Sam Berns, teen who battled 'accelerated aging' disease, dead at 17

AP | Jan 13, 2014, 02.20 PM IST

READ MORE Scott Berns|Sam Berns|Robert Kraft|Progeria|New England Patriots
Sam Berns, teen who battled 'accelerated aging' disease, dead at 17
Berns was diagnosed with progeria when he was 22 months old. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen-years-old Sam Berns, whose battle with a rare genetic condition that accelerates the aging process became the subject of an HBO documentary has died.

Berns, of Foxborough, Massachusetts, died on Friday after complications from Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, commonly known as progeria. The Progeria Research Foundation, which was founded by his parents, announced his death.

Berns was diagnosed with progeria when he was 22 months old. His parents founded the nonprofit foundation after encountering a lack of information and research on the condition, whose victims live an average of 13 years.

The work by his parents, Leslie Gordon and Scott Berns, who are doctors, on behalf of progeria patients is featured in the documentary " Life According to Sam.'' The exposure has brought greater recognition to the condition, which causes musculoskeletal degeneration, cardiovascular problems and other symptoms associated with aging.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft mourned Berns' death, saying he had invited the teen to be the football team's honorary captain for Saturday night's playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts and was looking forward to spending time with him and his family.

"I loved Sam Berns and am richer for having known him,'' Kraft said in a statement Saturday.

Kraft, after being introduced to Berns and attending the HBO premiere of the documentary in New York in October, made a $500,000 matching pledge to the foundation. Berns, a sports fan who was invited to a Patriots practice that month, gave the players an impromptu motivational speech, the Boston Globe reported.

Berns was asked to name his favorite player. He didn't have one. It takes a team to succeed, he said.
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Ultrasound can boost sensory performance: Study

IANS | Jan 13, 2014, 11.17 AM IST
READ MORE Ultrasound|Sensory Performance|Brain Activity
Ultrasound can boost sensory performance: Study
Scientists at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have demonstrated that ultrasound directed to a specific region of the brain can boost performance in sensory discrimination.
WASHINGTON: Ultrasound can modulate brain activity to heighten sensory perception in humans, says a study.

Scientists at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have demonstrated that ultrasound directed to a specific region of the brain can boost performance in sensory discrimination.

The study provides the first demonstration that low-intensity, transcranial-focused ultrasound can modulate human brain activity to enhance perception.

"Ultrasound has great potential for bringing unprecedented resolution to the growing trend of mapping the human brain's connectivity," said William 'Jamie' Tyler, assistant professor at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.

"So we decided to look at the effects of ultrasound on the region of the brain responsible for processing tactile sensory inputs," he said.

The scientists delivered focused ultrasound to an area of the cerebral cortex that processes sensory information received from the hand, said the study published in Nature Neuroscience.

To stimulate the median nerve - a major nerve that runs down the arm and the only one that passes through the carpal tunnel - they placed a small electrode on the wrist of human volunteers and recorded their brain responses using electroencephalography, or EEG.

Then, just before stimulating the nerve, they began delivering ultrasound to the targeted brain region.

The scientists found that the ultrasound both decreased the EEG signal and weakened the brain waves responsible for encoding tactile stimulation.

The scientists then administered two classic neurological tests - the two-point discrimination test that measures a subject's ability to distinguish whether two nearby objects touching the skin are truly two distinct points, rather than one.

The second is the frequency discrimination task - a test that measures sensitivity to the frequency of a chain of air puffs.

They found unexpected results.

The subjects receiving ultrasound showed significant improvements in their ability to distinguish pins at closer distances and to discriminate small frequency differences between successive air puffs.

"Even though the brain waves associated with the tactile stimulation had weakened, people actually got better at detecting differences in sensations," said Tyler, adding that the ultrasound affected an important neurological balance.

"We believe focused ultrasound changed the balance of ongoing excitation and inhibition processing sensory stimuli in the brain region, resulting in a functional improvement in perception, he added.

"This approach can be used for potential treatments of neurodegenerative disorders, psychiatric diseases and behavioural disorders, the study said.
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‘Warming can’t be averted artificially’

Steve Connor,The Independent | Jan 9, 2014, 07.16 AM IST

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Reflector satellite cluster to cool the poles
1 reply. A new idea has to come my... May 4, 2007

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‘Warming can’t be averted artificially’
One of the plans to “geoengineer” the global climate would in effect create another climate catastrophe, according to a computer model of the plan.

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A controversial proposal to cool the planet artificially by injecting tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere which block out sunlight would cause droughts and climate chaos in the poorest countries of the world, a study has found. One of the plans to "geoengineer" the global climate would in effect create another climate catastrophe, according to a computer model of the plan.

Some climate researchers have suggested that mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions with massive injections of sulphate particles into the atmosphere may be necessary in an emergency if global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels continue to rise unabated. It is known that the sulphate particles produced by volcanoes, which are relatively quickly washed out of the atmosphere, can reduce incoming solar radiation significantly, and so cause average global temperatures to dip.

However, a study by scientists at Reading University has found that the effect of a massive and continuous injection of sulphates into the air would be to alter the rainfall patterns over vast regions of the world, notably Africa, South America and Asia which could as a result be devastated by drought. "We have shown that one of the leading candidates for geo-engineering could cause a new unintended side-effect over a large part of the planet," said Andrew Charlton-Perez of the University of Reading, a co-author of the study.

"The risks from this kind of geo-engineering are huge. A reduction in tropical rainfall of 30% would, for example, quickly dry out Indonesia so much that even the wettest years after a man-made intervention would be equal to drought conditions now," Charlton-Perez said. "The ecosystems of the tropics are among the most fragile on Earth. We would see changes happening so quickly that there would be little time for people to adapt. Discussion of geo-engineering often prompts heated debate, but very often there is a lack of understanding of what putting large amounts of aerosol in the stratosphere will do to the complex climate system. Our findings should help to fill in some of the gaps about one of the leading candidates," he said.

Volcanoes, such as Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991, can cool average global temperatures significantly for short periods, but to reverse the expected 4C rise in temperatures as a result of global warming would need large quantities of sulphate aerosols to be injected into the upper atmosphere for several years. 
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