1 In 4 US Children Raised By Single Parent

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based public policy group, has released a report on family welfare which shows that 25.8 percent of US children are raised in a single family household, a number that is expected to increase by 8 percent by 2025 to 2030. This figure is the highest of any developed country in the world. Ireland was second (24.3 percent), followed by New Zealand (23.7 percent). Experts believe a variety of factors contributed to this trend, including a greater acceptance of single-parent families and having children out of wedlock, higher teenage pregnancy rates, economics, and lack of policies to help support families. The US lacks governmental policies, including childcare at work and national paid maternity leave, which are commonplace in other countries. US childhood poverty rates are also expected to climb from 20 percent to 23.5 percent in the coming years. However, the issue isn't so clear cut. Willem Adema, a senior economist at OECD, states that, "The financial strain causes all sorts of other strain, so ultimately it might contribute to family dissolution. At the same time, it might bring some families together. I suspect that the response differs across families.

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MIT DNA Robot

M I B S I T B T

DNA projected to have applications in nanotechnology

It is known that the primary function of DNA in our body cells is to carry genetic information from one generation to the next. However, some scientists have also predicted that DNA can also be effectively utilized as an ideal building material for nanoscale structures. Such DNA based structures can then have applications in drug delivery systems, biosensors, artificial photosynthesis and more. 

Over the past few years, scientists have also tried to build DNA structures on a large scale. Five years ago, a new design strategy called DNA origami was laid out by Caltech computational bioengineer Paul Rothemund which involved the construction of two-dimensional shapes from a DNA strand folded over on itself and secured by short "staple" strands. Few years later, William Shih's lab at Harvard Medical School translated this two dimensional concept to three dimensions. This permitted for the design of complex curved and bent structures that opened new avenues for synthetic biological design at the nanoscale. However, automation of the design process was a major obstacle to these complex designs.

To overcome this hurdle of automation, a team led by biological engineer Mark Bathe at MIT, has developed software that allows easier predictions of the three-dimensional shape that will result from a given DNA template. The software doesn't automate the design process completely but then it makes it considerably easier to design complex 3-D structures."We ultimately seek a design tool where you can start with a picture of the complex three-dimensional shape of interest, and the algorithm searches for optimal sequence combinations," says Bathe, the Samuel A. Goldblith Assistant Professor of Applied Biology. "In order to make this technology for nanoassembly available to the broader community — including biologists, chemists, and materials scientists without expertise in the DNA origami technique — the computational tool needs to be fully automated, with a minimum of human input or intervention."Bathe et al  have described this software in detail in the Feb. 25 issue of Nature Methods. 

DNA is primarily made up of four nucleotide bases known as A, T, G and C, which make the molecule easy to program. According to nature's rules, A binds only with T, and G only with C. "With DNA, at the small scale, you can program these sequences to self-assemble and fold into a very specific final structure, with separate strands brought together to make larger-scale objects," Bathe says. Rothemund's origami design strategy is based on the idea of getting a long strand of DNA to fold in two dimensions, as if laid on a flat surface. In his paper outlining the method, he utilized a viral genome (approximately 8,000 nucleotides) to create 2-D stars, triangles and smiley faces. That single strand of DNA serves as a "scaffold" for the rest of the structure. Hundreds of shorter strands, each about 20 to 40 bases in length, combine with the scaffold to hold it in its final, folded shape.

Bathe also stated that DNA is better suited to self-assembly than proteins since physical properties of proteins are difficult to control and that they are sensitive to their environment. His new software program interfaces with  another software program from Shih's lab called caDNAno.  caDNAno allows users to create scaffolded DNA origami from a two-dimensional layout manually. According to Rothemund, the CanDo program should allow DNA origami designers to more thoroughly test their DNA structures and tweak them to fold correctly. "While we have been able to design the shape of things, we have had no tools to easily design and analyze the stresses and strains in those shapes or to design them for specific purposes," he says. At the molecular-level, stress in the double helix of DNA decreases the folding stability of the structure and introduces local defects, both of which have hampered progress in the scaffolded DNA origami field.

Morning Heart Attacks Cause More Damage

Researchers publishing in the journal Heart revealed that heart attacks which occur in the morning, between 6am and noon, have potential for causing more widespread damage to heart tissues than those which occur at other times during the day. The researchers looked only at patients who suffered a specific type of heart attack called STEMI (ST Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction), during which blood supply to the heart is blocked for a relatively long period of time. Patients who suffered STEMI heart attacks in the morning were found to have 21% more dead heart tissue than those who had heart attacks between 6pm and midnight. Previous studies have shown that one's risk for heart attack can be up to 40% higher in the mornings. Scientists theorize this is due to many factors, including a sudden increase in adrenaline (which increases blood pressure and heart rate), an acute increase in the work the heart needs to do, and more likelihood for blood clots to occur. All these factors may also contribute to the findings in this recent study.

 

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Low Vitamin D Levels May Explain Higher Rates of Hypertension In Blacks

A new study published in the current Journal of General Internal Medicine suggests that low vitamin Dlevels may, in part, explain why blacks have higher rates of high blood pressure when compared to whites in the US. A growing body of evidence has suggested that vitamin D receptors are found in various parts of the body, including the arteries and the heart, and a deficiency of vitamin D may somehow negatively affect the cardiovascular system, leading to issues such as hypertension. And, indeed, in the current study scientists showed that, overall, blacks had significantly lower levels of vitamin D in their blood than whites and low blood levels of vitamin D were linked to elevated systolic blood pressures. According to the researchers, "We also know that blood pressure is highest among Blacks living in the US, where UV exposure is low…these findings point towards vitamin D deficiency as a potential contributor to higher rates of vascular dysfunction – here hypertension – among Blacks living in the US. Further work is required to determine whether vitamin D supplementation could reduce these racial disparities."

 

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