An underwater alarm system can identify oil layers with thickness of more than one millimeter on water surface.

For the first time in the Middle East, an underwater alarm system has been designed and produced by Iranian researchers in Khuzestan Science and Technology Park.
The equipment will be mass produced with the help of the Oil Ministry after successful preliminary tests, Mehr News Agency reported.
The project manager, Ramin Hooshyar, said that the equipment comprises three different sections: floater, sensor and controller.
He noted that the equipment is capable of recognizing oil layers with thickness of more than one millimeter on the surface of water.
“By installing the equipment beneath oil platforms at sea and rivers adjacent to the sea, offshore drilling derricks, crude oil discharging and loading wharfs and dam lakes, any leakage in the sea will be immediately announced,“ he added.
Noting that this equipment is merely used for fixed oil resources, Hooshyar opined that the system is capable of preventing oil wastage, detecting the presence of oil in the sea very soon thus preventing oil facilities from catching fire, polluting of seas, rivers and dams.
Commenting on the peculiarities of warning system, he pointed out that the equipment can easily be mounted.
“It has been designed and made in such a manner that is resistant to salty water. The equipment is also capable of being installed in salty sea and rivers,“ Hooshyar added.
He pointed out that the equipment works with 12 volt electricity and it has received the certificate of invention registration from Iranian Inventions Registration Organization.

Common genetic variants linked to arthritis may also play a role in human height, a new study shows.
The new study confirms observations by health professionals of a connection between decreased height and increased risk of osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, ScienceDaily reported.
Researchers speculate that both extremes of height may be associated with osteoarthritis for different reasons.
Shorter bones and/or less cartilage may render the joints more susceptible to damage, while longer bones may produce greater levels of damaging stress on the joints.
The findings are exciting for several reasons, said Goncalo Abecasis, assistant professor in the School of Public Health.
For one, there are many genes that control height, but only a few associated with osteoarthritis, he said. The international study was co-led by the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
“In this case the gene we picked also is important in osteoarthritis and it’s actually quite hard to find genes for osteoarthritis,“ said Abecasis, who co-directed the study with Karen Mohlke of the University of North Carolina.
“One of the things we were excited about is you could study (height) in many people, and once you’ve done that you have a short list of genes that you can then study for what they do in terms of osteoarthritis.“
The findings also add to the general understanding of height.
“It is useful to know all genes responsible for height variation, so we are reassured if our baby is shorter than others because he has a collection of short alleles on his DNA, and not because he has something wrong, like a metabolism disorder,“ said Serena Sanna, co-author who worked on the paper as a post-doctoral student in Abecasis’ group and is now at the National Research Council di Cagliari in Italy. Anne Jackson, a research specialist at U-M, is also a co-author.
To arrive at their findings, researchers from the United States and Europe analyzed the genomes of more than 35,000 people.
If there were average height differences for individuals with certain genetic variants, this indicated that something in that genomic region containing the variants likely influenced height.
In this particular study, researchers initially examined the effects of more than two million genetic variants.
The new variant accounts for less than one percent of the genetic basis of height, and is associated with an average difference in height of about 0.4 centimeters, or a little more than an eighth of an inch.
The range went from 0.3 cm to 1.4 cm, depending on the population and whether an individual had one or two copies of the so-called taller version of the variant.
A variety of factors, including genetics, diet and prenatal environment, interact to determine how tall someone grows. It is currently thought that genetic factors are responsible for at least 80 percent of the variation in height among people.
The variants most strongly associated with height lie in a region of the human genome thought to influence expression of a gene for growth differentiation factor 5, called GDF5, which is a protein involved in the development of cartilage in the legs and other long bones.

Sulfur-containing substances in garlic scavenge arsenic from tissues and blood.

Garlic may provide some relief for millions of Bangladeshis and Indians whose drinking water is contaminated with arsenic.
Keya Chaudhuri of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in Kolkata, and her colleagues gave rats daily doses of arsenic in their water, in levels equivalent to those found in groundwater in Bangladesh and West Bengal, according to NewScientist.com.
Rats which were also fed garlic extracts had 40 percent less arsenic in their blood and liver, and passed 45 percent more arsenic in their urine.
Chaudhuri says that sulfur-containing substances in garlic scavenge arsenic from tissues and blood. She advises people in at-risk areas to eat one to three cloves of garlic per day as a preventive measure.

It is a health concern that tens of thousands of people battle every day--the struggle to keep their blood pressure in check. Often, it involves numerous medications and lifestyle changes.
According to Nutrinium.com, in some cases even that combination is not enough, and patients are faced with potentially life-ending consequences. The struggles are real for many people around the world.
That is why a FDA-approved clinical trial at the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Medicine is so important.
Surgeons recently implanted the Rheos System into the first clinical trial patient.
When the device was turned on, the patient’s blood pressure measurements significantly decreased. The patient reported no discomfort.
The device is designed to reduce blood pressure by using small electrical signals to influence the body’s blood pressure regulation system, called the baroreflex.
The Rheos System is a pacemaker-like device that is implanted under the skin in the upper chest cavity and connected to two leads that are placed on the carotid arteries.
UK cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Sibu Saha is one of the trial’s primary investigators. “Hypertension is a silent killer and a major risk factor for stroke. I see its effects on patients every day. The Rheos device has shown promise in managing what was previously uncontrolled hypertension. I am pleased to be a part of this landmark trial,“ said Saha.
UK is one of only 24 medical centers participating in the trial and the only one in Kentucky.
Patients will be monitored during a 5-year time period. The purpose of the UK trial is to assess safety, efficacy, and device performance.
High blood pressure affects about 72 million people in the United States.

Cranberry juice which exhibits anti-viral properties against flu, can prevent cavities and lessen the reoccurrence of gastric ulcers.

Cranberry juice, long thought of as a mere folk remedy for relieving urinary tract infections in women, is finally getting some respect.
According to a new research led by Itzhak Ofek, the world now knows that science supports the folklore. Prof. Ofek’s research on the tart berry over the past two decades shows that its juice indeed combats urinary tract infections, ScienceDaily said.
And, he’s discovered, the refreshing red beverage has additional medicinal qualities as well. Prof. Ofek has found that cranberry juice which exhibits anti-viral properties against the flu, can prevent cavities and lessen the reoccurrence of gastric ulcers.
Unhappily for half the human race, however, new research published this year in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research on ulcers, suggests that, like urinary tract infections, the healing power of cranberries apply only to women.
The remarkable healing property in cranberries stems from a heavy molecule known as non-dialyzable material or NDM. This molecule, isolated by Prof. Ofek and his colleagues, seems to coat some bodily surfaces with Teflon-like efficiency, preventing infection-causing agents from taking root.
Surprisingly, NDM appears to have no effect on some of the good bacteria in our bodies, says Prof. Ofek. His seminal research on the subject, in collaboration with some other researchers, appeared in the world’s leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, in 1991.
“We understood that there was something in cranberry juice that doesn’t let infections adhere to a woman’s bladder,“ Prof. Ofek says. “We figured it was a specific inhibitor and proved this to be the case.“
After the 1991 study, Prof. Ofek conjectured that if cranberries could protect against bacterial invasion in the bladder, “Could they work wonders elsewhere?“
“We found that NDM inhibits adhesion of oral bacteria to tooth surfaces and as a consequence reduced the bacterial load that causes cavities in the mouth,“ says Prof. Ofek. “And after a clinical trial, we formulated a mouthwash based on cranberries.“
But Prof. Ofek wasn’t content to stop at cavities. Working with Prof. Ervin Weiss and Prof. Zichria Rones, he found that NDM inhibits the flu virus from attaching to cells and prevented experimental flu infections in animal models.

A NASA spacecraft will fly by the planet Mercury on Monday, the first visit to the sun’s closest neighbor since the 1970s.
The space probe Messenger will skim 124 miles above the planet’s surface, the first of three passes before it settles into orbit three years from now, AP said.
The flyby will provide up-close views and, in a few weeks, pictures.
“We’re expecting some pretty major surprises out of this,“ said Faith Vilas, a Messenger scientist and director of the MMT Observatory at Mount Hopkins, Ariz.
Scientists are hoping that what they learn next week will help them begin to answer lingering questions about the planet’s origin, magnetic field, atmosphere and what that means about our own planet.
Mercury is a “real oddball,“ said lead researcher Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The planet is so close to the sun that temperatures vary at the equator between day and night by 1,100 degrees. At the same time, there is also evidence of ice at the poles.
It’s the smallest planet in the solar system. For comparison, if Earth were the size of a baseball, Mercury would be a golf ball.
“We really need better information on Mercury to make sure that our ideas on how the Earth and sister planets formed“ are accurate, Solomon said.
Among the mysteries is Mercury’s magnetic field, discovered by NASA’s Mariner 10 in the 1970s.
Scientists had thought that because of its small size, the planet’s core had long ago solidified and would not have a molten interior, the most common explanation for a magnetic field.
Last year, scientists using powerful radar signals to examine Mercury’s rotation found evidence of wobbling that they say shows the planet has a molten outer core. Messenger’s magnetometer is expected to provide further clues.
Mariner 10’s three passes by Mercury provided information on less than half of the planet.
“Probably the first thing that most of us want to see is what the other 55 percent of Mercury looks like,“ said Vilas.
William McClintock, who led the development of a Messenger spectrometer at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said scientists have only a “vague idea“ about the composition Mercury’s surface.