Nerdy Science Blog

Dr Dalila Kamaruddin, the head of the Women’s Cancer Detection Centre of the National Cancer Society of Malaysia (NCSM), said that the society latest statistics showed that Malay and Indian women had lower breast cancer awareness compared to Chinese women.  The number of deaths caused by breast cancer in Malaysia is increasing every year.

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A study will be presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta on March 15.  The study was regarding to running marathon expose runners to risks of high blood pressure and heart complications.  Despina Kardara, a researcher from Athens Medical School and Hippokration Hospital in Athens, said that people who don’t exercise and who exercise excessively will stress the cardiovascular system, hence at higher risk of developing heart-related problems.  However exercise moderately will provide protective effects.

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Stanford University researchers have recently reported that genetic testing can help people identify whether they will respond better to a low-fat OR a low-carb diet.   In their study involving overweight/obese white American women, they have found that those with diets appropriate to their genetic predisposition loss substantially more weight than those who had their diets mismatched.    This may also explain why people on the same diet regimes have shown noticeably varying degrees of success in the past.

More research is needed to find out whether this also applies to men and/or other racial groups.  However, this is still exciting news for weight-watchers as they may soon be able to find out which diet works best for them.   Moreover, they would no longer need to compromise themselves to food and beverages that are low in both fat and carbs.

At the American Heart Association’s 50th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, researchers reported daily consumption of sugary beverages like soft drinks, sport drinks and fruit drinks (which are not 100% fruit juice), contributes to diabetes and heart disease. A well-established computer simulation Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) Policy Model was used to find the link between diabetes and sugary beverages. Researchers said each sugar-sweetened drink contains calories ranging from 120 to 200, and this can be a cause to obesity.

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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.

By-line:

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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