Micro and Macro similarities

Micro and Macro Cosmos are alike

In Indian scriptures, many references and descriptions aver that the Pindaanda and Brahmananda systems and structures or similar. Now we have scientific research confirming the same.

LOS ANGELES: Humans may be more aligned with the universe than thought, say scientists who found that the structures of our cell cytoplasm and neutron stars are similar, both resembling helical multistory parking garages.



Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US, explored the biophysics of shapes - helices that connect stacks of evenly spaced sheets - in a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER).

These structures named 'Terasaki ramps' were thought to be unique to soft matter (like the interior of cells) until researchers happened upon the work of nuclear physicist Charles Horowitz at Indiana University in the US.

Using computer simulations, Horowitz and his team had found the same shapes deep in the crust of neutron stars.



Nuclear physicists have an apt terminology for the entire class of shapes they see in their high-performance computer simulations of neutron stars: nuclear pasta.

These include tubes (spaghetti) and parallel sheets (lasagna) connected by helical shapes that resemble Terasaki ramps. However, differences can be found in the underlying physics.

Typically matter is characterised by its phase, which depends on thermodynamic variables: density (or volume), temperature and pressure - factors that differ greatly at the nuclear level and in an intracellular context.

"For neutron stars, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force create what is fundamentally a quantum-mechanical problem," said Greg Huber, physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"In the interior of cells, the forces that hold together membranes are fundamentally entropic and have to do with the minimisation of the overall free energy of the system. At first glance, these could not be more different," said Huber.



Another difference is scale. In the nuclear case, the structures are based on nucleons such as protons and neutrons and those building blocks are measured using femtometres.

For intracellular membranes like the ER, the length scale is nanometres. The ratio between the two is a factor of a million, yet these two vastly different regimes make the same shapes.

"This means that there is some deep thing we do not understand about how to model the nuclear system," Huber said.



The similarity of the structures is riveting for theoretical and nuclear physicists alike.

"Seeing very similar shapes in such strikingly different systems suggests that the energy of a system may depend on its shape in a simple and universal way," said Horowitz.



The study was published in the journal Physical Review C.

Scientific Basis for Gangaa Snaanam

CHANDIGARH: Until now, it was believed that the healing properties of the Ganga were merely the stuff of myths.

However, scientists from the Institute of Microbial Technology (Imtech), Chandigarh, have for the first time come forward with scientific evidence that the water of Ganga does not putrefy easily. They have identified new viruses, or bacteriophages, which mimic bacteria in the river's sediment and eat them up.

The scientific world has always been baffled by the antiseptic properties of Ganga's waters. In 1896, British physician E Hanbury Hankin observed that cholera microbes died within three hours in its water, but thrived in distilled water.

This remained hypothetical until Imtech experts found the new viruses. Imtech is one of the laboratories of the CSIR. The study has revealed 20 to 25 types of bacteriophages in the river which can fight microorganisms that cause diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, cholera and urinary tract infection, among others.

"We analysed the viral metagenomes in sediments of the Ganga and found different types of phages, said Dr Shanmugam Mayilraj, senior principal scientist at Imtech. He said the sediments house several novel viruses, which were never reported earlier. These are active against certain bacterial strains and can be used against multidrug resistant infections.

The team collected samples from the highly polluted Haridwar-Varanasi stretch. Also part of the project were National Environment Engineering Research Institute co-ordinating lab, National Botanical Research Institute, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research and Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.

Chance of being nice - a real incident

Read this story. This might change the way you react to people around. Being nice is beneficial to our own life rather than some one else.

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Reproduction of the incident of Mike Harrison

When I was 24, I moved into an apartment and the couple next door were loud all the time. After putting up with it for a couple weeks, I decided to confront them and politely ask them to be quieter after noon, as I had a job that required me to work the midnight shift, so I always went to bed around noon and got up at 8pm.

I went next door and knocked on the door around 10am and a woman who was 68 answered and I introduced myself and she asked if I had come over to complain about the noise, which I said yes. She explained that both her and her husband are going deaf and they need to speak loudly to each other in order to hear each other. She invited me in and offered me a Pepsi and we just started talking about anything and everything about each other and after about 30 minutes or so we heard a loud bang in the kitchen area of the apartment so we went to investigate and her husband had collapsed and was not breathing. I told her to call 911(emergency services) and I started doing CPR on him, the ambulance and fire department arrived about 10 minutes later and by the time they arrived, I had revived him. I asked if she needed a ride to the hospital and she said no, so after the police took my info and statement for the reports, I went home and went to bed and woke up at 8pm and went next door and knocked and got no answer, so I assumed she was still at the hospital, and went to work that night.

When I came home from work there was a note on my apartment door from the lady asking me to come over. When I went over, she had cooked me breakfast and asked if I would drive her to the hospital as a police officer had driven her home around 3am because she was to distraught to drive, which I said no problem and asked when she wanted to go. When we got to the hospital I followed her to his room in ICU and he was in decent shape and he thanked me for doing CPR, which I replied that anyone would do it. He ended up staying in the hospital for a couple weeks and was released. I ended up becoming friends with this couple ( and never once complained again about the noises they made every day) until they moved to an assisted living facility in another state to be closer to their children, a year later.

Flash forward 10 years and I get a phone call from an attorney in Kentucky asking me to come down to his office. I of course was wondering what was going on, so I went down the next day and when I arrived at his office, the lawyer asked me if I knew a couple by their names and I said yes, they used to live next door to me. He told me that the woman had died a couple years ago and that the husband had died a month ago and he was hired by their children to find me, and that the man had changed his will to include me in it. He handed me an envelope that had a check for $25,000 (which I did not take, instead I told the lawyer to give it to the couples kids) and he asked if I would like to meet their children and grandchildren, because they wanted to thank me personally for saving the husbands life a decade ago and the couple had talked so highly about me saving his life, and also never once complaining about the noises they made and always asking if they needed anything whenever I went to the store or running around, and asking if they would like to go out to eat or see a movie(even if it wasn’t a movie I really wanted to see, I still went to whatever movie the wife wanted to see). I met the family and the two children (who are basically my age) introduced me to their kids as their adopted brother and to this day, we are all still friends and see each other constantly, as they moved to my area shortly after as their parents had a house that they had been renting out when I met them, and it went to the kids, so the son moved into the house with his family and his sister moved up here a few years later. In fact, the oldest daughter of the son is getting married this weekend, and my family and I are going to it.

To this day, I still have no regrets about not taking the money offered. The friendships I have gotten from the couples children is more than enough to make me happy

Written Jul 28

Constant sitters - Tip to avoid heart trouble

If your job needs to sit for long hours either at table or on flight, make it a habit to move your toes to keep the blood circulation in order to avert heart problem.

New York: Fidgeting while sitting for an extended period of time at a computer or during a long flight can protect the arteries in your legs and potentially help prevent arterial disease, a new study has claimed.

Research has shown that sitting for an extended period of time reduces blood flow to the legs, which may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease. "Many of us sit for hours at a time, whether it is binge watching our favourite TV show or working at a computer," said Jaumme Padilla from University of Missouri in the US.

"We wanted to know whether a small amount of leg fidgeting could prevent a decline in leg vascular function caused by prolonged sitting," said Padilla. While researchers expected fidgeting to increase blood flow to the lower limbs, they actually found that this would be sufficient to prevent a decline in arterial function.
Researchers compared the leg vascular function of 11 healthy young men and women before and after three hours of sitting.

While sitting, participants were asked to fidget one leg intermittently, tapping one foot for one minute and then resting it for four minutes, while the other leg remained still throughout. On average, the participants moved their feet 250 times per minute. Researchers then measured the blood flow of the popliteal - an artery in the lower leg - and found that the fidgeting leg had a significant increase in blood flow, as expected, while the stationary leg experienced a reduction in blood flow.

Previous research has shown that increased blood flow and its associated shear stress - the friction of the flowing blood on the artery wall - is an important stimulus for vascular health. However, fidgeting's protective role had not
been established. While only one leg was exposed to fidgeting during the experiment, in a real-world scenario researchers recommend tapping both legs to maximise the beneficial effects.

However, researchers caution that fidgeting is not a substitute for walking and exercise, which produce more overall cardiovascular benefits. "You should attempt to break up sitting time as much as possible by standing or walking. But if you are stuck in a situation in which walking just is not an option, fidgeting
can be a good alternative. Any movement is better than no movement," said Padilla.

The findings were published in the American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

How Brain Perceives the World and analyses the Sight

Scientists gain new insight into how brain perceives the world

London, Oct 2, 2015 (PTI)

Neuroscientists have gained new insight into how the brain perceives the world by using high resolution high field MRI to study activity in different layers of the visual cortex in great detail.
The visual cortex is the part of the brain that processes sight by receiving feedforward input from the eyes.

But feedback is also required from parts of the brain that conceptualise and contextualise in order for us to fully comprehend what we are seeing.

Scientists have so far been impeded by the integration of both signals within the six different layers of the cortex.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have come up with a solution by taking advantage of the fact that input from the retina is mapped out in the visual cortex, the University said in a release.

Much like light entering the lens of a camera hits a specific portion of a sensor to form a pixel, so too light entering the eye has a corresponding portion in the visual cortex, which when applied to magnetic resonance images, is called a voxel.

In order to study the feedback signal, the researchers showed subjects a picture – for example a car – part of which was obscured by a white square.

This enabled them to identify and isolate the area of the brain that responded only to the occluded portion of the scene, and thus quieten the feed-forward signal.

But even in the absence of sensory input, the visual cortex communicates with other brain areas.

By measuring the activity in this part, the researchers were able to see where feedback and feed-forward activity took place across the six different layers of the cortex as the brain tried to complete the picture by inferring what the whole scene looked like.
The ability to measure layer specific signals in humans was made possible by 7 Tesla MRI techniques pioneered at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research.

Professor Essa Yacoub and colleagues have developed techniques that allow visualisation of human brain activity at sub-millimeter spatial resolutions and with high degrees of accuracy.

Such a capability was previously only possible with invasive studies in animals.
The result, published in the journal Current Biology, reveals the layered cortical organisation of external versus internal processing streams during perception, with activity during normal visual stimulation peaking in mid-layers and contextual information peaking in superficial layers.

Professor Lars Muckli, of the Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, said: "Understanding the brain's feedback system is important if we are to develop more powerful computers and artificial intelligence systems, but it might also help us to better understand mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and autism.

Successful Life - Inherent Controls

Successful in Life - Inherent Controls

Once a small boy asked his father about an illustration for a success in life.
His father took him to the river front. En route to the river, they purchased a kite and long string. The colourful kite was flown. Soon the length of the string was insufficient as the kite flew long and high.

Then the boy, asked - Papa - if we cut off the string or leave the string, the kite could fly higher? Why don't we do this?

Father agreed to this proposal and let him leave the string. The kite flew little higher and the descent started gradually. Within no time, the kite drifted away and fell at an obscure place.

Then the father went on to narrate:
Success in life is similar to this kite. It is tethered by a long string called
1) Family, Friends and Affection
2) Values
3) Morality and Ethics
4) Personal Intergrity and Honesty (to name a few).

Many a time, it seems that we could reach higher planes, if we are not restrained by this string. However, the drift will not last long. And the life would be at Jeopardy.

Hence, it is better to be tethered by the string of values rather than drift away without accountability, for temporary inducement or adhoc benefits which could ruin the future.

Vegetarian diet may help lower your BP

Tokyo, Feb 25, 2014 (PTI):

Vegetarians rejoice! Eating a vegetarian diet may lower your blood pressure (BP), a long-term research has claimed.

Factors such as diet, body weight, physical activity and alcohol intake play a role in the risk of developing hypertension, researchers said.

Dietary modifications have been shown to be effective for preventing and managing hypertension, according to research author Yoko Yokoyama, of the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan, and colleagues.

The authors analysed seven clinical trials and 32 studies published from 1900 to 2013 in which participants ate a vegetarian diet.

Net differences in BP associated with eating a vegetarian diet were measured, researchers said.

In the trials, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a reduction in the average systolic (peak artery pressure) and diastolic (minimum artery pressure) BP compared with eating an omnivorous (plant and animal) diet.

In the 32 studies, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with lower average systolic and diastolic BP, compared with omnivorous diets.

"Further studies are required to clarify which types of vegetarian diets are most strongly associated with lower BP. Research into the implementation of such diets, either as public health initiatives aiming at prevention of hypertension or in clinical settings, would also be of great potential value," researchers said.

The research was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine..

Sindhoor - Originally it is Bixa Orellana Dye

Sindhoora

Traditional Dye of Red Shade

We, in Indian culture, have come across the word Sindhura at many places.

Sindhura is a beautiful shade of red, which is the popular context. In North India, it is mostly used by women to apply on the top of the forehead. 

(At times, Kunkuma (Vermillion) is also referred as Sindhoor in North India. However, it is made by mixing Picking Lime to the Turmeric Powder.)

While procuring large quantity of Sindhura, for a temple inauguration, we got the complete picture of Sindhura trade and Manufacturing process currently followed in the market. 

It is made from lead, which Pb₃O_4,

Lead Tetroxide is its chemical name. It is basically used by the Paint and Glass industry.​ Due to cheaper ingredients and commercial mass usage, this procedure is followed. In long term and regular usage/ higher quantity this can be carcenogenic. This is also called Miniun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II,IV)_oxide ​

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However, earlier days - the flower and seeds of Sindur tree were used. Even now, it is an art. Kindly refer to these two documents in the end of this article.

This is called Bixa Orellana (Tree). The natural dye is harmless. Every Hanuman Temple should be using this herbal powder instead of the harmful chemical.

Indigenous usage in many parts of the continent, including Nepal, is reflective of our customs. Check the photo from Brazil.

http://tasteofnepal.blogspot.in/2013/06/sindur-tree-of-nepal-sindure.html?m=1

https://www.academia.edu/4918901/Formulation_and_Evaluation_of_Herbal_Sindoor_Using_Different_Natural_Herbal_Ingredients

Hence, follow safe practices whether at home or temples. We should not save at the cost of health. Spread awareness.

Musical Training in Younger days, Helps a lot

Scientists have found some of the strongest evidence yet that musical training in younger years can prevent the decay in speech listening skills in later life.

According to a new Canadian study led by the Rotman Research Institute (RRI) at Baycrest Health Sciences, older adults who had musical training in their youth were 20% faster in identifying speech sounds than their non-musician peers on speech identification tests, a benefit that has already been observed in young people with musical training.

The findings are published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Among the different cognitive functions that can diminish with age is the ability to comprehend speech. Interestingly, this difficulty can persist in the absence of any measurable hearing loss. Previous research has confirmed that the brain's central auditory system which supports the ability to parse, sequence and identify acoustic features of speech -- weakens in later years.

Starting formal lessons on a musical instrument prior to age 14 and continuing intense training for up to a decade appears to enhance key areas in the brain that support speech recognition. The Rotman study found "robust" evidence that this brain benefit is maintained even in the older population.

"Musical activities are an engaging form of cognitive brain training and we are now seeing robust evidence of brain plasticity from musical training not just in younger brains, but in older brains too," said Gavin Bidelman, who led the study as a post-doctoral fellow at the RRI and is now an assistant professor at the University of Memphis.

"In our study we were able to predict how well older people classify or identify speech using EEG imaging. We saw a brain-behaviour response that was two to three times better in the older musicians compared to non-musicians peers. In other words, old musicians' brains provide a much more detailed, clean and accurate depiction of the speech signal, which is likely why they are much more sensitive and better at understanding speech."

Bidelman received a GRAMMY Foundation research grant to conduct the study and partnered with senior scientist Claude Alain, assistant director of Baycrest's RRI and a leading authority in the study of age-related differences in auditory cortical activity.

The latest findings add to mounting evidence that musical training not only gives young developing brains a cognitive boost, but those neural enhancements extend across the lifespan into old age when the brain needs it most to counteract cognitive decline. The findings also underscore the importance of music instruction in schools and in rehabilitative programs for older adults.

In this study, 20 healthy older adults (aged 55-75) -- 10 musicians and 10 non-musicians -- put on headphones in a controlled lab setting and were asked to identify random speech sounds. Some of the sounds were single vowel sounds such as an "ooo" or an "ahhh," others more ambiguous as a mix of two sounds that posed a greater challenge to their auditory processing abilities for categorizing the speech sound correctly.

During the testing cycles, researchers recorded the neural activity of each participant using electroencephalography (EEG). This brain imaging technique measures to a very precise degree the exact timing of the electrical activity which occurs in the brain in response to external stimuli. This is displayed as wave forms on a computer screen. Researchers use this technology to study how the brain makes sense of our complex acoustical environment and how aging impacts cognitive functions.

According to Bidelman and Alain's published paper, the older musicians' brain responses showed "more efficient and robust neurophysiological processing of speech at multiple tiers of auditory processing, paralleling enhancements reported in younger musicians."

Teixobactin - Next Generation Anti-Biotic

A newly discovered antibiotic eliminates pathogens without encountering any detectable resistance, a finding that may lead to treatments for chronic infections such as tuberculosis and MRSA.

For years, pathogens' resistance to antibiotics has put them one step ahead of researchers, which is causing a public health crisis, according to Northeastern University Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis.

The pioneering work to develop a novel method for growing uncultured bacteria led to the discovery of the antibiotic, called Teixobactin, and Lewis' lab played a key role in analysing and testing the compound for resistance from pathogens.

Lewis said this marks the first discovery of an antibiotic to which resistance by mutations of pathogens have not been identified.

The research team says teixobactin's discovery presents a promising new opportunity to treat chronic infections caused by staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that are highly resistant to antibiotics, as well as tuberculosis, which involves a combination of therapies with negative side effects.

Lewis and biology professor Slava Epstein tapped into a new source of antibiotics beyond those created by synthetic means: uncultured bacteria, which make up 99 per cent of all species in external environments.

They developed a novel method for growing uncultured bacteria in their natural environment.
Their approach involves the iChip, a miniature device Epstein's team created that can isolate and help grow single cells in their natural environment and thereby provides researchers with much improved access to uncultured bacteria.

Researchers have since assembled about 50,000 strains of uncultured bacteria and discovered 25 new antibiotics, of which Teixobactin is the latest and most interesting, Lewis said.

The antibiotic was discovered during a routine screening for antimicrobial material using this method.

Lewis then tested the compound for resistance development and did not find mutant MRSA or Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to teixobactin, which was found to block several different targets in the cell wall synthesis pathway.

"Our impression is that nature produced a compound that evolved to be free of resistance. This challenges the dogma that we've operated under that bacteria will always develop resistance. Well, maybe not in this case," Lewis said.

However, indiscriminate usage of anti-biotics without monitoring/ awareness/ prescription could render this drug ineffective as well.  So, use Anti- Biotics Judiciously.

Catalytic Converter produces power from Sea Water

Are we close to a solution to Global Warming Crisis??

If the US Navy makes available its new invention to the world, sea water could be used to generate electricity.

Washington: 

The US Navy believes it has finally worked out the solution to a problem that has intrigued scientists for decades — how to take seawater and use it as fuel. The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is being hailed as “a game-changer” because it would significantly shorten the supply chain, a weak link that makes any force easier to attack.

The US has a fleet of 15 military oil tankers and only aircraft carriers and some submarines are equipped with nuclear propulsion. All other vessels must frequently abandon their mission for a few hours to navigate in parallel with the tanker, a delicate operation, especially in bad weather.

The ultimate goal is to eventually get away from the dependence on oil altogether, which would also mean the navy is no longer hostage to potential shortages of oil or fluctuations in its cost. Vice Admiral Philip Cullom declared, “It’s a huge milestone for us.”

“We are in very challenging times where we really do have to think in pretty innovative ways to look at how we create energy, how we value energy and how we consume it,” he said. “We need to challenge the results of the assumptions that are the result of the last six decades of constant access to cheap, unlimited amounts of fuel,” added Admiral Cullom. 

“Basically, we have treated energy like air, something that’s always there and that we don’t worry about too much. But the reality is that we do have to worry about it,” he said.

US experts have found out how to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater.

Then, using a catalytic converter, they transformed them into a fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. They hope the fuel will not only be able to power ships, but also planes.

That means instead of relying on tankers, ships will be able to produce fuel at sea. The predicted cost of jet fuel using the technology is in the range of three to six dollars per gallon, say experts at the US Naval Research Laboratory, who have already flown a model airplane with fuel produced from seawater.

Younger Fathers have better Children??

Father's age plays a role in the shape, health and form of the children. The study from Austria, suggests that younger the father, better the child's looks.

• Sperm less effectively copies DNA as men age, causes genetic mutation
• 'Errors' in men double every 16 years, women pass same genes at any age
• Follows research men over 45 increase risk of autism by 3.5 times
• Children with older fathers have chromosome construct linked to longevity

Does it Is it back to old days of early marriage and progeny?? Now a days, studies, career are centred on individual's efforts, responsibilities or aspirations; whereas older systems were dependent on the families and communities.

As the system envisaged completion of basic education till at least 16 at a distant places under different Guru, come back to home; continue education and learn responsibilities with practical training.

Marriage and bringing up next generation was the natural responsibility of the grand parents. It had two benefits. 

• Young parents can attend to their works/ education without being affected totally with the infants. 
• When the children grow up, their control would rest with grand parents, who are less aggressive and more affectionate, due to the factors of age and experience.
• Thus the bond between 1st and 3rd Generation would strengthen and old age homes were never thought about, unless the couple is issueless.

Ghee is not harmful to heart

Did you ever hear from your Cardiologists and Trainers warning you, not to consume Ghee, Butter, Cheese or such saturated fats/ oils???

Of late, we have been hearing many appeals from traditional scholars to modern scientists debunking the theory. Now Cambridge University study negates the benefits of Olive Oil, Corn Oil apart from absolving the worsening effects of Saturated Fats. However, some scientists warn us from resumption of uncontrolled consumption.

It is generally agreed that Carbohydrates and Sugars are more dangerous.

Oils are good source for Vitamin E and Ghee is said to be one of the important source for Good Intellect and sharpness. घृतेन वर्धते बुद्धिः। तेजो वै घृतम्।

However, the method of consumption which results in maximum benefit is different from the way we consume today. If practised in the traditional way of consuming fresh ghee with hot food, it could yield desired results.
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Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.

The new findings are part of a growing body of research that has challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and will continue the debate about what foods are best to eat.

For decades, health officials have urged the public to avoid saturated fat as much as possible, saying it should be replaced with the unsaturated fats in foods like nuts, fish, seeds and vegetable oils.

But the new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including mono-unsaturated fat like olive oil or poly-unsaturated fat like corn oil.

“My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the new study and a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University.

But Dr Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings should not be taken as “a green light” to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat. He said that looking at individual fats and other nutrient groups in isolation could be misleading, because when people cut down on fats they tend to eat more bread, cold cereal and other refined carbohydrates that can also be bad for cardiovascular health.

“The single macronutrient approach is outdated,” said Dr Hu, who was not involved in the study. “I think future dietary guidelines will put more and more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cut-off point for certain macronutrients.”

He said people should try to eat foods that are typical of the Mediterranean diet, like nuts, fish, avocado, high-fibre grains and olive oil. A large clinical trial last year, which was not included in the current analysis, found that a Mediterranean diet with more nuts and extra virgin olive oil reduced heart attacks and strokes when compared with a lower fat diet with more starches.

Alice H Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University, agreed that “it would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon,” citing evidence that replacing saturated fat with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats — instead of simply eating more carbohydrates — reduces cardiovascular risk.

Dr Lichtenstein, who was not involved in the latest study, was the lead author of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines, which recommend that people restrict saturated fat to as little as 5 per cent of their daily calories, or roughly two tablespoons of butter or two ounces of Cheddar cheese for the typical person eating about 2,000 calories a day. The heart association states that restricting saturated fat and eating more unsaturated fat, beans and vegetables can protect against heart disease by lowering low-density lipoprotein or so-called bad cholesterol.

In the new research, Dr Chowdhury and his colleagues sought to evaluate the best evidence to date, drawing on nearly 80 studies involving more than a half million people. They looked not only at what people reportedly ate, but at more objective measures such as the composition of fatty acids in their bloodstreams and in their fat tissue. The scientists also reviewed evidence from 27 randomised controlled trials — the gold standard in scientific research — that assessed whether taking polyunsaturated fat supplements like fish oil promoted heart health.

The researchers did find a link between trans fats, the now widely maligned partially hydrogenated oils that had long been added to processed foods, and heart disease. But they found no evidence of dangers from saturated fat, or benefits from other kinds of fats.

The primary reason saturated fat has historically had a bad reputation is that it increases low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL, the kind that raises the risk for heart attacks. But the relationship between saturated fat and LDL is complex, said Dr. Chowdhury. In addition to raising LDL cholesterol, saturated fat also increases high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. And the LDL that it raises is a subtype of big, fluffy particles that are generally benign. Doctors refer to a preponderance of these particles as LDL pattern A.

The smallest and densest form of LDL is more dangerous. These particles are easily oxidized and are more likely to set off inflammation and contribute to the buildup of artery-narrowing plaque. An LDL profile that consists mostly of these particles, known as pattern B, usually coincides with high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, both risk factors for heart attacks and stroke.

The smaller, more artery-clogging particles are increased not by saturated fat, but by sugary foods and an excess of carbohydrates, Dr Chowdhury said. “It’s the high carbohydrate or sugary diet that should be the focus of dietary guidelines,” he said. “If anything is driving your low-density lipoproteins in a more adverse way, it’s carbohydrates.”

While the new research showed no relationship overall between saturated or polyunsaturated fat intake and cardiac events, there are numerous unique fatty acids within these two groups, and there was some indication that they are not all equal.

When the researchers looked at fatty acids in the bloodstream, for example, they found that margaric acid, a saturated fat in milk and dairy products, was associated with lower cardiovascular risk. Two types of omega-3 fatty acids, the polyunsaturated fats found in fish, were also protective. But a number of the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, commonly found in vegetable oils and processed foods, may pose risks, the findings suggested.

The researchers then looked at data from the randomised trials to see if taking supplements like fish oil produced any cardiovascular benefits. It did not.

But Dr Chowdhury said there might be a good explanation for this discrepancy. The supplement trials mostly involved people who had pre-existing heart disease or were at high risk of developing it, while the other studies involved generally healthy populations.

So it is possible that the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids lie in preventing heart disease, rather than treating or reversing it. At least two large clinical trials designed to see if this is the case are currently underway.

How did the Universe form?

Bicep Experiment supports the theory that tiny atom became a massive universe by INFLATION. 

Theoretical Physics, championed by our seers has their latest pioneers vying for a moment of excitement with the latest discovery about INFLATION. 

This is what myriad sentences of Veda said. For an example - Asad Vaa Idamagra Aaseet. Tato Vai Sadajaayaata; Tadaikshata, Bahu Syaam Prajaayeya etc.

Bicep Experiment supports the theory that tiny atom became a massive universe by INFLATION. 

BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) is an experiment designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to unprecedented precision, and in turn answer crucial questions about the beginnings of the Universe.)

BICEP Observatory on South Pole

Why was the telescope positioned on the South Pole??

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

Stanford physicist Andrei Linde's theory of how universe began

The detection of gravitational waves by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe came to be. The discovery, made in part by Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, supports the theoretical work of Stanford's Andrei Linde.

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today's best telescopes. All this, of course, has just been theory.

Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as "cosmic inflation." Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

"This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe," said Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.

Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.

"Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called 'B-modes,' which represents a twisting or 'curl' pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light," said BICEP2 co-leader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness," Kuo said.

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

The researchers were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.

"This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," said co-leader Clem Pryke, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota.

Physicist Alan Guth formally proposed inflationary theory in 1980, when he was a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, as a modification of conventional Big Bang theory. Instead of the universe beginning as a rapidly expanding fireball, Guth theorized that the universe inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. This idea immediately attracted lots of attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.

However, as Guth, who is now a professor of physics at MIT, immediately realized, certain predictions in his scenario contradicted observational data. In the early 1980s, Russian physicist Andrei Linde modified the model into a concept called "new inflation" and again to "eternal chaotic inflation," both of which generated predictions that closely matched actual observations of the sky.

Linde, now a professor of physics at Stanford, could not hide his excitement about the news. "These results are a smoking gun for inflation, because alternative theories do not predict such a signal," he said. "This is something I have been hoping to see for 30 years."

BICEP2's measurements of inflationary gravitational waves are an impressive combination of theoretical reasoning and cutting-edge technology. Stanford's contribution to the discovery extends beyond Kuo, who designed the polarization detectors. Kent Irwin, a professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC, also conducted pioneering work on superconducting sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. The research also involved several researchers, including Kuo, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), which is supported by Stanford, SLAC and the Kavli Foundation.

BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-principal investigator structure. The four PIs are Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL,) John Kovac (Harvard), Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC) and Clem Pryke (UMN). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California, San Diego; University of British Columbia; National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Toronto; Cardiff University; and Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique.

BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team's telescopes. NASA, JPL and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.

Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website:http://bicepkeck.org

Reaction of the Russian Theoretical Physicist Prof. Andrei Linde, who is the Founding father of the Gravitational Waves INFLATION Theory, when the news broke by Prof Kuo.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/03/18/the-most-heartwarming-moment-from-yesterdays-groundbreaking-physics-discovery/