products every eight months or so, and do not always know the exact combination of phages that make up the cocktail.

In initial trials, the researchers found that their phage could kill more than 99% of the E. coli cells that contained specific anti­biotic-resistance gene sequences, whereas it left susceptible cells alone. Giving the phage to waxworm larvae infected with resistant E. coli increased the worms’ chance of survival. The researchers are now starting to test the system in mice (human trials are a long way off).

Phge therapy never replaces antibiotics . But it definitly gives and added advantage over the drug resistance strains of bacteria.

Phage Therapy -Drug resistant bacterial diseases

4:07 PM antibiotic resistance, bacterio phage therapy, diseases, drug resistance, mutaion, virus

Evolutionary relationships among some of the organisms

Evolutionary relationships among some of the organisms

The branches of the evolutionary tree show paths of descent but do not indicate by their length the passage of time. (Note, similarly, that the vertical axis of the diagram shows major categories of organisms and not time.)

Evolutionary relationships among some of the organisms

Evolutionary relationships among some of the organisms

2:36 PM Evolutionary relationships among some of the organisms