In an effort to find out how far the extremely contagious norovirus germs travel when a person with the sickness throws up, researchers have invented a vomiting robot.

In an effort to find out how far the extremely contagious norovirus germs travel when a person with the sickness throws up, researchers have invented a vomiting robot.

"Vomiting Larry" was created at the Health and Safety Laboratory in Britain. The reason he was developed was to help scientists understand the range of contamination norovirus has during episodes of projectile vomiting that is experienced by its sufferers.

Norovirus causes serious projectile vomiting as well as diarrhea for up to 62 hours. After exposure to the virus, the symptoms start 12 to 48 hours later. The virus can be spread by an infected person through direct contact and contaminated food or surfaces.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the virus sickens nearly 21 million Americans each year, causing 800 deaths and 70,000 hospitalizations.

Researchers from HSL developed Vomiting Larry to evaluate how the virus so easily spreads from person to person. Larry is made up of a cylinder body loaded with water combined with florescent liquid, a head with an open mouth, and a pump to eject water through the mouth, like a projectile vomit.

After Vomiting Larry projectile vomited, the extent of room contamination was able to be measured by the amount of particles spread across the room. The researchers found that the particles could spread over three meters and that these drops are not easily visible under white hospital lighting.

The study showed that norovirus can be separated from these small particles at concentrations effective enough to cause an infection. This implies that when someone sick with the virus throws up, the area that needs to be cleaned is much larger than previously thought.

Norovirus can quickly infect many people in a short amount of time because it passes easily from person to person. It is also resistant to several cleaning products, such as ones that are used to clean bathrooms and kitchens and hand sanitizer.

In fact, earlier research says that hand sanitizers may actually cause outbreaks instead of prevent them.

The maker of Vomiting Larry, Catherine Makison-Booth, recommends using bleach to effectively clean up the vomit.

In february of 2012, it was reported that 18.2 percent of all infection outbreaks and 65 percent of all ward closures in hospitals are due to norovirus.

Baby's Health Is Tied to Mother's Value for Family

The value that an expectant mother places on family -- regardless of the reality of her own family situation -- predicts the birthweight of her baby and whether the child will develop asthma symptoms three years later, according to new research from USC. The findings suggest that one's culture is a resource that can provide tangible physical health benefits. "We know that social support has profound health implications; yet, in this case, this is more a story of beliefs than of actual family support," said Cleopatra Abdou, assistant professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Abdou studied 4,633 socioeconomically disadvantaged white, black and Hispanic women, gauging their "familism," or, more specifically, their beliefs about familial roles and responsibilities, using a questionnaire. Familism was determined by responses to statements such as, "Single moms can do just as well as married parents," or "It is better for children if their parents are married." Abdou then tracked the health of their children and found that, for every one-point increase in familism, there was a 71-gram increase in birthweight independent of a whole host of other factors -- including the gender of the infant or whether the mother was married. (For context, average birthweight in the U.S. is around 7.5 pounds, or roughly 3,400 grams. Low birthweight, typically defined as under 5.5 pounds or 2,500 grams, has been linked to health problems later in life.) Higher familism also predicted lower rates of asthma in the children up to three years later. Though one might expect to see healthier children from mothers who reported strong family support, familism is a cultural measure that exists outside of an individual's actual circumstances. "Cultural beliefs and ideals can be distinct from one's present reality. Familism is about beliefs and ideals within families. That's why familism is referred to as a cultural resource. The cultural resource of familism appears to favorably impact both reproductive health in mothers as well as critical markers of physical health in offspring. That is, the transmission of health from one generation to another," Abdou said. Abdou's findings were published online on Nov. 9 in the journal Social Science & Medicine, in an article coauthored by Tyan Parker Dominguez of USC and Hector F. Myers of UCLA. The results may shed light on the so-called "Hispanic Paradox" or "epidemiologic paradox," first documented in 1986 by Markides and Coreil, which found that immigrant populations in the United States tend to be relatively healthy compared to their peers, despite being poorer. In general, poorer populations tend to be less healthy than wealthier ones. The epidemiologic paradox diminishes over time, with immigrant populations becoming less and less healthy as they start assimilating into American culture. Abdou theorizes that U.S.-born populations, in addition to immigrant populations, can benefit in terms of mental and physical health from strong cultural resources, a theory that is supported by this study. Her work continues to probe the connections between health and culture in diverse populations in the United States and the Middle East.

Cognitive Deficits from Concussions Still Present After Two Months

The ability to focus and switch tasks readily amid distractions was compromised for up to two months following brain concussions suffered by high school athletes, according to a study at the University of Oregon. Research team members, in an interview, said the discovery suggests that some athletes may need longer recovery periods than current practices dictate to lower the risk of subsequent concussions. Conventional wisdom, said lead author David Howell, a graduate student in the UO Department of Human Physiology, has typical recovery at seven to 10 days. "The differences we detected may be a matter of milliseconds between a concussed person and a control subject, but as far as brain time goes that difference for a linebacker returning to competition too soon could mean the difference between another injury or successfully preparing to safely tackle an oncoming running back," Howell said. The findings are based on cognitive exercises used five times over the two months with a pair of sensitive computer-based measuring tools -- the attentional network test and the task-switching test. The study focused on the effects of concussions to the frontal region of the brain, which is responsible for working, or short-term, memory and executive function, said Li-Shan Chou, professor of human physiology and director of the UO Motion Analysis Laboratory. The study was published online ahead of print by Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. "If a person goes back to the playing field without a full recovery, that person is put into great danger of being re-injured," Chou said. "In any given season, if you suffer a concussion, the chances of your suffering a second one is three to six times higher and suffering a third is eight times higher. There are accumulations in this kind of injury. It doesn't go away easily." A big unknown, the researchers said, is just how serious such injuries are for adolescents, whose brains are still developing. It could be the brain can recover more easily, or such injuries could continue to produce deficits that last a lifetime. "We just don't know," Chou said, adding that most previous studies have involved college-aged athletes and older adults. Each year, there are 300,000 to 500,000 mild traumatic brain injury incidents, or concussions, with 100,000 tied to football, Chou said. He also cited a 2011 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that called such injuries a silent epidemic, with sports-related concussions in youths rising by 60 percent in the last decade. Another source of concussions, he added, is improvised explosive devices used in warfare. Through an arrangement with Eugene-area schools, 20 high school athletes who had suffered a concussion -- primarily football players but also others from soccer, volleyball and wrestling -- were assessed within 72 hours of injury and then again one week, two weeks, a month and two months later. Each of the subjects, whose diagnosis was made by a certified athletic trainer and/or physician, was matched with a healthy control subject of the same sex, body size, age and sport. "After two months following the concussions, these individuals were still significantly impaired in their executive function, compared to age-matched, activity-matched and gender-matched control populations," said co-author Louis Osternig, professor emeritus of human physiology and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. Osternig, also a certified athletic trainer, noted that self-reports by the subjects about how they were feeling sometimes were at odds with test results, which continued to show subtle deficits in cognitive functioning. The researchers also noted anecdotal reports from concussed athletes and their parents of declines in academic performance during the two-month period. Additional data linking the deficits found in cognitive testing to the subjects' gait -- their task-shifting abilities while walking -- currently are being analyzed in the ongoing project, which is funded by the Department of Defense Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (W81XWH-11-1-0717), National Athletic Trainers Association, Veterans Administration and a translational research award from a joint UO-PeaceHealth Oregon Region collaboration program. "By using tools from cognitive psychology, neuroscience and human physiology, this interdisciplinary team of scientists is improving our understanding of how brain trauma affects reaction time, and they are helping to create better outcomes for athletes, soldiers and others who are affected by concussions," said Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the graduate school. "UO researchers are working to improve the health and well-being of people in our local communities and throughout the world." "The brain is the controller of our body movement," Chou said. "If you have a brain injury, are there any differences that we can pick up in the way a subject moves the body? In this lab, we are using motion analysis as a way to detect any deficiencies or abnormalities of body movement." Chou said that his lab's goal, for now, is to disseminate the findings to the public and to talk to parents, athletic trainers and, perhaps, coaches directly to say: "These are the facts. We may not be able to draw any line on what clinically should or shouldn't be done. However, these are our observations based on our scientific testing."

Got Food Allergies? You Can Now Test Your Meal On the Spot Using a Cell Phone

Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone. A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples. The iTube attachment uses the cell phone's built-in camera, along with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would. Food allergies are an emerging public concern, affecting as many as 8 percent of young children and 2 percent of adults. Allergic reactions can be severe and even life-threatening. And while consumer-protection laws regulate the labeling of ingredients in pre-packaged foods, cross-contaminations can still occur during processing, manufacturing and transportation. Although several products that detect allergens in foods are currently available, they are complex and require bulky equipment, making them ill-suited for use in public settings, according to the UCLA researchers. The iTube was developed to address these issues, said Aydogan Ozcan, leader of the research team and a UCLA associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering. Weighing less than two ounces, the attachment analyzes a test tube-based allergen-concentration test known as a colorimetric assay. To test for allergens, food samples are initially ground up and mixed in a test tube with hot water and an extraction solvent; this mixture is allowed to set for several minutes. Then, following a step-by-step procedure, the prepared sample is mixed with a series of other reactive testing liquids. The entire preparation takes roughly 20 minutes. When the sample is ready, it is measured optically for allergen concentration through the iTube platform, using the cell phone's camera and a smart application running on the phone. The kit digitally converts raw images from the cell-phone camera into concentration measurements detected in the food samples. And beyond just a "yes" or "no" answer as to whether allergens are present, the test can also quantify how much of an allergen is in a sample, in parts per million. The iTube platform can test for a variety of allergens, including peanuts, almonds, eggs, gluten and hazelnuts, Ozcan said. The UCLA team successfully tested the iTube using commercially available cookies, analyzing the samples to determine if they had any harmful amount of peanuts, a potential allergen. Their research was recently published online in the peer-reviewed journal Lab on a Chip and will be featured in a forthcoming print issue of the journal. Other authors of the research included graduate student and lead author Ahmet F. Coskun and undergraduate students Justin Wong, Delaram Khodadadi, Richie Nagi and Andrew Tey, all of whom are members of the Ozcan BioPhotonics Laboratory at UCLA. Ozcan is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. "We envision that this cell phone-based allergen testing platform could be very valuable, especially for parents, as well as for schools, restaurants and other public settings," Ozcan said. "Once successfully deployed in these settings, the big amount of data -- as a function of both location and time -- that this platform will continuously generate would indeed be priceless for consumers, food manufacturers, policymakers and researchers, among others." Allergen-testing results of various food products, tagged with a time and location stamp, can be uploaded directly from cell phones to iTube servers to create a personalized testing archive, which could provide additional resources for allergic individuals around the world. A statistical allergy database, coupled with geographic information, could be useful for future food-related policies -- for example in restaurants, food production and for consumer protection, the researchers said.

Quick Detection of Periodontitis Pathogens

— Twelve million Germans suffer from periodontitis, an inflammation that can lead to the loss of teeth if left untreated. A new diagnostic platform enables the pathogens to be detected quickly, enabling dentists to act swiftly to initiate the right treatment.
Bleeding gums during tooth brushing or when biting into an apple could be an indication of periodontitis, an inflammatory disease of the tissues that surround and support the teeth. Bacterial plaque attacks the bone, meaning teeth can loosen over time and in the worst case even fall out, as they are left without a solid foundation to hold them in place. Furthermore, periodontitis also acts as a focal point from which disease can spread throughout the entire body: If the bacteria, which can be very aggressive, enter the bloodstream, they can cause further damage elsewhere. Physicians suspect there is a connection between periodontitis pathogens and the sort of cardiovascular damage that can cause heart attacks or strokes. In order to stop the source of inflammation, dentists remove dental calculus and deposits from the surface of teeth, but this is often not enough; particularly aggressive bacteria can only be eliminated with antibiotics.
Of the estimated 700 species of bacteria found in the mouth cavity, there are only eleven that are known to cause periodontal disease in particular; of these, some are deemed to be severely pathogenic. If these biomarkers are present in the gingival sulcus -- the small gap around the base of the tooth -- then the patient is at high risk of a severe form of periodontitis. But the only way to find out is by conducting a bacteria test. The problem is that current methods for identifying pathogens are time-consuming and must be carried out in an external contract laboratory. Conventional bacterial analysis using microbial culture carries the risk of bacteria being killed as soon as they come into contact with oxygen.
Bacterial analysis in less than 30 minutes
A new mobile diagnostic platform is designed to speed up identification of the eleven most relevant periodontitis pathogens considerably. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI in Leipzig have collaborated with two companies, BECIT GmbH and ERT-Optik, to develop a lab-on-a-chip module called ParoChip. In future this will allow dentists and medical labs to prepare samples quickly and then analyze the bacteria. All the steps in the process -- the duplication of DNA sequences and their detection -- take place directly on the platform, which consists of a disk-shaped microfluidic card that is around six centimeters in diameter. "Until now, analysis took around four to six hours. With ParoChip it takes less than 30 minutes. This means it's possible to analyze a large number of samples in a short amount of time," says Dr. Dirk Kuhlmeier, a scientist at the IZI.
The analysis is conducted in a contactless and fully automated manner. Samples are taken using sterile, toothpick-shaped paper points, after which the bacteria are removed from the point and their isolated DNA injected into reaction chambers containing dried reagents. There are eleven such chambers on each card, each featuring the reagent for one of the eleven periodontal pathogens. The total number of bacteria is determined in an additional chamber, via polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This method allows millions of copies of even tiny numbers of pathogen DNA sequences to be made. In order to generate the extremely quick changes in temperature that are required for PCR, the disk-shaped plastic chip is attached to a metal heating block with three temperature zones and mechanically turned so it passes over these zones. This causes a fluorescent signal to be generated that is measured by a connected optical measuring device featuring a fluorescence probe, a photo detector and a laser diode. The key benefit is that the signal makes it possible not only to quantify each type of bacterium and thus determine the severity of the inflammation, but also to establish the total number of all the bacteria combined. This enables doctors to fine-tune an antibiotic treatment accordingly.
"As the connected optical measuring system allows us to quantify bacteria, ParoChip is also suited to the identification of other bacterial causes of infection, such as food-borne pathogens or those that lead to sepsis ," says Kuhlmeier, who goes on to emphasize further advantages of the compact diagnostic platform: "Using ParoChip does away with many of the manual steps that are a necessary part of current bacteria tests. The synthetic disks can be produced cheaply and disposed of after use in the same way as disposable gloves." Already available as a prototype, ParoChip is initially intended for use in clinical laboratories; however it could also be used by dentists to carry out inhouse analysis of patient samples in their own practice

Calorie-Burning Brown Fat Is a Potential Obesity Treatment, Researchers Say

A new study suggests that many adults have large amounts of brown fat, the "good" fat that burns calories to keep us warm, and that it may be possible to make even more of this tissue. The study's lead author, Aaron Cypess, MD, PhD, is presenting the results at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston. "We are now even more optimistic that brown fat could be used for treating obesity and diabetes," said Cypess, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Cypess heads the research team that two years ago published a study showing that brown fat is present in adults, not just in infants and small mammals, as scientists had thought. Although most adult fat is calorie-storing white fat, most adults have some brown fat in an area extending from the front of the neck to the chest, he reported at The Endocrine Society's meeting in 2009. Now they have learned that brown fat cells lie in deeper fat, not superficial fat, and that the number of regions of brown fat varies by person, Cypess reported. They discovered this by measuring the expression of a protein found exclusively in brown fat, called uncoupling protein-1. However, even in those regions where many brown fat cells are present, they are mixed with white fat cells. "It's a marbling at the cellular level," Cypess said. "We wondered: Wouldn't it be nice if you could grow more brown fat? The answer is yes." In their new study, the researchers succeeded in growing mature human brown fat cells from preadipocytes, or pre-fat cells, that they obtained from a fresh sample of brown fat taken from the neck of a patient having routine surgery. The process took about two weeks in a laboratory dish but likely occurs more quickly in the body, Cypess said. "Some of these preadipocytes may have the choice to become either white or brown fat," he said. In another experiment, Cypess and his colleagues measured how many calories brown fat burns. To do so, they measured the fat cells' oxygen consumption rate in both cultures and surgical tissue samples from volunteers. "We demonstrated that brown fat burns up a substantial number of calories," Cypess said. "We have an organ in our body whose job it is to generate heat and burn calories." Although Cypess said stimulating the growth of additional brown fat may be a promising treatment of obesity, it cannot replace traditional approaches such as diet and exercise. He said, "As powerful as brown fat could be at burning calories, we can easily out-eat the benefit." The National Institutes of Health and the Eli Lilly Foundation funded this study.

Shifting the Balance Between Good Fat and Bad Fat

— In many cases, obesity is caused by more than just overeating and a lack of exercise. Something in the body goes haywire, causing it to store more fat and burn less energy. But what is it? Sanford-Burnham researchers have a new theory -- a protein called p62. According to a study the team published December 21 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, when p62 is missing in fat tissue, the body's metabolic balance shifts -- inhibiting "good" brown fat, while favoring "bad" white fat. These findings indicate that p62 might make a promising target for new therapies aimed at curbing obesity. "Without p62 you're making lots of fat but not burning energy, and the body thinks it needs to store energy," said Jorge Moscat, Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham professor. "It's a double whammy." Moscat led the study with collaborators at Helmholtz Zentrum München in Germany and the University of Cincinnati. p62 and obesity Moscat's team had previously produced mice that completely lack the p62 protein everywhere in their bodies. As a result, the animals were obese. They also had metabolic syndrome. In other words, as compared to mice with p62, mice lacking p62 weighed more, expended less energy, had diabetes and had a hyper-inflammatory response that's characteristic of obesity. While those results showed that the lack of p62 leads to obesity, "we didn't know which tissue was responsible for these effects, because p62 was missing in all of them," Moscat said. Some researchers believe that muscle tissue, where energy is expended, controls obesity. Others suspect the liver is a key player, or that the brain's appetite control center is most responsible for obesity. But then there's fat itself -- both white fat and brown fat. White fat is the type we think of as unwanted body fat. Brown fat, on the other hand, is beneficial because it burns calories. Many researchers now believe that brown fat somehow malfunctions in obesity, but the details are unclear. p62 shifts the balance between white fat and brown fat In their latest study, Moscat and colleagues set out to pinpoint the specific tissue responsible for obesity when p62 is missing. They made several different mouse models, each missing p62 in just one specific organ system, such as the central nervous system, the liver, or muscle. In every case, the mice were normal. They weren't obese like the mice lacking p62 everywhere. Then they made a mouse model lacking p62 only in their fat tissue. These mice were obese, just like the mice missing p62 in all tissues. Upon further study, the researchers found that p62 blocks the action of an enzyme called ERK while activating another enzyme called p38. When p62 is missing, the enzyme p38 is less active in brown fat, while ERK is more active in white fat. As a result, Moscat said, p62 is "a master regulator" in normal fat metabolism. According to Moscat, the discovery of p62's role in brown fat tissue is encouraging, because fat tissue is much more accessible than other parts of the body -- the brain, for example -- for potential drug therapies. "This makes it easier to think about new strategies to control obesity," he said. New methods for preventing or treating obesity, a major epidemic in the United States, are urgently needed. Drug therapies designed to minimize the intake of food have had limited success and also produce considerable side effects.