People who use two or more non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to help control pain have a worse health-related quality of life than their peers who use only one, results of a study suggest.
“Patients may self-manage their pain to improve their daily activities by taking more than one NSAID. However, by attempting to obtain symptom relief, patients may be putting themselves at risk for complications,“ Dr. Stacey H. Kovac, from the Durham VA Medical Center in North Carolina, and colleagues note in the medical journal Arthritis Care and Research, according to Reuters.
Prior research has established a strong link between multiple NSAID use and gastrointestinal problems, but it was unclear if this practice affected health-related quality-of-life.
To investigate, Kovac’s team interviewed 138 patients from a large regional managed care organization who had filled one or more NSAID prescription between February and August 2002.
Overall, 26 percent of subjects used two or more NSAIDs, the report indicates. These patients scored lower on the physical component of a quality of life questionnaire than did single-NSAID users, suggesting a poorer health-related quality of life.
Whether multiple NSAID use impairs health-related quality of life itself or whether it simply reflects a more severe underlying disease that is responsible will require further study, the investigators note.

Tropical soils have certain properties that can limit the performance of metal detectors due to soil magnetic susceptibility.

A metal detector is the most common device used for searching landmines, which litter the soil in approximately 90 countries. Many of these countries are located in the tropics where intensively weathered soils are prevalent.
These tropical soils have certain properties that can limit the performance of metal detectors due to soil magnetic susceptibility. This problem is enhanced by the spread of minimum-metal mines, according to ScienceDaily.
Magnetic properties of soils are caused by ferrimagnetic minerals, such as magnetite and maghemite. The negative effects can result in a reduction of detector sensitivity or cause false alarms.
To overcome these problems, the metal detectors have been continuously re-hauled over the years but only now has taken the geoscientific research of soil into account. The knowledge of soil magnetic properties may allow detectors to be adapted to meet the local conditions.
Geoscientists at the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geosciences and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hannover, Germany conducted a study on the magnetic susceptibility of tropical soils using the soil archive of the Federal Agency.
The magnetic susceptibility of more than 500 soil samples from the entire tropical belt was analyzed with the goal of classifying their impact on landmine detection.
The study revealed that the problem of soil influence can occur quite frequently. More than one-third of the measured soil samples may generate severe or very severe limitations when using metal detectors.
Soils were grouped according to their parent rocks. On average susceptibility of soils with basaltic origin were higher than those of other origin. However, the variability within the different groups is high.
This provides evidence that besides origin, additional influences on soil susceptibility such as soil development are likely to exist.

Can a machine taste coffee? The question has plagued scientists studying the caffeinated beverage for decades. Fortunately, researchers in Switzerland can now answer with a resounding ’yes.’
For the food industry, “electronic tasters“ like the new coffee-tasting machine could prove useful as quality control devices to monitor food production and processing, Physorg.com reported.
Christian Lindinger and colleagues at NestlŽ Research pointed out that coffee scientists have long been searching for instrumental approaches to complement and eventually replace human sensory profiling.
However, the multisensory experience from drinking a cup of coffee makes it a particular challenge for flavor scientists trying to replicate these sensations on a machine. More than 1,000 substances may contribute to the complex aroma of coffee.
The new tasting machine assessed the taste and aromatic qualities of espresso coffee nearly as accurately as a panel of trained human espresso tasters, the study reported.
It analyzed gases released by a heated espresso sample, then transformed the most pertinent chemical information into taste qualities like roasted, flowery, woody, toffee and acidity.
“This work represents significant progress in terms of correlation of sensory with instrumental results exemplified on coffee,“ state the authors.

Astronauts on Monday installed the European space laboratory Columbus on the orbiting International Space Station, giving Europe an important foothold for the deeper exploration of space.
“The European Columbus module is officially part of the International Space Station,“ said French space engineer Leopold Eyharts, as NASA broadcast live images of the installation, which took place at 2144 GMT, AFP said.
The long-delayed move gives European space agencies a presence alongside US and Russian astronauts on the ISS, a preparation point for future human missions to Mars.
Two astronauts from the US space shuttle Atlantis earlier made a seven-hour space walk to prepare Columbus for its hook-up to the station, orbiting 350 kilometers (215 miles) above the Earth.
They fixed fittings to Columbus so it could be grabbed and maneuvered into position by a robotic arm, operated from within the ISS, for attachment to the station’s Harmony module.
The two billion-dollar (1.3 billion-euro), 10-ton laboratory represents a milestone in Europe’s role in space. Paid for mostly by Germany, Italy and France, it is the first ISS addition not made in the United States or Russia.
The laboratory will boost the station’s research capabilities, being used for biotechnology and medicine experiments involving microgravity. It has room for three astronauts and 10 experimentation units.
The spacewalkers also had to install panels to protect it from the impact of micro-meteorites.
NASA plans to attach another laboratory, the Japanese module Kibo, to Harmony in March.
Clearing up concerns that launch debris may have damaged the shuttle as it took off from Florida, mission chief John Shannon said Sunday that the thermal shield on Atlantis’s nose and wing forward edges were in perfect condition.

With the driest sand-and-water recipe, the grains were linked by liquid bridges shaped like a double-ended trumpet.

Every child knows that you don’t have to follow an exact recipe to build a sandcastle. All you need is sand plus a splash of water--and now physicists understand why.
Mario Scheel at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Gottingen, Germany, and colleagues studied how a liquid squeezes between grains, NewScientist.com reported.
Using a series of X-ray images to build up a three-dimensional picture of the sand pile, they found that with the driest sand-and-water recipe, the grains were linked by liquid bridges shaped like a double-ended trumpet. When enough of these bridges form, the mixture is able to hold its shape.
From then on, adding more liquid doesn’t make much difference, unless so much is added that the mixture becomes saturated.
“The liquid goes into the crevices and fuses the bridges together,“ explains Martin Brinkmann, one of Scheel’s collaborators.
As long as the bridges retain something of their original shape, their mechanical properties remain the same, he says.
The result could be applied to many different liquids and granular materials, and help us understand other mixing processes. It might even help to determine the critical point at which mud and water become a landslide.

They may seem to just eat, cry, sleep and poo, but 3-month-old babies may already be aware of how many animals are dangling from their mobiles.
Veronique Izard at the University of Paris-South in France and her colleagues have discovered that babies have brain circuits dedicated to noticing quantity, adding weight to the argument that humans possess an innate sense of numbers, NewScientist.com said.
Izard had already shown in adults and 4-year-olds that numbers seem to be processed in a particular part of the brain, and separately from other information. To find out if 3-month-old babies did the same, the team fitted 36 infants with caps designed to record their brain waves.
The babies were then shown a series of images on a screen. Most of the time consistent objects and quantities appeared, for instance, four ducks.
Occasionally, though, either the number or the object would be changed, and researchers recorded changes in their brain activity in response.
Like adults, the babies processed changes in the identity of the object in a different part of the brain to changes in number.

Encapsulated fats can be used in emulsion-based foods such as beverages, sauces, desserts, yoghurt and salad dressings.

Low-fat foods are often disappointing to consumers since removing the fat changes the desirable taste, texture and aroma of the original product.
Now, a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are developing a new technology that could lead to low-calorie foods that taste like the real thing, ScienceDaily wrote.
“Our goal is to keep the fat in the food, but stop it from being digested by surrounding it with layers of dietary fiber,“ says Julian McClements, UMass Amherst professor of food science.
“Foods produced with these encapsulated fats should have the same qualities as conventional high-fat foods.“ The research team includes McClements and UMass Amherst food science professors Eric Decker and Yeonhwa Park.
To make the encapsulated fats, small oil droplets are formed by mixing oil, water and a surfactant in a process similar to making salad dressing. The surfactant coats the droplets and keeps them separate from the water until fiber is added to the mix in the final step.
Controlling the electrical charges of the surfactant and the fiber molecules allows the oil to attract the fiber like a magnet.
Droplets are usually coated with two to three layers of fiber, and other substances such as proteins can be incorporated to hold the fiber layers together or to provide additional benefits.
The process is suitable for encapsulating a wide range of fats and oils, everything from orange oil to olive oil, and uses fiber obtained from apples, oranges, seaweed or shellfish. All the ingredients are food-grade, so this technology requires no FDA approval to use.
Encapsulated fats can be used in emulsion-based foods such as beverages, sauces, desserts, yoghurt and salad dressings. They remain stable in acidic foods and during freezing, thawing and cooking, and can also handle large amounts of salt.
How much of the fat can be digested is controlled by the number of layers and the types of fiber used. The team is currently experimenting with ways to chemically link the fiber layers to enhance their ability to stay intact around the fat droplets.
Layers of fiber could also be used to encapsulate vitamins and antioxidants, enabling them to survive a trip through the stomach and be released in the small intestine for absorption by the body, and this process could allow ingredients with proven health benefits but unpleasant taste, like Omega-3 fatty acids, to be included in a wide variety of foods.

The speed with which bees learn affects their ability to collect food from flowers, according to a new study from Queen Mary, University of London.
As nectar levels in flowers change from minute-to-minute, faster learning bees are more likely to keep track of which blooms are most rewarding, and thrive as a result, Physorg.com said.
Dr Nigel Raine and Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences presented twelve bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies with flight arenas containing blue and yellow artificial flowers, which were stocked with different amounts of nectar reward.
The bees were challenged to overcome their natural preference for ’blue’ flowers, and to learn that the ’yellow’ flowers were more rewarding. The team found that the colonies which learned colours quickly, were more successful foragers.
The colonies’ learning speeds varied by a factor of nearly five; those colonies which learnt to associate the yellow, nectar-rich flowers, with rewards fastest in the laboratory, went on to harvest 66 per cent more nectar than the slowest learning colonies, from real flowers under field conditions.
Dr Raine explains, “It is often assumed that the learning abilities of animals are adapted to the environments in which they live and that faster learning animals should be at an advantage. Our study is the first to go out and test this assumption looking at an animal in the wild. We indeed find that faster learning bees appear to have an advantage when looking for food.“
Foraging bees use a variety of cues, including floral colour, pattern and scent, to recognize, discriminate and learn the flowers from which they collect food.
The team’s findings suggest that differences in learning performance have important evolutionary consequences for animal foraging and fitness under natural conditions.
“Rather like us, some bees learn from their mistakes more quickly than others. These faster learning bees also collect more nectar from flowers, which ultimately means their colony will be more successful,“ explains Raine.