Much of the world’s electronic waste is being shipped to China for recycling and the cottage industry that has sprung up there to recover usable materials from computers, cell phones, televisions and other goods may be creating significant health and environmental hazards.

Scientists from China and the United States have identified numerous toxic elements in the emissions from an e-waste recycling workshop in southern China, which uses low-tech methods to separate reusable electronic components from the circuit boards. It is not an isolated case, the scientists point out; such methods are used all over China.

Results of their study have been published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

“The most immediate problem is the health of the workers and the people who live in the city,” said Bernd R. T. Simoneit, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University and one of the authors of the study. “But this may also be contributing to global contamination. For example, previous studies have found carcinogens in wind-carried dust from Asia.”

Simoneit is a widely published scientist who has been involved in numerous studies identifying chemical “signatures” for emissions, including coal smoke, biomass burning, petroleum-based fuels and even the burning of municipal refuse.

By using mass spectrometers and other sophisticated instrumentation, the researchers can pinpoint the contributions of specific emissions to the atmosphere. Their work in China was conducted in Shantou City, a town of 150,000 people located in southern China’s Guangdong Province.

They collected samples during four working days, when workers were removing the electronic components by heating the circuit boards over grills on stoves burning coal briquettes. The workshop had 24 stoves along three walls, and an estimated five tons of circuit boards stacked along the fourth wall for processing. Workers would use the grills to melt the solder, and then remove reusable portions of the circuitry.

The research team included five Chinese scientists and Simoneit, who has dual appointments in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. The researchers found that through this “roasting process,” numerous organic chemicals, heavy metals, flame retardants and persistent organic pollutants (or POPs) were emitted into the air via the smoke. The chemical signature created by this process of roasting or toasting circuit boards “is unmistakable.”

“The next step is to see to what extent this is harming the environment and creating a health hazard for both the workers, and people living in the path of the emissions — either through inhalation, or exposure to the skin,” Simoneit said. “Some of these chemical compounds may be carcinogens; others may be just as harmful because they can act as ‘environmental disruptors’ and may affect body processes from reproduction to endocrine function.”

The Chinese authors of the study are affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and include lead author Xinhui Bi, with ZhenZhen Wang, Xinming Wang, Guoying Sheng and Jiamo Fu.

Simoneit also is working with scientists in India to identify chemical signatures from the burning of wire and other materials, which is done to recycle copper and other minerals. And he is working in Saudi Arabia on a different problem — helping develop “green chemistry” methods for recycling that country’s massive urban waste to create methane.

A revolution is in the offing for deaf and hearing-impaired people with scientists testing a new mobile device which they claim will transmit American Sign Language over cellular networks.

Developed by engineers at the University of Washington (UW), MobileASL uses motion detection technology to identify American Sign Language (ASL) and transmit video images over cell networks in the U.S. The tool, which can be integrated to any high-end mobile phone with a video camera, is undergoing field tests involving 11 participants and the researchers plan to launch a larger field study this winter.

“This is the first study of how deaf people in the U.S. use mobile video phones,” said project leader Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical engineering.

According to the university, the engineers are now working to optimise compressed video signals for sign language, increasing the quality of the images around the face and hands to reduce the data rate to 30 kilobytes per second.To minimize the amount of battery power, the MobileASL phones employ motion sensors to determine whether sign language is being used, it said.

Transmitting sign language as efficiently as possible increases affordability, improves reliability on slower networks and extends battery life, even on devices that might have the capacity to deliver higher quality video.And the field test is allowing the team to see how people use the tool in their daily lives and what obstacles they encounter. “We know these phones work in a lab setting, but conditions are different in people’s everyday lives,” Riskin said. “The field study is an important step toward putting this technology into practice.”Texting or email is currently the preferred method for distance communication of deaf and hearing-impaired people. But the participants’ experiences with the MobileASL phone are, in general, positive.

Texting sometimes is very slow, because you send the message and you’re not sure that the person is going to get it right away. If you’re using this kind of phone then you’re either able to get in touch with the person or not right away, and you can save a lot of time.

According to the researchers, newly released high-end phones, such as the iPhone 4 and the HTC Evo, offer video conferencing. But broadband companies are now blocking the heavy-bandwidth conferencing from their networks and introducing tiered pricing plans to account for heavy data usage.But Riskin said they “want to deliver affordable, reliable ASL on as many devices as possible. It’s a question of equal access to mobile communication technology.”

Scientists have created red blood cells for the first time from spare IVF embryos ells in Britain as part of a multi-million pound project to manufacture synthetic blood on mass-scale.

IVF or In-vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the womb.

Researchers relied on more than 100 spare embryos left over from treatment at fertility clinics to establish several embryonic stem cell ‘lines’, reports the Telegraph.

One of them, known as RC-7, was converted into blood stem cells before they were transformed into red cells containing haemoglobin – the oxygen-carrying pigment.

Scientists averred that the objective was to find cells genetically programmed to develop into the O-Negative blood group, one of the rarest groups. This is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection but is only found in seven per cent of the population.

According to the researchers, the aim of the project is to establish a manufacturing process to produce more than two million pints a year. A pint is 473 ml.

The research could potentially revolutionise medicine by ending the need to rely on volunteers to provide blood for transfusions. The synthetic version would also be guaranteed free of infections. The first clinical trial of synthetic blood made from embryonic stem cells could begin within five years.

Less than 20 per cent of plants and animal species in the world’s tropical forests may remain in their current form by the end of the century due to global warming, a new study says.

The study was conducted by Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and published in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology Thursday. According to the new study, by 2100, only 18 to 45 percent of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in global humid tropical forests may remain as we know them today because of global warming.

In Latin America and Africa, about two-thirds of the humid tropical forests’ biodiversity could alter because of climate change, selective logging and ongoing land-use changes.

In Asia and the central and southern Pacific islands, deforestation and logging are also the primary drivers of ecosystem changes.

The scientists came to the conclusion after looking at land use and climate change by integrating global deforestation and logging maps from satellite imagery and high-resolution data.

“This is the first global compilation of projected ecosystem impacts for humid tropical forests affected by these combined forces,” the institution’s Greg Asner said. “For those areas of the globe projected to suffer most from climate change, land managers could focus their efforts on reducing the pressure from deforestation, thereby helping species adjust to climate change, or enhancing their ability to move in time to keep pace with it,” he said.

Tropical forests hold more than half of all the plants and animal species on earth. But the combined effect of climate change, forest clear cutting and logging may force them to adapt, move, even die.

A new imaging method has been developed which can diagnose cancers affecting lung, ovary, breast and skin. This breakthrough innovation in the cancer treatment field is a collaborative effort by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and technology giant Apple, reports Peerzada Abrar of ET Finance.

The imaging method uses infrared imaging solution which can help accelerate the process of cancer diagnosis and is also a much flexible option. The core component used in the imaging technology is from Apple. It also makes use of the open source medical image processing software OsiriX.

Dr. Phaneendra Yalavarthy, Assistant Professor of Supercomputer Education and Research Centre,IISc, who led the research said, “Near infrared light is a promising way to assess the physiology of tumours in tissue,and to monitor responses to treatment.”

The imaging data that is available now can only identify a tumor but gives no information about its physiology. Also the equipments used for the process are unwieldy and ionizing done in the process has its side effects.

However, the big step forward comes in form of three-dimensional image reconstruction. The Apple and IISc team aim to reconstruct images in 3D in realtime in the doctors’ clinics. 3D near infrared imaging can also help in assessing the effects on the bodies of people who are treated with chemotherapy.

Additionally, this imaging technology can also be used to monitor other changing conditions such as arthritis and brain diseases.

Yalavarthy is hopeful that it can detect not only different cancers but other diseases such as diabetes as well.

Tissue regeneration a la Salamanders and Newts seems like it should be the stuff of science fiction. But it happens routinely.

Why can’t we mammals just re-grow a limb or churn out a few new heart muscle cells as needed?

New research suggests there might be a very good reason: Restricting our cells’ ability to pop in and out of the cell cycle at will — a prerequisite for the cell division necessary to make new tissue — reduces the chances that they’ll run amok and form potentially deadly cancers.

Now scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have taken a big step toward being able to confer this regenerative capacity on mammalian muscle cells; they accomplished this feat in experiments with laboratory mice in which they blocked the expression of just two tumor-suppressing proteins. The finding may move us closer to future regenerative therapies in humans — surprisingly, by sending us shimmying back down the evolutionary tree.

“Newts regenerate tissues very effectively,” said Helen Blau, PhD, the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Professor and a member of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “In contrast, mammals are pathetic. We can regenerate our livers, and that’s about it. Until now it’s been a mystery as to how they do it.”

Blau is the senior author of the research, which will be published in Cell Stem Cell on Aug. 6. Kostandin Pajcini, PhD, a former graduate student, and Jason Pomerantz, MD, a former postdoctoral scholar in Blau’s laboratory, are primarily responsible for the work and are first author and co-senior author, respectively.

Although there’s been a lot of discussion about using adult or embryonic stem cells to repair or revitalize tissues throughout the body, in this case the researchers weren’t studying stem cells. Instead they were investigating whether myocytes, run-of-the mill muscle cells that normally don’t divide, can be induced to re-enter the cell cycle and begin proliferating. This is important because most specialized, or differentiated, cells in mammals are locked into a steady state that does not allow cell division. And without cell division, it is not possible to get regeneration.

In contrast, the cells of some types of amphibians are able to replace lost or damaged tissue by entering the cell cycle to give rise to more muscle cells. While doing so, the cells maintain their muscle identity, which prevents them from straying from the beaten path and becoming other, less useful cell types.

Pomerantz and Blau wondered if it could be possible to coax mammalian cells to follow a similar path. To do so, though, they needed to pinpoint what was different between mammalian and salamander cells when it comes to cell cycle control. One aspect involves a class of proteins called tumor suppressors that block inappropriate cell division.

Previous research had shown that a tumor suppressor called retinoblastoma, or Rb, plays an important role in preventing many types of specialized mammalian cells, including those found in muscle, from dividing willy-nilly. But the effect of blocking the expression of Rb in mammalian cells has been inconsistent: In some cases it has allowed the cells to hop back into the cell cycle; in others, it hasn’t.

The researchers employed some evolutionary detective work to figure out that another tumor suppressor called ARF might be involved. Like Rb, ARF works to throw the brakes on the cell cycle in response to internal signals. An examination of the evolutionary tree provided a key clue. They saw that ARF first arose in chickens. It is found in other birds and mammals, but not in animals like salamanders nestled on the lower branches. Tellingly, it’s also missing in cell lines that begin cycling when Rb is lost, and it is expressed at lower-than-normal levels in mammalian livers — the only organ that we humans can regenerate.

Based on previous investigators’ work with newts, Blau said it “seemed to us that they don’t have the same limitations on growth. We hypothesized that maybe, during evolution, humans gained a tumor suppressor not present in lower animals at the expense of regeneration.”

Sure enough, Pajcini and Pomerantz found that blocking the expression of both Rb and ARF allowed individual myocytes isolated from mouse muscle to dedifferentiate and begin dividing. When they put the cells back into the mice, they were able to merge with existing muscle fibers — as long as Rb expression was restored. Without Rb the transplanted cells proliferated excessively and disrupted the structure of the original muscle.

“These myocytes have reached the point of no return,” said Blau. “They can’t just start dividing again. But here we show that temporarily blocking the expression of just two proteins can restore an ancient ability to contribute to mammalian muscle.”

The key word here is “temporarily.” As is clear from the mouse experiments, blocking the expression of tumor suppressors in mammalian cells can be a tricky gambit. Permanently removing these proteins can lead to uncontrolled cell division. But, a temporary and well-controlled loss — as the researchers devised here — could be a useful therapeutic tool.

The research required some sophisticated technology to separate individual myocytes from one another for study. To do so, Pajcini traveled to Munich to learn how to optimize a technique normally used on cryopreserved and fixed tissue sections — “laser micro-dissection catapulting” — for use with living cells. But the effort paid off when he was able to prove conclusively that once the expression of the two proteins was blocked, individual live cells were, in fact, dividing in culture.

Next, the researchers would like to see if the technique works in other cell types, like those of the pancreas or the heart, and whether they can induce it to happen in tissue at sites of injury. If so, it may be possible to trigger temporary cell proliferation as a means of therapy for a variety of ailments.

In addition to Blau, Pajcini and Pomerantz, other Stanford researchers involved in the study include senior research scientist Stephane Corbel, PhD, and assistant professor of pediatrics and genetics Julien Sage, PhD. Pajcini is now at the University of Pennsylvania, and Pomerantz is an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California-San Francisco.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Baxter Foundation.

Tiny particles of iron oxide could become tools for simultaneous tumor imaging and treatment, because of their magnetic properties and toxic effects against brain cancer cells. In mice, researchers from Emory University School of Medicine have demonstrated how these particles can deliver antibodies to implanted brain tumors, while enhancing tumor visibility via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results are published online by the journal Cancer Research. The lead author is Costas Hadjipanayis, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine, director of Emory’s Brain Tumor Nanotechnology Laboratory, and chief of neurosurgery service at Emory University Hospital Midtown. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and most aggressive primary brain tumor, often comes back because cancer cells infiltrate into the surrounding brain tissue and survive initial treatment. Hadjipanayis’ team designed tiny iron oxide particles (10 nanometers across), coated with a polymer and bioconjugated or linked to antibodies directed against a molecule that appears on the surface of glioblastoma cells.

This molecule, a shortened and continuously active form of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFRvIII), drives glioblastoma cell growth and accounts for radiation and chemotherapy resistance. EGFRvIII appears in about a third of glioblastomas and is only present on tumor cells and not the normal surrounding cells in the brain. The team showed that the particles bind to and kill human glioblastoma cells, yet do not cause any toxicity to normal human astrocytes, which comprise the majority of cells in the brain. They used a technique called convection-enhanced delivery (CED) — continuous infusion of fluid under positive pressure — to introduce the iron oxide particles into mice that had human glioblastoma cells implanted intracranially. The antibody-linked particles lengthened survival of the tumor-implanted mice: their median survival was 19 days compared to 16 days for bare particles and 11 days for no particles. The particles also made the tumor visible via MRI, darkening the area of the brain where the tumor is (see accompanying image). Hui Mao, PhD associate professor of radiology, and his team of researchers, contributed MRI experiments showing the sensitive imaging qualities of the iron-oxide nanoparticles in vitro and in the mouse brain.

To heighten anti-cancer effects, the Brain Tumor Nanotechnology Laboratory is investigating the use of safe alternating magnetic fields for the generation of local hyperthermia (heating) against malignant brain tumors by magnetic nanoparticles. Hadjipanayis and his team plan to translate the use of bioconjugated iron-oxide nanoparticles for use in canine brain tumor models at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine and into a human clinical trial for patients suffering from brain cancer. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, EmTech Bio Inc., Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation, the Georgia Cancer Coalition and the Dana Foundation.

The average mobile phone carries 18 times more potentially harmful germs than a flush handle in a men’s toilet, tests have revealed.

One of the phones in the test had such high levels of bacteria that it could have given its owner a serious stomach upset.

The findings from a sample of dozens of phones by Which? magazine suggest 14.7 million of the 63 million mobiles in use in Britain today could be potential health hazards, reports the Daily Mail.

Hygiene expert Jim Francis, who carried out the tests, said: “The levels of potentially harmful bacteria on one mobile were off the scale. That phone needs sterilising.”

The most unhygienic phone also had 39 times the safe level of enterobacteria, a group of bacteria that live in the lower intestines of humans and animals and include bugs such as salmonella.

It boasted 170 times the acceptable level of faecal coliforms, which are associated with human waste.

Other bacteria including food poisoning bugs e.coli and staphylococcus aureus were found on the phones but at safe levels.

Which? researcher Ceri Stanaway said: “The bugs can end up on your hands which is a breeding ground and be passed back to your phone. They can be transferred back and forth and eventually you could catch something nasty.

“What this shows is how easy it is to come into contact with bacteria. People see toilet flushes as being something dirty to touch but they have less bacteria than phones.

“People need to be mindful of that by observing good hygiene themselves and among others who they pass the phone to when looking at photos, for example.”

Which? has previously found that some computer keyboards carry more harmful bacteria than a lavatory seat.

Washington: A physician-guided robot carrying out surgeries on patients is not new, but scientists have developed a next generation robot that could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario, the doctor.

Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot — without any human assistance — can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs. It can also guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session, according to the researchers who believe as the technology is further developed autonomous robots could soon perform many more simple surgical tasks.

“Earlier this year we demonstrated that a robot directed by artificial intelligence can on its own locate simulated calcifications and cysts in simulated breast tissue with high repeatability and accuracy,” said Kaicheng Liang, a Duke scientists and a member of the research team. “Now we have shown that the robot can sample up to eight different spots in simulated human prostate tissue.”

The latest research has appeared in the journal Ultrasonic Imaging, while the previous Duke study was published in the journal Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology in January. According to the university, in both experiments scientists used whole turkey breasts as their tissues closely resemble that of humans in texture and density, and appear similar when scanned by ultrasound.

For their research, the Duke team combined a souped-up version of an existing robot arm with an ultrasound system of its own design. The ultrasound serves as the robot’s “eyes” by collecting data from its scan and locating its target.

The robot, controlled by an artificial intelligence programme, has a mechanical “hand” that can manipulate the same biopsy plunger device that physicians use to reach a lesion and take samples. In the latest series of experiments, the robot guided the plunger to eight different locations on the simulated prostate tissue in 93 per cent of its attempts. This is important because multiple samples can also determine the extent of any lesion, said Stephen Smith, the director of the Duke University Ultrasound Transducer Group.

Smith believes that routine medical procedures, such as biopsies in other tissues in the body, will be performed in the future with minimal human guidance, and at greater convenience and less cost to patients. An important challenge to be overcome is the speed of data acquisition and processing, but the scientists are confident that faster processors and better algorithms will address that issue.

To be clinically useful, all of the robot’s actions would need to be in real time, the researchers said. “One of the beauties of this system is that all of the hardware components are already on the market,” Smith said.

“We believe that this is the first step in showing that with some modifications, systems like this can be built without having to develop a new technology from scratch.” “We are now testing the robot on a human mannequin seated at the examining table whose breast is constrained in a stiff bra cup… Our next step is to move to an excised human breast,” Smith added.

NEW DELHI: New WHO guidelines released on the sidelines of the International AIDS Conference that kicked off in Vienna on Sunday said the earlier anti-HIV treatment started, the better.

A randomized trial from Haiti — the first comparing earlier therapy with deferred therapy — found early treatment reduced the risk of death by 75% and the rate of new tuberculosis diagnoses by half. The finding has been reported in the latest issue of the “New England Journal of Medicine”.

The study showed that deferred treatment resulted in a 69% increase in the risk of death, compared with therapy started soon after diagnosis. Antiretrovirals can reduce levels of HIV to below detectable levels but cannot eradicate the pathogen completely.

According to WHO guidelines, which is also followed by India, when the CD4 count in the infected person’s blood falls below 200, the patient is to be put on the life-saving ART drugs. Normal CD4 counts in adults range from 500 to 1,500 cells per cubic mm of blood.

CD4 count also shows how far AIDS has advanced (the stage of the disease), and helps predict the risk of complications and debilitating infections. According to Daniel Fitzgerald from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, the latest finding supports previous observational evidence that starting treatment while the immune system is still relatively robust can save lives.

New guidelines say that treatment should be started when a patient’s count of CD4-positive T cells falls to even 500 cells per microlitre of blood, according to Melanie Thompson of the International AIDS Society’s guidelines panel.