Monthly Archives: August 2021

Technology has evolved over the years in many fascinating ways

We live in a world where agricultural practices are very advanced. However, we started with collecting wild grains more than 10,50,00 years ago and then planting them around 11,500 years ago. A lot went between when nascent farmers began gathering seeds and when modern farmers started using ultra-modern technologies to cultivate their lands.

The Atlantic came up with a panel of eminent figures who compiled a list of 50 innovations which have been most important to the agricultural sector. In this blog post, we tell you about 6 of these great breakthroughs in agriculture that changed the world.

The German chemist Fritz Haber, who is also known as the father of chemical weapons, won a Nobel Prize for developing an ammonia synthesis process. This process was used to create fertilizers which ultimately led to the green revolution. This brings us to the second breakthrough.

The fertilizers development in the early twentieth century combined with scientific plant breeding methods led to a huge increase in world's food output. The world remembers this landmark turn as the green revolution. Norman Borlaug, the man behind the green revolution, was an agricultural economist who saved 1 billion people from hunger and starvation.

Gregor Mendel, who is also known as the father of genetics, discovered how plant breeding and human genetics works. It was he who deserves the credit for the development of hundreds of high yielding varieties which were made possible only by his research.

The combine harvester has become very essential to farming. However, what we do not realize is the fact that it wasn't always there. Before its invention, farmers had to perform a number of tasks manually. Its invention ensured that more and more hands were free to do other kinds of work.

We have water pumps today which can give off litres and litres of water in a single minute. The first ever water pump was made by Archimedes. The Greek scientist is said to have designed a rotating corkscrew which could push water up a tube. It completely changed the way irrigation was done and it still remains in use in sewage treatment plants.

Refrigeration changed the way food was stored and used forever. One cannot even imagine the difficulties faced in storing food by people who lived in a world where refrigeration was not yet discovered. Its discovery transformed food transport, food safety, and food preservation.

Read this article:
6 Greatest Breakthroughs in Agriculture that Changed the World - Krishi Jagran

Hyderabad: A new study has revealed that Roman Catholics of Goa, Kumta, and Mangalore regions are the remnants of very early lineages of the Brahmin community of India, majorly with Indo-European-specific genetic composition.

Conducted by Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Chief Scientist, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), and Director of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad; and Dr Niraj Rai, Senior Scientist, DST-Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow, and the researchers analyzed the DNA of 110 individuals from the Roman Catholic community of Goa, Kumta, and Mangalore.

They compared the genetic information of the Roman Catholic group with previously published DNA data from India and West Eurasia. They put this information alongside archaeological, linguistic, and historical records. All of these helped the researchers fill in many of the key details about the demographic changes and history of the Roman Catholic population of South West of India since the Iron Age (until around 2,500 years ago), and how they relate to the contemporary Indian population.

They concluded that the Roman Catholics of Goa, Kumta and Mangalore regions are the remnants of very early lineages of the Brahmin community of India, majorly with Indo-European-specific genetic composition.

The study found consequences of the Portuguese inquisition in Goa on the population history of Roman Catholics. They also found some indication of the Jewish component. This finding has been published in "Human Genetics" on 23 August 2021.

"Our genetic study revealed that the majority of Roman Catholics is genetically close to an early lineage of the Gaur Saraswat community. More than 40 per cent of their paternally inherited Y chromosomes can be grouped under the R1a haplogroup. Such a genetic signal is prevalent among populations of north India, the Middle East, and Europe and unique to this population in the Konkan region," said Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj, senior author of the study.

Dr. Niraj Rai, the co-corresponding author, said this study strongly suggests profound cultural transformations in the ancient South West of India. "This has mostly happened due to continuous migration and mixing events since last 2500 years", he said.

Lomous Kumar, first author of the paper, said the origins of many population groups in India like the Jews and Parsis are not well-understood.

"These are gradually unfolding with advances in the modern and ancient population genetics. Roman Catholics are one of them with much-debated history of the origin based on inferences of anthropologists and historians", he said

Dr Vinay K Nandikoori, Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, said this multi-disciplinary study using history, anthropology and genetics information have helped them in understanding the population history of Roman Catholics from one of the most diverse and multicultural region of our country.

The other institutes involved in this study are Mangalore University, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and Institute of Advanced Materials, Sweden.

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Roman Catholics of Goa, Mangalore have early lineages of Brahmin community: Study - NewsMeter

As anyone who has ever lived with a dog will know, it often feels like we don't get enough time with our furry friends. Most dogs only live around ten to 14 years on average though some may naturally live longer, while others may be predisposed to certain diseases that can limit their lifespan.

But what many people don't know is that humans and dogs share many genetic similarities including a predisposition to age-related cancer. This means that many of the things humans can do to be healthier and longer lived may also work for dogs.

Here are just a few ways that you might help your dog live a longer, healthier life.

One factor that's repeatedly linked with longevity across a range of species is maintaining a healthy bodyweight. That means ensuring dogs aren't carrying excess weight, and managing their calorie intake carefully.

Not only will a lean, healthy bodyweight be better for your dog in the long term, it can also help to limit the impact of certain health conditions, such as osteoarthritis.

Carefully monitor and manage your dog's bodyweight through regular weighing or body condition scoring where you look at your dog's physical shape and "score" them on a scale to check whether they're overweight, or at a healthy weight. Using both of these methods together will allow you to identify weight changes and alter their diet as needed.

Use feeding guidelines as a starting point for how much to feed your dog, but you might need to change food type or the amount you feed to maintain a healthy weight as your dog gets older, or depending on how much activity they get.

Knowing exactly how much you are feeding your dog is also a crucial weight-management tool so weigh their food rather than scooping it in by eye.

More generally, good nutrition can be linked to a healthy ageing process, suggesting that what you feed can be as important as how much you feed. "Good" nutrition will vary for each dog, but be sure to look for foods that are safe, tasty and provide all the nutrients your dog needs.

Exercise has many physiological and psychological benefits, both for our dogs (and us). Physical activity can help to manage a dog's bodyweight, and is also associated with anti-ageing effects in other genetically similar species.

While exercise alone won't increase your dog's lifespan, it might help protect you both from carrying excess bodyweight. And indeed, research suggests that "happy" dog walks lead to both happy dogs and people.

Ageing isn't just physical. Keeping your dog's mind active is also helpful. Contrary to the popular adage, you can teach old dogs new tricks and you might just keep their brain and body younger as a result.

Even when physical activity might be limited, explore alternative low-impact games and pursuits, such as scentwork that you and your dog can do together. Using their nose is an inherently rewarding and fun thing for dogs to do, so training dogs to find items by scent will exercise them both mentally and physically.

Other exercise such as hydrotherapy a type of swimming exercise might be a good option especially for dogs who have conditions which affect their ability to exercise as normal.

Like many companion animals, dogs develop a clear attachment to their caregivers. The human-dog bond likely provides companionship and often, dog lovers describe them as a family member.

A stable caregiver-dog bond can help maintain a happy and mutually beneficial partnership between you and your dog. It can also help you recognize subtle changes in your dog's behavior or movement that might signal potential concerns.

Where there is compatibility between caregiver and dog, this leads to a better relationship and even benefits for owners, too, including stress relief and exercise. Sharing positive, fun experiences with your dog, including playing with them, are great for cementing your bond.

Modern veterinary medicine has seen substantial improvements in preventing and managing health concerns in dogs. Successful vaccination and parasite management programs have effectively reduced the incidence of disease in both dogs and humans including toxocariasis, which can be transmitted from dog feces to humans, and rabies, which can be transmitted dog-to-dog or dog-to-human.

Having a good relationship with your vet will allow you to tailor treatments and discuss your dog's needs. Regular health checks can also be useful in identifying any potential problems at a treatable stage such as dental issues or osteoarthritis which can cause pain and negatively impact the dog's wellbeing.

At the end of the day, it's a combination of our dog's genetics and the environment they live in that impacts their longevity. So while we can't change their genetics, there are many things we can do to improve their health that may just help them live a longer, healthier life.

Jacqueline Boyd, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read more:
Animal Expert Shares 5 Things That Will Help Your Dog Live a Longer, Healthier Life - ScienceAlert

Changing your diet to improve your health is nothing newpeople with diabetes, obesity, Crohns disease, celiac disease, food allergies, and a host of other conditions have long done so as part of their treatment. But new and sophisticated knowledge about biochemistry, nutrition, and artificial intelligence has given people more tools to figure out what to eat for good health, leading to a boom in the field of personalized nutrition.

Personalized nutrition, often used interchangeably with the terms precision nutrition or individualized nutrition is an emerging branch of science that uses machine learning and omics technologies (genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) to analyze what people eat and predict how they respond to it. Scientists, nutritionists, and health care professionals take the data, analyze it, and use it for a variety of purposes, including identifying diet and lifestyle interventions to treat disease, promote health, and enhance performance in elite athletes.

Increasingly, its being adopted by businesses to sell products and services such as nutritional supplements, apps that use machine learning to provide a nutritional analysis of a meal based on a photograph, and stool-sample tests whose results are used to create customized dietary advice that promises to fight bloat, brain fog, and a myriad of other maladies.

Nutrition is the single most powerful lever for our health, says Mike Stroka, CEO of the American Nutrition Association, the professional organization whose mandate includes certifying nutritionists and educating the public about science-based nutrition for health care practice. Personalized nutrition will be even bigger.

In 2019, according to ResearchandMarkets.Com, personalized nutrition was a $3.7 billion industry. By 2027, it is expected to be worth $16.6 billion. Among the factors driving that growth are consumer demand, the falling cost of new technologies, a greater ability to provide information, and the increasing body of evidence that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet.

The sequencing of the human genome, which started in 1990 and concluded 13 years later, paved the way for scientists to more easily and accurately find connections between diet and genetics.

When the term personalized nutrition first appeared in the scientific literature, in 1999, the focus was on using computers to help educate people about their dietary needs. It wasnt until 2004 that scientists began to think about the way genes affect how and what we eat, and how our bodies respond. Take coffee, for instance: Some people metabolize caffeine and the other nutrients in coffee in a productive, healthy way. Others dont. Which camp you fall into depends on a host of factors including your genetics, age, environment, gender, and lifestyle.

More recently, researchers have been studying connections between the health of the gut microbiome and conditions including Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and depression. The gut microbiome, the bodys least well-known organ, consists of more than 1000 species of bacteria and other microbes. Weighing in at almost a pound, it produces hormones, digests food that the stomach cant, and sends thousands of different diet-derived chemicals coursing through our bodies every day. In many respects the microbiome is key to understanding nutrition and is the basis of the growth in personalized nutrition.

Blood, urine, DNA, and stool tests are part of the personalized nutrition toolkit that researchers, nutritionists, and health care professionals use to measure the gut microbiome and the chemicals (known as metabolites) it produces. They use that data, sometimes in conjunction with self-reported data collected via surveys or interviews, as the basis for nutrition advice.

Read more here:
The Poop About Your Gut Health and Personalized Nutrition - WIRED