The importance of the hair in ancient Egyptian society

The study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science shown that ancient Egyptians styled their hair using a fat-based ‘gel’. These analyses revealed that ancient Egyptians used the product to ensure that their style stayed in place in both life and death.

The study was based on hair samples taken from 18 mummies. The oldest is around 3,500 years old, but most were excavated from a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert, and date from Greco-Roman times, around 2,300 years ago.

They include males and females ranging in age from 4 to 58 years old. Some were artificially mummified, whereas others were preserved naturally by the dry sand in which they were buried.

Microscopy using light and electrons revealed that nine of the mummies had hair coated in a mysterious fat-like substance. The gas chromatography–mass spectrometry was used to separate out the different molecules in the samples, and found that the coating contained biological long-chain fatty acids including palmitic acid and stearic acid.

The fatty coating might be a styling product that was used to set hair in place. These fatty acids were most found on both natural and artificial mummies. It seems that fatty acid were beauty product during life as well as a key part of the mummification process.

As for resins and embalming materials used to prepare the artificially mummified bodies were not found in the hair samples, suggesting that the hair was protected during embalming and then styled separately.

The evidence revealed that ancient Egyptian paid special attention to the hair because they realized that it didn’t degrade as much as the rest of the body. The product was found on both male and female mummies, showing that both sexes cared about their eternal hairdo.  Well, thing have change since then, only woman cares about heirdo in the moden days. Its seem to me its indiginous african trand though, as evindence many of black girls have fringes from the weaves either Brazilian, Indian and plastic hair. Whereas, most male species including me don’t know the difference between weaves. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s not your real hair.

High-status hairstyles

Hair was a status symbol ancient Egyptian. Therefore the styles signified high standing. Therefor, the weave on woman, I suspect is status symbol thing. The only thing I certain know about the weave is one of the major causes of the financial crisis.

On Egyptian texts and art there nothing mention of hair products. Moreover, Ancient Egyptians are known to have used scented oils and lotions on their bodies. Some best clue comes from Egyptian wigs. The hair is often coated with beeswax. Such wigs, which have been found in Egyptian tombs, would have been expensive and probably restricted to the nobility. The majority of the mummies have their own hair.

The Egyptians might have also used beeswax on their own hair. The wax contains fatty acids such as palmitic acid. Although the study doesn’t show any evidence of beeswax. Only there certain about is the product a fat, but the study can’t tell us what type of fat.

The mummies’ hairstyles varied, both long and short, with curls particularly popular; metal implements resembling curling tongs have been found in several tombs. Once the hair was styled, the fatty gunge would have held the individuals’ curls in place.

I can ensure now you ladies, that you’ll still get action without a weave, or any other artificial cosmetics products. Please don’t waste your money on silly things.

Viagra: Twitch for obesity treatment?

Treatment of obesity is a challenging activity in our modern society, including scientific approach and some the current weight-loss programs. One of the surprising scientific discovery it’s the suggestion that Viagra could be useful to treat obesity in humans.

A study published in Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, revealed both mice and mice cells that a signaling messenger called Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) would have on fat tissue. Normally, cGMP is a common regulator most physiological function including blood vessels, relaxation of vascular smooth muscles lead to vasodilation and increased blood flow. Viagra also enhance the vasodilatory by blocking an enzyme that breaks down cGMP, term phosphodiesterases (PDE 5) that increase levels of cGMP could be considered to contribute to potential changes in the fat cells.

Viagra experiment was done within seven days. During this period the mice were split into two groups, with one group being given 12mg/kg Viagra and the other group being given a placebo containing 0.9% salt. These treatments were administered on a daily basis. Once the treatments were finished, the researchers compared changes in weight and body composition before and after the treatment between the groups. In addition to that the researchers also looked at tissue samples taken from the mice’s abdominal region. The key findings indicated that the weight and body composition was not affected in either group. However, the observation of the samples of abdominal cells suggested that, for the mice in the Viagra group, the white fat cells had changed to have some features of brown adipose tissue (known for their ability to generate heat from fat). Based on this, the researchers argued that Viagra could contribute to “browning” of white fat cells, which could be useful for considering obesity treatments.

Although this study outlined an intriguing hypothesis for the underlying mechanism of browning, it is clear that the many limitations of the study demonstrated that the findings are too small and too recent to warrant the conclusions. The fact that the findings cannot be extrapolated to humans at this stage is obvious given that this was an animal study that had a very short duration. Similarly, several factors such as whether all the mice were obese, ages of the mice and levels of stress tolerance that could have contributed to different reactions between the groups were not specified, thus making it challenging to rule out alternative explanations.

What stood out the most for us when reading the article was the absence of two distinctions in particular. The first one was the researchers’ failure to make a distinction between browning cells and brown cells when discussing their results, thus making it difficult to know whether their ability to create heat from fat comes from an identical process and is comparable to other studies of brown cells. Consequently, this omission led to the study’s main strength of explaining an underlying relationship between Viagra and fat cells becoming subject to more questions than answers. The second distinction was the fact that the researchers gave the mice very high doses of Viagra, which were much higher than the current doses prescribed for erectile dysfunction treatment in humans. This, of course, made us wonder for whom they were designing this treatment and where the value of the finding lies.

If high doses are likely to be considered unsuitable for humans, then they are even more unlikely to be a prescribed by most clinicians. While the findings in this study can raise hope, it is important to know that they are far from being established facts in the scientific community and even further from being considered safe and reliable treatments in the clinical community. You can read more about the study

Treatment of obesity is a challenging activity in our modern society, including scientific approach and some the current weight-loss programs. One of the surprising scientific discovery it’s the suggestion that Viagra could be useful to treat obesity in humans.

A study published in Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, revealed both mice and mice cells that a signaling messenger called Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) would have on fat tissue. Normally, cGMP is a common regulator most physiological function including blood vessels, relaxation of vascular smooth muscles lead to vasodilation and increased blood flow. Viagra also enhance the vasodilatory by blocking an enzyme that breaks down cGMP, term phosphodiesterases (PDE 5) that increase levels of cGMP could be considered to contribute to potential changes in the fat cells.

Viagra experiment was done within seven days. During this period the mice were split into two groups, with one group being given 12mg/kg Viagra and the other group being given a placebo containing 0.9% salt. These treatments were administered on a daily basis. Once the treatments were finished, the researchers compared changes in weight and body composition before and after the treatment between the groups. In addition to that the researchers also looked at tissue samples taken from the mice’s abdominal region. The key findings indicated that the weight and body composition was not affected in either group. However, the observation of the samples of abdominal cells suggested that, for the mice in the Viagra group, the white fat cells had changed to have some features of brown adipose tissue (known for their ability to generate heat from fat). Based on this, the researchers argued that Viagra could contribute to “browning” of white fat cells, which could be useful for considering obesity treatments.

Although this study outlined an intriguing hypothesis for the underlying mechanism of browning, it is clear that the many limitations of the study demonstrated that the findings are too small and too recent to warrant the conclusions. The fact that the findings cannot be extrapolated to humans at this stage is obvious given that this was an animal study that had a very short duration. Similarly, several factors such as whether all the mice were obese, ages of the mice and levels of stress tolerance that could have contributed to different reactions between the groups were not specified, thus making it challenging to rule out alternative explanations.

What stood out the most for us when reading the article was the absence of two distinctions in particular. The first one was the researchers’ failure to make a distinction between browning cells and brown cells when discussing their results, thus making it difficult to know whether their ability to create heat from fat comes from an identical process and is comparable to other studies of brown cells. Consequently, this omission led to the study’s main strength of explaining an underlying relationship between Viagra and fat cells becoming subject to more questions than answers. The second distinction was the fact that the researchers gave the mice very high doses of Viagra, which were much higher than the current doses prescribed for erectile dysfunction treatment in humans. This, of course, made us wonder for whom they were designing this treatment and where the value of the finding lies.

If high doses are likely to be considered unsuitable for humans, then they are even more unlikely to be a prescribed by most clinicians. While the findings in this study can raise hope, it is important to know that they are far from being established facts in the scientific community and even further from being considered safe and reliable treatments in the clinical community. You can read more about the study

 

 

 

Drinking buddies has social networks connect on a genetic level

Algebra at high school level teaches us that combining the like terms allows us to shorten and simplify algebraic expressions, so that will be more easily worked with them. To combine like terms, we add the coefficients and keep the variables the same. However, we can’t combine unlike terms because that’s like trying to add apples and oranges. The same principle prove to true on social networks connect on a genetic level.

 

A research paper published in The Proceedings of the Academy of Science shown that a group of friends has patterns of genetic similarity.

 

The study is based on patterns of variation in two out of six genes sampled among friends and strangers. However, the story among some geneticists it’s hard to believe theory, they claim that the researchers have not analysed enough genes to rule out alternative explanations.

 

James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California, San Diego and his colleagues, had  analysis the data on six genes from roughly 5,000 individuals enrolled in unrelated studies, and recorded the variation at one specific point, or single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), in each gene, and compared this between friends and non-friends. Fowler and colleagues controlled the genetic likeness due to sex, age, race or common ancestry. However, the genes from friends had a tendency of having the same SNP at one position in a gene encoding the dopamine D2 receptor, DRD2, essential gene for neurological processes, including motivation, pleasure, cognition, memory, learning, and fine motor control, as well as modulation of neuroendocrine signalling.  Moreover, the friends also had showed more variation at one position in a cytochrome gene, CYP2A6, than non-friends.

 

The researchers believed that an ‘opposites attract’ phenomenon may account for the variation in CYP2A6 among friends. The study also indicates that genetic patterns don’t always show up for friends who connect through similar activities, such as running marathons or playing musical instruments.

 

 

Genetic cluster.

 

The functionality of both genes DRD2 or CYP2A6 is associated with influences of social behaviour: DRD2 with alcoholism and CYP2A6 with ‘openness’. The authors of the study believes people choose friends with similar genotypes, an individual’s fitness or survival until reproduction, these preferences are not only reflects their own genes but also the genes of the friends they’ve chosen. In other words, these traits might be an evolutionary benefit to having friends with compatible genes, even if you don’t have any offspring with them. For example, if people who are naturally less susceptible to bacterial infection hang around together, their collective health as a group multiplies because the bacteria have no vulnerable hosts. Indeed, scientists have long acknowledged that people attracted towards like-minded people, but he would have expected genotypic similarities to be far less apparent, because behaviour tends to be influenced by several genes. There is little reason to suspect that friends with similar characteristics, such as altruism, would be able to detect variations in the underlying genes for that trait. 

 

 

 

Mice who have genetic material from two fathers but nary a mother

Scientists have created mice that are the genetic product of two fathers, the latest in a series of unusual experiments in mammalian reproduction.

 

Researchers at University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and elsewhere first engineered a female mouse whose eggs contained the DNA from a male. When the female was mated with another male, the offspring had genetic contributions entirely from two males. The study appears online in the peer-reviewed journal Biology of Reproduction.

 

While the achievement is technically intriguing, its practical benefits are far from clear. Any move to try the same experiment in people is certain to be more complicated and controversial.

 

The study describes the technique as “a new form of mammalian reproduction” that could potentially be used to improve livestock breeds or preserve endangered species. More provocatively, the authors argue that if certain technical hurdles can be overcome, “then some day two men could produce their own genetic sons and daughters.” But those technical hurdles are extremely high.

 

“It has been a weird project, but we wanted to see if it could be done” in mice, says Richard Behringer, lead author of the study and a developmental geneticist at M.D. Anderson in Houston.

 

New techniques are allowing scientists to tweak the biology of reproduction in unusual ways. In April, scientists at U.K.’s Newcastle University created embryos with DNA taken from a man and two women. The research, published in the journal Nature, was undertaken to potentially help mothers avoid passing on rare genetic disorders to their children. The embryos weren’t brought to term. In 2009, a cloning-related method was used to produce monkeys with genetic material from two mothers.

 

So how is it possible to engineer mice whose genetic material is entirely from two males?

 

A human embryo has 46 chromosomes, including two that determine sex. Females normally have two of the same, written as XX, while males have an X and a Y chromosome, or XY.

 

In the latest experiment, Dr. Behringer and his colleagues first took a cell from a male mouse—Dad A. They reprogrammed the cell so it became similar to an embryonic stem cell, which eventually gives rise to all the tissues of the body.

 

When copies of the cell were grown in a cell line, about 1% spontaneously lost the Y chromosome, an occurrence that happens when mistakes creep in during cell division.

 

These cells—with Dad A’s original X chromosome but not the Y chromosome—were injected into blastocysts, early-stage embryos created from donor egg and sperm. The treated blastocysts then were transferred into surrogate mothers.

 

When the mouse babies were born, they had cells from both the blastocyst and from Dad A—so-called chimeras, which are creatures composed of at least two genetically distinct types of cells. When the females matured, some produced eggs containing only Dad A’s genetic material.

 

As a final step, the female chimeras mated with an ordinary male mouse, Dad B. Some of the resulting progeny, both male and female, were made entirely from the genetic material originating in the two dads.

 

One hitch was that, as part of the reprogramming step, the researchers added certain genes that triggered tumors in some mice, an inherent problem in the current approach used for cell reprogramming.

 

Trying this in humans is a much bigger challenge. When a human embryo inherits only one X chromosome (instead of one chromosome from each parent) it tends to die. Rarely, females are born this way, called Turner syndrome, and all are infertile. And scientists would also have to find a way to create eggs without creating human chimeras, which is ethically contentious.

Immune gene that control HI-Virus

A study published in the journal Nature Immunology reveal a gene that is essential for embryo survival could also be the key to treating chronic infections such as HIV. Genes are the working subunits of DNA, where DNA stand for Deoxyribonucleic acid, a chemical information database that carries the complete set of instructions for the cell as to the nature of the proteins produced by it, its life span, maturity, function and death. Therefore, each gene contains a particular set of instructions, usually coding for a particular protein or for a particular function. The gene, called Arih2 produce a protein that is fundamental to the function of the immune system, making critical decisions about whether to switch on the immune response to an infection.

Researchers said that Arih2 is found in dendritic cells, the sentinels of the immune system that play an essential role in raising the alarm about the presence of foreign invaders in the body.

But while our immune system works well against many infections, chronic overwhelming infections such as HIV ‘exhaust’ and switch off the immune system, similar to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and sepsis.

Indeed, during evolution, some organisms have evolved ways of exhausting our immune system to the point where the immune system just switches off, and this is what happens in HIV, hepatitis B, and tuberculosis. These organisms counter the immune response – exhausting T cells which are stimulated over and over again by the infection and becoming exhausted or paralyzed.

In the study, mice that were deficient in ARIH2 died before birth (embryonic lethal). Some of the mice with a mixed genetic background survived to birth but succumbed to an aggressive multi-organ inflammatory response.

Hence, the researchers are now looking at the effect on the immune response of switching off Arih2 for short periods of time during chronic infections.

This discovery has significant implications for manipulating the immune response to infections and suppressing chronic inflammation or autoimmunity because we can target this gene to try to push immune responses in one or other direction – either promoting it or suppressing it.

The shape of the glass holding your favorite brew can affect how quickly you get drunk.

Beer drinkers in the United Kingdom are influenced by an optical illusion caused by the shape of a curved glass. According to a new study published in PLoS ONE, certain glass shapes can actually make people down a beer more quickly, possibly contributing to the rising binge drinking problem in the U.K. that legislation has failed to control.

Different glass shapes can give the same volume of liquid the appearance of varying volumes, reasoned experimental psychologist Angela Attwood of the University of Bristol. So she and her colleagues set out to test how much glass shape affected beer drinkers’ intake. They tested 160 healthy young people, who were categorized as “social beer drinks,” not alcoholics, according to the standard WHO test for hazardous drinking. The researchers then asked each participant to drink one of two volumes of lager or soft drink—either 177 milliliters or 354 milliliters—from either a straight or curved glasses, while watching a nature documentary. At the end of each session, the participants performed a word search task, the purpose of which was merely to throw them off the true purpose of the study.

Reviewing the data, the researchers found that people drinking a full glass of beer from a curved glass drank significantly faster—in about 8 minutes, compared to the average 13 minutes it took people drinking from a straight glass. They found no differences in drinking time, however, between curved and straight glasses of half a beer.

According to Attwood, social beer drinkers naturally pace their drinking by judging how quickly they reach the halfway point. Because a curved glass holds more beer in the top half, it unconsciously motivates drinkers to speed up, reasons Attwood, who suggests a solution of marking beer glasses with a half-full line. “We can’t tell people not to drink, but we can give them a little more control,” she told

A tools to do blood tests, without costing time, money, and lives in the resources limited areas

 

When biomedical engineer Rick Haselton visited New Delhi’s largest public hospital last year, he saw glaring inefficiencies. One of the biggest: Patients were traveling great distances and staying for days just to get routine blood tests for infection. They had no choice, since many outlying regions lacked well-equipped reference labs and tools to purify samples. But if remote clinics could handle the testing, Haselton thought, then the hospital could focus on the sick while the rest stayed home.

The solution, developed by Haselton and colleagues at Vanderbilt University, was the extractionator, a tool that keeps body fluids sterile while tiny magnets extract disease biomarkers, like proteins or bits of DNA, that can be the telltale sign of an infection. To diagnose malaria, for instance, a blood sample is fed into a closed plastic tube filled with millions of tiny magnetic beads coated with nickel. Nickel chemically binds to a protein produced by the malaria parasite, called histidine-rich protein 2. Once the protein attaches to the beads, another larger magnet slides along the outside of the tube, dragging the combo through a series of chambers. One chamber washes contaminants from the beads; another contains a salt that binds to nickel, causing the biomarker to detach. Then researchers put the purified sample onto a cheap, rapid diagnostic chip. The chip detects the telltale protein, signaling a positive result for malaria.

Haselton plans to identify other pathogens by coating the beads with substances that bind to other biomarkers. Silica, for instance, picks up bits of DNA that can be used to diagnose tuberculosis. The tool could also provide an inexpensive way to test drinking water.

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