Nerdy Science Blog

Dr. James E. Rothman, Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, plan to invest RM 375 mil to set up a herbal extraction plant in Malacca, Malaysia this year.  He will chaired Malaysian HerbalScience Inc Sdn Bhd, which is in the process of acquiring Florida-based Herbal Science Group (HSG).  Malaysian is chosen for herbal extraction plant is because of its rich 15,000 species of plants.  Sulaiman Mohktar, business advisor of HerbalScience Inc, said the company had request for plant seed stocks by bulk for herbal extraction purposes from Felda.

Dr James E. Rothman was nominated for Nobel Prize for Chemistry/Biology last year and he had won numerous international science awards.  Dr James also chairs science advisory panel of HSG.  He believed that herbal medicines and remedies would be prescribed by doctors in the future.

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Steven Platek of Georgia Gwinnett College has discovered what a lot of people already knew: When a man sees a curvaceous woman, he experiences the same reward feeling that’s brought on by drugs or alcohol. Platek and a team of researchers had 14 men (whose average age was 25) look at before and after pictures of naked women who had received plastic surgery to give them more shapely posteriors. Platek added that the women did not lose weight in the surgery, just had it “redistributed,” and indeed that some of the women wound up “fatter” in the process. The men had their brain activity measured as they looked at the photos, and Platek noticed that when the men looked at the photos of curvier women, there was increased activity in the reward area of the brain. Platek and colleague Devendra Singh published their findings online in early February in the journal PLoS One.

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This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes on the topics of online universities accredited.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a process to treat infertility by fertilizing ovum with sperm outside the womb.  A test tube baby is a baby successfully comes to this world as the result of IVF treatment.  However how does one woman know if she should pursue IVF treatment?

IVF Australia will be introducing a new blood test to measure how many eggs a woman have left.  The test measures anti-mullerian hormone (AMH), a specific hormone found in woman’s ovaries, to know the remaining amount of eggs available.  AMH test is dubbed as “egg timer”.

The test allows a woman to make decision if they want baby in a natural way, IVF treatment or adoption.  Women who wish to sell eggs can also use the same test to do proper egg planning.  According to medical director of IVF Australia, Assistant Professor Peter Illingworth, the test will be introduced next month and it costs $65 per test.

If you have enough eggs for fertilization and you are not pregnant, you should test the strength of your husband’s sperms with Sperm Efficiency Kit.

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Cane toad was brought to Australia from Hawaii for agriculture pest control in 1935.  However introduction of cane toads did not reduce the beetles that threatened sugar cane plantations, it had other effect on Australia biodiversity, particularly in the number of native predatory reptiles.

Scientists from the University of Sydney’s School of Biological Sciences used cat food as a bait to lure native meat ants to control cane toads population.  Professor Rick Shine, Georgia Ward-Fear and Greg Brown observed deadly effect of native meat ants on young cane toads last March on the Adelaide River floodplain 60km east of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.  They found that cat food baits increase effectiveness of cane toads control significantly.  Such toad control practice is not only low damage risk to other native wildlife, but also realistic, less technology and cost required.

The finding is published in February issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology.

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Taiwanese scientists at National Taiwan University invented a male fertility home test kit to measure the efficiency of sperm cells. The sperm efficiency kit can help thousands of men to test their sperm cells’ strength and aid women in choosing a better husband (sperm-wise). The kit will offer a numerical measure of sperm cells’ motility in reaching an egg. One of the inventors Andrew Wo suggested other possible uses of the kit, such as use it to check how the change of lifestyle (stress or smoking) affect the motility of sperm cells.

There are similar products available in the market but they only focus on the quantity of the sperm cells, where as the sperm efficiency kit focuses on quality.

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French and Australian scientists develop a new way of delivering stem cells to regenerate bone.  According to Dr Frank Caruso of the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of Melbourne, the new injectable format made of synthetic polymers enclosing growth factor and stem cells can be injected to any part of the bone to mend broken and diseased bones and joints, and only single injection is required.  The sizes of capsules range from about 100 nanometres to ten of microns.  Stem cell capsule may be used for treatment in 5 to 10 years time if all things go well.  One of the problems need to be solved now is the rate of releasing growth factors as it determines the number of injections needed.  Effective stem cell transplantation for bones and joints regrowth is critical as bone cells do not heal themselves very well sometimes.  The development of stem cell delivery in capsule form has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Paul Steen, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Michael Vogal, a formal postdoctoral associate, developed a palm-size device that possibly allowed human to walk on walls by using water surface tension as an adhesive bond.  The device was developed at Cornell University and the research was published in Feb 1’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The invention was inspired by beetle native to Florida which can stick itself to a leaf 100 times more than its own weight.  Scientists applied the rapid adhesion mechanism they found to develop a device that can be used on shoes, gloves, or other possible tools you can think of to stick and unstick heavy things to walls.  The device is made of holes in orders of microns on flat plate with a liquid reservoir at bottom and porous layer at the middle.  With the help of 9-volt battery, water will be pumped to produce droplets to the top layer of the device and the droplets’ surface tension will grip another surface.

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A study was conducted at Clinical Research Centre of the University of Surrey to understand the sleeping time difference of healthy adults.  The study involved young adults (age 20 to 30 years), middle-aged adults (40 to 55 years) and older adults (66 to 83 years) without sleep disorders.  Researchers found that the older healthy adults are, the less time they sleep.  It was found that the sleep need of healthy adults decreased significantly with increasing age.  Older adults sleep 20 minutes less than middle-aged adults, whereas middle-aged adults sleep 23 minutes less than young adults.  The scientists conclude that older adults who are sleepy during daytime are not normal, and hope the findings can change the existing insomnia treatment to older people.  The study is published in Feb 1 journal SLEEP.

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