Saving Hearts Of The Future

Congenital heart disease affects 1 in 1000 babies in the UK, with some forms being mild and very treatable while others prove fatal. Recent investigations in the US suggest that the diet of pregnant women can affect the probability of their baby developing heart problems. Folic acid and vitamin D are already recommended supplements for pregnant women to reduce some birth defects, such as spinal problems. Of the 19,000 women surveyed, those with the top diet quality were recorded to have the lowest risk of having a baby with heart problems.

Medicine students could think about other actions an expecting mother could do to reduce health risks of her baby.

Those considering studying Biology should think about what constitutes a healthy, balanced diet, and the importance of maintaining this diet in the long-term. Biological Natural Sciences and Maths students should also consider the limitations of this survey in the US with regard to the sample size and demographic profile of the women tested.

In England, the government has the resources to provide vouchers for pregnant women, on low incomes, so they can buy milk and vegetables. PPE and HSPS should contemplate how the economic development of countries can affect pregnant women in being able to keep to the suggested diet, and the wider impacts of this. 

A medical advancement has made it possible for signs of carrying twins or the risk of a miscarriage to be verified in urine samples.

MAP Diagnostics in Hertfordshire have created a test that analyses the protein composition of urine, which allows scientists to then predict the chance of a successful birth, a miscarriage, and whether a woman is pregnant with twins. These proteins are secreted from embryos, and the test makes use of a small mass spectrometer to identify these protein cultures.

Identifying the protein cultures allows the test to search for these potential risks using an algorithm. The algorithm is based on the protein profile of a sample of 121 women between 6 and 10 weeks pregnant. Biological Natural Sciences applicants should consider how verifiable this sample size is in proving the efficacy of a product, in contrast to the phases of new drug development which are perhaps more rigorous.

Furthermore, HSPS and Medicine applicants should consider the ethical implications of marketing the features of this test given the small sample size that verifies its claims. As Zev Williams of Yeshiva University in New York argues, “you wouldn’t want a lot of women being unnecessarily stressed or falsely reassured” by a test which claims that it can accurately predict these risks. As such, Medicine applicants should further consider the ethical responsibility of people working in research and development of new treatments.

Men may not really be from Mars, but why do they seem to feel the heat so much more than women? A study by two dutch scientists this week analysed why men feel the need to turn the air con down, while women are often battling to get the heating back on.

In general they found that women were comfortable at around 2.5 degrees warmer than men, BBC journalist Chris Stokel-Walker investigated further. It appears that men tend to have a higher resting metabolic rates than women, which means the energy used keeps them slightly warmer.

Biology applicants may wish to explore what drives this rate and understand the differences between ‘brown fats’ and ‘white fats’. Whilst Human Sciences or Medicine applicants could look at how this difference in genders could affect treatments or indeed ways of coping with different heats and even Architecture applicants could begin to think about how they could design a building or space that could accommodate all the different temperatures that office workers may require in order to be most productive.

It can be noted, however, that both the study and the investigations of Warwick University found that this is not universally true of the genders, and the resting metabolic rates of adults can vary well outside of just ‘men’ and ‘women’. HSPS applicants may wish to think about how we categorise men and women with habits or stereotypes in the 21st century. 

Researchers at Cambridge University have made a recent breakthrough in treating people with schizophrenia. Specialists have used a brain-training game on a small number of patients with the mental condition to help ease symptoms such as hallucinations. The game has a wizard theme with increasing levels of difficulty, asking patients to enter rooms and find items, and remember where they put them to test their episodic memory. The results of the game showed that patients made significantly fewer mistakes in assessments testing their memory and brain functions afterwards.

Medicine applicants should think about the role non-drug treatments can take in helping long-term illnesses, as well as their drawbacks or shortfalls.

With the condition affecting 1 in 100 people, PPE and Economics applicants should consider how far funding should be made available to develop and improve this type of research, especially as it has only been tested on a small number of patients so far. A counterpoint here is that this sort of treatment may result in much lower costs in the long run, given the expensive nature of many drug-based treatments.

The Peruvian government will soon make contact for the first time with an Amazonian tribe that has, up until this point, survived largely isolated in the Manu National Park in south-eastern Peru.

HSPS applicants will be interested to note that the first official contact with the tribe will be made by government anthropologists who will talk with the clan of Mashco Piro to understand why they have recently been emerging from the forest.

This contact comes after the Mashco Piro have increasingly been spotted seeking machetes and food outside their jungle enclaves.  Geography students should investigate how the spread of cities and urban populations can damage indigenous tribes and Natural Sciences candidates will want to consider the impact this urbanisation and loss of native tribes will have on the local environment and on biodiversity.

History candidates should look further into the historical context of the region as the Mashco Piro have survived enslavement during Peru’s rubber boom in the late 1800s and rebuffed the advances of missionaries in the 1900s.

Peru prohibits contact with the Mashco Piro and another dozen “uncontacted” tribes mainly because their immune systems carry little resistance to common illnesses. A team of doctors six hours upriver would treat the tribe if disease breaks out and prospective Medicine should discuss the challenges associated with such an unusual medical scenario. 

Linguistics aspirants should know that the government hopes to communicate with the Mascho Piro, not through their own language but through Yine, a native language similar to the Mashco Piro tongue.

Peruvian authorities have long restricted contact with the Mashco Piro tribes but have now said they cannot keep people from defying the contact ban because no penalty is attached.  Law students may want to consider the legal methods available to restrict contact with the tribe.

Do you remember your first romantic kiss? For some, it is the memory that defined their best summer, whilst for others, it was an experience tinged with embarrassment and awkwardness. Countless romantic comedies would have us believe that kissing is a natural universal behaviour. However, a new study has revealed that the practice isn’t as common as it may appear.

The study, which looked at couples in 168 world cultures, found that only 46% practiced kissing in the romantic sense. The Mehinaku tribe in Brazil went so far as to call it “gross”. Some researchers believe that kissing is a product of western societies, passed on from one generation to the next, although evidence shows that it may have been practised in other cultures.

The oldest evidence of a kissing in human societies comes from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit texts from over 3,500 years ago. Kissing was described as ‘inhaling each other’s soul’. Students of many disciplines, including Archaeology and Anthropology, Classics and History, may be interested in exploring how ancient texts help us to understand today’s socially accepted norms.

It is argued that animals may not need to kiss as they are more likely to use their sense of smell to determine physical attraction. The variety of means by which animals attract their mates is remarkable, with the poison-eating antics of the great bustard being a case in point. Biology students may consider how such practices have come about by the process of evolution, while also delving deeper into the similarities and differences between human and animal pheromones and how this impacts laws of attraction. 

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital have grown the world’s first biolimb. The biolimb that has been developed is that of a rat, from living cells. However, it is believed that the techniques employed may soon be applicable to growth of human limbs for amputees. Currently,  the process behind the rat forelimb has been applied to smaller human organs such as hearts and lungs, but not to limbs. The hope is that biolimbs will prove successful replacements for artificial limbs, which lack the mobility and functionality of biolimbs.

Moreover, artificial replacements pose problems of immune response and require immunosuppressant to be administered to the patient, so that their body does not reject them. The first step in the process of biolimb growth is decellularising the donor limb before recellularising it with cells from the recipient. There are still challenges to overcome with the re-cellularisation process, for example ensuring that the recipient’s nerve tissue penetrates into the new limb so that the nervous system can develop.

Medicine applicants may consider the conflict between biolimb developments as an area of academic interest versus that of a realistic clinical endeavour.

Philosophy applicants should question the ethical implications of using donor limbs for transplants and what the counter arguments may entail.

As well as the moral implications, PPE and Economics and Management applicants can reflect on the cost challenges compared to the life-enhancing benefits of such an advancement, given that there are currently 1.5 million amputees in the US alone.

The UK experienced its highest July temperature on record last week as the mercury reached 36.7^oC at Heathrow Airport. It was also the hottest day since the all-time record of 38.1^oC back in August 2003.

So, why all this heat? Geography applicants should note that the very recent spike in temperatures has not been limited to our shores. Much of southern and western Europe have seen the same, with France and Spain experiencing particularly warm conditions.

High pressure has been dominant over southern Europe lately, allowing the heat to build. This, combined with recent southerly winds has seen the hot air drawn up to the UK.

Enjoyable as it may be for many to bask in the summer sun, there are risks attached. Prospective Medics should be aware that the Government has already issued health warnings to the elderly, who are less able to regulate their body temperatures sufficiently. Diminished ability to thermoregulate is evident at about age 70 and worsens with each decade of life. It can take an elderly person nearly twice the time it takes a younger person to return to a normal core body temperature after exposure to temperature extremes. Those who are heavily pregnant or seriously ill may also be at risk.

Individual weather events like the current heatwave should be treated with caution when discussing global warming. They may be examples of the extreme weather events which some scientists predict, but a warm spell alone cannot be said to be proof of global warming.

However, with the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris rapidly approaching, episodes like the present one will not go unnoticed, and may help to push the world’s leaders towards a firm set of commitments on tackling global warming.  

More commonly associated with nightmares rather than dreams; a team at University College London has revealed new research which suggests that rats do in fact dream when they sleep.

Veterinary Medicine applicants will be interested to note that when electrodes are attached to rats’ brains, they show that different places which the rats visit are recorded and remembered by different combinations of their hippocampal neurons firing together.  The research team showed the rats a path to a treat in a maze and then encouraged the rats to go for a nap.  The team recorded their hippocampus activity while they slept and noted that after the rats woke up, they set along a path to the treat which fired the same hippocampal activity as the pattern of activity when they were asleep. 

Experimental Psychology students should question what this research tells us about rats dreams being shaped by their desire and PBS students will want to investigate what this experiment could teach us about how mental maps are constructed in general.

Medicine applicants should pay attention to the similarities between how the hippocampi of rats and humans work and Philosophy students might consider the idea that if we can understand areas of the brain that are fired when dreaming, could we stimulate and manipulate those areas on sleeping humans and what are the ethical implications for doing so.

With this new research on rats dreaming coming hot on the heels of reports of Google’s Artificial Intelligence being able to dream (Computer Science students take note), it is becoming increasingly apparent that the world is full of far more dreamers than previously imagined.

A new antimalarial drug has been developed by researchers at Dundee University. The compound, entitled DDD107498, was developed by the university’s Drug Discovery Unit and the Medicines for Malaria Venture.

Medicine applicants should be aware that many parasites have become resistant to current malaria treatments. The exciting discovery therefore comes at a critical stage in the development of treating the deadly disease.

Biomedical Sciences applicants may join scientists in hailing the discovery as potentially ground-breaking due to its tri-fold ability to treat malaria, whilst also protecting people from the disease and preventing its spread, all in a single dose.

Malaria is found in more than 100 countries, with an estimated 3.3 billion people at risk of contracting the mosquito-borne illness. HSPS and Geography applicants may want to consider the role global organisations, such as the World Health Organisation, play in reducing the spread of illnesses in less economically developed countries. PPE applicants may also be interested in discussing levels of international and domestic funding available for medical research and development.