Science Media Centre, IISER Pune

The Science Media Centre in IISER Pune was set up with partial support from NCSTC, Department of Science and Technology in 2012. 
Initially, the primary activity consisted of training in science video production for students, teachers, researchers,.. and training media people to deal with science. And of course coverage of scientific events and some video productions. You will find some of them in Youtube.
The Science Media Centre is now moving into Science Radio a magazine format production, in partnership with Vidyavani, the community radio at Pune University. 
One of the segments in the magazine would be science news - latest discoveries in science.
The stories below arose out of this need to attract the educated public in and around Pune University to scientific research happening around the world.
The intention is to target CR in Pune University, yet science does not limit itself to Pune. Others who may want to use any of the stories are free to take these stories modify if necessary and use them. I would appreciate any comments that will help improve the usability of these stories.
I will now take a break. See you in the next episode, next week.

Climatic Classification of Indian Districts

The rainy season is coming to an end in India And the recent issue of Current Science has come out

with a new classification of districts on the basis of the climatic data between 1975 to 2005.

The earlier classification used data prior to 1970 and does not consider the possible changes in climate.

Moreover, the data sets relating to rainfall and evapo-respiration have also been becoming more precise in the recent years.

The paper claims that this new classification is more useful in agricultural planning at district levels.

Current Science, 105 (4 ):  492 - 495 491, 25 August 2013 

Deaths in Pune

Pune has a large enough number of deaths from cancer.

And many of them have diabetes.

Is there a relationship between cancers and diabetes?

In a paper published in Current Science, scientists note that there is indeed an increased percentage of certain kinds of cancers in diabetic patients as opposed to the non-diabetic. Especially of the liver, lung, pancreas and prostrate.

The data is taken from Death certificates dating from January 2006 to December 2006. In 14,838 Death certificates, 8% had diabetes and about 7% had cancer. In fact, thirty-two different cancers were seen in the diseased population.

Current Science, 105 (4 ): 486-491, 25 August 2013 

Drumming up support

Social insects like ants and bees are known to communicate with each other with chemical, tactile and visual signaling. Now here is a case of termites hitting their head against the wooden walls of their colony to drum up support in response to invasion by other creatures.

A paper recently published in Nature shows that these African termites can indeed respond to low frequency vibrations that emanate from the head hitting. But these vibrations do not travel more than 40 centimeters or so. So the others who detect these vibrations may pass on the message by repeating the drumming with their own heads, say the scientists.

Reminds one of the talking drums that are depicted in Phantom comics, doesn't it?

Do Plants feel pain?

Do plants have feelings?

Well, we would never know what they feel.

But we can definitely investigate how they respond to wounds.

If you damage the leaf, for instance, a signal, typically a jasmonate, tell the other leaves about it.

This can be detected even as electrical signals from the leaves that respond.

And what is more interesting is that the receptors for these signals

are very much like the receptors of glutamate neurotransmitter in our own brains.

A study of this phenomenon is reported in a recent paper in the journal Nature.

Nature 500, 422–426 (22 August 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12478

Spare parts for your body

Stem cell therapy has been used for many degenerative diseases in recent years. But often, after the treatment, the patient comes back to the hospital with a teratoma, a tumour with different types of tissues.

A paper in PNAS published online on August 5th, gives a possible solution to the roadblock in the use of stem cell therapies.

Scientists now know that teratoma, in such cases is often caused by some pluripotent cells or cells that can form any type of tissue.

The mitochondria of these undifferentiated cells often contain certain small molecules, whereas the differentiated stem cells that make up the organ, do not contain them.

So they can be targeted and removed by inducing programmed cell death. This result makes stem cell therapy more long lasting and without undesirable outcome of tumor growth.

Stem cell therapy could potentially challenge the organ transplantation process by growing liver, retina and even heart valves. A perhaps will be the basis for a niche industry for highly individualised spare parts for your body.

PNAS  Published online August 5, 2013, E3281–E3290

Complex Chemistry

Chemists usually consider two or three chemicals at a time in a reaction. But when there are a large number of reagents and products, and they interact by catalysis and inhibition, producing feed forward and feedback cycles, the story becomes too complex for most chemists.

Without knowing the kinetics of the individual component reactions, can we write a master equation of such complex chemical systems?

Two chemical engineers have proposed such a master equation in a recent issue of PNAS.

Besides chemists, biologists too would be very happy to have such a tool

that can describe the complex biochemical networks in living cells.

PNAS vol. 110, no. 35, 14261–14265 August 27, 2013

Treating Typhoid

Typhoid is a disease that needs long term treatment. Even though the symptoms subside soon after initiating treatment, the bacteria that causes the disease, can survive in the gut for many weeks. And prolonged antibiotic treatment without having any symptoms may lead to the patients not taking the medicines, as required. Often leading to antibiotic resistant varieties of bacteria.

Now, scientists have found that the bacteria that causes typhoid is helped by another bacteria called E.coli.

E coli, a generally useful bacteria of the gut, produces indol, a chemical signal which is used for messaging between the cells of their species. Typhoid bacteria do not produce indol.

But it has a mechanism by which it uses this chemical to develop tolerance for the antibiotic.

Scientists have been studying this type of interdependence of different bacterial species for some time now.

 But this result has immediate implication in the treatment of typhoid.

PNAS   110 (35): 14420–14425 (2013)

After smells

Television presents 25 images in one second. Yet we see it as continuous because there is an after image in our brain that lasts one-eleventh of a second. Is there a similar after image in the sense of smell?

Yes. Though the experiments showed that rat brains respond to smells in a few milliseconds.,

Even after removal of the smell, there is an after image that lasts for more than 10 breath cycles. They have also identified the particular brain area that is responsible for this phenomenon.

PNAS  Published online August 5, 2013, E3340–E3349 

From the world outside to the world inside

Bacteria are known to cause many diseases. But recent research on the bacteria of the gut shows that some bacteria are important for health.

In fact, one could diagnose insulin resistance, obesity, faulty lipid metabolism, inflammations and many other metabolic disorders by the diversity of microbiota of your intestines. 

So soon doctors may start prescribing bacteria for your illnesses. And besides probiotic dahi, the supermarket near you will be selling bacterial products to make you healthy. You can find a good review on the topic published in the recent edition of Nature journal.

But wait before you run to the supermarket to buy these good bacteria. The diversity of microflora in your gut may be reduced because of hormones and other factors. For example, increased testosterone in males after puberty gives them a different set of microbiota compared to females. Bacterial species vary depending on the food that you eat and perhaps even your psychosocial and cultural life may affect it through epigenetic means. So perhaps the disorder is causing selective removal of some species of bacteria from the gut rather than the disorder being caused by lack of certain bacterial species. It is only further research that can provide results that can be translated to treatments.

Nature 500, 541–546 (29 August 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12506

Motivation gene

Some people are highly motivated and some others are not? Why?

Why is that some people study more and work more and some others slack off? Is it something in our brain?

Latest issue of the journal, Molecular Psychiatry, reports that perhaps the Dopamine 2 Receptors in the part of the brain called ventral striatum may be responsible for the differences.

Dopamine is a well known neurotransmitter known to be responsible for response to rewarding stimuli.

There are different kinds of receptors for Dopamine and one of them, Dopamine 2 Receptor is found in different parts of the brain.

Scientists used a virus as a vector to put more copies of the gene for Dopamine 2 receptor to increase the expression of the receptor in different areas of rat brain.

When Dopamine 2 receptor was increased in ventral striatum, the rats showed increased motivation - measured by Instrumental learning, willingness to work towards goals and modulation of behaviour by rewards. 

Scientists believe that this understanding may one day, be used to treat mental illnesses that come in the way of using effort to achieve goals - including certain types of obesity and addiction.

P Trifilieff  et al. Molecular Psychiatry (2013) 18, 1025–1033