Chloé Sharrocks

Scientists have found a molecule that intensifies allergic reactions which could mean they can reduce the risk of children suffering serious allergic reactions to food such as peanuts.

The team of researchers from Glasgow University have also created a biological agent which they hope can reduce allergy symptoms.

Their work,published in the Proceedings of the National Association of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) journal, could dramatically reduce the number of fatal cases of anaphylactic shock, or severe allergic reaction, across the world.

Many different things can cause allergic reactions.  Common food which can cause problems include peanuts, tree nuts, sesame, fish, shellfish, dairy products and eggs.  People can also suffer allergies to wasp or bee stings, rubber, penicillin and many other drugs or injections.  The symptoms sufferers may experience include generalised flushing, skin reactions and breathing difficulties.  In severe cases cardiac arrest and death can occur, which is why researchers are battling to learn how to prevent allergies.

In the UK alone 500,000 people are thought to have an acute food allergy and we have the highest prevalence of allergies in Europe.  Allergic reactions are treated with adrenaline and those thought to be at risk of a severe reaction are prescribed pre-loaded adrenaline injection kits, often known as EpiPens.

This latest research is a world-first.  The team, led by Dr Alirio Melendez and Professor Eddy Liew, found that the novel cytokine (immune hormone), IL-33, plays a significant role in the development of anaphylaxis.

By studying patients who had experienced anaphylaxis during surgery they were able to discover that IL-33 was involved in the anaphylactic shock and has allowed the scientists to discover how to intervene to reduce the severity of the reaction.

Dr Melendez said: “An anaphylactic shock prompts a massive inflammatory reaction which often is so severe that it constricts breathing. In our study we found that the severity of the shock is linked to the IL-33 molecule, which acts as an amplifier to the inflammatory reaction. This can lead to a fatal constriction of the airway and, ultimately, death.”

The scientists then went on to develop a mouse model which shows that by blocking the IL-33 molecule reduces the severity of an anaphylactic shock.  They are now continuing their study and are going to be investigating in more depth allergic reactions specific to food, venoms and medicinal drugs.

‘Seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses’ has finally been proved to be more than just a metaphor.  Now scientists at the University of Toronto have found evidence that our mood can change the way in which we see the world around us.

Their study suggests that the way we feel, can affect the way our visual system filters our perceptual experience, although they found that wearing the rose-tinted glasses of a good mood is more about how much we see, rather than the colour.

Image courtesy of Jersyko from Wikipedia

Adam Anderson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, found that when people are feeling happy and positive about life then their visual cortex absorbs more information, whilst being in a negative frame of mind can make us blinkered or have tunnel-vision.

Their results were achieved by firstly showing images to their subjects which were designed to first generate a good, neutral or bad mood.  Their testers were then shown a composite image featuring a face in the centre surrounded by “place” images such as a house.  By asking their testers to specify the gender of the face, they focused their tests attention on the faces in front of them.

The scientists then removed the images from view and asked the testers if they could remember what else was shown in the image other than the face.  Those subjects in a good mood took in more information and remembered the surrounding pictures of houses , whereas those in a bad mood failed to recall these.

Taylor Schmitz, a graduate student of Prof Anderson and lead author of the study, said: “Under positive moods, people may process a greater number of objects in their environment which sounds like a good thing, but it can also result in distraction”.  It thus seems like being in a positive frame of mind literally expands the window upon which we look at the world.  But this in itself can lead to problems, especially when we need to concentrate on critical tasks requiring a narrow focus such as operating dangerous machinery or in the airport screening of passenger luggage.

So bad moods might not always be such a bad thing – they can keep us narrowly focused on the task at hand and prevent us from absorbing useless outside information.

Since I was 7 years old I’ve ridden horses and for the last 9 years been the proud owner of my very own, so a knowledge of the gaits of horses and other four-legged animals is pretty much second nature to me now, so I was interested in this article on Science Daily which discusses the results of a new study that shows a rather alarming number of anatomists, taxidermists and, perhaps less surprisingly, toymakers do not get the walking gait of horses and other animals such as dogs correct.

The study which was published in Current Biology on 27th January, was carried out by Hungarian researchers following on from previous research which had discovered that horses’ limbs were often wrongly illustrated.  The scientists decided to see if such errors also applied to museums, veterinary books and toy shops by collecting hundreds of walking portrayals and seeing if the limbs were correctly positioned.

With the correct walking behaviour of quadruped animals described and published over 120 years ago by the pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s, the researchers were rather alarmed to discover that over 50% of their samples showed errors:

We found that almost half of the depictions are wrong. This high error rate in walking illustrations in natural history museums and veterinary anatomy books is particularly unexpected in a time where high-speed cameras and the internet offer ideal possibilities to obtain reliable quantitative information about tetrapod walking.

[Horváth, G. et al, "Erroneous quadruped walking depictions in natural history museum", Current Biology 2009]

The method of walking is virtually universal between all four-legged animals since it provides maximum stability.  Small differences only in the exact timing of the steps exist between animals.  All four-legged animals step first with their left hindleg, then their left foreleg before finally their right hindleg and lastly their right foreleg.  When walking fairly slowly, the dog or horse’s body is supported by 3 of it’s feet – effectively forming a triangle.  They are more stable if their centre of mass is closer to the centre of the triangles 3 points.  If children’s toys followed the biomechanics more closely, it would be likely that they would fall over less. However, ignoring this practicality, it is rather more imperative that natural history museums and anatomical textbooks follow the scientific correctness more rigorously!

Interestingly, despite the carelessness of some toymakers, Horváth did observe that Holloywood movies, such as Lord of the Rings, generally do a more accurate job of depicting walking animals!

Anyone who would like to read a little more about the biomechanics should read the article on Discover Magazine’s website called “The Flesh of Physics” which has some great graphical illustrations and also some slow-motion video clips of horses galloping allowing their footfall to be accurately observed (NB. The footfall during galloping is obviously not the same as when walking despite them both being a four-beat movement)

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have been inspired by beetle larvae to construct a boat capable of moving without the aid of paddles, sails or motors.  Instead the boat relies on harnessing the energy contained within the surface of the water.

Various attractive intermolecular forces exist between water molecules and in the bulk of the fluid the overall net force on each molecule is zero since it is being pulled equally in all directions.  However, at the surface of the water, the overall intermolecular force is inwards (less of an attractive force exists between water and air molecules)  but this is balanced by the liquid’s resistance to compression so that the net force is zero.  However, the liquid surface resembles a stretched piece of elastic (such as the skin on a drum) since another driving force exists which attempts to minimise the surface area, by squeezing the liquid together.  This provides the water with a surface tension.

Sung Kwon Cho, a senior researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, and his colleagues managed to develop a technique which destabilised the water’s surface tension and use it to create their boat.

Cho read that beetle larvae move on water by altering it’s surface tension.  When resting in the water, like any other floating object, the larva causes the surface tension to pull equally on both sides.  However, if the larva lowers its back downwards, the tension direction is changed so that the larva moves forwards.  The scientists then replicated the experiment by constructing a boat that used an electric pulse to reproduce the effect of the larva’s back bending.  They went on to add a second electrode to the boat’s front side to act as a rudder.

Although the 2 cm long boat only moves at 4 mm/s, it is believed that this method of propulsion would be a useful low-maintenance mechanism for small aquatic devices, such as those used to monitor water quality.

A video of the boat is available here: http://www.pitt.edu/news2009/curving_top_cho.wmv

Yesterday the Metro published a story that a poll for the Prince’s trust had revealed 1 in 10 teenagers felt that their life was ‘meaningless’ and that ‘(t)hey believe life is not worth living or has little or no purpose’.  The teenagers believed that their happiness was heavily influenced by relationships with family and friends and many felt that they had no-one to turn to with their problems or concerns.

I find it rather alarming therefore that today the Times published an article online suggesting that soon parents in England will be able to flex their credit card to see if their offspring are going to be successful sports stars.

In America, people are already taking up this opportunity.  For the fee of £100, Atlas Sports Genetics in Colorado, will process your child’s sample (submitted in a sterile bag via the postal system) and send you your child’s results complete with certificate (not competitive at all of course!).  In Australia, gyms are even providing the kits for only £50 with the hope that fitness fanatics will want to learn how to burn any fat just that little bit quicker.

Whilst feeling somewhat sceptical about the scientific validity of these tests in proving a true representation of who will turn into a future sports star, I can’t help but feel even more alarmed by the fact that parents are able to use these test on children as young as one to determine their child’s destiny.  What sort of pressure is that going to put on the older child when they’re ready to leave school and chose their future career?  Not to mention the ethical issues of testing children who have no say in the matter? (But that’s a different story – surely the same could be argued for a foetus being tested for genetic diseases?)

If parents are able to analyse their child’s DNA (by taking a swab sample of cheek and gum cells) to see whether they are going to be the next ‘golden balls’ David Beckham or the ‘disasterous’ dancing John Sergeant surely some children are going to feel even more isolated when they realise that their parents’ dreams are never going to be realised?