Vaccines developed for H5N1, H7N9 avian influenza strains

 

Wenjun Ma, assistant professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University, left, and Jürgen Richt, Regents distinguished professor of veterinary medicine and director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, have developed vaccines for H5N1 and H7N9, two emerging strains of avian influenza. The strains are zoonotic and can be transmitted from chickens to pigs and humans. Credit: Image courtesy of Kansas State University A recent study with Kansas State University researchers details vaccine development for two new strains of avian influenza that can be transmitted from poultry to humans. The strains have led to the culling of millions of commercial chickens and turkeys as well as the death of hundreds of people. The new vaccine development method is expected to help researchers make vaccines for emerging strains of avian influenza more quickly. This could reduce the number and intensity of large-scale outbreaks at poultry farms as well as curb human transmission. It also may lead to new influenza vaccines for pigs, and novel vaccines for sheep and other livestock, said Jürgen Richt, Regents distinguished professor of veterinary medicine and director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases. Richt and his colleagues focused on the avian influenza virus subtype H5N1, a new strain most active in Indonesia, Egypt and other Southeast Asian and North African countries. H5N1 also has been documented in wild birds in the U.S., though in fewer numbers. "H5N1 is a zoonotic pathogen, which means that it is transmitted from chickens to humans," Richt said. "So far it has infected more than 700 people worldwide and has killed about 60 percent of them. Unfortunately, it has a pretty high mortality rate." Researchers developed a vaccine for H5N1 by combining two viruses. A vaccine strain of the Newcastle disease virus, a virus that naturally affects poultry, was cloned and a small section of the H5N1 virus was transplanted into the Newcastle disease virus vaccine, creating a recombinant virus. Tests showed that the new recombinant virus vaccinated chickens against both Newcastle disease virus and H5N1. Researchers also looked at the avian flu subtype H7N9, an emerging zoonotic strain that has been circulating in China since 2013. China has reported about 650 cases in humans and Canada has reported two cases in people returning from China. About 230 people have died from H7N9. "In Southeast Asia there are a lot of markets that sell live birds that people can buy and prepare at home," Richt said. "In contrast to the H5N1 virus that kills the majority of chickens in three to five days, chickens infected with the H7N9 virus do not show clinical signs of sickness. That means you could buy a bird that looks perfectly healthy but could be infected. If an infected bird is prepared for consumption, there is a high chance you could get sick, and about 1 in 3 infected people die." Using the same method for developing the H5N1 vaccine, researchers inserted a small section of the H7N9 virus into the Newcastle disease virus vaccine. Chickens given this recombinant vaccine were protected against the Newcastle disease virus and H7N9. "We believe this Newcastle disease virus concept works very well for poultry because you kill two birds with one stone, metaphorically speaking," Richt said. "You use only one vector to vaccinate and protect against a selected virus strain of avian influenza." Using the Newcastle disease virus for vaccine development may extend beyond poultry to pigs, cattle and sheep, Richt said. Researchers found they were able to protect pigs against an H3 influenza strain by using the Newcastle disease virus to develop a recombinant virus vaccine. Wenjun Ma, Kansas State University assistant professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, is building on this finding and using the Newcastle disease virus to make a vaccine for porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, a disease that has killed an estimated 6 million pigs. Richt conducted the avian influenza study with Ma, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and several other colleagues. They published their findings in the Journal of Virology study, "Newcastle disease virus-vectored H7 and H5 live vaccines protect chickens from challenge with H7N9 or H5N1 avian influenza viruses." It is the first study to look at an H7N9 vaccine in chickens, the animals the disease originates in. Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Kansas State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Qinfang Liu, Ignacio Mena, Jingjiao Ma, Bhupinder Bawa, Florian Krammer, Young S Lyoo, Yuekun Lang, Igor Morozov, Gusti Ngurah Mahardika, Wenjun Ma, Adolfo García-Sastre, Juergen A. Richt. Newcastle disease virus-vectored H7 and H5 live vaccines protect chickens from challenge with H7N9 or H5N1 avian influenza viruses. Journal of Virology, 2015; JVI.00031-15 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.00031-15

National Physical Fitness and Sports Month

 

Most adults with disabilities are able to participate in physical activity, yet nearly half of them get no aerobic physical activity. Learn how everybody can make lifestyle changes and include physical activity in their everyday life.  May is National Fitness and Sports Month. CDC recommends finding and creating opportunities to add more physical activity into your daily routine and encourage family and friends to do the same. All adults, with and without disabilities, need at least 2½ hours a week of aerobic physical activity at a moderate-intensity level to increase heart and lung function; to improve daily living activities and independence; to decrease chances of developing chronic diseases; and to improve mental health. Learn how Jonathan, a man with an intellectual disability, finds time to be physically active and encourages others to do the same. Jonathan's story Before Jonathan Doring, 34, goes to bed every night, he logs his physical activities for the day. He tracks his time at the gym, his time on the tennis court, even his time vacuuming or raking. Jonathan makes sure that he finds time in his busy schedule each day to focus on his fitness. Fitness wasn't always a priority for Jonathan, who has Fragile X syndrome. Jonathan's family says he used to stay in his room as a child, but then began competing in sports at age 5, which changed his life. He joined Special Olympics as an athlete when he was 8 years old and he now competes and trains year-round. All adults, with and without disabilities, need at least 2½ hours a week of aerobic physical activity at a moderate-intensity level. Jonathan has also joined the President's Challenge, and the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award program. The Presidential Active Lifestyle Challenge helps participants add physical activity to their lives and improve eating habits. This Challenge is for anyone, from students to seniors, but it's geared toward people who want to set themselves on the road to a healthier life through positive changes to their physical activity and eating behaviors. Jonathan encouraged his father, Mark, to join him and they haven't stopped since. "As Jonathan's strength has increased, so has his self-confidence," says Kathy, Jonathan's mom. "He has joined a local men's tennis league and is competing in USTA [United States Tennis Association] adult tournaments. So, in addition to his regular Special Olympics activities he is playing tennis three days a week and weight training another three. My husband drives him to these events and rather than just spectate he walks or exercises along with his son." Jonathan is a health ambassador because of both the way he lives his life and his role as a spokesperson for Special Olympics. As a spokesperson, he has shared healthy messages with nearly 1,000 Exceptional Student Education students in schools across Florida, his home state, at Fortune 100 company conferences, and even with the Florida Governor. CDC would like to thank Jonathan, the Doring family and Special Olympics for sharing this personal story. 5 helpful tips for people with disabilities If you or somebody in your family has a disability and wants to add more routine physical activity, here are some helpful tips: Visit your doctor. Talk to your doctor about how much and what kind of physical activity is right for you. Discuss your barriers to physical activity. Ask your doctor to put you in contact with resources and programs to help you begin or maintain your physical activity. Find opportunities to add more physical activity into your everyday life. Decide how much physical activity is right for you and your fitness level. Remember, all adults, whether or not they have a disability, should try to get at least 2½ hours a week of moderate-intensity physical activity. If this is not possible, adults with disabilities should avoid being inactive; some activity is better than none! Be active your way. Decide what kind of physical activity you enjoy. General gardening, doing active chores around the house, wheeling yourself in your wheelchair, walking briskly, dancing, playing wheelchair basketball, tennis or soccer are all examples of physical activity that you can add into your everyday life. Start slowly. Start slowly based on your abilities and fitness level. For example, be active for at least 10 minutes at a time, and then slowly increase activity over several weeks if necessary. Have fun with your family. It's easier to stay active when you have the support of your family and friends. Invite your loved ones to have fun with you. For example, together you can play outside with a ball, dance, or walk or wheel around the neighborhood. What CDC and our National Programs are doing CDC supports and provides funding for four National Public Health Practice and Resource Centers that focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities, including physical activity: CDC also supports 18 state-based programs to promote equity in health, prevent chronic disease, and increase the quality of life for people with disabilities. Learn more about the State's disability and health programs.

MIT has a new method for producing large quantities of graphene

 

The new technique involves wrapping a substrate around an inner tube and passing gas through an outer tube (Credit: MIT) A team of MIT and University of Michigan researchers has a new method for manufacturing graphene that it believes could take the material out of the laboratory and into commercial products. The method involves forming the strong, conductive material in a chamber consisting of two concentric tubes. Graphene is a material with some serious potential. It's strong, highly conductive and could be used in solar panels, flexible light sources and more. Unfortunately, it's also rather difficult to fabricate, with most existing solutions unable to produce patches of the material large enough for widespread commercial uses. A new technique pioneered by MIT researchers could make things significantly easier. It's similar to the existing chemical vapor deposition method, but makes use of a chamber consisting of two concentric tubes – one placed inside the other. The technique requires the chamber to be heated to around 1,000 °C (1,832 °F). The substrate on which the graphene forms is wound around the inner tube, with gases flowing through the larger tube and out of a set of holes halfway along the inner tube. This allows the process to be split into two stages, with the first part of the chamber used to prepare the substrate, and the second used to grow the graphene upon it. The MIT team built and tested a lab-scale version of the chamber, finding that when the substrate is moved through at a pace of 25 mm (1 in) per minute, a high-quality, uniform layer of graphene is formed. Turning up the speed to 50 cm (20 in) a minute produces a lower-quality coating that would still be useable for certain applications. The researchers claim that the technique is scalable, with the resulting graphene samples only limited by the width of the rolls of foil and the size of the chamber used. This isn't the first time we've seen an innovative technique for making graphene come out of MIT. Back in May 2014, the same collaborative team detailed a method that allows for the formation of the material on both sides of a film, binding it directly to a substrate. As with the new research, it's thought that the technique could be used on a large scale. As for the new tube-chamber method of graphene production, the team is now working to tweak the process to allow for the production of high-quality graphene layers at higher speeds, improving the potential of the technique. The findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports. Source: MIT

Nobot wants to put people to work ... in robot form

 

Nobot is a robot shell controlled by a human operator (Credit: Nobot) We hear plenty of discussion about robots taking over our jobs, so it's a refreshing change to hear about a robot designed to create them instead. Its name is Nobot, and what makes this machine unique is that it's largely controlled remotely by a human being rather than by a set of software algorithms. The Indiegogo campaign describes the concept as being "like a person in a robot suit," which is a helpful way of understanding it – as long as you realize the person is sat behind a computer somewhere else in the world. Nobot owners get a clever robot to help around the house without needing to spend time programming; Nobot operators get to earn money from home. Childcare, healthcare, gardening ... there's conceivably no limit to what Nobot could do. The plan is to set up a marketplace for operators and owners, so if you've bought a shiny new Nobot you can easily find someone with the skills and expertise to work it for you – even if you just want some company in the evening or someone to fold the laundry. The robot unit itself is relatively low-tech, combining a tough plastic exoskeleton with a Raspberry Pi that handles most of the unit's operations. Each Nobot is fitted with a rotating camera, touchscreen, speaker, microphone and wireless connectivity. Of course the real smarts are provided by the human at the other end of the video feed. That human element saves the Nobot team from having to program a sophisticated operating system. It also means Nobot owners don't have to spend an evening with a user manual to work out how to get the robot to do their bidding – they simply speak out the instructions as necessary and let the Nobot do its work. Owners can also operate the Nobot themselves, should they want to keep an eye on their home from afar, for example. The inventors behind the project are currently aiming to raise US$19,000 on Indiegogo to make their product a reality. The early bird price for a Nobot is set at $399, with shipping expected in November if the campaign meets its goals. The video below gives some idea of the inspiration behind the idea. Sources: Nobot, Indiegogo

Things heat up for self-destructing electronic devices

 

A transient electronic device dissolving after the heating element in the center was remotely activated by a radio-frequency signal Expanding on previous research into electronic devices that dissolve in water once they have reached the end of their useful life, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new type of "transient" electronic device that self-destructs in response to heat exposure. The work is aimed at making it easy for materials from devices that usually end up in landfill to be recycled or dissolved completely. The research involved a group led by aerospace engineering professor Scott R. White teaming up with John A. Rogers, who previously led work in the development of transient electronics that biodegrade in water. These previous devices dissolved in water after a predetermined period of time, which was related to the thickness of outer protective layers encapsulating the actual electronics. But using heat as a trigger has now enabled the creation of electronic devices that can be prompted to self-destruct on demand. The technology involves first printing magnesium circuits on thin, flexible materials. Microscopic droplets of a weak acid are then trapped in wax, which is coated onto the devices. When exposed to heat, the wax melts and releases the acid, which completely dissolves the device. The researchers were also able to create devices that can be remotely triggered to self-destruct by embedding a radio-frequency receiver and inductive heating coil. In response to a radio signal, the coil heats up and melts the wax, leading to the destruction of the device. "We have demonstrated electronics that are there when you need them and gone when you don’t need them anymore," says White. "This is a way of creating sustainability in the materials that are used in modern-day electronics. This was our first attempt to use an environmental stimulus to trigger destruction." Similar to the devices that dissolve in water, the time it takes for the heat-triggered devices to dissolve can be controlled by tuning the thickness of the wax, the concentration of the acid, and the temperature. The researchers say it is possible to create a device that dissolves in as little as 20 seconds or up to a couple of minutes after the heat is applied. Additionally, by encasing different parts in waxes with different melting temperatures, it is possible to create devices that degrade in a series of predefined steps. This gives control over which parts of the device are operative at what time, thereby providing the potential for devices that can sense and respond to conditions in their environment. The team is also exploring the potential for other triggers, such as ultraviolet light and mechanical stress. "If you can’t keep using something, whether it’s obsolete or just doesn’t work anymore, we’d like to be able to bring it back to the building blocks of the material so you can recycle them when you’re done, or if you can’t recycle it, have it dissolve away and not sit around in landfills," says White. The team's work was supported by the National Science Foundation and DARPA, whose Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program has been investigating the potential for transient electronics designed to self-destruct on command to prevent classified technology finding its way into enemy hands. The University of Illinois team's research is detailed in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials.   Source: University of Illinois

Should you fear aspartame?

 

Soft drink giant PepsiCo recently announced its plans to stop sweetening Diet Pepsi with aspartame in response to growing consumer concern, yet the company, regulators and many medical authorities say the potential detrimental effect of the artificial sweetener on human health is overblown. So, what's really going on here and who should you believe? The tricky thing is that there's lots of conflicting information out there on the safety of aspartame, and there's almost as much conflicting information out there on the scientific quality of that primary information. In short, it's a rabbit hole of never-ending argument. The full history of Aspartame is one plagued by controversy almost since the day in 1965 when it was accidentally discovered by a chemist named James M. Schlatter. He was working on an anti-ulcer drug and found that his concoction had a pleasant, sweet taste. After a few more years of testing, the pharmaceutical company that employed Schlatter, G.D. Searle & Co., decided to take advantage of the damaged reputation of the existing sugar substitutes of the time (cyclamate was banned in 1969, giving saccharine a virtual monopoly, but it too was plagued by health concerns and building calls for a ban) and petition for the approval by the American Food and Drug Administration for aspartame to be sold as a food additive. That petition was filed in 1973 and was technically approved the following year, but approval was then delayed when concerns surfaced about the methods and research procedures Searle used to prove the safety of aspartame. What followed for the next seven years was a series of audits, inquiries and even a grand jury investigation into both the safety of aspartame and the internal practices at Searle. While a board of inquiry declared in 1980 that more testing was required of aspartame due to concerns of possible carcinogenicity, the FDA commissioner found errors in the board's calculations of the potential risks and overruled its decision. In 1981 FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. ruled that aspartame was safe and approved its use as a tabletop sweetener and in dry goods; it was later approved for use in soft drinks in 1983. While the initial science behind aspartame's safety was eventually validated, the climate of controversy and suspicion under which aspartame came to market has never abated and has flared up at certain times over the last three decades. In 1985, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who led an investigation into Searle and aspartame's safety prior to its approval, introduced the Aspartame Safety Act of 1985 to provide for further study in response to the widespread popularity of aspatame-based NutraSweet. The bill came out shortly after the Centers for Disease Control conducted a study on short-term negative side effects of aspartame use and found no reason for concern, which may have played a role in the bill failing to become a law. A lawsuit attempting to remove aspartame from shelves on health grounds also failed around the same time. When the internet became a global phenomenon in the 1990s, an anti-aspartame community was able to better connect, coalesce and grow exponentially. A study published in 1996 by long-time aspartame critic Dr. John Olney and publicized by Metzenbaum suggested a possible correlation between the incidence of brain tumors and the introduction of aspartame to the market several years earlier. The company producing Nutrasweet and the FDA both pointed out problems with Olney's study and it was widely criticized in scientific, academic and regulatory circles, but the mass media latched on to the fear factor over potential health concerns associated with aspartame, arguably exaggerating Olney's main conclusion, which was simply that more study of the effects of aspartame was called for. Now, nearly two decades later, the influence of the internet on the aspartame debate has snowballed, and the web is filled with a dizzying array of claims, conspiracy theories, debunkings, and debunkings of those debunkings. Depending on what Google result you click on, you could find claims that aspartame is linked to the Nazis, the Illuminati, or that it causes multiple sclerosis, a claim that the National Multiple Sclerosis Society now lists on the "disproved theories" page of its website. So how can we pull anything resembling the truth about aspartame, especially its effects or lack thereof on human health, from this tsunami of rhetoric spanning three decades? Here's what we think we know with a pretty high level of confidence. While there's plenty of reason to doubt either the competence or the motives of both the aspartame manufacturers and the regulators from time to time, the science still speaks for itself, and it has yet to prove a conclusive link between aspartame and cancer, or even between aspartame and lesser health effects like headaches. Of course, science has not completely disproven the existence of such a link either. Such is the nature of scientific inquiry – it's very difficult to prove a negative. All we can do is study something as rigorously as possible, and then continue to study it more. That process has been ongoing for almost four decades with aspartame, and the science has yielded a few false positives (including an oft-cited 2005 study linking high doses of aspartame intake in rats to brain tumors), a lot of data pointing to aspartame as a benign additive, and some studies that call for further study, which continues to be ongoing. Today, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), among others, all consider aspartame to be safe for human consumption in the amounts currently recommended (one exception being those with the medical condition phenylketonuria, who should probably steer clear altogether). "This opinion represents one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever undertaken," said Dr. Alicja Mortensen of the EFSA, following a full risk assessment in 2013. "It’s a step forward in strengthening consumer confidence in the scientific underpinning of the EU food safety system and the regulation of food additives." While aspartame's early political history may leave reason to doubt its safety, the scientific consensus that has been amassed since then points in the other direction. However, the science also suggests that aspartame might not be all that great for one of its initial purposes, which was to help people diet and lose weight. There's conflicting data in this area, with some studies supporting the notion that artificial sweeteners can be a miracle weight loss tool, others showing no impact, and even some that suggest they may have the opposite effect. There are also new concerns, published in a study last year, that indicate artificial sweeteners could be messing with the microbiomes in our guts and leading to problems like glucose intolerance. This research is pretty new and only applies to animals so far; it probably needs more research to see if humans might also be affected in similar ways. So, to wrap this all up, don't believe the hype that aspartame is killing you, whereas large amounts of the high-calorie sugar sweeteners it replaces just might. In fact, you'd probably be better off just restricting sweet stuff from your diet and choosing water or tea over Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. Like most things, there's no reason to fear aspartame in moderation, but we should continue to question past findings and study it more as our science and technology improves. That's just the way science works. Maybe some day I'll eat these words, but right now there are decades of research backing them up. So what's to become of Diet Pepsi? In a conference call with industry analysts in February, before officially initiating the move away from aspartame, the company's CEO for the Americas hinted at the issue: "The number-one thing we see from consumers is a complaint about aspartame. Aspartame is just one sweetener, but it's the one that seems to get most of the negatives in the press and on YouTube. And as you research it, that's where the negatives are coming." The company also says aspartame is safe in the frequently asked questions section of its website, but now it's switching to sucralose, (aka Splenda) in response to those "negatives." This naturally leads to the question, how safe is sucralose? It's generally accepted as safe, but a few seconds of Googling will lead to other opinions ... but that's an entirely different article. Sources: Harvard University(PDF),( 2), National MS Society, NCI, NIH, EFSA, FDA, ACS, Nature, Mercola, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, PepsiCo, ( 2), ( 3 - PDF)

New class of "non-Joulian magnets" have potential to revolutionize electronics

 

A microscopic view of periodic magnetic cells created in iron-gallium alloy that appear to be responsible for the strange non-Joulian magnetostriction (Credit: Harsh Chopra/Temple University) Magnets are at the heart of much of our technology, and their properties are exploited in a myriad ways across a vast range of devices, from simple relays to enormously complex particle accelerators. A new class of magnets discovered by scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) and Temple University may lead to other types of magnets that expand in different ways, with multiple, cellular magnetic fields, and possibly give rise to a host of new devices. The team also believes that these new magnets could replace expensive, rare-earth magnets with ones made of abundant metal alloys. About 175 years ago, physicist James Prescott Joule (the same person after which the unit of work energy, the joule, is named) discovered magnetostriction, where iron-based magnetic materials minutely distort in shape, but not in volume, when placed in a magnetic field. Since then, it has been pretty much accepted that this was the way all magnetic materials behaved. The work conducted on iron alloys (including iron-gallium, iron-germanium, and iron-aluminum) by researchers at UMD and Temple, however, has resulted in the observation of a property never before encountered in magnetic materials: a change in volume whilst in the process of magnetization. As this was fundamentally different to the phenomenon discovered by Joule, the new magnets are called "non-Joulian magnets." "Our findings fundamentally change the way we think about a certain type of magnetism that has been in place since 1841," said former Ph.D. student Harsh Deep Chopra, now professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple University. "We have discovered a new class of magnets, which we call 'Non-Joulian Magnets', that show a large volume change in magnetic fields. Moreover, these non-Joulian magnets also possess the remarkable ability to harvest or convert energy with minimal heat loss." The researchers say the low-energy characteristics of these new magnets means they show potential for the production of smaller, more efficient sensors and actuators with ever-smaller heat signatures. Other potential applications range from efficient energy-harvesting devices and compact micro-actuators for space, automotive, robotics and medical applications, through to actuators with exceptionally low thermal signatures ideal for defense applications. To create these new magnetic materials, professor of materials science and engineering Manfred Wuttig, and Chopra heated certain iron-based alloys in a furnace to approximately 760º C (1,400º F) for 30 minutes, then quickly cooled them to room temperature. Once cooled, the new materials demonstrated the non-Joulian behavior. In studying the newly-formed materials under a microscope, the team was astounded to find tiny cell-like structures that appeared to be responsible for the strange non-Joulian magnetostriction they observed. "The response of these magnets differs fundamentally from that likely envisioned by Joule,” said professor Wuttig. "He must have thought that magnets respond in a uniform fashion. Knowing about this unique structure will enable researchers to develop new materials with similarly attractive properties." Though this research is in its infancy, the researchers say there is great potential for the production of multi-pole magnets created from simple, abundant alloys to replace expensive rare-earth element magnets in all manner of applications. The results of this research were recently published in the journal Nature. Source: University of Maryland